Frases de Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Fecha de nacimiento: 15. Febrero 1861
Fecha de muerte: 30. Diciembre 1947
Alfred North Whitehead, OM, MRS fue un matemático y filósofo inglés. Es reconocido como la figura que define a la escuela filosófica conocida como la filosofía del proceso, [1] que hoy en día ha encontrado aplicación en una gran variedad de disciplinas, entre ellas la ecología, la teología, la educación, la física, la biología, la economía y la psicología, entre otras áreas.
En sus primeros años, Whitehead escribió principalmente sobre matemáticas, lógica y física. Sus trabajos más notables en esas áreas son los tres volúmenes de Principia Mathematica , que escribió junto con Bertrand Russell, un exestudiante suyo. Principia Mathematica es considerado uno de los trabajos más importantes sobre lógica matemática del siglo XX, y alcanzó el lugar 23 en una lista de los 100 mejores libros de no ficción en idioma inglés del siglo XX de la Biblioteca Moderna. [2]
Comenzando la década de 1910 y principios de 1920, Whitehead comenzó a enfocarse más en la filosofía de la ciencia y finalmente en la metafísica. Desarrolló un sistema metafísico que radicalmente salió de la filosofía occidental. Whitehead argumentó que la realidad consistía en procesos, más que en objetos materiales, y que los procesos son mejor definidos por sus relaciones con otros procesos, por lo que refutó la teoría de que la realidad está fundamentalmente construida por pedazos de materia que existen de manera independiente entre cada uno.[3] Actualmente, los trabajos filosóficos de Whitehead, en especial Proceso y realidad, son conocidos como los textos que fundaron la filosofía del proceso.[cita requerida]La filosofía del proceso de Whitehead argumenta que "existe una urgencia de ver al mundo como una red de procesos interrelacionados de los que somos partes integrales, por lo que todas nuestras decisiones y acciones tienen consecuencias para el mundo alrededor de nosotros". [3] Por esta razón, una de las aplicaciones más prometedoras de las ideas de Whitehead en los años más recientes ha sido en el área de la civilización ecológica y la ética del medio ambiente, iniciada por John B. Cobb, Jr.[4]
Frases Alfred North Whitehead
„The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence.“
1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)
Contexto: The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
„All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.“
Fuente: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science"
Contexto: The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.
„The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other.“
Modes of Thought (1938).
1930s
Contexto: The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
„Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things.“
Preface
1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)
Contexto: Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things. It has to insist on the scrutiny of the ultimate ideas, and on the retention of the whole of the evidence in shaping our cosmological scheme. Its business is to render explicit, and — so far as may be — efficient, a process which otherwise is unconsciously performed without rational tests.
„It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.“
Pt. I, ch. 2, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Contexto: Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.
„Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.“
1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)
Contexto: For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.
„More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook.“
Fuente: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science"
Contexto: More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, wherever there is a rational society.
„In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux.“
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Contexto: In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.
„Seek simplicity and distrust it.“
The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18835/18835-h/18835-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII.
1910s
Contexto: The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."
