Frases de Alfred North Whitehead

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“El desvanecimiento de los ideales es triste prueba de la derrota del esfuerzo humano.”

“Desde los primeros pasos de su educación el niño debe experimentar el placer del descubrimiento.”

“Toda la filosofía occidental es una serie de notas a pie de página de la filosofía platónica.”

“El arte ejerce una función curativa en la experiencia humana, al revelar, como en una llamarada, la verdad absoluta e íntima sobre la naturaleza de las cosas.”

“El orden no es suficiente. Lo que se requiere es algo mucho más complejo. Es el orden actuando sobre la novedad, para que la masividad de orden no degenere en mera repetición, y de este modo la novedad siempre se refleje sobre un fondo de sistema.”

“Durante el período escolar, el estudiante ha estado mentalmente inclinado sobre su escritorio; en la universidad debe ponerse de pie y mirar a su alrededor.”

“No hay verdades absolutas; todas las verdades son medias verdades. El mal surge de quererlas tratar como verdades absolutas.”

“Los oscurantistas de cualquier generación están constituidos principalmente por los que practican la metodología dominante.”

“The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.”

“…The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit…”

“The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.”

“A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.”

“Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.”

“The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.”

“By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.”

“The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.”

“The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.”

“The power of God is the worship He inspires…. The worship of God is not a rule of safety — it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.”

“There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.”

“In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.”

“There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.”

“What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.”

“The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.”

“I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t.”

“Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.”

“Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.”

“We do not require elaborate training merely in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference. Such abstinence is only too easy.”

“There is nothing in the real world which is merely an inert fact. Every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt.”

“It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.”