Science and the Modern World Quotes

“Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

“The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

“The mountain endures. But when after ages it has worn away, it has gone. If a replica arises, it is yet a new mountain.

A colour is eternal. It haunts time like a spirit. It comes and it goes. But where it comes, it is the same colour. It neither survives nor does it live.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

“The certainty of mathematics depends on its complete abstract generality.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

“The reasonable harmony of being, which is required for the unity of a complex occasion, together with the completeness of the realization (in that occasion) of all that is involved in its logical harmony, is the primary article of metaphysical doctrine. It means that for things to be together involves that they are reasonably together. This means that thought can penetrate into every occasion of fact, so that by comprehending its key conditions, the whole complex patterns of conditions lies open before it.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

“Thus nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless...”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

“It builds cathedrals before the workmen have moved a stone, and it destroys them before the elements have worn down their arches. It is the architect of the buildings of the spirit, and it is also their solvent: - and the spiritual precedes the material.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

“Realization is… in itself the attainment of value”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World