All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Mathematics began when it transitioned from specific instances to general propositions.
Alfred North Whitehead emphasizes the pivotal moment in the history of mathematics when thinkers started to formulate general rules and theories that applied to abstract entities rather than only specific, tangible examples. This shift allowed mathematics to develop as a rigorous science, abstracting concepts to understand broader truths about the universe.
Themes
MathematicsAbstractionSciencePropositionsGeneralization
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a lecture on the philosophy of mathematics to highlight its evolution.
More from Alfred North Whitehead
All quotes βThe vitality of thought is in adventure. Idea's won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervour, live for it, and, if need be, die for it. Their inheritors receive the idea, perhaps now strong and successful, but without inheriting the fervour; so the idea settles down to a comfortable middle age, turns senile, and dies.
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The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology.
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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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