QuoteProject
The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Scientific progress involves recognizing patterns and relationships in the world around us.

This quote emphasizes that the essence of scientific inquiry lies in the ability to discern underlying principles that govern diverse phenomena. Alfred North Whitehead asserts that true scientific thought seeks to connect seemingly isolated events through broader laws, highlighting the importance of understanding both the specific and the universal in our observations of the world.

Themes

ScienceObservationPatternsLawsKnowledge

In practice

Example use cases

In a lecture on the importance of scientific thinking, one might quote this to illustrate how scientists interpret data.

More from Alfred North Whitehead

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
The 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.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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

Similar quotes

No matter how counter-intuitive it may seem, basic research has proven over and over to be the lifeline of practical advances in medicine.
Arthur KornbergRead
When a physician is called to a patient, he should decide on the diagnosis, then the prognosis, and then the treatment. ... Physicians must know the evolution of the disease, its duration and gravity in order to predict its course and outcome. Here statistics intervene to guide physicians, by teaching them the proportion of mortal cases, and if observation has also shown that the successful and unsuccessful cases can be recognized by certain signs, then the prognosis is more certain.
Claude BernardRead
I remember it was hard to believe that I was taking a step onto the lunar surface.
Buzz AldrinRead
The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation.
Paul DiracRead
Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question?
Carl SaganRead
It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.
Henri PoincareRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.