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
Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Science relies on deductive reasoning to be meaningful and effective in understanding the world.
Alfred North Whitehead emphasizes the importance of deductive logic in the scientific process. He suggests that simply moving from specific observations to general theories lacks value unless we can also apply deductive reasoning to derive specific conclusions from those general theories. This back-and-forth movement between specific and general knowledge is crucial for meaningful scientific inquiry, likened here to ascending and descending Jacob's ladder, which illustrates the interconnectedness of knowledge.
Themes
ScienceDeductive LogicReasoningUnderstandingKnowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation on the importance of the scientific method, one might use this quote to highlight deductive logic.
More from Alfred North Whitehead
All quotes →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
There are two major challenges before Indian agriculture today: ecological and economical. The conservation of our basic agricultural assets such as land, water, and biodiversity is a major challenge. How to make agriculture sustainable is the challenge.
M. S. SwaminathanRead
Just because things get a little dingy at the subatomic level doesn't mean all bets are off.
Murray Gell-MannRead
We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we'll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.
Jeff BezosRead
Every theory presented as a scientific concept is just that; it's a theory that tries to explain more about the world than previous theories have done. It is open to being challenged and to being proven incorrect.
Marvin HarrisRead
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.
Stephen HawkingRead