Alfred North Whitehead - Order Quotes

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The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

Alfred North Whitehead
No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.

Alfred North Whitehead
He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it.... He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.

Alfred North Whitehead
Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty; so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition; and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.

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

Alfred North Whitehead
In order that a mathematical science of any importance may be founded upon conventional definitions, the entities created by them must have properties which bear some affinity to the properties of existing things.

Alfred North Whitehead
In the first place, there can be no living science unless there is a widespread instinctive conviction in the existence of an Order of Things, and, in particular, of an Order of Nature.

Alfred North Whitehead
In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.

Alfred North Whitehead