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CytatyAlfred North WhiteheadEnglish mathematician & philosopher (1861 - 1947)A clash of doctrines is not a disaster--it is an opportunity.An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words. Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it. I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether. I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad. If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings. Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and 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 excellence of the human mind. Seek simplicity, and distrust it. |
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