Adventures of ideas / by Alfred North Whitehead.

  • Alfred North Whitehead
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Adventures of ideas / by Alfred North Whitehead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    166/412 page 150
    could derive from him a coherent system of thought. It was a criticized trust. Unfortunately, they did not reflect that some of his main ideas depended upon his direct acquaintance with experienced fact. They trusted to the logical coherence of the system as a guarantee of the unrestricted relevance of his primary notions. They thus accepted his confusion— when there was confusion—of superficial aspects with funda¬ mental principles of widest generality. Their method for the furtherance of natural knowledge was endless debate, un¬ relieved by recurrence to direct observation. Unfortunately also their instrument of debate, Aristotelian Logic, was a more superficial weapon than they deemed it. Automatically it kept in the background some of the more fundamental topics for thought. Such topics are the quantitative relations examined in mathematics, and the complex possibilities of multiple relationship within a system. All these topics, and others, were kept in the background by Aristotelian Logic. Fortunately the scholastic age of Alexandrian scholarship dominated Europe for centuries, and bestowed upon civi¬ lization priceless treasures of thought. It was an age of immense progress. But a scholarly age works within rigid limitations. Fortunately, a revival of Hellenism over¬ whelmed the Hellenistic unity of the Middle Age. Plato arose as if from his tomb. Vagrant speculation and direct observation broke up the scholarly system. New interests, new gods, prevailed. The new basis for thought was the report upon facts, directly observed, directly employed. Fortunately, in the subsidence of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, the drama of the transference of culture from Athens to Alexandria was again repeated. Europe gradually entered upon a new scholarly age. The modern historian appeared, the modern critical literature appeared,
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3