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Aug. 30th, 2024 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The great characteristic of the mathematical mind is its capacity for
dealing with abstractions; and for eliciting from them clear-cut
demonstrative trains of reasoning, entirely satisfactory so long as it
is those abstractions which you want to think about. The enormous
success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand
_matter_ with its _simple location_ in space and time, and on the other
hand _mind_, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has
foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete
rendering of fact.
Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined.
-- Whitehead. Science ..., 1925
dealing with abstractions; and for eliciting from them clear-cut
demonstrative trains of reasoning, entirely satisfactory so long as it
is those abstractions which you want to think about. The enormous
success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand
_matter_ with its _simple location_ in space and time, and on the other
hand _mind_, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has
foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete
rendering of fact.
Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined.
-- Whitehead. Science ..., 1925