Word: whitehead
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...Philosopher-Mathematician Alfred North Whitehead's wares were not for such men as the driver. For more than six decades he had displayed them to countless scholars and students, and not all of them were quite sure of what they saw. Nevertheless, Whitehead's wares had a wonderful reputation. On a platform and in his parlor, Whitehead's wit and wisdom were displayed most effectively. And when he put his style to it, he could write with crystalline clarity and poetic insight. But "getting me from my books," he once observed, "is not so much dangerous...
...Cambridge and London, and later at Harvard, learned to look alive when he exploded "God bless my soul!" That invocative usually heralded a significant pronouncement. His voice, in later years somewhat shrill, had the range of a roller coaster. In cutaway coat with stiff collar and ascot tie, Whitehead paced the lecture platform with hands in pockets. Vestigial tufts of white hair fringing a shiny bald pate made him look, said one pupil, "like an angel whose halo had slipped." Now & then Whitehead arrested his pacing to sketch a deceptively simple blackboard diagram of what he called a "prehension...
...Whitehead once defined the ideal university professor as "an ignorant man thinking." He possessed the great teacher's greatest gift: nobody ever asked him a foolish question. His philosophy students at Harvard gladly took the calculated risk that Professor Whitehead had demanded-honors or a flunk; no "gentleman...
...conformance with the wishes of his widow, the memorial service for Alfred North Whitehead hold at Appleton Chapel yesterday afternoon dispensed with all eulogy. A throng of over 300 friends and admirers led by President Conant attended the service...
...because not subject to the vicissitudes of scientific fashions, is a more enduring book. But not for that reason alone. It will, I believe, be read, pondered and discussed long after all of us are gone. It is a classic of our time, a wise book, a mellow one. Whitehead felt that it was his best. At once profound and lucid, original and erudite, comprehensive and detailed, it deals with the roots and fruits of cosmology, religion, art, ethics and civilization. In a hundred different ways it points up the limitations of language, of scholarship, of traditional science and religion...