A Quote by Alfred North Whitehead

Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Animated Constitute Interesting Proving Purpose Scientists Study Subject

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Alfred North Whitehead
English - Mathematician
February 15, 1861 - December 30, 1947

Many a scientist has patiently designed experiments for the purpose of substantiating his belief that animal operations are motivated by no purposes. He has perhaps spent his spare time in writing articles to prove that human beings are as other animals so that 'purpose' is a category irrelevant for the explanation of their bodily activities, his own activities included. Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.

Alfred North Whitehead

There is no debate here, just scientists and non-scientists. And since the subject is science, the non-scientists don't get a vote.

Bill Maher

Historians of a generation ago were often shocked by the violence with which scientists rejected the history of their own subject as irrelevant; they could not understand how the members of any academic profession could fail to be intrigued by the study of their own cultural heritage. What these historians did not grasp was that scientists will welcome the history of science only when it has been demonstrated that this discipline can add to our understanding of science itself and thus help to produce, in some sense, better scientists.

I. Bernard Cohen

The universe does not have a purpose, but we do have! Our purpose is to re-shape this purposeless universe in a way that it will not be able to kill us!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Theology is a non-subject. I'm not saying that professors of theology are non-professors. They do interesting things, like study biblical history, biblical literature. But theology, the study of gods, the study of what gods do, presupposes that gods exist. The only kind of theology that I take account of are those theological arguments that actually argue for the existence of God.

Richard Dawkins

In a study, scientists report that drinking beer can be good for the liver. I'm sorry, did I say 'scientists'? I meant Irish people.

Tina Fey

Genuine music, to me, is the one which has no purpose. It should be as natural and as purposeless as the flow of the river.

Ilaiyaraaja

Mathematics has a threefold purpose. It must provide an instrument for the study of nature. But this is not all: it has a philosophical purpose, and, I daresay, an aesthetic purpose.

Henri Poincare

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

John Cage

Biology can be divided into the study of proximate causes, the study of the physiological sciences (broadly conceived), and into the study of ultimate (evolutionary) causes, the subject of natural history.

Ernst Mayr

Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.

John Polanyi

The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.

Wassily Kandinsky

It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour a day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge.

William Ellery Channing

First, study the present construction. Second, ask for all past experiences ...study and read everything you can on the subject.

Thomas A. Edison

No doubt it is true that science cannot study God, but it hardly follows that God had to keep a safe distance from everything that scientists want to study.

Phillip E. Johnson

Scientists are supposed to study animals in a totally objective fashion, similar to the way we inspect a rock or measure the circumference of a tree trunk. Emotions are not to interfere with the assessment. The animal-rights movement capitalizes on this perception, depicting scientists as devoid of compassion.

Frans de Waal

A Quote by Alfred North Whitehead

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