Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

Number is different from quantity. This difference is basic for any sort of theorizing in behavioral science, any sort of imagining of what goes on between organisms or inside organisms as part of their processes of thought.

Mathematics is the language of size.

I'm precise. I think in proportions. I play games with numbers, and I proportionalise.

We turn to quantities when we can't compare the qualities of things.

All science requires mathematics.

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.

Mathematics doesn’t care about those beyond the numbers.

I've always enjoyed mathematics. It is the most precise and concise way of expressing any idea.

Science cannot progress without reliable and accurate measurement of what it is you are trying to study. The key is measurement, simple as that.

In rating ease of description as very important, we are essentially asserting a belief in quantitative knowledge - a belief that most of the key questions in our world sooner or later demand answers to 'by how much?' rather than merely to 'in which direction?'

Whenever you can, count.

We live in a culture that venerates scores. We affix numbers to how much fat is in our mochachinos, how quickly our telephones suck information from the air, how much pain we're in. Reading, too, has become a skill to quantifiably assess.

I always liked numbers.

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.

In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.

Number, the most excellent of all inventions.

The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills.

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

It's not about size, it's a science.

Numeracy: 1. The art of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning amounts to variables in order that practical decisions may be reach. 2. That aspect of education (beyond mere literacy) which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.

I want to talk about things that are quantifiable, not a bunch of metro riders and crowd sizes.

If someone separated the art of counting and measuring and weighing from all the other arts, what was left of each (of the others) would be, so to speak, insignificant.

I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too.