At 12:58 pm 14/06/2005 -0500, you wrote: > > >Grimer wrote: > >> At 11:08 am 14/06/2005 -0400, you wrote: >>> "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by >>> eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the >>> habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. >>> Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which >>> we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like >>> cavalry charges in a battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they >>> require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments." >>> >>> - Alfred North Whitehead >> >> >> Barbarism also advances by extending the number of important operations which >> we can perform without thinking about them. Killing jews, lynching niggers, >> aborting babies, etc. >> >> Frank Grimer >>
>Are you insinuating Whitehead is a Blockhead? ;-) >Harry Perish the thought. I am a great fan of THAT Alf as shown by the quotation which headed my paper, ==================================================== ITERATIVE HIERARCHICAL MECHANICS - A brief history The art of reasoning consists in getting hold of the subject at the right end, of seizing the few general ideas that illuminate the whole, and of persistently organizing all subsidiary facts around them. Nobody can be a good reasoner unless he has realized the importance of getting hold of the big ideas and hanging onto them like grim death . A.N.Whitehead Presidential Address to the London Branch of the Mathematical Association., 1914 ==================================================== But nobody's perfect - not Whitehead - not even Gauss. 8-) Cheers Frank Grimer
