Overwhelming Importance

Some things to think about from Alfred North Whitehead, writing in 1925 in the preface to Science and the Modern World:

"This study has been guided by the conviction that the mentality of an epoch springs from the view of the world which is, in fact, dominant in the educated sections of the communities in question." (p. viii)

Philosophy "builds cathedrals before the workmen have moved a stone, and it destroys them before the elements have worn down their arches. It is the architect of the buildings of the spirit, and it is also their solvent: --and the spiritual precedes the material." (pp. viii-ix)

"The key to the book is the sense of the overwhelming importance of a prevalent philosophy." (p. x)

I have at times feared philosophy, but I love it -- what little I have dabbled in it. It is about knowing, and knowing can be scary, but it is also rewarding.

I love Whitehead's line: "the spiritual precedes the material." I fear we do to little spiritual or philosophical thinking.