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North Whitehead, Alfred – The nature of inspiration and rationalism
Identifier
025739
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Process and Reality - Part I The Speculative Scheme
Chapter I - Speculative Philosophy
Section III
After the initial basis of a rational life with a civilized language has been laid, all productive thought has proceeded either by the poetic insight of artists, or by the imaginative elaboration of schemes of thought capable of utilization as logical premises. In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.
Rationalism never shakes off its status of an experimental adventure. The combined influences of mathematics and religion, which have so greatly contributed to the rise of philosophy, have also had the unfortunate effect of yoking it with static dogmatism. Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought, progressive and never final. But it is an adventure in which even partial success has importance.