Alfred North Whitehead...on the passion for discovery





Disinterested scientific curiosity is a passion for an ordered intellectual vision of the connection of events. But the goal of such curiosity is the marriage of action to thought. This essential intervention of action even in abstract science is often overlooked. No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows to discover. The pleasure which art and science can give to toil is the enjoyment which arises from successfully directed intention. Also, it is the same pleasure which is yielded to the scientist and to the artist.

- The Aims of Education, 1917