Page "Alfred North Whitehead" Paragraph 11

Whitehead had opinions about a vast range of human endeavors.

These opinions pepper the many essays and speeches he gave on various topics between 1915 and his death ( 1917, 1925a, 1927, 1929a, 1929b, 1933, 1938 ).

His Harvard lectures ( 1924 – 37 ) are studded with quotations from his favourite poets, Wordsworth and Shelley.

Most Sunday afternoons when they were in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Whiteheads hosted an open house to which all Harvard students were welcome, and during which talk flowed freely.

Some of the obiter dicta Whitehead spoke on these occasions were recorded by Lucien Price, a Boston journalist, who published them in 1954.

That book also includes a remarkable picture of Whitehead as the aged sage holding court.

It was at one of these open houses that the young Harvard student B. F. Skinner credits a discussion with Whitehead as providing the inspiration for his work Verbal Behavior in which language is analyzed from a behaviorist perspective.

Another student influenced by Whitehead was Charles Malik, the drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights's preamble, and later president of the UN General Assembly.

Malik wrote his PhD dissertation about Whitehead, in which Malik compared Whitehead's Metaphysics of Time to that of Martin Heidegger.