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Alfred North Whitehead (1939)

Lidský rod pozůstává z malé skupiny živočichů, která se po krátkou dobu diferencovala od celku živočišného života na malé planetě obíhající kolem malého slunce. Vesmír je rozsáhlý. Nic není podivnější než ten samolibý dogmatismus, jak si lidstvo v každém období své historie libuje v klamu definitivnosti právě existujících způsobů poznání. Skeptici a věřící jsou na tom stejně. V přítomné době jsou vedoucími dogmatiky vědci a skeptici. Pokrok v detailu se připouští; základní novost se zavrhuje. Tento dogmatický zdravý rozum znamená konec filosofického dobrodružství. Vesmír je rozsáhlý.
(Proces a realita, in: 3581, Matematika a dobro a jiné eseje, Praha 1970, str. 46.)
(orig.: 2879, Essays in Science and Philosophy, New York 1948, p. 91-92.)

Aristotelés (–384-324)

It remains to disarm the considerations urged in /263/ support of the existence of the unlimited not only as a potentiality but as actually compassed. Some of them do not follow as alleged from the admitted premises; and the rest can be met along some other line od sound reasoning.
(1)Admitting that things never cease to come into being, it does not follow that there actually exists some sense-perceptible body unlimited in quantity; for though the sum of things be limited, things may come out of and pass into each other without end.
(2)Again, being in contact and being limited are different things. Contact is a relation with something else, for there must be something to touch the touched; and this may happen to something limited incidentally; but ,being limited‘ is not a relation. Also a limited thing need not be touched by a thing homogeneous with itself and cannot be touched by any other.
(3)It is futil to trust to what we can conceive as a guide to what is or can be; for the excess or defect in such a case lies not in the thing but in the conceiving. One might conceive any one of us to be many times as big as we are, without limit; but if there does not exist a man too big for the city to hold, for instance, or even bigger than the men we know of, that is not because we have conceived him to exist, but because he does; and whethe we have or have not conceived him to exist is a mere incident.
Fys. III, 8, 208a
(The Physics I, London etc. 1970, p. 261+263

Alfred North Whitehead (1933)

... Jen malý krok odděluje Platóna, autora mýtu o stínech na zadní stěně jeskyně, od již zcela pozitivistické doktríny Huma (jako autora A Treatise of Humane Nature), Milla, Comta, a Huxleyho. Hlavní rozdíl mezi Platónem a současnými mysliteli – a jedná se o velký rozdíl – spočívá v tom, že Platónovo kladení důrazu na mimořádnou skutečnost věčného světa idejí musí být nahrazeno nominalismem většiny těchto moderních myslitelů.
V pozdních dialozích se ovšem Platónův zájem obrací ke kosmologii a jak je vidět z uvedených citátů jeho konečné přesvědčení či úpadek duchovních sil ve stáří jej přivádí ke kompromisu mezi koncepcí imanentního zákona a zákona uloženého zvnějšku.
Oddíl 6. Ve svém pozdním období Platón formuloval názor „... mám totiž za to – abych podal výměr – že jsoucna nejsou nic jiného než mohutnost“. Toto stanovisko představuje chartu koncepce imanentního zákona.
Významným mezníkem v historii této koncepce jsou asi o čtyři staletí později alexandrijští theologové. Světská historie filosofického myšlení obvykle nedoceňuje theologii. Je to nespravedlivé, neboť po dobu dlouhou asi tisíc třista let byli nejschopnějšími mysliteli většinou theologové. (Dobrodružství idejí, př. Zd. Bígl, Praha 2009, str. 133.)

Alfred North Whitehead (1933)

One aspect of the history of thought from the Time of Plato to the present day is the struggle between metaphysicians and Positivists over the interpretation of the Laws of Nature. The Greeks, as distinguished from the Alexandrians, are to be looked on the discoverers of ideas, rather /165/ than their systematizers. Thus it is not surprising, that the attitude of Plato on this topic is not as clearly defined as the preceding quotations might imply. In some of his Dialogues his attention is fixed on the distinction between the eternal world of ideas, completely open to the understanding, and the fluent world disclosed by the senses which fails to participate with any exact clarity in the eternal forms. To that extent the sensible world is closed to the understanding. Its history is reduced to matter of fact, incapable od complete rationalization. It is but a short step from the Plato who composed the myth of the shadows on the wall of the cave to the full positivist doctrine of Hume (i.e. the ,Humeʻ of the Treatise), Mill, Comte and Huxley. The main distinction between Plato in his mood of the Moderns – and it is a great disctinction – is that the Platonic emphasis on the eminent reality of the eternal world od ideas must be replaced by the nominalism of most of these moderns.
But in his later Dialogues Plato’s interest is concentrated on cosmology; and, as the quotations show, his final judgement, od the decay of his old age, leads him to an intermediate position between the doctrines of Immanent Law and of Imposed Law.
Section VI. It was Plato in his later mood who put forward the suggestion, „and I hold that the definition of being is simply power“. This suggestion is the charter of the doctrine of Immanent Law.
The next important landmark in the history of his doctrine is provided by the theological Alexandrians, some four to six hundred years later. It is customary to undervalue theology in a secular history of philosophical thought. This is a mistake, since for a period of about thirteen hundred years the ablest thinkers were mostly theologians.
(0029, Adventures of Ideas, Cambridge 1943, p. 164-65.)

Alfred North Whitehead (1948)

I do not like this habit among philosophers, of having recourse to secret stores of information, which are not allowed for in their system of philosophy. They are the ghost od Berkeley´s „God“, and are about as communicative.
(Uniformity and Contingency, in: Essays in Science and Philosoophy, New York 1948, p. 108.)
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Nelíbí se mi u filosofů zvyk, že se uchylují k tajným zdrojům informací, kterým ve svém systému filosofie nepopřávají místa. Jsou to příznaky Berkeleyho „Boha“ a jsou asi stejně komunikativní.
(Uniformita a kontingence, přel.Fr. Marek, in: Matematika a dobro, Praha 1970, str. 74.)