¶ Whitehead’s Dilemma
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Index Entry
Whitehead’s Dilemma:
“Then Whitehead said we now come to a surprise because we then will discover that the specialists will not have the capability to integrate the potentials that are accruing to the special information they are finding because they are not able to communicate in this way. Certainly they wouldn’t feel they could look into the significance of this as it might impinge on general technology-- they are pure scientists. Therefore, he said, having suddenly discovered that these people would not have the ability to integrate their capabilities, then society’s hopes would be frustrated. Somebody would have to put their potential together. He said that inasmuch as they couldn’t do it themselves and someone else was going to have to do it-- who would do it? Now we discover that we may have possibly made a mistake, because, having deliberately sifted out the bright ones, we had left over a pile of tailings of the not-so-brights and inasmuch as the bright ones cannot put their work together, we will have to leave it to the not-so-bright’s to put these things together. I gave this the name of Whitehead’s Dilemma.”
¶ Citations
- OREGON UNIVERSITY Lecture "2 - p. 40, 2 Jul’62
