"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
Do one simple move—opening your bag or unlocking your phone—three times slower than usual. When thought enters a motion you normally do without thinking, what do you notice?
Civilization Advances When We Think Less?
Alfred North Whitehead was a British mathematician and philosopher who co-wrote Principia Mathematica (1910–1913) with his former student Bertrand Russell, an attempt to ground all of mathematics in logic. At sixty-three he moved to Harvard and developed a new metaphysics known as 'process philosophy'.
In Principia Mathematica, '1+1=2' is proved only after hundreds of pages of logical groundwork, and the authors drily remark beside it that 'the above proposition is occasionally useful.' It shows how much thought is compressed into the addition everyone does without thinking.