SOURCE: "Einstein's Theory," in Essays in Science and Philosophy, Philosophical Library, 1947, pp. 332-42.

A distinguished English mathematician, philosopher, and educator, Whitehead collaborated with Bertrand Russell on the latter's Principia Mathematica (1910-13), a three-volume treatise on the relationship of logic to mathematics that would eventually inspire the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his ground-breaking studies. In the following essay, originally published in the Times Educational Supplement in 1920, Whitehead seeks to explain the major principles of Einstein's work.

Einstein's work may be analysed into three factors—a principle, a procedure, and an explanation. This discovery of the principle and the procedure constitute an epoch in science. I venture, however, to think that the explanation is faulty, even although it formed the clue by which Einstein guided himself along the path from his principle to his procedure. It is no novelty to the history of science that factors of thought which...