Books: Adventurous Old Man

DIALOGUES OF ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (373 pp.)—Lucien Price—Little, Brown ($5).

Harvard's late famed Philosopher-Mathematician Alfred North Whitehead was far from the conventional absent-minded professor, but he did have occasional verbal lapses. One day he was cautioning a student about a theory of logic. "You must take it with a grain of er . . . um ... ah ..." For almost a minute, Whitehead groped for the word, until the student suggested. "Salt. Professor?"

"Ah, yes," Whitehead beamed. "I knew it was some chemical."

One for the Road. It is the informal and gifted...