While John Locke’s admonition against the "blind precipitancy" of passion should always guide the serious philosopher, an excess of zeal may well be forgiven when it involves the kind of innocent fallout that inevitably accompanies genius -- as is the case with Karl Popper. Sir Karl’s The Open Society and Its Enemies has become by now a classic argument for rationalism, as eloquent a defense of scientific tolerance as most believers in the law of noncontradiction are likely to want. Some exegetes, however, may take exception to Popper’s interpretation of what he calls Whitehead’s "wander[ing] off to such questions as the (Platonic) collectivist theory of morality" (OSE 248). I propose to show that Popper leapt to this conclusion a bit too hastily; for the passage he quotes by way of illustration does not permit an unequivocal reading. The contrary interpretation that I suggest has the added advantage of consistency with a rather straightforward 1939 article by Whitehead entitled, quite simply, "An Appeal to Sanity," whose message leaves uncharacteristically little room for confusion.1
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