Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
. He is best known as the defining figure of the
philosophical school
{{Horizontal TOC, nonum=on
A
* Absurdism
* Academic skepticism
* Achintya Bheda Abheda
* Advaita Vedanta
* Agnosticism
* Ajātivāda
* Ājīvika
* Ajñana
* Alexandrian school
* Analytic philosophy
* Analytical Thomism
* Anarchist schools of t ...
known as
process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classic ...
, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
,
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
,
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
,
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
,
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
, and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, among other areas.
In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
,
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
, and
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
'' (1910–1913), which he wrote with former student
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
. ''Principia Mathematica'' is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in
mathematical logic
Mathematical logic is the study of logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of for ...
, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by
Modern Library
The Modern Library is an American book publishing imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Modern Library became an ...
.
["The Modern Library's Top 100 Nonfiction Books of the Century"](_blank)
last modified 30 April 1999, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', accessed 21 November 2013.
Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to
philosophy of science
Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
, and finally to
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of
Western philosophy
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word ' ...
. Whitehead argued that
reality
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, r ...
consists of
processes rather than material objects, and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another.
[ C. Robert Mesle, ''Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead'' (West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation Press, 2009), 9.] Today Whitehead's philosophical works – particularly ''
Process and Reality
''Process and Reality'' is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.
Whit ...
'' – are regarded as the foundational texts of process philosophy.
Whitehead's process philosophy argues that "there is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have consequences for the world around us."
For this reason, one of the most promising applications of Whitehead's thought in recent years has been in the area of
ecological civilization Ecological civilization is the hypothetical concept that describes the alleged final goal of social and environmental reform within a given society. It implies that the changes required in response to global climate disruption and social injustices ...
and
environmental ethics
In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resourc ...
pioneered by
John B. Cobb
John Boswell Cobb, Jr. (born 9 February 1925) is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associ ...
.
[Philip Rose, ''On Whitehead'' (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2002), preface.]
Life
Childhood and education
![cmglee Cambridge Trinity College Whewells Court](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Cmglee_Cambridge_Trinity_College_Whewells_Court.jpg)
Alfred North Whitehead was born in
Ramsgate
Ramsgate is a seaside resort, seaside town in the district of Thanet District, Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2001 it had a population of about 40,000. In 2011, according to t ...
,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, England, in 1861.
[Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 2.] His father, Alfred Whitehead, became an Anglican minister after being headmaster of
Chatham House Academy, a school for boys previously headed by Alfred's father, Thomas Whitehead.
[Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 13.] Whitehead himself recalled both of them as being very successful school masters, with his grandfather being the more "remarkable" man.
Whitehead's mother was Maria Sarah Buckmaster. Her maternal great grandmother was Jane North (1776-1847); whose maiden surname was given to Whitehead, and several other members of his family over time. His mother, Maria Buckmaster had eleven siblings. The son of her brother Thomas,
Walter Selby Buckmaster, was twice an Olympics silver medal winner for polo (1900, 1908) for Britain, and is said to be "one of the finest polo players England has ever produced
Whitehead does not appear to have been close to his mother, although he and Evelyn (full name: Evelyn Ada Maud Rice Willoughby Wade), whom he married in 1890, are recorded in the English Census of 1891 as living with Alfred's mother and father. Lowe notes that there appears to have been mutual dislike between Whitehead's wife, Evelyn, and his mother, Maria.
Griffin relates how Bertrand Russell, a colleague and collaborator of Whitehead, was a very close friend of Whitehead and of his wife, Evelyn. Griffin retells Russell's story of how, one evening in 1901, "they found Evelyn Whitehead in the middle of what appeared to be a dangerous and acutely painful angina attack. ...
utIt seems that she suffered from a psychosomatic disorder ...
ndthe danger was illusory." Griffin posits that Russell exaggerated the drama of her illness, and that both Evelyn and Russell were habitually given to melodrama. Intensity of emotion was encourgaged by their avant garde associates in the turbulent
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strac ...
which "discussed aesthetic and philosophical questions in a spirit of agnosticism and were strongly influenced by
G.E. Moore
George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...
’s ''
Principia Ethica
''Principia Ethica'' is a 1903 book by the British philosopher G. E. Moore, in which the author insists on the indefinability of "good" and provides an exposition of the naturalistic fallacy. ''Principia Ethica'' was influential, and Moore's a ...
'' (1903) and by A.N. Whitehead’s and Bertrand Russell’s ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
'' (1910–13), in the light of which they searched for definitions of the good, the true, and the beautiful "
Alfred's brother
Henry
Henry may refer to:
People
*Henry (given name)
* Henry (surname)
* Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry
Royalty
* Portuguese royalty
** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal
** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...
became
Bishop of Madras and wrote the closely observed ethnographic account ''Village Gods of South-India'' (Calcutta: Association Press, 1921).
Whitehead was educated at
Sherborne
Sherborne is a market town and civil parish in north west Dorset, in South West England. It is sited on the River Yeo, on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, east of Yeovil. The parish includes the hamlets of Nether Coombe and Lower Clatcombe. T ...
, a prominent English
public school
Public school may refer to:
* State school (known as a public school in many countries), a no-fee school, publicly funded and operated by the government
* Public school (United Kingdom), certain elite fee-charging independent schools in England an ...
, where he excelled in sports and mathematics and was head
prefect
Prefect (from the Latin ''praefectus'', substantive adjectival form of ''praeficere'': "put in front", meaning in charge) is a magisterial title of varying definition, but essentially refers to the leader of an administrative area.
A prefect's ...
of his class.
[Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 63.]
In 1880, he began attending
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...
, and studied mathematics. His academic advisor was
Edward Routh
Edward John Routh (; 20 January 18317 June 1907), was an English mathematician, noted as the outstanding coach of students preparing for the Mathematical Tripos examination of the University of Cambridge in its heyday in the middle of the ninet ...
.
He earned his B.A. from Trinity in 1884, writing his dissertation on
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and ligh ...
's ''
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
''A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'' is a two-volume treatise on electromagnetism written by James Clerk Maxwell in 1873. Maxwell was revising the ''Treatise'' for a second edition when he died in 1879. The revision was completed by Wil ...
'', and graduated as fourth
wrangler.
Career
Elected a
fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
of Trinity in 1884, Whitehead would teach and write on
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
and
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
at the college until 1910, spending the 1890s writing his ''Treatise on Universal Algebra'' (1898), and the 1900s collaborating with his former pupil,
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
, on the first edition of ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
''. He was a
Cambridge Apostle
The Cambridge Apostles (also known as ''Conversazione Society'') is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who became the first Bishop of Gibraltar.W. C. Lubenow, ''The Ca ...
.
![Russell1907-2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Russell1907-2.jpg)
In 1910, Whitehead resigned his senior lectureship in mathematics at Trinity and moved to London without first obtaining another job. After being unemployed for a year, he accepted a position as lecturer in applied mathematics and mechanics at
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
, but was passed over a year later for the Goldsmid Chair of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, a position for which he had hoped to be seriously considered.
In 1914, Whitehead accepted a position as professor of applied mathematics at the newly chartered
Imperial College London
Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
, where his old friend
Andrew Forsyth
Andrew Russell Forsyth, FRS, FRSE (18 June 1858, Glasgow – 2 June 1942, South Kensington) was a British mathematician.
Life
Forsyth was born in Glasgow on 18 June 1858, the son of John Forsyth, a marine engineer, and his wife Christina ...
had recently been appointed chief professor of mathematics.
[Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 26-27.]
In 1918, Whitehead's academic responsibilities began to seriously expand as he accepted a number of high administrative positions within the
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...
system, of which Imperial College London was a member at the time. He was elected dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of London in late 1918 (a post he held for four years), a member of the University of London's Senate in 1919, and chairman of the Senate's Academic (leadership) Council in 1920, a post which he held until he departed for America in 1924.
Whitehead was able to exert his newfound influence to successfully lobby for a new
history of science
The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal.
Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Meso ...
department, help establish a Bachelor of Science degree (previously only Bachelor of Arts degrees had been offered), and make the school more accessible to less wealthy students.
Toward the end of his time in England, Whitehead turned his attention to
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
. Though he had no advanced training in philosophy, his philosophical work soon became highly regarded. After publishing ''The Concept of Nature'' in 1920, he served as president of the
Aristotelian Society
The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy, more generally known as the Aristotelian Society, is a philosophical society in London.
History
Aristotelian Society was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Squar ...
from 1922 to 1923.
Move to the United States, 1924
In 1924,
Henry Osborn Taylor
Henry Osborn Taylor (December 5, 1856 – April 13, 1941) was an American historian and legal scholar.
Career
Taylor graduated from Harvard University in 1878 and, later, from Columbia Law School. He later received honorary degrees from Harvard ...
invited the 63-year-old Whitehead to join the faculty at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
as a professor of philosophy.
[Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 132.] The Whiteheads would spend the rest of their lives in the United States.
During his time at Harvard, Whitehead produced his most important philosophical contributions. In 1925, he wrote ''Science and the Modern World'', which was immediately hailed as an alternative to the
Cartesian Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher René Descartes—from his Latinized name ''Cartesius''. It may refer to:
Mathematics
*Cartesian closed category, a closed category in category theory
*Cartesian coordinate system, modern ...
dualism then prevalent in popular science. Lectures from 1927 to 1928, were published in 1929 as a book named ''
Process and Reality
''Process and Reality'' is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.
Whit ...
'', which has been compared to
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
's ''
Critique of Pure Reason''.
Family and death
In 1890, Whitehead married Evelyn Wade, an Irishwoman raised in France; they had a daughter, Jessie, and two sons,
Thomas
Thomas may refer to:
People
* List of people with given name Thomas
* Thomas (name)
* Thomas (surname)
* Saint Thomas (disambiguation)
* Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church
* Thomas the Ap ...
and Eric.
Thomas followed his father to Harvard in 1931, to teach at the
Business School
A business school is a university-level institution that confers degrees in business administration or management. A business school may also be referred to as school of management, management school, school of business administration, o ...
. Eric died in action at the age of 19, while serving in the
Royal Flying Corps
"Through Adversity to the Stars"
, colors =
, colours_label =
, march =
, mascot =
, anniversaries =
, decorations ...
during World War I.
From 1910, the Whiteheads had a cottage in the village of
Lockeridge
Lockeridge (pop. approximately 290) is a village in Wiltshire, England. It lies at the edge of the West Woods in the Kennet Valley, west of Marlborough, east of Avebury and south of Swindon. It is south of the A4 road which was historically t ...
, near
Marlborough, Wiltshire
Marlborough ( , ) is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the England, English Counties of England, county of Wiltshire on the A4 road (England), Old Bath Road, the old main road from London to Bath, Somerset, Bath. Th ...
; from there he completed ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
''.
The Whiteheads remained in the United States after moving to Harvard in 1924. Alfred retired from Harvard in 1937 and remained in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
, until his death on 30 December 1947.
Legacy
The two-volume biography of Whitehead by Victor Lowe is the most definitive presentation of the life of Whitehead. However, many details of Whitehead's life remain obscure because he left no ''
Nachlass
''Nachlass'' (, older spelling ''Nachlaß'') is a German word, used in academia to describe the collection of manuscripts, notes, correspondence, and so on left behind when a scholar dies. The word is a compound in German: ''nach'' means "after ...
'' (personal archive); his family carried out his instructions that all of his papers be destroyed after his death.
[Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 7.] Additionally, Whitehead was known for his "almost fanatical belief in the right to privacy," and for writing very few personal letters of the kind that would help to gain insight on his life.
Wrote Lowe in his preface, "No professional biographer in his right mind would touch him."
Led by Executive Editor Brian G. Henning and General Editor George R. Lucas Jr., the
Whitehead Research Project of the
Center for Process Studies is currently working on a critical edition of Whitehead's published and unpublished works.
["Critical Edition of Whitehead"](_blank)
last modified 16 July 2013, Whitehead Research Project, accessed 21 November 2013 . The first volume of the ''Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead'' was published in 2017 by Paul A. Bogaard and Jason Bell as ''The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924–1925: The Philosophical Presuppositions of Science''.
Mathematics and logic
In addition to numerous articles on mathematics, Whitehead wrote three major books on the subject: ''A Treatise on Universal Algebra'' (1898), ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
'' (co-written with
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
and published in three volumes between 1910 and 1913), and ''An Introduction to Mathematics'' (1911). The former two books were aimed exclusively at professional
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
s, while the latter book was intended for a larger audience, covering the
history of mathematics
The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments ...
and its
philosophical foundations.
[Christoph Wassermann, "The Relevance of An Introduction to Mathematics to Whitehead's Philosophy", ''Process Studies'' 17 (1988): 181. Available online at ] ''Principia Mathematica'' in particular is regarded as one of the most important works in mathematical logic of the 20th century.
In addition to his legacy as a co-writer of ''Principia Mathematica'', Whitehead's theory of "extensive abstraction" is considered foundational for the branch of
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
and
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
known as "
mereotopology In formal ontology, a branch of metaphysics, and in ontological computer science, mereotopology is a first-order theory, embodying mereological and topological concepts, of the relations among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the boundaries bet ...
," a theory describing
spatial relation
A spatial relationD. M. Mark and M. J. Egenhofer (1994), "Modeling Spatial Relations Between Lines and Regions: Combining Formal Mathematical Models and Human Subjects Testing"PDF/ref> specifies how some object is located in space in relation to s ...
s among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the
boundaries between parts.
''A Treatise on Universal Algebra''
In ''A Treatise on Universal Algebra'' (1898), the term ''
universal algebra
Universal algebra (sometimes called general algebra) is the field of mathematics that studies algebraic structures themselves, not examples ("models") of algebraic structures.
For instance, rather than take particular groups as the object of study, ...
'' had essentially the same meaning that it has today: the study of
algebraic structure
In mathematics, an algebraic structure consists of a nonempty set ''A'' (called the underlying set, carrier set or domain), a collection of operations on ''A'' (typically binary operations such as addition and multiplication), and a finite set of ...
s themselves, rather than examples ("models") of algebraic structures.
[George Grätzer, ''Universal Algebra'' (Princeton: Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1968), v.] Whitehead credits
William Rowan Hamilton
Sir William Rowan Hamilton Doctor of Law, LL.D, Doctor of Civil Law, DCL, Royal Irish Academy, MRIA, Royal Astronomical Society#Fellow, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the ...
and
Augustus De Morgan as originators of the subject matter, and
James Joseph Sylvester
James Joseph Sylvester (3 September 1814 – 15 March 1897) was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, and combinatorics. He played a leadership ro ...
with coining the term itself.
At the time, structures such as
Lie algebras
In mathematics, a Lie algebra (pronounced ) is a vector space \mathfrak g together with an operation called the Lie bracket, an alternating bilinear map \mathfrak g \times \mathfrak g \rightarrow \mathfrak g, that satisfies the Jacobi identi ...
and
hyperbolic quaternion
In abstract algebra, the algebra of hyperbolic quaternions is a nonassociative algebra over the real numbers with elements of the form
:q = a + bi + cj + dk, \quad a,b,c,d \in \mathbb \!
where the squares of i, j, and k are +1 and distinct eleme ...
s drew attention to the need to expand algebraic structures beyond the associatively multiplicative class. In a review
Alexander Macfarlane
Alexander Macfarlane FRSE LLD (21 April 1851 – 28 August 1913) was a Scottish logician, physicist, and mathematician.
Life
Macfarlane was born in Blairgowrie, Scotland, to Daniel MacFarlane (Shoemaker, Blairgowire) and Ann Small. He s ...
wrote: "The main idea of the work is not unification of the several methods, nor generalization of ordinary algebra so as to include them, but rather the comparative study of their several structures." In a separate review,
G. B. Mathews wrote, "It possesses a unity of design which is really remarkable, considering the variety of its themes."
''A Treatise on Universal Algebra'' sought to examine
Hermann Grassmann
Hermann Günther Grassmann (german: link=no, Graßmann, ; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His mat ...
's theory of extension ("Ausdehnungslehre"),
Boole
George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Irel ...
's algebra of logic, and Hamilton's
quaternion
In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a quatern ...
s (this last number system was to be taken up in Volume II, which was never finished due to Whitehead's work on ''Principia Mathematica''). Whitehead wrote in the preface:
Such algebras have an intrinsic value for separate detailed study; also they are worthy of comparative study, for the sake of the light thereby thrown on the general theory of symbolic reasoning, and on algebraic symbolism in particular... The idea of a generalized conception of space has been made prominent, in the belief that the properties and operations involved in it can be made to form a uniform method of interpretation of the various algebras.
Whitehead, however, had no results of a general nature.
His hope of "form
nga uniform method of interpretation of the various algebras" presumably would have been developed in Volume II, had Whitehead completed it. Further work on the subject was minimal until the early 1930s, when
Garrett Birkhoff
Garrett Birkhoff (January 19, 1911 – November 22, 1996) was an American mathematician. He is best known for his work in lattice theory.
The mathematician George Birkhoff (1884–1944) was his father.
Life
The son of the mathematician Geo ...
and
Øystein Ore
Øystein Ore (7 October 1899 – 13 August 1968) was a Norwegian mathematician known for his work in ring theory, Galois connections, graph theory, and the history of mathematics.
Life
Ore graduated from the University of Oslo in 1922, with a ...
began publishing on universal algebras.
''Principia Mathematica''
''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
'' (1910–1913) is Whitehead's most famous mathematical work. Written with former student
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
, ''Principia Mathematica'' is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematics, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by
Modern Library
The Modern Library is an American book publishing imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Modern Library became an ...
.
''Principia Mathematica''s purpose was to describe a set of
axiom
An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or f ...
s and
inference rule
In the philosophy of logic, a rule of inference, inference rule or transformation rule is a logical form consisting of a function which takes premises, analyzes their syntax, and returns a conclusion (or conclusions). For example, the rule of in ...
s in
symbolic logic
Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of formal ...
from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven. Whitehead and Russell were working on such a foundational level of
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
and
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
that it took them until page 86 of Volume II to prove that 1+1=2, a
proof humorously accompanied by the comment, "The above proposition is occasionally useful."
Whitehead and Russell had thought originally that ''Principia Mathematica'' would take a year to complete; it ended up taking them ten years.
[Hal Hellman]
''Great Feuds in Mathematics: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever''
(Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2006). When it came time for publication, the three-volume work was so long (more than 2,000 pages) and its audience so narrow (professional mathematicians) that it was initially published at a loss of 600 pounds, 300 of which was paid by
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press
A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
, 200 by the
Royal Society of London
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
, and 50 apiece by Whitehead and Russell themselves.
Despite the initial loss, today there is likely no major
academic library
An academic library is a library that is attached to a higher education institution and serves two complementary purposes: to support the curriculum and the research of the university faculty and students. It is unknown how many academic librar ...
in the world which does not hold a copy of ''Principia Mathematica''.
The ultimate substantive legacy of ''Principia Mathematica'' is mixed. It is generally accepted that
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an imme ...
's
incompleteness theorem
Complete may refer to:
Logic
* Completeness (logic)
* Completeness of a theory, the property of a theory that every formula in the theory's language or its negation is provable
Mathematics
* The completeness of the real numbers, which implies t ...
of 1931 definitively demonstrated that for any set of axioms and inference rules proposed to encapsulate mathematics, there would in fact be some truths of mathematics which could not be deduced from them, and hence that ''Principia Mathematica'' could never achieve its aims. However, Gödel could not have come to this conclusion without Whitehead and Russell's book. In this way, ''Principia Mathematicas legacy might be described as its key role in disproving the possibility of achieving its own stated goals. But beyond this somewhat ironic legacy, the book popularized modern mathematical logic and drew important connections between logic,
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
, and
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
.
''An Introduction to Mathematics''
Unlike Whitehead's previous two books on mathematics, ''An Introduction to Mathematics'' (1911) was not aimed exclusively at professional mathematicians but was intended for a larger audience. The book covered the nature of mathematics, its unity and internal structure, and its applicability to nature.
Whitehead wrote in the opening chapter:
The object of the following Chapters is not to teach mathematics, but to enable students from the very beginning of their course to know what the science is about, and why it is necessarily the foundation of exact thought as applied to natural phenomena.
The book can be seen as an attempt to understand the growth in unity and interconnection of mathematics as a whole, as well as an examination of the mutual influence of mathematics and philosophy, language, and physics. Although the book is little-read, in some ways it prefigures certain points of Whitehead's later work in philosophy and
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
.
Views on education
Whitehead showed a deep concern for
educational reform
Education reform is the name given to the goal of changing public education. The meaning and education methods have changed through debates over what content or experiences result in an educated individual or an educated society. Historically, th ...
at all levels. In addition to his numerous individually written works on the subject, Whitehead was appointed by Britain's
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during t ...
as part of a 20-person committee to investigate the educational systems and practices of the UK in 1921 and recommend reform.
Whitehead's most complete work on education is the 1929 book ''The Aims of Education and Other Essays'', which collected numerous essays and addresses by Whitehead on the subject published between 1912 and 1927. The essay from which ''Aims of Education'' derived its name was delivered as an address in 1916 when Whitehead was president of the London Branch of the
Mathematical Association
The Mathematical Association is a professional society concerned with mathematics education in the UK.
History
It was founded in 1871 as the Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching and renamed to the Mathematical Association in ...
. In it, he cautioned against the teaching of what he called "
inert ideas" – ideas that are disconnected scraps of information, with no application to real life or culture. He opined that "education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful."
[Alfred North Whitehead, ''The Aims of Education and Other Essays'' (New York: The Free Press, 1967), 1–2.]
Rather than teach small parts of a large number of subjects, Whitehead advocated teaching a relatively few important concepts that the student could organically link to many different areas of knowledge, discovering their application in actual life. For Whitehead, education should be the exact opposite of the
multidisciplinary
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...
, value-free school model
– it should be
''trans''disciplinary, and laden with values and general principles that provide students with a bedrock of wisdom and help them to make connections between areas of knowledge that are usually regarded as separate.
In order to make this sort of teaching a reality, however, Whitehead pointed to the need to minimize the importance of (or radically alter)
standard examinations for school entrance. Whitehead writes:
Every school is bound on pain of extinction to train its boys for a small set of definite examinations. No headmaster has a free hand to develop his general education or his specialist studies in accordance with the opportunities of his school, which are created by its staff, its environment, its class of boys, and its endowments. I suggest that no system of external tests which aims primarily at examining individual scholars can result in anything but educational waste.
Whitehead argued that curriculum should be developed specifically for its own students by its own staff, or else risk total stagnation, interrupted only by occasional movements from one group of inert ideas to another.
Above all else in his educational writings, Whitehead emphasized the importance of
imagination
Imagination is the production or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. Stefan Szczelkun characterises it as the forming of experiences in one's mind, which can be re-creations ...
and the free play of ideas. In his essay "Universities and Their Function", Whitehead writes provocatively on imagination:
Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts: it is a way of illuminating the facts. It works by eliciting the general principles which apply to the facts, as they exist, and then by an intellectual survey of alternative possibilities which are consistent with those principles. It enables men to construct an intellectual vision of a new world.
Whitehead's philosophy of education might adequately be summarized in his statement that "knowledge does not keep any better than fish." In other words, bits of disconnected knowledge are meaningless; all knowledge must find some imaginative application to the students' own lives, or else it becomes so much useless trivia, and the students themselves become good at parroting facts but not thinking for themselves.
Philosophy and metaphysics
![Rummell, Richard Harvard University](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Rummell%2C_Richard_Harvard_University.jpg)
Whitehead did not begin his career as a
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
.
In fact, he never had any formal training in philosophy beyond his
undergraduate education
Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry-lev ...
. Early in his life, he showed great interest in and respect for philosophy and
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
, but it is evident that he considered himself a rank amateur. In one letter to his friend and former student
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
, after discussing whether science aimed to be explanatory or merely descriptive, he wrote: "This further question lands us in the ocean of metaphysic, onto which my profound ignorance of that science forbids me to enter." Ironically, in later life, Whitehead would become one of the 20th century's foremost
metaphysicians
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
.
However, interest in metaphysics – the philosophical investigation of the nature of the universe and existence – had become unfashionable by the time Whitehead began writing in earnest about it in the 1920s. The ever-more impressive accomplishments of
empirical
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
science had led to a general consensus in academia that the development of comprehensive metaphysical systems was a waste of time because they were not subject to
empirical testing.
Whitehead was unimpressed by this objection. In the notes of one of his students for a 1927 class, Whitehead was quoted as saying: "Every scientific man in order to preserve his reputation has to say he dislikes metaphysics. What he means is he dislikes having his metaphysics criticized." In Whitehead's view, scientists and philosophers make metaphysical assumptions about how the universe works all the time, but such assumptions are not easily seen precisely because they remain unexamined and unquestioned. While Whitehead acknowledged that "philosophers can never hope finally to formulate these metaphysical
first principle
In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.
First principles in philosophy are from First Cause attitudes and taught by Aristotelians, and nua ...
s," he argued that people need to continually reimagine their basic assumptions about how the universe works if philosophy and science are to make any real progress, even if that progress remains permanently
asymptotic
In analytic geometry, an asymptote () of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as one or both of the ''x'' or ''y'' coordinates tends to infinity. In projective geometry and related contexts, ...
. For this reason, Whitehead regarded metaphysical investigations as essential to both good science and good philosophy.
Perhaps foremost among what Whitehead considered faulty metaphysical assumptions was the
Cartesian Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher René Descartes—from his Latinized name ''Cartesius''. It may refer to:
Mathematics
*Cartesian closed category, a closed category in category theory
*Cartesian coordinate system, modern ...
idea that reality is fundamentally constructed of bits of matter that exist totally independently of one another, which he rejected in favour of an
event
Event may refer to:
Gatherings of people
* Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion
* Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest
* Event management, the organization of eve ...
-based or "process"
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
in which events are primary and are fundamentally interrelated and dependent on one another.
[Alfred North Whitehead, ''Science and the Modern World'' (New York: The Free Press, 1967), 17.] He also argued that the most basic elements of reality can all be regarded as experiential, indeed that everything is constituted by its
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
. He used the term "experience" very broadly so that even inanimate processes such as electron collisions are said to manifest some degree of experience. In this, he went against Descartes' separation of two different kinds of real existence, either exclusively material or else exclusively mental.
[Alfred North Whitehead, ''Process and Reality'' (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 18.] Whitehead referred to his metaphysical system as "philosophy of organism," but it would become known more widely as "
process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classic ...
."
Whitehead's philosophy was highly original, and soon garnered interest in philosophical circles. After publishing ''The Concept of Nature'' in 1920, he served as president of the
Aristotelian Society
The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy, more generally known as the Aristotelian Society, is a philosophical society in London.
History
Aristotelian Society was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Squar ...
from 1922 to 1923, and
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson was quoted as saying that Whitehead was "the best philosopher writing in English." So impressive and different was Whitehead's philosophy that in 1924 he was invited to join the faculty at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
as a professor of philosophy at 63 years of age.
This is not to say that Whitehead's thought was widely accepted or even well understood. His philosophical work is generally considered to be among the most difficult to understand in all of the
Western canon
The Western canon is the body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West; works that have achieved the status of classics. However, not all these works originate in the Western world, and ...
.
Even professional philosophers struggled to follow Whitehead's writings. One famous story illustrating the level of difficulty of Whitehead's philosophy centres around the delivery of Whitehead's
Gifford lectures
The Gifford Lectures () are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by the will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford. Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in o ...
in 1927–28 – following
Arthur Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the lumin ...
's lectures of the year previous – which Whitehead would later publish as ''
Process and Reality
''Process and Reality'' is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.
Whit ...
'':
Eddington was a marvellous popular lecturer who had enthralled an audience of 600 for his entire course. The same audience turned up to Whitehead's first lecture but it was completely unintelligible, not merely to the world at large but to the elect. My father remarked to me afterwards that if he had not known Whitehead well he would have suspected that it was an imposter making it up as he went along... The audience at subsequent lectures was only about half a dozen in all.
It may not be inappropriate to speculate that some fair portion of the respect generally shown to Whitehead by his philosophical peers at the time arose from their sheer bafflement. The Chicago
theologian
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
Shailer Mathews
Shailer Mathews (1863–1941) was an American liberal Christian theologian, involved with the Social Gospel movement.
Career
Born on May 26, 1863, in Portland, Maine, and graduated from Colby College. Mathews was a progressive, advocating soci ...
once remarked of Whitehead's 1926 book ''Religion in the Making'': "It is infuriating, and I must say embarrassing as well, to read page after page of relatively familiar words without understanding a single sentence."
Gary Dorrien
Gary John Dorrien (born March 21, 1952) is an American social ethicist and Theology, theologian. He is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and Professor of Religion at Columbia Uni ...
, "The Lure and Necessity of Process Theology", ''CrossCurrents'' 58 (2008): 320.
However, Mathews' frustration with Whitehead's books did not negatively affect his interest. In fact, there were numerous philosophers and theologians at Chicago's Divinity School that perceived the importance of what Whitehead was doing without fully grasping all of the details and implications. In 1927, they invited one of America's only Whitehead experts,
Henry Nelson Wieman
Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975) was an American philosopher and theologian. He became the most famous proponent of theocentric naturalism and the empirical method in American theology and catalyzed the emergence of religious naturalism in the l ...
, to Chicago to give a lecture explaining Whitehead's thoughts.
Wieman's lecture was so brilliant that he was promptly hired to the faculty and taught there for twenty years, and for at least thirty years afterwards Chicago's Divinity School was closely associated with Whitehead's thought.
Shortly after Whitehead's book ''
Process and Reality
''Process and Reality'' is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.
Whit ...
'' appeared in 1929, Wieman famously wrote in his 1930 review:
Not many people will read Whitehead's recent book in this generation; not many will read it in any generation. But its influence will radiate through concentric circles of popularization until the common man will think and work in the light of it, not knowing whence the light came. After a few decades of discussion and analysis, one will be able to understand it more readily than can now be done.
Wieman's words proved prophetic. Though ''Process and Reality'' has been called "arguably the most impressive single metaphysical text of the twentieth century," it has been little-read and little-understood, partly because it demands – as Isabelle Stengers puts it – "that its readers accept the adventure of the questions that will separate them from every consensus."
Isabelle Stengers
Isabelle Stengers (; ; born 1949) is a Belgian philosopher, noted for her work in the philosophy of science. Trained as a chemist, she has collaborated with Russian-Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine and French philosopher/sociologist Bruno Latour am ...
, ''Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts'', trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011), 6. Whitehead questioned Western philosophy's most dearly held assumptions about how the universe works — but in doing so, he managed to anticipate a number of 21st century scientific and philosophical problems and provide novel solutions.
Whitehead's conception of reality
Whitehead was convinced that the scientific notion of
matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic partic ...
was misleading as a way of describing the ultimate nature of things. In his 1925 book ''Science and the Modern World'', he wrote that:
There persists ... fixed scientific cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...
which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic partic ...
, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself, such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call "scientific materialism." Also, it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived.
In Whitehead's view, there are a number of problems with this notion of "irreducible brute matter." First, it obscures and minimizes the importance of change. By thinking of any material thing (like a rock, or a person) as being fundamentally the ''same'' thing throughout time, with any changes to it being secondary to its "
nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
," scientific materialism hides the fact that nothing ever stays the same. For Whitehead, change is fundamental and inescapable; he emphasizes that "all things flow."
In Whitehead's view, then, concepts such as "quality," "matter," and "form" are problematic. These "classical" concepts fail to adequately account for change, and overlook the active and experiential nature of the most basic elements of the world. They are useful
abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstr ...
s but are not the world's basic building blocks. What is ordinarily conceived of as a single person, for instance, is philosophically described as a continuum of overlapping
event
Event may refer to:
Gatherings of people
* Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion
* Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest
* Event management, the organization of eve ...
s. After all, people change all the time, if only because they have aged by another second and had some further experience. These occasions of experience are logically distinct but are progressively connected in what Whitehead calls a "society" of events. By assuming that enduring objects are the most real and fundamental things in the universe, materialists have mistaken the abstract for the
concrete
Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...
(what Whitehead calls the "
fallacy of misplaced concreteness").
To put it another way, a thing or person is often seen as having a "defining
essence
Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...
" or a "core
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
" that is unchanging, and describes what the thing or person ''really is''. In this way of thinking, things and people are seen as fundamentally the same through time, with any changes being qualitative and secondary to their core identity (e.g., "Mark's hair has turned grey as he has gotten older, but he is still the same person"). But in Whitehead's cosmology, the only fundamentally existent things are discrete "occasions of experience" that overlap one another in time and space, and jointly make up the enduring person or thing. On the other hand, what ordinary thinking often regards as "the essence of a thing" or "the identity/core of a person" is an abstract generalization of what is regarded as that person or thing's most important or salient features across time. Identities do not define people; people define identities. Everything changes from moment to moment and to think of anything as having an "enduring essence" misses the fact that "all things flow," though it is often a useful way of speaking.
Whitehead pointed to the limitations of language as one of the main culprits in maintaining a materialistic way of thinking and acknowledged that it may be difficult to ever wholly move past such ideas in everyday speech. After all, every moment of each person's life can hardly be given a different proper name, and it is easy and convenient to think of people and objects as remaining fundamentally the same things, rather than constantly keeping in mind that each thing is a different thing from what it was a moment ago. Yet the limitations of everyday living and everyday speech should not prevent people from realizing that "material substances" or "essences" are a convenient generalized description of a continuum of particular, concrete processes. No one questions that a ten-year-old person is quite different by the time he or she turns thirty years old, and in many ways is not the same person at all; Whitehead points out that it is not philosophically or
ontologically
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
sound to think that a person is the same from one second to the next.
A second problem with materialism is that it obscures the importance of ''relations''. It sees every object as distinct and discrete from all other objects. Each object is simply an inert clump of matter that is only ''externally'' related to other things. The idea of matter as primary makes people think of objects as being fundamentally separate in time and space, and not necessarily related to anything. But in Whitehead's view, relations take a primary role, perhaps even more important than the relata themselves. A student taking notes in one of Whitehead's fall 1924 classes wrote that, "Reality applies to ''connections'', and only relatively to the things connected. (A) is real for (B), and (B) is real for (A), but
hey are
Hey or Hey! may refer to:
Music
* Hey (band), a Polish rock band
Albums
* ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014
* ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980
* ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title ...
not absolutely real independent of each other." In fact, Whitehead describes any entity as in some sense nothing more and nothing less than the sum of its relations to other entities – its ''synthesis of'' and ''reaction to'' the world around it. A real thing is just that which forces the rest of the
universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. Acc ...
to in some way conform to it; that is to say, if theoretically, a thing made strictly no difference to any other entity (i.e., it was not ''related'' to any other entity), it could not be said to really exist.
[Alfred North Whitehead, ''Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect'' (New York: Fordham University Press, 1985), 39.] Relations are not secondary to what a thing is; they ''are'' what the thing is.
It must be emphasized, however, that an entity is not ''merely'' a sum of its relations, but also a valuation of them and reaction to them. For Whitehead,
creativity
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary w ...
is the absolute principle of existence, and every entity (whether it is a human being, a tree, or an
electron
The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family,
and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...
) has some degree of novelty in how it responds to other entities and is not fully determined by
causal
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...
or
mechanistic
The mechanical philosophy is a form of natural philosophy which compares the universe to a large-scale mechanism (i.e. a machine). The mechanical philosophy is associated with the scientific revolution of early modern Europe. One of the first expo ...
laws. Most entities do not have
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
.
[Alfred North Whitehead, ''Process and Reality'' (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 23.] As a human being's actions cannot always be predicted, the same can be said of where a tree's roots will grow, or how an electron will move, or whether it will rain tomorrow. Moreover, the inability to predict an electron's movement (for instance) is not due to faulty understanding or inadequate technology; rather, the fundamental creativity/freedom of all entities means that there will always remain phenomena that are unpredictable.
The other side of creativity/freedom as the absolute principle is that every entity is constrained by the social structure of existence (i.e., its relations); each actual entity must conform to the settled conditions of the world around it.
Freedom always exists within limits. But an entity's uniqueness and individuality arise from its own self-determination as to just how it will take account of the world within the limits that have been set for it.
In summary, Whitehead rejects the idea of separate and unchanging bits of matter as the most basic building blocks of reality, in favour of the idea of reality as interrelated events in the process. He conceives of reality as composed of processes of dynamic "becoming" rather than static "being," emphasizing that all physical things change and evolve and that changeless "essences" such as matter are mere abstractions from the interrelated events that are the final real things that make up the world.
Theory of perception
Since Whitehead's
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
described a universe in which all entities
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
, he needed a new way of describing
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
that was not limited to living,
self-conscious
Self-consciousness is a heightened sense of awareness of oneself. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. Historically, "self-consciousness" was synonymous with "self-awareness", referring to a state of awareness that o ...
beings. The term he coined was "prehension," which comes from the Latin ''prehensio'', meaning "to seize".
David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin (August 8, 1939 – November 26, 2022) was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.Sources describing David Ray Griffin as a "conspiracy theorist", "conspiracist", "conspirac ...
, ''Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion'' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 79. The term is meant to indicate a kind of perception that can be conscious or unconscious, applying to people as well as
electron
The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family,
and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...
s. It is also intended to make clear Whitehead's rejection of the theory of ''representative'' perception, in which the
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
only has private ideas about other entities.
For Whitehead, the term "prehension" indicates that the perceiver actually incorporates aspects of the perceived thing into itself.
In this way, entities are constituted by their perceptions and relations, rather than being independent of them. Further, Whitehead regards perception as occurring in two modes, ''causal efficacy'' (or "physical prehension") and ''presentational immediacy'' (or "conceptual prehension").
Whitehead describes causal efficacy as "the experience dominating the primitive living organisms, which have a sense for the fate from which they have emerged, and the fate towards which they go." It is, in other words, the sense of
causal
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...
relations between entities, a feeling of being influenced and affected by the surrounding environment, unmediated by the
sense
A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of Stimulus (physiology), stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the cen ...
s. Presentational immediacy, on the other hand, is what is usually referred to as "pure sense perception," unmediated by any causal or
symbol
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
ic
interpretation, even
unconscious
Unconscious may refer to:
Physiology
* Unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli
Psychology
* Unconscious mind, the mind operating well outside the attention of the conscious mind a ...
interpretation. In other words, it is pure appearance, which may or may not be delusive (e.g., mistaking an image in a mirror for "the real thing").
In higher organisms (like people), these two modes of perception combine into what Whitehead terms "symbolic reference," which links appearance with causation in a process that is so automatic that both people and animals have difficulty refraining from it. By way of illustration, Whitehead uses the example of a person's encounter with a chair. An ordinary person looks up, sees a coloured shape, and immediately infers that it is a chair. However, an artist, Whitehead supposes, "might not have jumped to the notion of a chair," but instead "might have stopped at the mere contemplation of a beautiful colour and a beautiful shape." This is not the normal human reaction; most people place objects in categories by habit and instinct, without even thinking about it. Moreover, animals do the same thing. Using the same example, Whitehead points out that a dog "would have acted immediately on the hypothesis of a chair and would have jumped onto it by way of using it as such." In this way, symbolic reference is a fusion of pure sense perceptions on the one hand and causal relations on the other, and that it is in fact the causal relationships that dominate the more basic mentality (as the dog illustrates), while it is the sense perceptions which indicate a higher grade mentality (as the artist illustrates).
Evolution and value
Whitehead believed that when asking questions about the basic facts of existence, questions about
value and purpose can never be fully escaped. This is borne out in his thoughts on
abiogenesis
In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...
, or the hypothetical natural process by which life arises from simple organic compounds.
Whitehead makes the startling observation that "life is comparatively deficient in survival value." If humans can only exist for about a hundred years, and rocks for eight hundred million, then one is forced to ask why complex organisms ever evolved in the first place; as Whitehead humorously notes, "they certainly did not appear because they were better at that game than the rocks around them." He then observes that the mark of higher forms of life is that they are actively engaged in modifying their environment, an activity which he theorizes is directed toward the three-fold goal of living, living well, and living better. In other words, Whitehead sees life as directed toward the purpose of increasing its own satisfaction. Without such a goal, he sees the rise of life as totally unintelligible.
For Whitehead, there is no such thing as wholly inert
matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic partic ...
. Instead, all things have some measure of freedom or
creativity
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary w ...
, however small, which allows them to be at least partly self-directed. The
process philosopher David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin (August 8, 1939 – November 26, 2022) was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.Sources describing David Ray Griffin as a "conspiracy theorist", "conspiracist", "conspirac ...
coined the term "
panexperientialism" (the idea that all entities experience) to describe Whitehead's view, and to distinguish it from
panpsychism
In the philosophy of mind, panpsychism () is the view that the mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists thro ...
(the idea that all matter has
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
).
God
Whitehead's idea of
God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
differs from traditional monotheistic notions. Perhaps his most famous and pointed
criticism of the Christian conception of God is that "the Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to
Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman people, Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caes ...
." Here, Whitehead is criticizing Christianity for defining
God as primarily a divine king who imposes his will on the world, and whose most important attribute is power. As opposed to the most widely accepted forms of Christianity, Whitehead emphasized an idea of God that he called "the brief Galilean vision of humility":
It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operates by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals
Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of cond ...
. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present.[Alfred North Whitehead, ''Process and Reality'' (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 343.]
For Whitehead, God is not necessarily tied to
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
.
[Alfred North Whitehead, ''Process and Reality'' (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 207.] Rather than springing primarily from religious
faith
Faith, derived from Latin ''fides'' and Old French ''feid'', is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or In the context of religion, one can define faith as "belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion".
Religious people often ...
, Whitehead saw God as necessary for his
metaphysical
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
system.
His system required that an order exist among possibilities, an order that allowed for novelty in the world and provided an aim to all entities. Whitehead posited that these ordered potentials exist in what he called the ''primordial nature'' of God. However, Whitehead was also interested in
religious experience
A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defens ...
. This led him to reflect more intensively on what he saw as the second nature of God, the ''consequent nature''. Whitehead's conception of God as a "dipolar" entity has called for fresh
theological
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
thinking.
The primordial nature he described as "the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality"
— i.e., the unlimited possibility of the universe. This primordial nature is
eternal
Eternal(s) or The Eternal may refer to:
* Eternity, an infinite amount of time, or a timeless state
* Immortality or eternal life
* God, the supreme being, creator deity, and principal object of faith in monotheism
Comics, film and television
* ...
and
unchanging, providing entities in the universe with possibilities for realization. Whitehead also calls this primordial aspect "the lure for
feeling
Feelings are subjective self-contained phenomenal experiences. According to the ''APA Dictionary of Psychology'', a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations ...
, the eternal urge of desire," pulling the entities in the universe toward as-yet unrealized possibilities.
God's consequent nature, on the other hand, is anything but unchanging; it is God's reception of the world's activity. As Whitehead puts it, "
odsaves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved." In other words, God saves and cherishes all experiences forever, and those experiences go on to change the way God interacts with the world. In this way, God is really changed by what happens in the world and the wider universe, lending the actions of finite creatures an eternal significance.
Whitehead thus sees
God and the world as fulfilling one another. He sees entities in the world as fluent and changing things that yearn for a permanence which only God can provide by taking them into God's self, thereafter changing God and affecting the rest of the universe throughout time. On the other hand, he sees God as permanent but as deficient in actuality and change: alone, God is merely eternally unrealized possibilities and requires the world to actualize them. God gives creatures permanence, while the creatures give God actuality and change. Here it is worthwhile to quote Whitehead at length:
"In this way God is completed by the individual, fluent satisfactions of finite fact, and the temporal occasions are completed by their everlasting union with their transformed selves, purged into conformation with the eternal order which is the final absolute 'wisdom.' The final summary can only be expressed in terms of a group of antitheses
Antithesis (Greek for "setting opposite", from "against" and "placing") is used in writing or speech either as a proposition that contrasts with or reverses some previously mentioned proposition, or when two opposites are introduced together f ...
, whose apparent self-contradictions depend on neglect of the diverse categories of existence. In each antithesis there is a shift of meaning which converts the opposition into a contrast.
"It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent.
"It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many.
"It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.
"It is as true to say that the World is immanent
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheis ...
in God, as that God is immanent in the World.
"It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.
"It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God...
"What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world... In this sense, God is the great companion – the fellow-sufferer who understands."
The above is some of Whitehead's most evocative writing about God, and was powerful enough to inspire the movement known as
process theology
Process theology is a type of theology developed from Alfred North Whitehead's (1861–1947) process philosophy, most notably by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb (b. 1925) and Eugene H. Peters (1929-1983). Process theology and pr ...
, a vibrant theological school of thought that continues to thrive today.
[ Bruce G. Epperly, ''Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed'' (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 12.]
Religion
For Whitehead, the core of religion was individual. While he acknowledged that individuals cannot ever be fully separated from their society, he argued that life is an internal fact for its own sake before it is an external fact relating to others. His most famous remark on religion is that "religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness ... and if you are never solitary, you are never religious." Whitehead saw religion as a system of general truths that transformed a person's
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
. He took special care to note that while religion is often a good influence, it is not ''necessarily'' good – an idea which he called a "dangerous delusion" (e.g., a religion might encourage the violent extermination of a rival religion's adherents).
However, while Whitehead saw religion as ''beginning'' in solitariness, he also saw religion as necessarily expanding beyond the individual. In keeping with his
process metaphysics in which relations are primary, he wrote that religion necessitates the realization of "the value of the objective world which is a community derivative from the interrelations of its component individuals." In other words, the universe is a community which makes itself whole through the relatedness of each individual entity to all the others; meaning and value do not exist for the individual alone, but only in the context of the universal community. Whitehead writes further that each entity "can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world loyalty. The spirit at once surrenders itself to this universal claim and appropriates it for itself." In this way, the individual and universal/social aspects of religion are mutually dependent.
A connection between the works of
William DeWitt Hyde and Whitehead further elucidates this necessary duality of social and individual roles in religious experience.
Whitehead also described religion more technically as "an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of
emotion
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone." In other words, religion takes deeply felt emotions and contextualizes them within a system of general truths about the world, helping people to identify their wider meaning and significance. For Whitehead, religion served as a kind of bridge between philosophy and the emotions and purposes of a particular society. It is the task of religion to make philosophy applicable to the everyday lives of ordinary people.
Influence
Isabelle Stengers
Isabelle Stengers (; ; born 1949) is a Belgian philosopher, noted for her work in the philosophy of science. Trained as a chemist, she has collaborated with Russian-Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine and French philosopher/sociologist Bruno Latour am ...
wrote that "Whiteheadians are recruited among both
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
s and theologians, and the palette has been enriched by practitioners from the most diverse horizons, from
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
to
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
, practices that unite political struggle and
spirituality
The meaning of ''spirituality'' has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape o ...
with the
sciences of education."
In recent decades, attention to Whitehead's work has become more widespread, with interest extending to intellectuals in Europe and China, and coming from such diverse fields as ecology, physics, biology, education, economics, and psychology. One of the first theologians to attempt to interact with Whitehead's thought was the future Archbishop of Canterbury,
William Temple. In Temple's
Gifford Lectures
The Gifford Lectures () are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by the will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford. Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in o ...
of 1932-1934 (subsequently published as "Nature, Man and God"), Whitehead is one of a number of philosophers of the
emergent evolution approach with which Temple interacts. However, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Whitehead's thought drew much attention outside of a small group of philosophers and theologians, primarily Americans, and even today he is not considered especially influential outside of relatively specialized circles.
Early followers of Whitehead were found primarily at the
University of Chicago Divinity School
The University of Chicago Divinity School is a private graduate institution at the University of Chicago dedicated to the training of academics and clergy across religious boundaries. Formed under Baptist auspices, the school today lacks any s ...
, where
Henry Nelson Wieman
Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975) was an American philosopher and theologian. He became the most famous proponent of theocentric naturalism and the empirical method in American theology and catalyzed the emergence of religious naturalism in the l ...
initiated an interest in Whitehead's work that would last for about thirty years.
Professors such as Wieman,
Charles Hartshorne
Charles Hartshorne (; June 5, 1897 – October 9, 2000) was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and ...
,
Bernard Loomer
Bernard MacDougall Loomer (March 5, 1912 – August 15, 1985) was an American professor and theologian. Loomer was longtime Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School and a leading proponent of Process Theology.
Biography
Loomer is p ...
, Bernard Meland, and
Daniel Day Williams
Daniel Day Williams (1910 – December, 1973) was a process theologian, professor, and author. He served on the joint faculty of the University of Chicago and the Chicago Theological Seminary, and later at Union Theological Seminary in New York ...
made Whitehead's philosophy arguably the most important intellectual thread running through the divinity school. They taught generations of Whitehead scholars, the most notable of whom is
John B. Cobb
John Boswell Cobb, Jr. (born 9 February 1925) is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associ ...
.
Although interest in Whitehead has since faded at Chicago's divinity school, Cobb effectively grabbed the torch and planted it firmly in
Claremont, California
Claremont () is a suburban city on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, California, United States, east of downtown Los Angeles. It is in the Pomona Valley, at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. As of the 2010 census it had a popul ...
, where he began teaching at
Claremont School of Theology
Claremont School of Theology (CST) is an American graduate school focused on religion and theology and located in Claremont, California. CST is fully recognized and approved as one of thirteen official theological schools of the United Methodis ...
in 1958 and founded the
Center for Process Studies with
David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin (August 8, 1939 – November 26, 2022) was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.Sources describing David Ray Griffin as a "conspiracy theorist", "conspiracist", "conspirac ...
in 1973. Largely due to Cobb's influence, today Claremont remains strongly identified with Whitehead's process thought.
[Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 5.]
But while Claremont remains the most concentrated hub of Whiteheadian activity, the place where Whitehead's thought currently seems to be growing the most quickly is in China. In order to address the challenges of
modernization
Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...
and
industrialization
Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...
, China has begun to blend traditions of
Taoism
Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of Philosophy, philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of China, Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmo ...
,
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
, and
Confucianism
Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...
with Whitehead's "constructive post-modern" philosophy in order to create an "ecological civilization".
["China embraces Alfred North Whitehead"](_blank)
last modified 10 December 2008, Douglas Todd, ''The Vancouver Sun
The ''Vancouver Sun'', also known as the ''Sun'', is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. Published si ...
'', accessed 5 December 2013 . To date, the Chinese government has encouraged the building of twenty-three university-based centres for the study of Whitehead's philosophy,
and books by process philosophers John Cobb and David Ray Griffin are becoming required reading for Chinese graduate students.
Cobb has attributed China's interest in process philosophy partly to Whitehead's stress on the mutual interdependence of humanity and nature, as well as his emphasis on an educational system that includes the teaching of values rather than simply bare facts.
Overall, however, Whitehead's influence is very difficult to characterize. In English-speaking countries, his primary works are little-studied outside of Claremont and a select number of liberal
graduate-level
Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate ( bachelor's) degree.
The organization and stru ...
theology and philosophy programs. Outside of these circles, his influence is relatively small and diffuse and has tended to come chiefly through the work of his students and admirers rather than Whitehead himself. For instance, Whitehead was a teacher and long-time friend and collaborator of
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
, and he also taught and supervised the dissertation of
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". ...
, both of whom are important figures in
analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
– the dominant strain of philosophy in English-speaking countries in the 20th century. Whitehead has also had high-profile admirers in the
continental tradition
Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Pri ...
, such as French
post-structuralist
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critiques ...
philosopher
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
, who once dryly remarked of Whitehead that "he stands provisionally as the last great Anglo-American philosopher before
Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...
's disciples spread their misty confusion, sufficiency, and terror."
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
, ''The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque'', trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 76. French
sociologist and
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...
even went so far as to call Whitehead "the greatest philosopher of the 20th century."
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...
, preface to ''Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts'', by Isabelle Stengers
Isabelle Stengers (; ; born 1949) is a Belgian philosopher, noted for her work in the philosophy of science. Trained as a chemist, she has collaborated with Russian-Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine and French philosopher/sociologist Bruno Latour am ...
, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011), x.
Deleuze's and Latour's opinions, however, are minority ones, as Whitehead has not been recognized as particularly influential within the most dominant philosophical schools. It is impossible to say exactly why Whitehead's influence has not been more widespread, but it may be partly due to his metaphysical ideas seeming somewhat counterintuitive (such as his assertion that
matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic partic ...
is an
abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstr ...
), or his inclusion of
theistic
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with ''deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred to ...
elements in his philosophy, or the perception of metaphysics itself as passé, or simply the sheer difficulty and density of his prose.
Process philosophy and theology
Historically, Whitehead's work has been most influential in the field of
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
progressive theology.
The most important early proponent of Whitehead's thought in a
theological
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
context was
Charles Hartshorne
Charles Hartshorne (; June 5, 1897 – October 9, 2000) was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and ...
, who spent a semester at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
as Whitehead's teaching assistant in 1925, and is widely credited with developing Whitehead's
process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classic ...
into a full-blown
process theology
Process theology is a type of theology developed from Alfred North Whitehead's (1861–1947) process philosophy, most notably by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb (b. 1925) and Eugene H. Peters (1929-1983). Process theology and pr ...
. Other notable process theologians include
John B. Cobb
John Boswell Cobb, Jr. (born 9 February 1925) is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associ ...
,
David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin (August 8, 1939 – November 26, 2022) was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.Sources describing David Ray Griffin as a "conspiracy theorist", "conspiracist", "conspirac ...
,
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (born 1933) is an author and United Methodist professor emeritus, emerita of Christian theology, theology at Claremont School of Theology. She is also co-director of the Center for Process Studies' at Claremont.
Suchocki ...
,
C. Robert Mesle,
Roland Faber
Roland Faber (born 1960) is an author and Kilsby Family/John B. Cobb, Jr., Professor of Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Claremont Graduate University. He is Executive Co-Director of the C ...
, and
Catherine Keller.
Process theology typically stresses God's relational nature. Rather than seeing God as
impassive or emotionless, process theologians view God as "the fellow sufferer who understands," and as the being who is supremely affected by temporal events. Hartshorne points out that people would not praise a human ruler who was unaffected by either the joys or sorrows of his followers – so why would this be a praiseworthy quality in God? Instead, as the being who is most affected by the world, God is the being who can most appropriately respond to the world. However, process theology has been formulated in a wide variety of ways. C. Robert Mesle, for instance, advocates a "process
naturalism" — i.e., a process theology without God.
In fact, process theology is difficult to define because process theologians are so diverse and
transdisciplinary
Transdisciplinarity connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines, such as research o ...
in their views and interests. John B. Cobb is a process theologian who has also written books on biology and economics. Roland Faber and Catherine Keller integrate Whitehead with
poststructuralist
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
,
postcolonialist
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
, and
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
theory.
Charles Birch
Louis Charles Birch (1918–2009) was an Australian geneticist specialising in population ecology and was also well known as a theologian, writing widely on the topic of science and religion, winning the Templeton Prize in 1990. The prize recogn ...
was both a theologian and a
geneticist
A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic processe ...
.
Franklin I. Gamwell
Franklin I. Gamwell is a scholar of the philosophy of religion, Christian theology, and philosophical ethics. He is the Shailer Mathews Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Religious Ethics, the Philosophy of Religions, and Theology at the D ...
writes on theology and political theory. In ''Syntheism - Creating God in The Internet Age'', futurologists
Alexander Bard
Alexander Bengt Magnus Bard (born 17 March 1961) is a Swedish musician, author, lecturer, artist, songwriter, music producer, TV personality, religious and political activist, and one of the founders of the Syntheist religious movement alongside ...
and
Jan Söderqvist
Jan Söderqvist (born 1961) is an author, lecturer, writer and consultant, and among other things also working as a literary and film critic for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.
Söderqvist has written three books on the Internet revolut ...
repeatedly credit Whitehead for the process theology they see rising out of the
participatory culture
Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers). The term is most often applied to the product ...
expected to dominate the digital era.
Process philosophy is even more difficult to pin down than process theology. In practice, the two fields cannot be neatly separated. The 32-volume
State University of New York
The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...
series in constructive postmodern thought edited by process philosopher and theologian
David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin (August 8, 1939 – November 26, 2022) was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.Sources describing David Ray Griffin as a "conspiracy theorist", "conspiracist", "conspirac ...
displays the range of areas in which different process philosophers work, including physics, ecology, medicine, public policy, nonviolence, politics, and psychology.
One philosophical school which has historically had a close relationship with process philosophy is American
pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
. Whitehead himself thought highly of
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
and
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
, and acknowledged his indebtedness to them in the preface to ''
Process and Reality
''Process and Reality'' is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.
Whit ...
''.
Charles Hartshorne (along with
Paul Weiss) edited the collected papers of
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...
, one of the founders of pragmatism. Noted
neopragmatist
Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.
...
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic phi ...
was in turn a student of Hartshorne. Today,
Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher (; ; born 15 July 1928) is a German-American philosopher, polymath, and author, who has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961. He is chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and was for ...
is one example of a philosopher who advocates both process philosophy and pragmatism.
In addition, while they might not properly be called process philosophers, Whitehead has been influential in the philosophy of
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
,
Milič Čapek
Milič Čapek, (26 January 1909 – 17 November 1997) was a Czech–American philosopher. Čapek was strongly influenced by the process philosophy of Henri Bergson and to a lesser degree by Alfred North Whitehead. Much of his work was devoted to t ...
,
Isabelle Stengers
Isabelle Stengers (; ; born 1949) is a Belgian philosopher, noted for her work in the philosophy of science. Trained as a chemist, she has collaborated with Russian-Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine and French philosopher/sociologist Bruno Latour am ...
,
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...
,
Susanne Langer
Susanne Katherina Langer (; ''née'' Knauth; December 20, 1895 – July 17, 1985) was an American philosopher, writer, and educator known for her theories on the influences of art on the mind. She was one of the earliest American women to achieve ...
, and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...
.
Science
Scientists of the early 20th century for whom Whitehead's work has been influential include physical chemist
Ilya Prigogine
Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (; russian: Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин; 28 May 2003) was a physical chemist and Nobel laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.
Biogra ...
, biologist
Conrad Hal Waddington
Conrad Hal Waddington (8 November 1905 – 26 September 1975) was a British developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher who laid the foundations for systems biology, epigenetics, and evolutionary devel ...
, and geneticists
Charles Birch
Louis Charles Birch (1918–2009) was an Australian geneticist specialising in population ecology and was also well known as a theologian, writing widely on the topic of science and religion, winning the Templeton Prize in 1990. The prize recogn ...
and
Sewall Wright
Sewall Green Wright FRS(For) Honorary FRSE (December 21, 1889March 3, 1988) was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. He was a founder of population genetics alongsi ...
.
Charles Birch
Louis Charles Birch (1918–2009) was an Australian geneticist specialising in population ecology and was also well known as a theologian, writing widely on the topic of science and religion, winning the Templeton Prize in 1990. The prize recogn ...
, "Why Aren't We Zombies? Neo-Darwinism and Process Thought", in ''Back to Darwin: A Richer Account of Evolution'', ed. John B. Cobb Jr. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 252.
Henry Murray
Henry Alexander Murray (May 13, 1893 – June 23, 1988) was an American psychologist at Harvard University, where from 1959 to 1962 he conducted a series of psychologically damaging and purposefully abusive experiments on minors and under ...
dedicated his "Explorations in Personality" to Whitehead, a contemporary at Harvard.
In physics,
Whitehead's theory of gravitation In theoretical physics, Whitehead's theory of gravitation was introduced by the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in 1922. While never broadly accepted, at one time it was a scientifically plausible alternative to general relati ...
articulated a view that might perhaps be regarded as dual to
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
's
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
. It has been severely criticized. Yutaka Tanaka suggested that the
gravitational constant
The gravitational constant (also known as the universal gravitational constant, the Newtonian constant of gravitation, or the Cavendish gravitational constant), denoted by the capital letter , is an empirical physical constant involved in ...
disagrees with experimental findings, and proposed that Einstein's work does not actually refute Whitehead's formulation. Whitehead's view has now been rendered obsolete, with the discovery of
gravitational waves
Gravitational waves are waves of the intensity of gravity generated by the accelerated masses of an orbital binary system that Wave propagation, propagate as waves outward from their source at the speed of light. They were first proposed by Oliv ...
, phenomena observed locally that largely violate the kind of local flatness of space that Whitehead assumes. Consequently, Whitehead's cosmology must be regarded as a local approximation, and his assumption of a uniform spatio-temporal geometry, Minkowskian in particular, as an often-locally-adequate approximation. An exact replacement of Whitehead's cosmology would need to admit a Riemannian geometry. Also, although Whitehead himself gave only secondary consideration to
quantum theory
Quantum theory may refer to:
Science
*Quantum mechanics, a major field of physics
*Old quantum theory, predating modern quantum mechanics
* Quantum field theory, an area of quantum mechanics that includes:
** Quantum electrodynamics
** Quantum ...
, his
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
of processes has proved attractive to some physicists in that field.
Henry Stapp
Henry Pierce Stapp (born March 23, 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American mathematical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics, particularly the development of axiomatic S-matrix theory, the proofs of strong nonlocality properties, an ...
and
David Bohm
David Joseph Bohm (; 20 December 1917 – 27 October 1992) was an American-Brazilian-British scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th centuryPeat 1997, pp. 316-317 and who contributed u ...
are among those whose work has been influenced by Whitehead.
In the 21st century, Whiteheadian thought is still a stimulating influence:
Timothy E. Eastman and Hank Keeton's ''Physics and Whitehead'' (2004) and Michael Epperson's ''Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead'' (2004) and ''Foundations of Relational Realism: A Topological Approach to Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Nature'' (2013), aim to offer Whiteheadian approaches to
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
. Brian G. Henning, Adam Scarfe, and
Dorion Sagan's ''Beyond Mechanism'' (2013) and
Rupert Sheldrake
Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942) is an English author and parapsychology researcher who proposed the concept of morphic resonance, a conjecture which lacks mainstream acceptance and has been criticized as pseudoscience. He has worke ...
's ''Science Set Free'' (2012) are examples of Whiteheadian approaches to biology.
Ecology, economy, and sustainability
One of the most promising applications of Whitehead's thought in recent years has been in the area of
ecological
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
civilization,
sustainability
Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...
, and
environmental ethics
In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resourc ...
.
"Because Whitehead's holistic
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
of value lends itself so readily to an ecological point of view, many see his work as a promising alternative to the traditional
mechanistic
The mechanical philosophy is a form of natural philosophy which compares the universe to a large-scale mechanism (i.e. a machine). The mechanical philosophy is associated with the scientific revolution of early modern Europe. One of the first expo ...
worldview, providing a detailed metaphysical picture of a world constituted by a web of interdependent relations."
This work has been pioneered by
John B. Cobb
John Boswell Cobb, Jr. (born 9 February 1925) is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associ ...
, whose book ''Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology'' (1971) was the first single-authored book in environmental ethics. Cobb also co-authored a book with leading
ecological economist and
steady-state theorist Herman Daly
Herman Edward Daly (July 21, 1938 – October 28, 2022) was an American ecological and Georgist economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States, best known for his time as a s ...
entitled ''For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future'' (1989), which applied Whitehead's thought to
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
, and received the
Grawemeyer Award
The Grawemeyer Awards () are five awards given annually by the University of Louisville. The prizes are presented to individuals in the fields of education, ideas improving world order, music composition, religion, and psychology. The religion awa ...
for Ideas Improving World Order. Cobb followed this with a second book, ''Sustaining the Common Good: A Christian Perspective on the Global Economy'' (1994), which aimed to challenge "economists' zealous faith in the great god of growth."
Education
Whitehead is widely known for his influence in
education theory
Education sciences or education theory (traditionally often called ''pedagogy'') seek to describe, understand, and prescribe education policy and practice. Education sciences include many topics, such as pedagogy, andragogy, curriculum, learning, ...
. His philosophy inspired the formation of the Association for Process Philosophy of Education (APPE), which published eleven volumes of a journal titled ''Process Papers'' on
process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classic ...
and education from 1996 to 2008. Whitehead's theories on education also led to the formation of new modes of learning and new models of teaching.
One such model is the ANISA model developed by Daniel C. Jordan, which sought to address a lack of understanding of the nature of people in current education systems. As Jordan and Raymond P. Shepard put it: "Because it has not defined the nature of man, education is in the untenable position of having to devote its energies to the development of curricula without any coherent ideas about the nature of the creature for whom they are intended."
Another model is the FEELS model developed by Xie Bangxiu and deployed successfully in China. "FEELS" stands for five things in curriculum and education: Flexible-goals, Engaged-learner, Embodied-knowledge, Learning-through-interactions, and Supportive-teacher. It is used for understanding and evaluating educational curriculum under the assumption that the purpose of education is to "help a person become whole." This work is in part the product of cooperation between Chinese government organizations and the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China.
Whitehead's philosophy of education has also found institutional support in Canada, where the
University of Saskatchewan
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
created a Process Philosophy Research Unit and sponsored several conferences on process philosophy and education. Howard Woodhouse at the University of Saskatchewan remains a strong proponent of Whiteheadian education.
Three recent books which further develop Whitehead's philosophy of education include: ''Modes of Learning: Whitehead's Metaphysics and the Stages of Education'' (2012) by George Allan; ''The Adventure of Education: Process Philosophers on Learning, Teaching, and Research'' (2009) by Adam Scarfe; and "Educating for an Ecological Civilization: Interdisciplinary, Experiential, and Relational Learning" (2017) edited by Marcus Ford and Stephen Rowe. "Beyond the Modern University: Toward a Constructive Postmodern University," (2002) is another text that explores the importance of Whitehead's metaphysics for thinking about higher education.
Business administration
Whitehead has had some influence on philosophy of
business administration
Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...
and
organizational theory
Organizational theory refers to the set of interrelated concepts that involve the sociological study of the structures and operations of formal social organizations. Organizational theory also attempts to explain how interrelated units of organiz ...
. This has led in part to a focus on identifying and investigating the effect of temporal events (as opposed to static things) within organizations through an "organization studies" discourse that accommodates a variety of 'weak' and 'strong' process perspectives from a number of philosophers. One of the leading figures having an explicitly Whiteheadian and
panexperientialist stance towards
management
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activities o ...
is Mark Dibben, who works in what he calls "applied process thought" to articulate a philosophy of management and business administration as part of a wider examination of the
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
s through the lens of
process metaphysics. For Dibben, this allows "a comprehensive exploration of life as perpetually active experiencing, as opposed to occasional – and thoroughly passive – happening." Dibben has published two books on applied process thought,
Applied Process Thought I: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research' (2008), and
Applied Process Thought II: Following a Trail Ablaze' (2009), as well as other papers in this vein in the fields of philosophy of management and
business ethics
Business ethics (also known as Corporate Ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business co ...
.
Margaret Stout and Carrie M. Staton have also written recently on the mutual influence of Whitehead and
Mary Parker Follett
Mary Parker Follett (3 September 1868 – 18 December 1933) was an American social worker, management consultant, philosopher and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior. Along with Lillian Gilbreth, she was on ...
, a pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and
organizational behavior
Organizational behavior (OB) or organisational behaviour is the: "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself".Moorhead, G., & Griffin, R. W. (1995) ...
. Stout and Staton see both Whitehead and Follett as sharing an
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
that "understands becoming as a relational process; difference as being related, yet unique; and the purpose of becoming as harmonizing difference." This connection is further analyzed by Stout and Jeannine M. Love in ''Integrative Process: Follettian Thinking from Ontology to Administration''
Political views
Whitehead's political views sometimes appear to be
libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...
without the label. He wrote:
On the other hand, many Whitehead scholars read his work as providing a philosophical foundation for the social liberalism of the
New Liberal movement that was prominent throughout Whitehead's adult life. Morris wrote that "... there is good reason for claiming that Whitehead shared the social and political ideals of the new liberals."
Primary works
Books written by Whitehead, listed by date of publication.
* ''A Treatise on Universal Algebra''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898. . Available online at http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.chmm/1263316509 .
* ''The Axioms of Descriptive Geometry''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907. Available online at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/u/umhistmath/ABN2643.0001.001.
* with
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
. ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
, Volume I''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. Available online at http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/b/bib/bibperm?q1=AAT3201.0001.001. Vol. 1 to *56 is available as a CUP paperback.
[Alonzo Church, "Review: ''Principia Mathematica'' by A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell, Volumes II and III, Second Edition, 1927", ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' 34 (1928): 237–240. Available online at http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1928-34-02/S0002-9904-1928-04525-1/S0002-9904-1928-04525-1.pdf.]
* ''An Introduction to Mathematics''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911. Available online at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/u/umhistmath/AAW5995.0001.001. Vol. 56 of the ''
Great Books of the Western World
''Great Books of the Western World'' is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952, by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., to present the great books in a 54-volume set.
The original editors had three criteria for includi ...
'' series.
* with
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
. ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
, Volume II''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912. Available online at http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/b/bib/bibperm?q1=AAT3201.0002.001.
* with
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
. ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
, Volume III''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913. Available online at http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/b/bib/bibperm?q1=AAT3201.0003.001.
* ''The Organization of Thought Educational and Scientific''. London: Williams & Norgate, 1917. Available online at https://archive.org/details/organisationofth00whit.
* ''An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919. Available online at https://archive.org/details/enquiryconcernpr00whitrich.
* ''The Concept of Nature''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920. Based on the November 1919
Tarner Lectures delivered at
Trinity College Trinity College may refer to:
Australia
* Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales
* Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...
. Available online at https://archive.org/details/cu31924012068593.
* ''The Principle of Relativity with Applications to Physical Science''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922. Available online at https://archive.org/details/theprincipleofre00whituoft.
* ''Science and the Modern World''. New York: Macmillan Company, 1925. Vol. 55 of the ''
Great Books of the Western World
''Great Books of the Western World'' is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952, by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., to present the great books in a 54-volume set.
The original editors had three criteria for includi ...
'' series.
* ''Religion in the Making''. New York: Macmillan Company, 1926. Based on the 1926
Lowell Lectures.
* ''Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect''. New York: Macmillan Co., 1927. Based on the 1927 Barbour-Page Lectures delivered at the University of Virginia.
* ''
Process and Reality
''Process and Reality'' is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.
Whit ...
: An Essay in Cosmology''. New York: Macmillan Company, 1929. Based on the 1927–28
Gifford Lectures
The Gifford Lectures () are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by the will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford. Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in o ...
delivered at the University of Edinburgh. The 1978 Free Press "corrected edition" edited by
David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin (August 8, 1939 – November 26, 2022) was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.Sources describing David Ray Griffin as a "conspiracy theorist", "conspiracist", "conspirac ...
and Donald W. Sherburne corrects many errors in both the British and American editions, and also provides a comprehensive index.
* ''The Aims of Education and Other Essays''. New York: Macmillan Company, 1929.
* ''The Function of Reason''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1929. Based on the March 1929 Louis Clark Vanuxem Foundation Lectures delivered at Princeton University.
* ''Adventures of Ideas''. New York: Macmillan Company, 1933. Also published by Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933.
* ''Nature and Life''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934.
* ''Modes of Thought''. New York: MacMillan Company, 1938.
* "Mathematics and the Good." In ''The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead'', edited by
Paul Arthur Schilpp Paul Arthur Schilpp (; February 6, 1897 – September 6, 1993) was an American philosopher and educator.
Biography
Schilpp was born in Dillenburg, Germany and immigrated to the United States prior to World War I. Schilpp taught at Northwestern Un ...
, 666–681. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1941.
* "Immortality." In ''The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead'', edited by
Paul Arthur Schilpp Paul Arthur Schilpp (; February 6, 1897 – September 6, 1993) was an American philosopher and educator.
Biography
Schilpp was born in Dillenburg, Germany and immigrated to the United States prior to World War I. Schilpp taught at Northwestern Un ...
, 682–700. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1941.
* ''Essays in Science and Philosophy''. London: Philosophical Library, 1947.
* with Allison Heartz Johnson, ed. ''The Wit and Wisdom of Whitehead''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1948.
In addition, the
Whitehead Research Project of the
Center for Process Studies is currently working on a critical edition of Whitehead's writings, which is set to include notes taken by Whitehead's students during his Harvard classes, correspondence, and corrected editions of his books.
*Paul A. Bogaard and Jason Bell, eds. ''The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924–1925: Philosophical Presuppositions of Science''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
See also
*
Great refusal
*
Pancreativism
*
Relationalism
Relationalism is any theoretical position that gives importance to the relational nature of things. For relationalism, things exist and function only as relational entities. Relationalism may be contrasted with relationism, which tends to emphasize ...
*
Speculative realism
Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy (also known as post-Continental philosophy) that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of p ...
*
Whitehead's point-free geometry
In mathematics, point-free geometry is a geometry whose primitive ontological notion is ''region'' rather than point. Two axiomatic systems are set out below, one grounded in mereology, the other in mereotopology and known as ''connection theory' ...
A.N. Whitehead at Sherborne School
References
Further reading
''For the most comprehensive list of resources related to Whitehead, see th
thematic bibliographyof th
Center for Process Studies''
*Casati, Roberto, and
Achille C. Varzi. ''Parts and Places: The Structures of Spatial Representation''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1999.
*Ford, Lewis. ''Emergence of Whitehead's Metaphysics, 1925–1929''. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.
*
Hartshorne, Charles. ''Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1935–1970''. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1972.
*Henning, Brian G. ''The Ethics of Creativity: Beauty, Morality, and Nature in a Processive Cosmos''. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.
*Holtz, Harald and Ernest Wolf-Gazo, eds. ''Whitehead und der Prozeßbegriff / Whitehead and The Idea of Process. Proceedings of the First International Whitehead-Symposion''. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg i. B. / München, 1984.
*Jones, Judith A. ''Intensity: An Essay in Whiteheadian Ontology''. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998.
*Kraus, Elizabeth M. ''The Metaphysics of Experience''. New York: Fordham University Press, 1979.
*Charles MAlik, Malik, Charles H. ''The Systems of Whitehead's Metaphysics''. Zouq Mosbeh, Lebanon: Notre Dame Louaize, 2016. 436 pp.
*McDaniel, Jay. ''What is Process Thought?: Seven Answers to Seven Questions''. Claremont: P&F Press, 2008.
*McHenry, Leemon. ''The Event Universe: The Revisionary Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead''. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015.
*Nobo, Jorge L. ''Whitehead's Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity''. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986.
*Price, Lucien. ''Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead''. New York: Mentor Books, 1956.
*Willard Van Orman Quine, Quine, Willard Van Orman. "Whitehead and the rise of modern logic." In ''The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead'', edited by
Paul Arthur Schilpp Paul Arthur Schilpp (; February 6, 1897 – September 6, 1993) was an American philosopher and educator.
Biography
Schilpp was born in Dillenburg, Germany and immigrated to the United States prior to World War I. Schilpp taught at Northwestern Un ...
, 125–163. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1941.
*Rapp, Friedrich and Reiner Wiehl, eds. ''Whiteheads Metaphysik der Kreativität. Internationales Whitehead-Symposium Bad Homburg 1983''. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg i. B. / München, 1986.
*Nicholas Rescher, Rescher, Nicholas. ''Process Metaphysics''. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
*Nicholas Rescher, Rescher, Nicholas. ''Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues''. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.
*Paul Arthur Schilpp, Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed. ''The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead''. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1941. Part of the Library of Living Philosophers series.
*Siebers, Johan. ''The Method of Speculative Philosophy: An Essay on the Foundations of Whitehead's Metaphysics''. Kassel: Kassel University Press GmbH, 2002.
*Smith, Olav Bryant. ''Myths of the Self: Narrative Identity and Postmodern Metaphysics''. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004.
– Contains a section called "Alfred North Whitehead: Toward a More Fundamental Ontology" that is an overview of Whitehead's metaphysics.
*Michel Weber, Weber, Michel.
Whitehead's Pancreativism — The Basics'. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2006.
*Michel Weber, Weber, Michel.
Whitehead’s Pancreativism — Jamesian Applications', Frankfurt / Paris: Ontos Verlag, 2011.
*Weber, Michel and Will Desmond (eds.).
Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought', Frankfurt / Lancaster: Ontos Verlag, 2008.
*Alan Van Wyk and Michel Weber (eds.).
Creativity and Its Discontents. The Response to Whitehead's Process and Reality', Frankfurt / Lancaster: Ontos Verlag, 2009.
*Will, Clifford. ''Theory and Experiment in Gravitational Physics''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
External links
The Philosophy of Organismin Philosophy Now magazine. An accessible summary of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy.
Center for Process Studiesin
Claremont, California
Claremont () is a suburban city on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, California, United States, east of downtown Los Angeles. It is in the Pomona Valley, at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. As of the 2010 census it had a popul ...
. A faculty research center of
Claremont School of Theology
Claremont School of Theology (CST) is an American graduate school focused on religion and theology and located in Claremont, California. CST is fully recognized and approved as one of thirteen official theological schools of the United Methodis ...
, in association with Claremont Graduate University. The Center organizes conferences and events and publishes materials pertaining to Whitehead and process thought. It also maintains extensive Whitehead-related bibliographies.
Summary of Whitehead's PhilosophyA Brief Introduction to Whitehead's Metaphysics
Society for the Study of Process Philosophies a scholarly society that holds periodic meetings in conjunction with each of the divisional meetings of th
American Philosophical Association as well as at the annual meeting of th
Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in the ''MacTutor History of Mathematics archive'', by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.
"Alfred North Whitehead: New World Philosopher"at the Harvard Square Library.
Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism: Process Thinking for a More Hospitable World"What is Process Thought?"an introductory video series to process thought by Jay McDaniel.
Centre de philosophie pratique « Chromatiques whiteheadiennes »"Whitehead's Principle of Relativity"by John Lighton Synge on arXiv.org
Whitehead at Monoskop.org with extensive bibliography.
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitehead, Alfred North
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