Alfred North Whitehead

From a mathematical perspective, this paper will compare the 'Speculative' Realist Philosophy of Alain Badiou with the Process Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. To this end, each philosophy will be examined in terms of how it departs from the strictures of Kantian Critical Philosophy, specifically, in terms of how it articulates the structural relationship between subjects, objects, and relata. Moreover, each philosophy will also be judged both in terms of how it addresses the mereological distinction between internal and external relations, (...) and how it conceives of the relationship holding between philosophy and its others: the four Althusserian 'generics' of science, politics, art, and love. (shrink)

Jede Philosophie bezieht ihre Farbe von der geheimen Lichtquelle eines Vorstellungshintergrunds, der niemals ausdrücklich in ihren Gedankenketten auftaucht.

JEDE PHILOSOPHIE BEZIEHT IHRE FARBE VON DER GEHEIMEN LICHTQUELLE EINES VORSTELLUNGSHINTERGRUNDS, DER NIEMALS AUSDRÜCKLICH IN IHREN GEDANKENKETTEN AUFTAUCHT.

Aus einer langen Sicht der Menschheitsgeschichte - etwa in zehntausend Jahren - kann es kaum einen Zweifel daran geben, dass das bedeutendste Ereignis des 19. Jahrhunderts die Entdeckung der elektrodynamischen Gesetze durch Maxwell sein wird, Richard Feynman, 1964.

A Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead's Metaphysics .

Like many of his contemporaries such as Bradley and Collingwood, Whitehead wrote at a time when positivism was the dominant philosophical influence in British philosophy, following the disintegration of the Hegelian synthesis. Central to Whitehead’s philosophical project is the task of rehabilitation of metaphysics against the backdrop of its deconstruction by logical positivism. While Whitehead is broadly sympathetic to the ideal of metaphysics, he believes that the grandiose conception of metaphysics as science of being qua being associated with traditional metaphysics (...) is out of tune with scientific rationality and as such is problematic. At the core of Whitehead’s rehabilitation of metaphysics, therefore, is an attempt to broker rapprochement between metaphysical rationality and scientific rationality by converting metaphysics into speculative metaphysics, with the ambition of focusing on our universe of experience rather than all universes of discourse, as is typical of traditional metaphysics. While there is no doubt that Whitehead’s rehabilitation of metaphysics is an answer to positivism, it is at the same time an attempt to tone down the claims of metaphysics such as to bring it in accord with scientific rationality. Yet it remains to be seen whether Whitehead’s rehabilitation of metaphysics is successful in so far as the reconciliation of metaphysical rationality and scientific rationality through speculative philosophy focuses only on particular experiences rather than universal experiences, so that the concern of metaphysics to address the fundamental nature of the real in all its expressions remain pressing beyond the ideal of speculative philosophy. (shrink)

This paper articulates and explores in some detail the main features of Whitehead’s early temporal ontology. By ‘early temporal ontology’ I refer to the views Whitehead developed during his London years, more specifically in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919) and the more approachable Concept of Nature (1920). These works are not usually read through a heavily ontological lens. It is often said that Whitehead developed his metaphysics later, when he moved to the United States, in 1924. (...) I believe, however, that these earlier works should not merely be read as works in natural philosophy or merely as stepping stones to his later magnum opus Process and Reality (1929). Although Whitehead’s stated goal in these works is not to provide a systematic ontology of time, such an ontology is present and is worth distilling and interpreting. (shrink)

This chapter is a rethinking of my earlier “The Ages of Beauty” which investigated Charles Hartshorne’s Diagram of Aesthetic Values. The argument is placed in a long history of beauty being considered as the middle between extremes. It slowly develops into a structure not merely of aesthetic experience but of existence itself, making it a competitor of Heidegger’s fourfold.

A. N. Whitehead's approach to physical theorizing contrasts with that of mainstream or official physics in being centrally concerned with articulating a background explanation of physical facts and phenomena in general that would take the place of the “ether” of classical physics, a project otherwise unpursued by the science in its modern period. Unlike Einstein's, Whitehead's approach to relativity primarily seeks explanation rather than utility ; also, it avoids the philosophical problems with Einstein's theory alleged by Whitehead and a range (...) of other philosophers. This stops short of a finding as to the comparative worth of Whitehead's alternative basis for quantitative formulations. (shrink)

Following A.N. Whitehead’s rhythm of education, the author provides a guide for parents and educators on raising children to thrive in times of tempestuous change. Each chapter presents exemplary educational events rich in context, and then draws on seminal research to ground her recommendations in a robust theoretical foundation.

It has often been noticed that Plato's metaphysical view of being is dipolar. The purpose of the present article is to detail what it means to say that being is dipolar in Plato. Further, I will explore the extent to which dipolarity in Whitehead is indebted to Plato and the extent to which Whitehead's dipolarity is different from Plato's. In this regard I will concentrate on Whitehead's recently published Harvard Lectures.

The study shows the existence of a broad conformity between Whitehead’s organismic cosmology and the contemporary theory of complex systems at a relevant level of abstraction. One of the most promising directions of educational transformation in the age of big data and artificial intelligence – personalized learning – is conceived as a system of systems and reveals its close congruence with a number of basic Whiteheadian concepts. A new functional structure of personalized learning systems is proposed, including all the core (...) elements of a full learning sequence. A multiobjective optimization problem, which is subject to strong constraints, uncertain outcomes, and continued development, is under consideration. It is argued that many of Whitehead’s concepts can be used constructively in designing and implementing advanced personalized learning systems after being adapted and expanded and account for the requirements of emerging big data and artificial intelligence research. Special attention is paid to the main factors that determine the multi-modality of personalized learning – learning styles, contexts, and didactic variability. The effecttiveness of personalized learning is a data-driven problem. (shrink)

Abstract Die moderne Physik besteht nicht nur aus neuen Entdeckungen und Erfindungen durch die Relativitätstheorien und durch die Quantenphysik. Sie besteht auch aus völlig neuen Sichtweisen und völlig neuen Denkweisen von Zusammenhängen und Verschränkungen zwischen den Dingen. Die moderne Physik hat sich von dem Klischee des Schwarz-Weiß-Denkens verabschiedet, für das es nur getrennte Dinge, ohne fließende Übergänge zwischen den Dingen gibt. Diese Denkweisen können wir zurückverfolgen bis zu dem griechischen Philosophen Aristoteles. Während modernen Denkweisen in der Physik mit den Begriffen (...) von fließende Übergängen, von Zwischenstufen, von Zusammenhängen und von Schwingungen gekennzeichnet werden können. Seit Faraday und Maxwell drehen sich die Denkmodelle der modernen Physik nicht mehr um getrennte, isolierten Körper, die im Nichts schwimmen, sondern um die Zwischenräume zwischen den Körpern und um die flexiblen Beziehungsgeflechte zwischen den Dingen und um die Netzwerke, die die Dinge umgeben. Das sind ganz neue Denkweisen. In diesen Kategorien denken zunächst einmal nur die physikalischen Wissenschaften. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), a mathematician and logician by training, is the author of highly original works at the crossroads of science and philosophy, exploring the nature of the world around us and its temporal flow. Convinced that everyday terms distort reality, Whitehead invented or borrowed terms more appropriate to his project. The word "Process", which gives its title to his most famous work Process and Reality (1929), is central to his thinking. Process introduces his vision of nature as a (...) succession of crystallizations, each of which proves the finite granularity of time: the instant does not exist. It also implies a confrontation with the theory of relativity and quantum physics. Whitehead's perspective allows for the occurrence of creative novelties, but for which the world necessarily cooperates with a deity, the role of which is examined in this book's last chapter. In Alfred North Whitehead, Philosopher of Time, author Rémy Lestienne mixes biographical elements and intellectual advances, from logicism to philosophies of nature. A compelling introduction to Whitehead's demanding work, this book deciphers a metaphysical landscape often considered too abstract to be approachable, but points out the philosopher's imperfections with respect to the scientific advances of our time. (shrink)

This article uses Whitehead's process ontology and epistemology to propose Aesthetic Experience as a theory that can be used in organizational studies. The article starts from the intersections of ludic theory and aesthetics, to formulate a theory of Aesthetic Experience that improves and promotes enjoyment, creativity, satisfaction, and productivity in the workspace. Located in a process ontology and epistemology, we propose a simple approach for theory evaluation, using thought experiments to identify issues in the formulations of extant theories, and formulate (...) the theory of Aesthetic Experience using grounded methods, visual mapping, and process modeling. The broader purpose of the paper is to revive the study of Whiteheadian process philosophy within organizational studies. (shrink)

This article examines a recently discovered unpublished essay by Alfred North Whitehead titled “Religious Psychology of the Western Peoples.” It is the most sustained criticism of religion he would ever make. This essay is put into conversation with a previously published essay by Whitehead titled “An Appeal to Sanity.”.

Unearthing the Unknown Whitehead argues that it is Alfred North Whitehead's recently published Harvard lectures, and not his books, that contain the truest record of the development of his philosophy, including the false starts and dead ends that the published works obscure. This development could previously only be inferred as taking place in the gaps between books. It thus calls for a complete reconsideration of Whitehead's philosophical corpus. Joseph Petek critically evaluates the accuracy and reliability of the student accounts of (...) Whitehead's recently published Harvard lectures and then examines these notes, along with a number of previously unknown essays, in order to trace previously unknown aspects of Whitehead's philosophy and the development of his thought. Additionally, neglected early letters between Whitehead and Bertrand Russell appear to reveal a precise point at which he began transitioning from his long career in mathematics to a new career in philosophy. Two previously undiscovered essays-"Religious Psychology of the Western Peoples" and "Freedom and Order"-display Whitehead's concern for a creeping hyper-nationalism that is intensely relevant in today's political climate, along with terminological experiments that stretch our conceptions of Whitehead's philosophy in new directions. (shrink)

After an exposition of the importance of the concept of diachronic identity and a short sketch of the bewildering confusion concerning the meaning of the terms intimately connected to it, an outline of the basic features of Whitehead’s process approach is presented in as far as it is relevant for the topic of the human person and identity. In a further step, Whitehead’s concept of ‘person’ as nested in this approach will be discussed and the dilemma between securing human identity (...) on the one side and accounting at the same time for its flexible adaptivity to the environment on the other, will be elaborated. Then the concepts of strict and partial identity and the problem of the fragility of human identity, and even its possible loss, and how identity can be secured within this processorganismic conception of ‘person’ will be dealt with. Finally, the sources of partial diachronic identity within the framework of process philosophy will be discussed. (shrink)

This article treats religion as a central concern in Whitehead. His view of rational religion relies primarily on rational inference, not direct intuition. Taking seriously in religion the nonreflective elements in human cognition would not jeopardize, but would strengthen, his treatment of the reflective ones. While religion can certainly include vestiges of human savagery, it also promotes the ascent of humanity beyond social decay and enhances the art of life.

Modern philosophy in the West has been haunted since Descartes by his ontological dichotomy between extended unthinking substances and thinking unextended substances, which leads to the epistemological problem of whether perceptions by the mind can be judged as truly representing objects external to it. The typical solution has been to reduce one kind of substance to the other: to fashion some version of either idealism or materialism. Attempts at a solution that affirms real differences between physical bodies and conscious minds (...) but allows for their interaction, for each to have an effect on the other, are a characteristic strategy of analytic philosophers. However, Professor Hedrick finds their proposed... (shrink)

The studies of Empedocles have made headway in showing that Empedocles postulated a double zoogony. Whereas this has been traditionally related to the hypothesis of two worlds per cycle, some Empedoclean fragments provide evidence for a double zoogony in a cosmic cycle with one world. How can we reconcile the hypothesis of two zoogonies with the assumption of a unique world? Whereas there have been attempts to address this question by retaining the traditional idea of two opposite zoogonic periods or (...) phases, I contend that Empedocles’ fragments invite us to a reconsideration of his notion of a double birth and death of mortal beings. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to argue for the idea that processes and process-based entities are to be modelled as relational structures. Relational structures are genuine structures, namely entities not committed to the existence of basic objects. My argument moves from the analysis of Whitehead’s original insight about process-based entities that, despite some residual of substance metaphysics, has the merit of grounding the intrinsic dynamism of reality on the holistic and relational characters of process-based entities. The current model of (...) process ontology requires genuine emergence and this, in turn, requires organizations, i.e., emergence in organizations. Another view about processes rely on a structural specification of processes. I suggest that the two views can be made compatible by the help of a specific sort of structures, namely relational structures. The appeal to the mathematical theory of genuine structures, category theory, reveals the formal plausibility of this convergence. According to this formal approach, genuine structures are essentially dynamic entities for they are relational, namely, as well as organizations, they are not existentially committed to particulars. (shrink)

In "A Sketch of the Past," Virginia Woolf introduces her personal philosophy, her own ontology, based on the idea that all human and nonhuman beings are interconnected in a single work of art. This idea is foregrounded in her novels The Waves, Between the Acts, and the pacifist manifesto Three Guineas, where Woolf fully develops her "ontoethics," which consists in ontological interconnection of human beings and recognition of value of every human and nonhuman being. This article discusses this universal relationality (...) via Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism, which emphasizes the interrelatedness of all constituents of reality and solidarity that springs from this ontological bond. (shrink)

Empedocles’ B100 contains an analogy between a girl handling a clepsydra and respiration. This article argues that proposals to establish Love or Persephone as the girl’s respiratory equivalent are rendered unlikely by differences between their respective causal roles. Rather than her gender, this article emphasises the importance of the girl’s age: Empedocles required a playful child to handle the clepsydra. This child’s play results in the extra phase of submerging the clepsydra while the upper vent is open, which Empedocles needed (...) to form a parallel for the first static phase of respiration. (shrink)

The book deals with the complex notion of process worked out by Alfred N. Whitehead, a notion that includes his deep revision of the concepts of time and space. Throughout his whole career, Whitehead emphasized the importance of process for the account of reality. The book discusses Whitehead's concept of process starting from his works in mathematics, logic and epistemology of the natural sciences, in order to pave the way for a better understanding of Whitehead's speculative philosophy. The focus is (...) on the relationship between concrescence and transition, seen as deeply correlated and reciprocally determined. In this perspective, the book offers a reinterpretation of Whitehead's most enigmatic proposal: the event of subjectivity interpreted as a process of subjectivation. This poses the problem of the endurance of subjectivity. The book suggests that this problem is solved by Whitehead through is appropriation of Plato's notion of chora, seen as the "place" of a processual subject. (shrink)

Euclid’s definition of a point as “that which has no part” has been a major source of controversy in relation to the epistemological and ontological presuppositions of classical geometry, from the medieval and modern disputes on indivisibilism to the full development of point-free geometries in the 20th century. Such theories stem from the general idea that all talk of points as putative lower-dimensional entities must and can be recovered in terms of suitable higher-order constructs involving only extended regions (or bodies). (...) Here I focus on what is arguably the first thorough proposal of this sort, Whitehead’s theory of “extensive abstraction”, offering a critical reconstruction of the theory through its successive installments: from the purely mereological version of ‘La théorie relationniste de l’espace’ (1916) to the refined versions presented in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919) and in The Concept of Nature (1920) to the last, mereotopological version of Process and Reality (1929). (shrink)

The Extensive Continuum is most often seen as an empty form that awaits the accommodation of actuality. Contrary to this popular interpretation, I argue that extension is completely immanent to actual occasions and their prehensive relations. Whitehead's doctrine of internal relations entails that extension cannot be separated from actual occasions, just as actual occasions cannot be separated from extension. To prehend is to extend. Furthermore, any strict separation of form and actuality is shown to bifurcate nature into publicity and privacy. (...) Only with the immanence of extension is nature truly one. (shrink)

According to Whitehead’s rectified principle, two individuals are connected just in case there is something self-connected which overlaps both of them, and every part of which overlaps one of them. Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi have offered a counterexample to the principle, consisting of an individual which has no self-connected parts. But since atoms are self-connected, Casati and Varzi’s counterexample presupposes the possibility of gunk or, in other words, things which have no atoms as parts. So one may still wonder (...) whether Whitehead’s rectified principle follows from the assumption of atomism. This paper presents an atomic countermodel to show the answer is no. (shrink)

Michael Halewood uses ideas from analytic philosophy, continental philosophy and social theory to look at how language relates to the world, and the world to language. He primarily draws on the work of Alfred North Whitehead, and incorporating the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, John Dewey and Luce Irigaray, to view the world as 'in process'.

Photographs of the philosopher, his family, and associates provide an intimate look at a private and self-effacing man whose work has had a lasting impact on twentieth-century thought.

Since the time Nietzsche declared the death of God, while Auguste Comte postulated in the Law of Three Stages that humankind had gone pass the religious/mythical stage as well as the metaphysical/speculative stage and was now living in the positive/scientific stage, there has been the consistent institutionalization of atheism and secularism. The early part of the 20th century saw Freud’s publication of the Future of an Illusion in which he predicted that as science continues to advance, religion will become obsolete. (...) The logical positivist too lumped up metaphysical and religious propositions as meaningless and nonsensical. It is within this atmosphere that Alfred North Whitehead comes into philosophy. The main question that this paper seeks to answer is: Why does the concept of God occupy an eminent place in Whitehead’s system when all his contemporaries consider God a hypothesis they no longer needed as Laplace had earlier maintained? Of great interest here is the fact that before 1925 Whitehead’s writings had no concern for God. However, in his 1925 Science and the Modern World, the chapter on “Abstractions” required that there be such an explanatory factor, reason for which it is immediately followed by the chapter on “God”. The last part of his Process and Reality treats elaborately the nature of the relationship between God and the world. This paper explores the reasons why Whitehead places a lot of interest on God and the role that this God plays in his system. (shrink)

Central to this chapter is a basic philosophical concept of the nature of modern science which exists amongst positivists, like Auguste Comte, who rejects as illegitimate all that cannot be directly observed in the investigation and study of any subject. Our daily experience of the nature of science continues to give us reasons to unlearn what can be considered as prejudices and errors in our conception of the nature of science. Consequently, the question "what is the nature of modern science?" (...) still perplexes us, and the answers we provide to this question often reveal how distorted our vision of history and thought has become over the years. This chapter shall, via the method of critical analysis in philosophy pass through Comte's three stages of arriving at the truth. This approach rejects as non-scientific all that cannot be directly observed in the investigation and study of any subject against Whitehead's approach in which he tries to make a “dispassionate consideration of the nature of things, antecedently to any special investigation into their details”. This is a standpoint Whitehead terms “metaphysical.” This explains why he developed a comprehensive metaphysical system for the understanding of science, society, and self as found in his major texts. In this light, science cannot be done without taking metaphysics into account. (shrink)

The article presents a comparative analysis of neo-realist views of Russell and Whitehead on cosmology in the first decades of the 20th century. It is noted that despite the similarity of the basic theoretico-methodological principles of their philosophizing, these thinkers formulated philosophicocosmological conceptions that differed significantly from each other. The reason for this was that Russell, at the epistemological level, used the theory of degrees of certainty, and on the logical one he developed the theory of descriptions, but Whitehead, in (...) contrast, was a supporter of the theory of critical realism in epistemology and the method of extensive abstraction in logic. All this influenced the former to pay more attention to the questions of analysis and, accordingly, to use the basic concepts of facts, logical atoms, and propositions, and the latter to focus on the question of synthesis and to consider the structure of being through the prism of concepts of actual entities, eternal objects and prehension. Hence the world for Russell is a static formation, and we only need to define its laws, and for the Whitehead world is a dynamic formation, the laws of which still need to be understood. It is emphasized that as a result, Russell’s cosmology rejected the previous metaphysics, but Whitehead’s cosmology aimed at finding the origins of modern cosmology in the writings of early thinkers. Nevertheless, it is argued that the cosmological teachings of both had a significant influence on the development of analytic philosophy. (shrink)