Abstract

This thesis examines the affinities and contracts between A. N. Whitehead's process metaphysics and F. H. Bradley's Absolute Idealism. Whitehead drew upon Bradley's notion of experience in formulating his ontology, but disagreed sharply with Bradley on the status of relations. Whereas Bradley argued that relations and temporal transition are riddled with contradictions and cannot adequately characterize the nature of reality, Whitehead's interpretation of experience as happening in atomic or epochal units commits him to the reality of asymmetrical, temporal relations. Whitehead and Bradley share an opposition to the seventeenth-century cosmology which treated nature as a inert mechanism, but disagreed about the role of science in metaphysics. Bradley treated all science as dealing with appearances rather than reality. Whitehead formulated his metaphysics within the framework of modern physics, especially electromagnetism, relativity physics and quantum mechanics. This thesis ends with further comparisons between Bradley's Absolute and Whitehead's process theism.