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Who reads alfred north whitehead12/23/2023 Science and the Modern World appeared in 1925, Religion in the Making in 1926, Symbolism in 1927, and Process and Reality in 1929. Although Whitehead wrote philosophy based on natural science while still in London, he began his most important work shortly after moving to Harvard in 1924. Volume 2 of Alf red North Whitehead: The Man and His Work follows Whitehead's journey to the United States and analyzes his expanding intellectual life. The intellectual and personal restlessness that precipitated this move ultimately led Whitehead-at the age of sixty-three-to settle in America and change the focus of his work from mathematics to philosophy. In 1910 Whitehead abruptly ended his thirty-year association with Trinity College of Cambridge and moved to London. The second volume of Victor Lowe's definitive work on Alfred North Whitehead completes the biography of one of the twentieth century's most influential yet least understood philosophers. In PoR Whitehead develops a principle of relativity that differs in significant and erroneous ways from the special and general theories of Einstein's relativity, oddly claiming, for example, that "the ether is an observed character of things observed." (p.Originally published in 1985. He also argues against the notion of absolute space and time, claiming that the important information is the matter in space and the relative positions of bits of matter. In CN Whitehead argues against what he calls the "bifurcation of nature" (p.24) that divides the world into the appearance of sense-data (the empiricist's secondary qualities) and the "reality" of the molecules and light energy that are the causes (or primary qualities). Whitehead is correct that perceivable happenings always involve relatively large numbers of material particles interacting over a period of time, especially biological events. In PNK Whitehead calls the instantaneous and infinitesimal points of special relativity "event-particles." (p.33) He then says that the events of his theory will include large numbers of "event-particles" because his events are extended in both space and time, an idea he calls "extensive abstraction."(p.101) It is only these finite volumes of space and durations in time that can be perceived or apprehended by an observer. impressed by Whitehead's analysis of events in space and time in special relativity as organic "occasions." are prominent in debates about the role of quantum mechanics in consciousness and panpsychism.īefore he came to Harvard, Whitehead wrote three important books while at Trinity College, Cambridge, that put forth his speculative theories on space, time, matter, and energy - An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (PNK, 1919), The Concept of Nature (CN, 1920), and Principle of Relativity (PoR, 1922), Although logical positivism and later analytic language philosophy overwhelmed Whiteheadian "process" thinking in philosophy departments, Whitehead's "process theology" has grown strong in divinity schools around the world. Russell and Quine would become giants in the twentieth-century fields of logical positivism and logical empiricism. thesis on the Russell and Whitehead Principia Mathematica. But in philosophy and theology, Whitehead is best known as a philosopher whose later work at Harvard included his Process Philosophy and the subsequent development of a Process Theology.Īt Harvard, Whitehead supervised Willard van Orman Quine's Ph.D. Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Pasco Rakic Nicolas Rashevsky Lord Rayleigh Jürgen Renn Giacomo Rizzolati Emil Roduner Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle Tilman Sauerīiosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James SymposiumĪlfred North Whitehead was an English mathematician (best known among scientists for his work with his student Bertrand Russell on the Principia Mathematica).
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