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Science and the Modern World
Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science. Presaging by more than half a century most of today's cutting-edge thought on the cultural ramifications of science and technology, Whitehead demands that readers understand and celebrate the contemporary, historical, and cultural context of scientific discovery. Taking readers through the history of modern science, Whitehead shows how cultural history has affected science over the ages in relation to such major intellectual themes as romanticism, relativity, quantum theory, religion, and movements for social progress.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1926
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About the author
Alfred North Whitehead
118 books444 followersAlfred North Whitehead, OM FRS (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas.
In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910–13), which he co-wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library.
Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to philosophy of science, and finally to metaphysics. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of western philosophy. Whitehead argued that reality was fundamentally constructed by events rather than substances, and that these events cannot be defined apart from their relations to other events, thus rejecting the theory of independently existing substances. Today Whitehead's philosophical works – particularly Process and Reality – 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 and environmental ethics pioneered by John B. Cobb, Jr.
Isabelle Stengers wrote that "Whiteheadians are recruited among both philosophers and theologians, and the palette has been enriched by practitioners from the most diverse horizons, from ecology to feminism, practices that unite political struggle and spirituality with the sciences of education." Indeed, 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. However, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Whitehead's thought drew much attention outside of a small group of American philosophers and theologians, and even today he is not considered especially influential outside of relatively specialized circles.
In recent years, Whiteheadian thought has become a stimulating influence in scientific research.
In physics particularly, Whitehead's thought has been influential, articulating a rival doctrine to Albert Einstein's general relativity. Whitehead's theory of gravitation continues to be controversial. Even Yutaka Tanaka, who suggests that the gravitational constant disagrees with experimental findings, admits that Einstein's work does not actually refute Whitehead's formulation. Also, although Whitehead himself gave only secondary consideration to quantum theory, his metaphysics of events has proved attractive to physicists in that field. Henry Stapp and David Bohm are among those whose work has been influenced by Whitehead.
Whitehead is widely known for his influence in education theory. 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 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.
In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910–13), which he co-wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library.
Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to philosophy of science, and finally to metaphysics. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of western philosophy. Whitehead argued that reality was fundamentally constructed by events rather than substances, and that these events cannot be defined apart from their relations to other events, thus rejecting the theory of independently existing substances. Today Whitehead's philosophical works – particularly Process and Reality – 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 and environmental ethics pioneered by John B. Cobb, Jr.
Isabelle Stengers wrote that "Whiteheadians are recruited among both philosophers and theologians, and the palette has been enriched by practitioners from the most diverse horizons, from ecology to feminism, practices that unite political struggle and spirituality with the sciences of education." Indeed, 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. However, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Whitehead's thought drew much attention outside of a small group of American philosophers and theologians, and even today he is not considered especially influential outside of relatively specialized circles.
In recent years, Whiteheadian thought has become a stimulating influence in scientific research.
In physics particularly, Whitehead's thought has been influential, articulating a rival doctrine to Albert Einstein's general relativity. Whitehead's theory of gravitation continues to be controversial. Even Yutaka Tanaka, who suggests that the gravitational constant disagrees with experimental findings, admits that Einstein's work does not actually refute Whitehead's formulation. Also, although Whitehead himself gave only secondary consideration to quantum theory, his metaphysics of events has proved attractive to physicists in that field. Henry Stapp and David Bohm are among those whose work has been influenced by Whitehead.
Whitehead is widely known for his influence in education theory. 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 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.
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June 16, 2017
Mad geniuses occur more often in comic books than in real life, and it's always interesting to come across one. The clearest example I know is Fred Hoyle, who for a few years was considered one of the world's great scientists; during the 1950s, I understand that his name, at least in his native Britain, was synonymous with unconventional brilliance. Then everything fell apart. He resigned his prestigious Cambridge chair and began to write more and more eccentric books: infeasible defences of his beloved Steady State theory, anti-evolutionary tracts, near-Velikovskian explanations of the role of comets in human history. But even at his maddest, Hoyle is always fun to read. As the old joke has it, he may be crazy, but he's never stupid.
After finishing Science and the Modern World, it's hard not to feel that Alfred North Whitehead is another example. There's no doubt about the genius part. Quite apart from being the co-author of Principia Mathematica, the nec plus ultra of famous books that no one has ever read, his dazzling mind is in evidence pretty much from page one. He just seems to know everything, and draws the most extraordinary connections. Why did the scientific world-view only arise in Europe? I had never before seen the argument that it can be traced back to the great Greek tragedians and their interpretation of an ineluctable Fate, but Whitehead makes it startlingly convincing. He gives a brisk tour of the development of thought across the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and continues to astound. Here's someone who's equally at home with Thomist theology and the aesthetics of Langrange's equations, and happy to compare them. Needless to say, he's read everything in the original. In case you're in any doubt, he inserts little Greek and Latin phrases every now and then with a disarming naturalness.
Until I was halfway through, I was scratching my head and wondering why the book wasn't better known; but it then becomes brutally apparent that all is not well. Whitehead has already offered some cogent objections to materialism, and I was wondering what he was going to suggest instead. The answer turns out to be a weird metaphysics which is never properly explained, and is, to be blunt, unreadable. Looking around, I see an account of Whitehead's Gifford Lectures, where only a dozen people turned up after the first installment (a normal audience was several hundred). It is easy to understand his audience's disappointment. The prose in the metaphysical sections is not quite like anything I have seen before. It's a little bit like symbolic logic, but there are no symbols, only words. It's a little bit like Kant, but Kant makes sense if you read him carefully, and this doesn't. It's almost physically painful to get through. I know there are people who think highly of it, and it's claimed to be the foundation of "process philosophy", which has a considerable following. Well, I'm curious to hear from people who understand process philosophy and can defend it.
So why am I so sure that I'm not just missing the point? Perhaps I am, but I bought the book mostly because of the title and the fact that it contained chapters headed "Relativity" and "Quantum Mechanics". I was curious to know what this famous philosopher, writing in 1925, would have to say about those subjects. Had he in some way influenced their development? I'm afraid the answer is no. The two chapters are anodyne and utterly lacking in insight; they consist of superficial popular explanations and hooks to the eccentric metaphysics. When you compare them with the genuinely brilliant papers that Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Weyl and their colleagues were just about to publish, the contrast could not be greater. Weyl, in particular, was philosophically sophisticated: his Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science is in some ways the book this one would like to be.
I don't want to scare you off. Whitehead's book is more often than not well-written, and it's quite difficult to put down if you enjoy this kind of thing; I read it in three days. He's a likeable person. But I do wonder what happened to him, and how other scientists and philosophers of the time reacted, and what the route was that transformed this bizarre nonsense into something that's now supposed to be a quasi-respectable subject. I must look around some more. Maybe there's a good biography?
After finishing Science and the Modern World, it's hard not to feel that Alfred North Whitehead is another example. There's no doubt about the genius part. Quite apart from being the co-author of Principia Mathematica, the nec plus ultra of famous books that no one has ever read, his dazzling mind is in evidence pretty much from page one. He just seems to know everything, and draws the most extraordinary connections. Why did the scientific world-view only arise in Europe? I had never before seen the argument that it can be traced back to the great Greek tragedians and their interpretation of an ineluctable Fate, but Whitehead makes it startlingly convincing. He gives a brisk tour of the development of thought across the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and continues to astound. Here's someone who's equally at home with Thomist theology and the aesthetics of Langrange's equations, and happy to compare them. Needless to say, he's read everything in the original. In case you're in any doubt, he inserts little Greek and Latin phrases every now and then with a disarming naturalness.
Until I was halfway through, I was scratching my head and wondering why the book wasn't better known; but it then becomes brutally apparent that all is not well. Whitehead has already offered some cogent objections to materialism, and I was wondering what he was going to suggest instead. The answer turns out to be a weird metaphysics which is never properly explained, and is, to be blunt, unreadable. Looking around, I see an account of Whitehead's Gifford Lectures, where only a dozen people turned up after the first installment (a normal audience was several hundred). It is easy to understand his audience's disappointment. The prose in the metaphysical sections is not quite like anything I have seen before. It's a little bit like symbolic logic, but there are no symbols, only words. It's a little bit like Kant, but Kant makes sense if you read him carefully, and this doesn't. It's almost physically painful to get through. I know there are people who think highly of it, and it's claimed to be the foundation of "process philosophy", which has a considerable following. Well, I'm curious to hear from people who understand process philosophy and can defend it.
So why am I so sure that I'm not just missing the point? Perhaps I am, but I bought the book mostly because of the title and the fact that it contained chapters headed "Relativity" and "Quantum Mechanics". I was curious to know what this famous philosopher, writing in 1925, would have to say about those subjects. Had he in some way influenced their development? I'm afraid the answer is no. The two chapters are anodyne and utterly lacking in insight; they consist of superficial popular explanations and hooks to the eccentric metaphysics. When you compare them with the genuinely brilliant papers that Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Weyl and their colleagues were just about to publish, the contrast could not be greater. Weyl, in particular, was philosophically sophisticated: his Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science is in some ways the book this one would like to be.
I don't want to scare you off. Whitehead's book is more often than not well-written, and it's quite difficult to put down if you enjoy this kind of thing; I read it in three days. He's a likeable person. But I do wonder what happened to him, and how other scientists and philosophers of the time reacted, and what the route was that transformed this bizarre nonsense into something that's now supposed to be a quasi-respectable subject. I must look around some more. Maybe there's a good biography?
March 4, 2017
Found this a bit frustrating in the end. Other reviewers have commented on the convoluted language, which I didn't find a problem early on in the text, but toward the end it becomes more and more of a problem. I had gained the impression that there are some very interesting ideas in Whitehead's philosophy, and I bought this book in the hope that it might prepare me for Process and Reality, but now I find it difficult to determine whether the ideas are as impressive or as interesting as I initially thought, so that I'm no longer sure whether Process and Reality will be worth my time.
March 14, 2014
This was a perspective-altering book. Whitehead gives a brief outline of the development of the philosophy behind scientific thought in the 17th century and subsequently critiques the limitations of this system of thought. He then posits and develops a philosophical system that is, as he puts it, "founded upon the ultimate concept of organism."
Each chapter in this book corresponds to a lecture (a fact which astounds me, as I can't imagine the kind of preparation that goes into a talk on these subjects), and I did get the sense that I was listening to a very learned individual outline the result of years of pondering. Many, many times I had to re-read passages and turn back-and-forth between pages so as to interpret Whitehead's ideas. He lays on some heavy metaphysics the likes of which I have never before read, and I will be the first to admit that my grasp of the proceedings was tenuous at times. Still, I closed each chapter feeling like my mind had been stretched into new territories teeming with vital, restless ideas.
I have folded the corners of dozens of pages in this book, so as to return to them and again piece together Whitehead's ideas. There's a lot here to digest, and I have an unshakeable feeling that I need to keep this book close and to keep exploring its pages to see what lights I may find within.
Each chapter in this book corresponds to a lecture (a fact which astounds me, as I can't imagine the kind of preparation that goes into a talk on these subjects), and I did get the sense that I was listening to a very learned individual outline the result of years of pondering. Many, many times I had to re-read passages and turn back-and-forth between pages so as to interpret Whitehead's ideas. He lays on some heavy metaphysics the likes of which I have never before read, and I will be the first to admit that my grasp of the proceedings was tenuous at times. Still, I closed each chapter feeling like my mind had been stretched into new territories teeming with vital, restless ideas.
I have folded the corners of dozens of pages in this book, so as to return to them and again piece together Whitehead's ideas. There's a lot here to digest, and I have an unshakeable feeling that I need to keep this book close and to keep exploring its pages to see what lights I may find within.
January 4, 2012
This is one of the most important writings of the twentieth century. I first read it for a college course in the 1960’s (and for that I thank my teacher, Dr. Peter Caws), and I have returned to it many times since. Yes, it is difficult to comprehend this profound book in one reading, but it is well worth the effort.
The book conceptualizes the way of thinking that led to and supported the development of modern science. It proceeds to show not only the value but also the limitations of that way of thinking and how it affected the development of Western civilization in both enriching and limiting ways. The book suggests, long after it was written, how these persisting limitations may be plaguing our current personal, social, political and economic life. By no means is the book anti-science; it is instead asking us to see a bigger reality beyond science but that includes science. That bigger reality includes aesthetics, broadly conceived. His description of the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” though applied to the philosophy of scientific materialism, points to a more general mental error of mistaking mental abstractions for reality itself. It is an error present, for example, in today’s politics, where words like “liberal,” “socialism,” “big government,” “capitalism” and “freedom,” are thrown about as though there was an identifiable reality that they described. Such abstractions substitute for experience instead of enriching it. The error is even reflected in much (not all) modern architecture, where often abstract forms dominate with boring and sterile emptiness within the forms. The error of substituting abstraction for empirical reality affects not only how we see ourselves in relation to the world around us, but also our social, political, economic and culture milieu.
So I recommend this book, for if you put forth the effort to understand it, it may enrich your life.
The book conceptualizes the way of thinking that led to and supported the development of modern science. It proceeds to show not only the value but also the limitations of that way of thinking and how it affected the development of Western civilization in both enriching and limiting ways. The book suggests, long after it was written, how these persisting limitations may be plaguing our current personal, social, political and economic life. By no means is the book anti-science; it is instead asking us to see a bigger reality beyond science but that includes science. That bigger reality includes aesthetics, broadly conceived. His description of the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” though applied to the philosophy of scientific materialism, points to a more general mental error of mistaking mental abstractions for reality itself. It is an error present, for example, in today’s politics, where words like “liberal,” “socialism,” “big government,” “capitalism” and “freedom,” are thrown about as though there was an identifiable reality that they described. Such abstractions substitute for experience instead of enriching it. The error is even reflected in much (not all) modern architecture, where often abstract forms dominate with boring and sterile emptiness within the forms. The error of substituting abstraction for empirical reality affects not only how we see ourselves in relation to the world around us, but also our social, political, economic and culture milieu.
So I recommend this book, for if you put forth the effort to understand it, it may enrich your life.
March 29, 2016
We are somewhere in the 1920's, Whitehead starts assuming that we did our homework; meaning that we know a great deal about Bacon, Harvey, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Huygens, Boyle, Newton, Locke, Spinoza and Leibniz. My homework wasn't finished, but I kept going anyway. Then he goes about knitting together the evolution of science through the 18th and 19th centuries. He lost me a bit in two chapters, but finished strong with a sober view of social progress.
September 10, 2014
The most exciting work of intellectual history I've read in a long time, but it took me years to be prepared for it. Read it in concert with Process and Reality: the two books illuminate and interfuse with each other.
May 12, 2012
This book is compiled from a series of lectures that Dr. Whitehead gave. Whether or not one agrees with his conclusions they are necessary reading for understanding the history of scientific developement and the relationships between science and philosophy, and between science and religion. Whitehead proclaims the death of strict materialistic philosophy of nature as a foundation for science and gives what he calls an organic theory as a possible replacement. His development of his new theory is interesting to say the least. His critiques of Materialistic philosophy resemble those of C. S. Lewis who wrote a critique of Materialism about 20 - 30 years after Whitehead presented these lectures, and the critiques of the well-known philosopher Alvin Plantinga. Whitehead, in fact, makes the same claims as Plantinga, to the effect that evolution and materialism simply cannot go together. This book is well worth the time it takes to read it, and to understand the concepts that Whitehead advances.
April 18, 2013
The last chapter is exceptional. It was worth plowing through the first 12 chapters, just to glimpse Whiteheads vision in chapter 13. Aims of education, associations, the dangers of the Gospels of Force and Uniformity, potential fallacies of Adam Smith and the Professional man, physical wandering, spiritual adventures, passionate feeling, aesthetic experience are all addressed. "Wisdom is the fruit of a balanced life".
I'm not completely satisfied with his ideas of adaption. I'm a fan of considering tried and time tested cultural habits that are good and proper.
I'm not completely satisfied with his ideas of adaption. I'm a fan of considering tried and time tested cultural habits that are good and proper.
June 2, 2015
I realize that the ideas in this book are extremely important. But Whitehead's obscure writing makes me want to stop reading philosophy forever. I was a philosophy major in college, but maybe I've changed over the years. When I now encounter page after page of obscure metaphysics, I think about the meaning of life in terms of why anyone would want to spend significant portions of their life thinking and reading about such things. There are many instances in which I can read a two-page spread in this book and have only the vaguest notion of what the hell Whitehead is actually talking about.
May 29, 2023
Whitehead, a philosopher, and mathematician presents us with a proposition that resonates with Buddhism—the notion that essences are but illusions, mirages concocted by our minds to confer significance upon the world. Within Whitehead's thought, the interconnectedness of processes and their transitory nature emerges as a fundamental pillar. Whitehead's perspective aligns with theories of Carlo Rovelli and his covariant quantum theory.
November 28, 2021
Utrolig konsist om vitenskapens (ide)historie, dens implikasjoner, og veien videre. Profetisk, men ikke apokalyptisk. En filosof som i en bedre verden ville vært regnet som en av de store tenkerne av det 20. århundret, men som av forskjellige grunner havnet i skyggen av sine samtidige. Veldig merkelig. Viktig å lese han før han blir totalt kuppet av OOO, som (imo) leser ham veldig tendensiøst
October 14, 2009
Just as relevant and interesting today as it was when first published in 1925. A must for all students of historiography, theology, or philosphy! Accessible, clear and articulate! Loved it! Again!
April 25, 2020
Time and time again, it is clear that mathematical thinking and philosophical thinking are compliments to one another. Both dealing in abstract principles and both attempting to discipline thought to discover and work within immutable principles. The anecdotal story of Plato inscribing “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here” above his Academy is telling of how classical thought respected this intermarriage. Likewise, Alfred North Whitehead, a trained mathematician, demonstrates the value of this principle in the collected lectures found in Science and the Modern World.
Whitehead views Plato and Pythagoras as founders of Western thought. Both mathematicians and both setting a framework upon which subsequent generations expanded upon. It is unfortunate that Artistotle, the son of a doctor, became so influential for centuries. In some ways, for Whitehead, Aristotle’s methods corrupted a more pure means of building thought:
What follows is Whitehead’s summary of the revitalization of Western thought after the Middle Ages. With the rise of mathematics once again in the 16th century, we get a Cliffs’ Notes version of the great thinkers in the Western canon. From such thinkers, there comes the more focused analysis on the perceived duality between mind and matter, the nature of enduring objects and the challenge to permanence itself.
True to his algebraist background, and the sciences of his day including relativism and quantum mechanics, Whitehead sees the relationship between things as the key to unlocking understanding instead of trying to search for first principles of the thing itself. Not only in nature, but in thought:
Despite his brilliant summation of Western thought, it is difficult to see where Whitehead pushes that thought forward in these lectures. His last few lectures touch on the longstanding metaphysical dilemmas encountered in the millennia before. He, ironically, returns to Aristotle, this time as the greatest metaphysician due to his general insight and influence, and uses Aristotelian Logic to render itself impotent in determining a rationale for the existence of God. He discusses how religion is more a psychological quest for adventure rather than an extension of metaphysical analysis. Finally he pushes that quest for adventure into a call for intellectual wandering. To avoid the traps that come with specialization and pick the fruit of all trees that you may pass.
Whitehead disposes of the old questions with sincerity and care, but he still disposes them. His lectures call for a push to the new rather than another razing and rebuilding of the old.
Whitehead views Plato and Pythagoras as founders of Western thought. Both mathematicians and both setting a framework upon which subsequent generations expanded upon. It is unfortunate that Artistotle, the son of a doctor, became so influential for centuries. In some ways, for Whitehead, Aristotle’s methods corrupted a more pure means of building thought:
The practical counsel to be derived from Pythagoras, is to measure, and thus to express quality in terms of numerically determined quantity. But the biological sciences, then and till our own time, have been overwhelmingly classificatory. Accordingly, Aristotle by his Logic throws the emphasis on classification. The popularity of Aristotelian Logic retarded the advance of the physical science throughout the Middle Ages. If only the schoolmen had measured instead of classifying, how much they might have learnt!
Classification is a halfway house between the immediate concreteness of the individual thing and the complete abstraction of mathematical notions. Pg. 28
What follows is Whitehead’s summary of the revitalization of Western thought after the Middle Ages. With the rise of mathematics once again in the 16th century, we get a Cliffs’ Notes version of the great thinkers in the Western canon. From such thinkers, there comes the more focused analysis on the perceived duality between mind and matter, the nature of enduring objects and the challenge to permanence itself.
True to his algebraist background, and the sciences of his day including relativism and quantum mechanics, Whitehead sees the relationship between things as the key to unlocking understanding instead of trying to search for first principles of the thing itself. Not only in nature, but in thought:
It should be the task of the philosophical schools of this century to bring together the two streams into an expression of the world-picture derived from science, and thereby end the divorce of science from the affirmations of our aesthetic and ethical experiences.
Despite his brilliant summation of Western thought, it is difficult to see where Whitehead pushes that thought forward in these lectures. His last few lectures touch on the longstanding metaphysical dilemmas encountered in the millennia before. He, ironically, returns to Aristotle, this time as the greatest metaphysician due to his general insight and influence, and uses Aristotelian Logic to render itself impotent in determining a rationale for the existence of God. He discusses how religion is more a psychological quest for adventure rather than an extension of metaphysical analysis. Finally he pushes that quest for adventure into a call for intellectual wandering. To avoid the traps that come with specialization and pick the fruit of all trees that you may pass.
Whitehead disposes of the old questions with sincerity and care, but he still disposes them. His lectures call for a push to the new rather than another razing and rebuilding of the old.
February 28, 2011
Whitehead begins this book by describing the problems with rationalism and materialism. The first two chapters seem clear enough. Rationalism, with its origns in Greek thought and mathematics and its merger with religion (Christianity), increasingly removed itself from science. The materialist perspective in its turn dug itself into a hole by viewing reality only in terms of atomism, abstraction and determinism. Whitehead's task in this book is to propose an alternative theory that takes the best from both worlds in what he calls his theory of the organism.
Unfortunately, Whitehead's writing in this book becomes increasingly difficult to understand and this presents a challenge in putting together a coherent picture of his alternative perspective. The first hint of what that might be is given in his preface where he writes that the intellect "builds cathedrals before workmen have moved a stone." With this comment, he states that "the spiritual precedes the material" and displays the rationalist flag. Later, he gives Berkeley credit for emphasizing that things are, as a reflection of god's unity, brought together and unified by mind. This type of insight is the basis for Whitehead's "prehensive" theory of mind where material reality is intertwined in space and time even if it is not "contemporaneous." In this way, Whitehead points his theory in the direction of universal wholeness and the lack of an organic theory of the whole is, he believes, the chief defect of 18th century science.
Whitehead then draws certain conclusions from the world of science and quantum theory in particular. Electrons don't move in a continuous, successive pattern, but leap from one orbit to another. At the heart of matter, Whitehead believes, there is a "discontinuous existence in space." This movement at the quantum level he characterizes as vibration, or some sort of expression of energy, not as hard units of matter moving across space. In fact, Whitehead says that this understanding of quantum reality gets "rid" of matter and opens the field "for the introduction of some new doctrine of organism which may take the place of the materialism" where, since the 17th century, "science has saddled philosophy." Another problem with that scientific worldview is what Whitehead calls "misplaced concreteness" where, in its emphasis on abstracting parts from the whole, we skew our understanding of reality because abstractions remove things. The problem here is that molecules don't operate in isolation but as part of a whole that guides or directs the workings of the parts. This insight now moves Whitehead's theory back to the concept of "prehensive" unity, where any "part," from molecule to the self, is dependent in some sense on the larger universe.
In this spirit, Whitehead pulls together rationalism and materialism into his organic theory whereby association, not seperateness and competition, becomes reality's signature. This association (mutual cooperation) is "exhibited in the simplest physical entities, such as the association between electrons and positive nuclei, and in the whole realm of animate nature." In this way, the physical world is seen as organic and the organic world is seen as physical. For Whitehead, the association of species in ecosystems express this mutuality best, to which he provides an additional component whereby the whole provides for both permanance (identity) and change, with change (movement, transformation) being understood as necessary for permanance to continue over time. This, as the essence of adaptation in evolutionary theory, illustrates the creativity (e.g., the evolutionary past expresses itself in the present, and the present expresses itself in the future) as well as the prehensive concept that many have come to associate as Whitehead's primary thought. The human mind is the highest point (to date?) of the evolutionary process (e.g., man's "wandering" enables him to "ascend the scale of being") and mind enables humans to see the universal unity that Berkeley and Whitehead articulated.
Whitehead affirmatively quotes Bacon that (physical) "bodies have perception in the sense that they pick up signals from other bodies and 'embrace what is agreeable and reject what is not.'" While Whitehead says that Bacon in this statement provides a "more sophisticated treatment than passive matter acted upon externally by other matter," he does not point out that this physical dynamic applies to the animate world as well and is another way the organic and inorganic world have something fundamental in common. In emphasing association and unity, Whitehead overextends his argument by dismissing the role of competition and opposing forces in his version of reality. With his reference to "the Gospel of Force," Whitehead's negative view is clear. But when he says, as an example, that "lions and tigers are not...successful species because they rely on a force that "bars cooperation," he moves into a dead end. With adaptation and survval as the criteria for evolutionary success, it's not clear why Whitehead would make such a statement about these animals other than "force" is at odds with his theory. "Force," he says, "is incapable with social life." That statement makes sense only if his vision is that of the peaceable kingdom. Pack animal predators are highly social within their group despite the havoc they create on their prey. Force is an inconvenient truth for Whitehead. Unfortunately for his theory, "unity" can be achieved by species or humans overpowering and dominating the other (e.g., wolves,as cooperative and associative beings, survive by killing prey; tyrants survive by eliminating opposition). Whitehead does not want to go in this direction, even though forces of opposition are equal in stature in the cosmic playing field to the forces of association. This is why, to use the Bacon observation, bodies embrace what is agreeable and reject what is not.
At the top of Whitehead's theory lies some version of God who (or that) somehow allows for eternal forms to come into place as existent bodies. This accounts for their "permanent" identity (manifestation of eternal form) yet allows for their transformation and creativity over time. Until he gets to this point, Whitehead's theory has many appealing features. Here, however, he leaps into the mystical sphere in making a connection (through "ingression") between cosmic permanence and earthly change. This is unfortunate as his theory goes silent on the potential for a materilistic explanation for the origin and maintenance of life and, importantly, for some thoughtful speculation as to what constitutes the permanent life force (Bergson?) that "oversees" change and, thereby, allows life to adapt over time.
Unfortunately, Whitehead's writing in this book becomes increasingly difficult to understand and this presents a challenge in putting together a coherent picture of his alternative perspective. The first hint of what that might be is given in his preface where he writes that the intellect "builds cathedrals before workmen have moved a stone." With this comment, he states that "the spiritual precedes the material" and displays the rationalist flag. Later, he gives Berkeley credit for emphasizing that things are, as a reflection of god's unity, brought together and unified by mind. This type of insight is the basis for Whitehead's "prehensive" theory of mind where material reality is intertwined in space and time even if it is not "contemporaneous." In this way, Whitehead points his theory in the direction of universal wholeness and the lack of an organic theory of the whole is, he believes, the chief defect of 18th century science.
Whitehead then draws certain conclusions from the world of science and quantum theory in particular. Electrons don't move in a continuous, successive pattern, but leap from one orbit to another. At the heart of matter, Whitehead believes, there is a "discontinuous existence in space." This movement at the quantum level he characterizes as vibration, or some sort of expression of energy, not as hard units of matter moving across space. In fact, Whitehead says that this understanding of quantum reality gets "rid" of matter and opens the field "for the introduction of some new doctrine of organism which may take the place of the materialism" where, since the 17th century, "science has saddled philosophy." Another problem with that scientific worldview is what Whitehead calls "misplaced concreteness" where, in its emphasis on abstracting parts from the whole, we skew our understanding of reality because abstractions remove things. The problem here is that molecules don't operate in isolation but as part of a whole that guides or directs the workings of the parts. This insight now moves Whitehead's theory back to the concept of "prehensive" unity, where any "part," from molecule to the self, is dependent in some sense on the larger universe.
In this spirit, Whitehead pulls together rationalism and materialism into his organic theory whereby association, not seperateness and competition, becomes reality's signature. This association (mutual cooperation) is "exhibited in the simplest physical entities, such as the association between electrons and positive nuclei, and in the whole realm of animate nature." In this way, the physical world is seen as organic and the organic world is seen as physical. For Whitehead, the association of species in ecosystems express this mutuality best, to which he provides an additional component whereby the whole provides for both permanance (identity) and change, with change (movement, transformation) being understood as necessary for permanance to continue over time. This, as the essence of adaptation in evolutionary theory, illustrates the creativity (e.g., the evolutionary past expresses itself in the present, and the present expresses itself in the future) as well as the prehensive concept that many have come to associate as Whitehead's primary thought. The human mind is the highest point (to date?) of the evolutionary process (e.g., man's "wandering" enables him to "ascend the scale of being") and mind enables humans to see the universal unity that Berkeley and Whitehead articulated.
Whitehead affirmatively quotes Bacon that (physical) "bodies have perception in the sense that they pick up signals from other bodies and 'embrace what is agreeable and reject what is not.'" While Whitehead says that Bacon in this statement provides a "more sophisticated treatment than passive matter acted upon externally by other matter," he does not point out that this physical dynamic applies to the animate world as well and is another way the organic and inorganic world have something fundamental in common. In emphasing association and unity, Whitehead overextends his argument by dismissing the role of competition and opposing forces in his version of reality. With his reference to "the Gospel of Force," Whitehead's negative view is clear. But when he says, as an example, that "lions and tigers are not...successful species because they rely on a force that "bars cooperation," he moves into a dead end. With adaptation and survval as the criteria for evolutionary success, it's not clear why Whitehead would make such a statement about these animals other than "force" is at odds with his theory. "Force," he says, "is incapable with social life." That statement makes sense only if his vision is that of the peaceable kingdom. Pack animal predators are highly social within their group despite the havoc they create on their prey. Force is an inconvenient truth for Whitehead. Unfortunately for his theory, "unity" can be achieved by species or humans overpowering and dominating the other (e.g., wolves,as cooperative and associative beings, survive by killing prey; tyrants survive by eliminating opposition). Whitehead does not want to go in this direction, even though forces of opposition are equal in stature in the cosmic playing field to the forces of association. This is why, to use the Bacon observation, bodies embrace what is agreeable and reject what is not.
At the top of Whitehead's theory lies some version of God who (or that) somehow allows for eternal forms to come into place as existent bodies. This accounts for their "permanent" identity (manifestation of eternal form) yet allows for their transformation and creativity over time. Until he gets to this point, Whitehead's theory has many appealing features. Here, however, he leaps into the mystical sphere in making a connection (through "ingression") between cosmic permanence and earthly change. This is unfortunate as his theory goes silent on the potential for a materilistic explanation for the origin and maintenance of life and, importantly, for some thoughtful speculation as to what constitutes the permanent life force (Bergson?) that "oversees" change and, thereby, allows life to adapt over time.
July 31, 2024
Some quite interesting chapters in this, especially early on (hence the four stars), but if anyone can explain how the metaphysical sections are anything more than elaborate nonsense, please enlighten me
March 22, 2019
You know how physicists constantly get emails from people who claim to have a perpetual motion machine, or mathematicians from people who have a proof that 1+1!=2? That's basically what this is, except the crank is a preeminent philosopher, and the email is a series of lectures at Harvard.
The book is mostly just a bunch of pseudo-profound newagey bullshit:
...and that's before he starts going into quantum theory and metaphysics!
The main idea, to the extent that I was able to grasp it, is that materialism and "simple location" are wrong, because if an object is at A and you are looking at it from B, then it's present in both locations. His alternative is some sort of "organic synthesis". He wants events as the basic unit of physics:
Even the mundane parts about the history of science are extremely questionable: Whitehead credits the notion of fate in Ancient Greek tragedy for engendering the idea of an "order of nature" in modern thought!
This guy co-wrote Principia Mathematica! He was Quine's thesis advisor! What happened? The whole thing is bizarre.
The book is mostly just a bunch of pseudo-profound newagey bullshit:
The actual world is a manifold of prehensions; and a 'prehension' is a 'prehensive occasion'; and a prehensive occasion is the most concrete finite entity, conceived as what it is in itself and for itself and not as from its aspect in the essence of another such occasion.
The problem of evolution is the development of enduring harmonies, of enduring shapes of value, which merge into higher attainments of things beyond themselves.
Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms.
Thus, in some sense, time, in its character of the adjustment of the process of synthetic realisation, extends beyond the spatiotemporal continuum of nature.
Realisation is the becoming of time in the field of extension. Extension is the complex of events, qua their potentialities. In realisation the potentiality becomes actuality.
...and that's before he starts going into quantum theory and metaphysics!
The main idea, to the extent that I was able to grasp it, is that materialism and "simple location" are wrong, because if an object is at A and you are looking at it from B, then it's present in both locations. His alternative is some sort of "organic synthesis". He wants events as the basic unit of physics:
A theory of science which discards materialism must answer the question as to the character of these primary entities. There can be only one answer on this basis. We must start with the event as the ultimate unit of natural occurrence. An event has to do with all that there is, and in particular with all other events. This interfusion of events is effected by the aspects of those eternal objects, such as colours, sounds, scents, geometrical characters, which are required for nature and are not emergent from it.
Even the mundane parts about the history of science are extremely questionable: Whitehead credits the notion of fate in Ancient Greek tragedy for engendering the idea of an "order of nature" in modern thought!
This guy co-wrote Principia Mathematica! He was Quine's thesis advisor! What happened? The whole thing is bizarre.
May 5, 2009
After having glossed over this book years ago, I returned to see if I could understand what I missed. I was disappointed in my youthful expectations.
Alfred North Whitehead argues against the atomic materialism that gave rise to Newtonian physics, in favor of a philosophy of organism which he thinks is more compatible with evolution and quantum physics. But he does it in very general terms which, although they make sense, are not hard enough or specific enough to be of use scientifically, it seems to me.
Whitehead wrote in 1925 and in some ways anticipated Thomas Kuhn's discussion of scientific paradigms. Atoms and organisms are examples of paradigms, but Kuhn, as a historian of science, ties his examples of paradigms closely to the histories of the scientific communities who support them.
Of course Whitehead is also concerned with reconciling science with religion, art, history, law, politics and all of those areas of experience which assume (organic) free will and creativity. But this has been a general theme of philosophy for centuries.
I find Whitehead most appealing in his conception of God as the creative force in the universe, embodying both evolution and human creativity as part of an organic creation of value. Charles Hartshorne builds on Whitehead's concept to argue against a static, perfectionist conception of God, in favor of a constantly changing God, coincident with the universe, including human creativity, which grows and endlessly surpasses itself.
Alfred North Whitehead argues against the atomic materialism that gave rise to Newtonian physics, in favor of a philosophy of organism which he thinks is more compatible with evolution and quantum physics. But he does it in very general terms which, although they make sense, are not hard enough or specific enough to be of use scientifically, it seems to me.
Whitehead wrote in 1925 and in some ways anticipated Thomas Kuhn's discussion of scientific paradigms. Atoms and organisms are examples of paradigms, but Kuhn, as a historian of science, ties his examples of paradigms closely to the histories of the scientific communities who support them.
Of course Whitehead is also concerned with reconciling science with religion, art, history, law, politics and all of those areas of experience which assume (organic) free will and creativity. But this has been a general theme of philosophy for centuries.
I find Whitehead most appealing in his conception of God as the creative force in the universe, embodying both evolution and human creativity as part of an organic creation of value. Charles Hartshorne builds on Whitehead's concept to argue against a static, perfectionist conception of God, in favor of a constantly changing God, coincident with the universe, including human creativity, which grows and endlessly surpasses itself.
January 1, 2017
to difficult
October 22, 2025
"Science is an abstraction. It neglects the full richness of experience. Philosophy is the critic of abstractions.."
"It is very arguable that the science of political economy, as studied in its first period after the death of Adam Smith (1790), did more harm than good. It destroyed many economic fallacies, and thaught how to think about the econimic revolution then in process. But it riveted on men a certain set of abstractions which were disastrous in their influence on modern mentalit"
Buku ini berisi tentang kritik Whitehead terhadap peradaban modern yang menggunakan sains sebagai landasan memandang dunia. Majorku dulu Fisika, tp senang sekali kalo sains dapat kritikan wkwkw Apalagi kritik tersebut datang dari seorang Mathematician (dan Philosopher).
Diantara point-point yang dikritik adalah
1. Reduksionis : Sains memutuskan hubungan pengalaman langsung manusia (nilai, kualitas, kesadaran) dengan struktur alam semesta. Realitas dipandang sebagai kumpulan fakta empiris berurutan. Hal ini tak terlepas dari prinsip dasar sains yang dibangun melalui abstraksi, yaitu penyederhanaan suatu fenomena agar dapat dianalisis. Menurut Whitehead, sains modern sering melakukan abstraksi yang berlebihan : sains memahami dunia secara parsial, bukan secara utuh. Namun kita sering lupa bahwa model ilmiah hanyalah abstraksi dari kenyataan, bukan kenyataan itu sendiri.
2. Half-hearted : Pemikiran modern menggunakan sains untuk menjelaskan dunia, tapi doktrinnya sendiri menyatakan bahwa sains tidak benar-benar menjelaskan hakikat realitas. Di dalam sains yang berlandaskan pandangan mekanistik, ketika dunia hanya dipahami lewat hukum sebab akibat, terlepas dari tujuan. Namun di sisi lain, dalam kehidupan sehari-hari, etika, seni, agama dan politik masih berfikir dalam kerangka bahwa dunia memiliki makna, tujuan, dan nilai. Inilah yang disebut "radical inconsistency". Mengapa tidak bisa dipisah saja ? Biarkan sains memberikan fakta dan agama/etika/seni memberikan makna ? Menurut Whitehead tidak bisa, sebab akan menjadi problematis, karena :
A. Filsafat mekanistik (sains) menafikan kualitas pengalaman manusia. Jika dunia hanya mesin tanpa makna, apa landasan objektif bagi nilai dan tujuan ?
B. Ilmu dan nilai menjadi dunia yang terpisah, padahal manusia hidup di satu dunia yang sama, bukan dua dunia.
C. Kontradiksi praktis dalam peradaban modern. Peradaban modern dibangun atas teknologi, politik, bahkan moralitas dengan sains sebagai dasar. Namun secara filosofis, sains menyangkal makna yang dibutuhkan untuk menopang kehidupan sosial.
3. Krisis makna : akibatnya, peradaban modern punya fondasi yang rapuh. Ilmu sangat maju secara teknis, tetapi miskin dalam pemahaman tentang makna dan tujuan.
Jadi, walaupun secara teknologi industri semakin berkembang pesat, tetapi ada beberapa hal yang menjadi catatan besar : kekosongan spiritual, manusia mulai melihat alam hanya sebagai obek yang bisa dieksploitasi, bukan sesuatu yang memiliki nilai, dan ilmu yang terlalu terspesialis dan terfragmentasi sehingga kehilangan pandangan menyeluruh tentang kehidupan.
Alternatif dari pandangan klasik tersebut, Whitehead menawarkan teori filsafat organism. Alih-alih memandang dunia hanya terdiri dari benda benda tetap (substance) yang menempati ruang dan waktu, Whitehead memandang bahwa dunia / realitas adalah jaringan peristiwa yang bersifat prosesual, tidak statis, melainkan terus-menerus tercipta dari hubungan antar peristiwa baru. Lebih jelasnya ada di buku beliau yg berjudul "Process and Reality" tapi sepertinya kepalaku belum sanggup menggiling buku filsafat semacam itu wkwkwk
"It is very arguable that the science of political economy, as studied in its first period after the death of Adam Smith (1790), did more harm than good. It destroyed many economic fallacies, and thaught how to think about the econimic revolution then in process. But it riveted on men a certain set of abstractions which were disastrous in their influence on modern mentalit"
Buku ini berisi tentang kritik Whitehead terhadap peradaban modern yang menggunakan sains sebagai landasan memandang dunia. Majorku dulu Fisika, tp senang sekali kalo sains dapat kritikan wkwkw Apalagi kritik tersebut datang dari seorang Mathematician (dan Philosopher).
Diantara point-point yang dikritik adalah
1. Reduksionis : Sains memutuskan hubungan pengalaman langsung manusia (nilai, kualitas, kesadaran) dengan struktur alam semesta. Realitas dipandang sebagai kumpulan fakta empiris berurutan. Hal ini tak terlepas dari prinsip dasar sains yang dibangun melalui abstraksi, yaitu penyederhanaan suatu fenomena agar dapat dianalisis. Menurut Whitehead, sains modern sering melakukan abstraksi yang berlebihan : sains memahami dunia secara parsial, bukan secara utuh. Namun kita sering lupa bahwa model ilmiah hanyalah abstraksi dari kenyataan, bukan kenyataan itu sendiri.
2. Half-hearted : Pemikiran modern menggunakan sains untuk menjelaskan dunia, tapi doktrinnya sendiri menyatakan bahwa sains tidak benar-benar menjelaskan hakikat realitas. Di dalam sains yang berlandaskan pandangan mekanistik, ketika dunia hanya dipahami lewat hukum sebab akibat, terlepas dari tujuan. Namun di sisi lain, dalam kehidupan sehari-hari, etika, seni, agama dan politik masih berfikir dalam kerangka bahwa dunia memiliki makna, tujuan, dan nilai. Inilah yang disebut "radical inconsistency". Mengapa tidak bisa dipisah saja ? Biarkan sains memberikan fakta dan agama/etika/seni memberikan makna ? Menurut Whitehead tidak bisa, sebab akan menjadi problematis, karena :
A. Filsafat mekanistik (sains) menafikan kualitas pengalaman manusia. Jika dunia hanya mesin tanpa makna, apa landasan objektif bagi nilai dan tujuan ?
B. Ilmu dan nilai menjadi dunia yang terpisah, padahal manusia hidup di satu dunia yang sama, bukan dua dunia.
C. Kontradiksi praktis dalam peradaban modern. Peradaban modern dibangun atas teknologi, politik, bahkan moralitas dengan sains sebagai dasar. Namun secara filosofis, sains menyangkal makna yang dibutuhkan untuk menopang kehidupan sosial.
3. Krisis makna : akibatnya, peradaban modern punya fondasi yang rapuh. Ilmu sangat maju secara teknis, tetapi miskin dalam pemahaman tentang makna dan tujuan.
Jadi, walaupun secara teknologi industri semakin berkembang pesat, tetapi ada beberapa hal yang menjadi catatan besar : kekosongan spiritual, manusia mulai melihat alam hanya sebagai obek yang bisa dieksploitasi, bukan sesuatu yang memiliki nilai, dan ilmu yang terlalu terspesialis dan terfragmentasi sehingga kehilangan pandangan menyeluruh tentang kehidupan.
Alternatif dari pandangan klasik tersebut, Whitehead menawarkan teori filsafat organism. Alih-alih memandang dunia hanya terdiri dari benda benda tetap (substance) yang menempati ruang dan waktu, Whitehead memandang bahwa dunia / realitas adalah jaringan peristiwa yang bersifat prosesual, tidak statis, melainkan terus-menerus tercipta dari hubungan antar peristiwa baru. Lebih jelasnya ada di buku beliau yg berjudul "Process and Reality" tapi sepertinya kepalaku belum sanggup menggiling buku filsafat semacam itu wkwkwk
June 21, 2021
In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead thrives when talking about other people's ideas and falls flat when discussing his own. If you were to read, and I do recommend you do, do yourself a favor and skip any chapter or part of a chapter in which Whitehead goes into detail of his own metaphysical philosophy. It may or may not be nonsense (thought certainly I found it to be the former), but it was either way written very poorly.
The series of lectures does an excellent job describing some of the major moments of Western philosophy and science and explaining their significance to an audience already deaf to their impact. At its best, Science and the Modern World allows the ever-more-modern reader to appreciate the effects of scientific advances on our philosophy which we have largely taken for granted. It was interesting, for example, to read from Whitehead the issue of relativity from a time period where Einstein's theory was not yet fully accepted. It is very beneficial to understand why a problem arose in the first place - for this will allow us to think more critically about the solution, especially as it becomes more and more taken for granted. Whitehead does a marvelous job explaining the issues and solutions modern science addresses and he contributes a number of memorable lines to really hit home their significance.
However, there are at least two chapters of complete nonsense that almost ruin the book. In a flurry of "intelligence", Whitehead will try to convince you that everything in the Universe is presupposed, that everything is merely what it is in relation to other things, and that God is some factor "limiting" the potentiality of any one of infinite events. His objective is to rid us of the materialist standpoint that focuses on the individual known being, and instead have us look at the whole process. This is not a bad idea at all, but Whitehead unfortunately does not put forward a sturdy theory for doing so and all but confounds his audience as it becomes more and more clear he does not really know what he is advocating for either.
All in all 3/5. Some very worth-reading chapters and some very worth-tearing-out-of-the-book chapters.
The series of lectures does an excellent job describing some of the major moments of Western philosophy and science and explaining their significance to an audience already deaf to their impact. At its best, Science and the Modern World allows the ever-more-modern reader to appreciate the effects of scientific advances on our philosophy which we have largely taken for granted. It was interesting, for example, to read from Whitehead the issue of relativity from a time period where Einstein's theory was not yet fully accepted. It is very beneficial to understand why a problem arose in the first place - for this will allow us to think more critically about the solution, especially as it becomes more and more taken for granted. Whitehead does a marvelous job explaining the issues and solutions modern science addresses and he contributes a number of memorable lines to really hit home their significance.
However, there are at least two chapters of complete nonsense that almost ruin the book. In a flurry of "intelligence", Whitehead will try to convince you that everything in the Universe is presupposed, that everything is merely what it is in relation to other things, and that God is some factor "limiting" the potentiality of any one of infinite events. His objective is to rid us of the materialist standpoint that focuses on the individual known being, and instead have us look at the whole process. This is not a bad idea at all, but Whitehead unfortunately does not put forward a sturdy theory for doing so and all but confounds his audience as it becomes more and more clear he does not really know what he is advocating for either.
All in all 3/5. Some very worth-reading chapters and some very worth-tearing-out-of-the-book chapters.
December 31, 2024
【A Retro-future Program Still Standing for a Real Future / AN Whitehead /Science and the Modern World】
When it comes to the Romantic reaction to scientific materialism, this book and the author highly regarded Shelley (showed him even a great respect), saying these things.
They tend to treat (Shelley's love for science) as a casual oddity of Shelley's nature what was, in fact, part of the main structure of his mind, permeating his poetry through and through. (P81, Chapter 5)
Shelley's nature is in its essence a nature of organisms, functioning with the full content of our perceptual experience. (P81, ibid.)
And even this.
We know also that when in these lectures we come to the twentieth century, we shall find a movement in science itself to recognize its concept, driven thereto by its own intrinsic development. (P84, ibid.) - it somewhat get its rather insufficient and yet interesting conclusion that even God is another empiricist thing coming from "this concept," value. (P161, at the end of Chapter 11)
His conclusion to this chapter follows as:
But if you think of it (that time and space is not fixed ) of our naïve experience (poetry), it is a nere transcript of the obvious facts. (87, ibid.)
Even though this book is largely outdated in terms of its take on biology, theory of relativity etc., to say the least (at the publication of it, even DNA was yet to be discovered), this book is well worth reading with a caution that it is not up to date. However, his showing that Kant himself could be approved from the theory of relativity and revised (including the revision that Kant's famous theory on place and time was not really definite) still holds its grip on philosophy today, in my personal opinion. He also reread Descartes in the Chapter 9, which was also great for its
time-standing alacrity of negation of the sole existence of mind and body. (Circa p132)
The conclusion might be a bit decisive, for your information - and yet this book is a great read to conclude my year in books.
When it comes to the Romantic reaction to scientific materialism, this book and the author highly regarded Shelley (showed him even a great respect), saying these things.
They tend to treat (Shelley's love for science) as a casual oddity of Shelley's nature what was, in fact, part of the main structure of his mind, permeating his poetry through and through. (P81, Chapter 5)
Shelley's nature is in its essence a nature of organisms, functioning with the full content of our perceptual experience. (P81, ibid.)
And even this.
We know also that when in these lectures we come to the twentieth century, we shall find a movement in science itself to recognize its concept, driven thereto by its own intrinsic development. (P84, ibid.) - it somewhat get its rather insufficient and yet interesting conclusion that even God is another empiricist thing coming from "this concept," value. (P161, at the end of Chapter 11)
His conclusion to this chapter follows as:
But if you think of it (that time and space is not fixed ) of our naïve experience (poetry), it is a nere transcript of the obvious facts. (87, ibid.)
Even though this book is largely outdated in terms of its take on biology, theory of relativity etc., to say the least (at the publication of it, even DNA was yet to be discovered), this book is well worth reading with a caution that it is not up to date. However, his showing that Kant himself could be approved from the theory of relativity and revised (including the revision that Kant's famous theory on place and time was not really definite) still holds its grip on philosophy today, in my personal opinion. He also reread Descartes in the Chapter 9, which was also great for its
time-standing alacrity of negation of the sole existence of mind and body. (Circa p132)
The conclusion might be a bit decisive, for your information - and yet this book is a great read to conclude my year in books.
October 8, 2024
A “STUDY” OF HOW SCIENCE HAS INFLUENCED RELIGION, LITERATURE, AND WESTERN CULTURE
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an English mathematician [he is credited as co-writer with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica] and philosopher, best known for developing Process Philosophy. He wrote many other books such as 'Process and Reality,' 'Religion in the Making,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1925 book, “The present book embodies a study of some aspects of Western culture during the past three centuries, in so far as it has been influenced by the development of science. This study has been guided by the conviction that the mentality of an epoch springs from the view of the world which is, in fact, dominant in the educated sections of the communities in question… The various human interests which suggest cosmologies, and also are influenced by them, are science, aesthetics, ethics, religion…I have avoided the introduction of a variety of abstruse detail respecting scientific advance. What is wanted… is a systematic study of main ideas as seen from the inside.” (Pg. vii-viii)
In the first chapter, he makes a famous (and widely-quoted) statement: “the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement … [is] the inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction … which is the motive power of research---that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled.
"How has this conviction been so vividly implanted on the European mind?... there seems to be but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality…
"In Asia, the conceptions of God were of a being who was either too arbitrary or too impersonal for such ideas to have much effect … There was not the same confidence as in the intelligible rationality of a personal being… My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.” (Pg. 12-13)
He summarizes, “In my last lecture I developed a … line of argument, which would lead to a system of thought basing nature upon the concept of organism, and not upon the concept of matter. In the present lecture, I propose in the first place to consider how the concrete educated thought of men has viewed this opposition of mechanism and organism. It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.” (Ch. V, pg. 75)
Later, he adds, “In the previous lecture, I was chiefly considering the relation to space-time of things which, in my sense of the term, are eternal. It was necessary to do so before we can pass to the consideration of the things which endure.” (Pg. 87) And then, “My previous lecture was occupied with the comparison of the nature-poetry of the romantic movement in England with the materialistic scientific philosophy inherited from the eighteenth century. It noted the entire disagreement of the two movements of thought. The lecture also continued… to outline an objectivist philosophy, capable of bridging the gap between science and that fundamental intuition of mankind which finds its expression in poetry and its practical exemplification in the presuppositions of daily life.” (Ch. VI, pg. 95)
He argues, “we must provide a ground for limitation which stands among the attributes of the substantial activity. This attribute provides the limitation for which no reason can be given: for all reason flows from it. God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality. For no reason can be given for just that limitation which it stands in His nature to impose. God is not concrete, but He is the ground for concrete actuality.
"No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality… Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to Him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success. If He be conceived as the supreme ground for limitation, it stands in His very nature to divide the Good from the Evil, and to establish Reason ‘within her dominions supreme.’” (Ch. XI, pg. 178-179)
He observes, “In the first place, there has always been a conflict between religion and science; and in the second place, both religion and science have always been in a state of continual development.” (Ch. XII, pg. 182) He suggests, “Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.” (Pg. 189)
He adds, “religion is the expression of one type of fundamental experiences of mankind: that religious thought develops into an increasing accuracy of expression, disengaged from adventitious imagery: that the interaction between religion and science is one great factor in promoting this development.” (Pg. 190)
And “The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience. The vision claims nothing but worship; and worship is a surrender to the claim for assimilation, urged with the motive force of mutual love. The vision never overrules. It is always there, and it has the power of love presenting the one purpose whose fulfillment is eternal harmony… The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.” (Pg. 192)
Those who simply quote Whitehead’s statement in the first chapter are “missing out,” not to mention taking his words out of context. (See his “Process and Reality” for a fuller development of his ideas about God, etc.)
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an English mathematician [he is credited as co-writer with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica] and philosopher, best known for developing Process Philosophy. He wrote many other books such as 'Process and Reality,' 'Religion in the Making,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1925 book, “The present book embodies a study of some aspects of Western culture during the past three centuries, in so far as it has been influenced by the development of science. This study has been guided by the conviction that the mentality of an epoch springs from the view of the world which is, in fact, dominant in the educated sections of the communities in question… The various human interests which suggest cosmologies, and also are influenced by them, are science, aesthetics, ethics, religion…I have avoided the introduction of a variety of abstruse detail respecting scientific advance. What is wanted… is a systematic study of main ideas as seen from the inside.” (Pg. vii-viii)
In the first chapter, he makes a famous (and widely-quoted) statement: “the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement … [is] the inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction … which is the motive power of research---that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled.
"How has this conviction been so vividly implanted on the European mind?... there seems to be but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality…
"In Asia, the conceptions of God were of a being who was either too arbitrary or too impersonal for such ideas to have much effect … There was not the same confidence as in the intelligible rationality of a personal being… My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.” (Pg. 12-13)
He summarizes, “In my last lecture I developed a … line of argument, which would lead to a system of thought basing nature upon the concept of organism, and not upon the concept of matter. In the present lecture, I propose in the first place to consider how the concrete educated thought of men has viewed this opposition of mechanism and organism. It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.” (Ch. V, pg. 75)
Later, he adds, “In the previous lecture, I was chiefly considering the relation to space-time of things which, in my sense of the term, are eternal. It was necessary to do so before we can pass to the consideration of the things which endure.” (Pg. 87) And then, “My previous lecture was occupied with the comparison of the nature-poetry of the romantic movement in England with the materialistic scientific philosophy inherited from the eighteenth century. It noted the entire disagreement of the two movements of thought. The lecture also continued… to outline an objectivist philosophy, capable of bridging the gap between science and that fundamental intuition of mankind which finds its expression in poetry and its practical exemplification in the presuppositions of daily life.” (Ch. VI, pg. 95)
He argues, “we must provide a ground for limitation which stands among the attributes of the substantial activity. This attribute provides the limitation for which no reason can be given: for all reason flows from it. God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality. For no reason can be given for just that limitation which it stands in His nature to impose. God is not concrete, but He is the ground for concrete actuality.
"No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality… Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to Him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success. If He be conceived as the supreme ground for limitation, it stands in His very nature to divide the Good from the Evil, and to establish Reason ‘within her dominions supreme.’” (Ch. XI, pg. 178-179)
He observes, “In the first place, there has always been a conflict between religion and science; and in the second place, both religion and science have always been in a state of continual development.” (Ch. XII, pg. 182) He suggests, “Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.” (Pg. 189)
He adds, “religion is the expression of one type of fundamental experiences of mankind: that religious thought develops into an increasing accuracy of expression, disengaged from adventitious imagery: that the interaction between religion and science is one great factor in promoting this development.” (Pg. 190)
And “The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience. The vision claims nothing but worship; and worship is a surrender to the claim for assimilation, urged with the motive force of mutual love. The vision never overrules. It is always there, and it has the power of love presenting the one purpose whose fulfillment is eternal harmony… The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.” (Pg. 192)
Those who simply quote Whitehead’s statement in the first chapter are “missing out,” not to mention taking his words out of context. (See his “Process and Reality” for a fuller development of his ideas about God, etc.)
June 28, 2024
The historical portions of the book on the development of science from the 1600s to the early 1900s is interesting, but I did not realize that Whitehead would also be proposing his own new philosophy of everything (now called process philosophy) when I chose to read this book. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I was impressed by Whitehead's presentation of his philosophy at all. He introduces new language and words and only later defines them adequately, and, worse, the explanations simply are not very clear. These were originally lectures, and I have a hard time thinking anyone could follow them because it requires a lot of rereading to pick up what may be the gist of Whitehead's philosophy from most of the chapters here.
While there are certainly tidbits of interest within the book, I think you'd be far better off reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on process philosophy rather than puzzling over Whitehead's prose.
The final chapters pick up on religion, science, and Whitehead's conception of God, which is written much more concretely, for the most part, and may be of interest for those wishing to see other possibilities for their harmony. [Also, I think Whitehead makes a couple of claims that are just strange, such as that the 19th century was one of bad military warfare. This is rather strange because scholars consider the long peace between great powers after the Napoleonic Wars to be one of the longer stretches of peace within Europe.]
Overall, I would not recommend the book.
While there are certainly tidbits of interest within the book, I think you'd be far better off reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on process philosophy rather than puzzling over Whitehead's prose.
The final chapters pick up on religion, science, and Whitehead's conception of God, which is written much more concretely, for the most part, and may be of interest for those wishing to see other possibilities for their harmony. [Also, I think Whitehead makes a couple of claims that are just strange, such as that the 19th century was one of bad military warfare. This is rather strange because scholars consider the long peace between great powers after the Napoleonic Wars to be one of the longer stretches of peace within Europe.]
Overall, I would not recommend the book.
November 13, 2025
A free PDF file of this book is available from the Internet Archives (the page numbers I cite are from this version):
https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/ite...
In this 100th anniversary year of Whitehead’s influential book, I was motivated to read his account of how the development of science since the 17th century has influenced certain aspects of the Western culture. The book consists of 13 chapters, corresponding to the eight original Lowell Lectures, one of which is split into two chapters discussing relativity and quantum theory separately, plus two chapters, 2 & 12, derived from other lectures and two chapters, 10 & 11, that are original to this volume.
- The Origins of Modern Science
- Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought
- The Century of Genius
- The Eighteenth Century
- The Romantic Reaction
- The Nineteenth Century
- Relativity
- The Quantum Theory
- Science and Philosophy
- Abstraction
- God
- Religion and Science
- Requisites for Social Progress
In the words of Whitehead himself: “The thesis which these lectures will illustrate is that this quiet growth of science has practically recoloured our mentality so that modes of thought which in former times were exceptional are now broadly spread through the educated world” [p. 2].
The three key developments in the 17th century that produced a scientific outburst were “the rise of mathematics, the instinctive belief in a detailed order of nature, and the unbridled rationalism of the thought of the later Middle Ages” [p. 49]. After the focus on materialism in the 18th century and the romantic reaction to it, a remarkable thing happened in the 19th century: Taking the focus away from specific inventions and placing it instead on the method of invention. Key developments of the 19th century included contact between the romantic movement and science, the development of technology, and advances in biological sciences, including the theory of evolution.
As we entered the 20th century, we realized that “so many complexities have developed regarding material, space, time, and energy, that the simple security of the old orthodox assumptions has vanished” [p. 142]. Advances in instrument design came just in time to help us deal with such complexities. Very early in the 20th century came two major jolts, which necessitated a reexamination of much of physics: Planck’s quantum theory and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Of course, Whitehead could not talk or write about all the implications of the latter two jolts from his vantage point in 1925.
Let me end my review by quoting Whitehead’s final paragraph in the book, which shows his reverence for science and scientists: “The great conquerors, from Alexander to Caesar, and from Caesar to Napoleon, influenced, profoundly the lives of subsequent generations. But the total effect of this influence shrinks to insignificance, if compared to the entire transformation of human habits and human mentality produced by the long line of men of thought from Thales to the present day, men individually powerless, but ultimately the rulers of the world” [pp. 259-260].
https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/ite...
In this 100th anniversary year of Whitehead’s influential book, I was motivated to read his account of how the development of science since the 17th century has influenced certain aspects of the Western culture. The book consists of 13 chapters, corresponding to the eight original Lowell Lectures, one of which is split into two chapters discussing relativity and quantum theory separately, plus two chapters, 2 & 12, derived from other lectures and two chapters, 10 & 11, that are original to this volume.
- The Origins of Modern Science
- Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought
- The Century of Genius
- The Eighteenth Century
- The Romantic Reaction
- The Nineteenth Century
- Relativity
- The Quantum Theory
- Science and Philosophy
- Abstraction
- God
- Religion and Science
- Requisites for Social Progress
In the words of Whitehead himself: “The thesis which these lectures will illustrate is that this quiet growth of science has practically recoloured our mentality so that modes of thought which in former times were exceptional are now broadly spread through the educated world” [p. 2].
The three key developments in the 17th century that produced a scientific outburst were “the rise of mathematics, the instinctive belief in a detailed order of nature, and the unbridled rationalism of the thought of the later Middle Ages” [p. 49]. After the focus on materialism in the 18th century and the romantic reaction to it, a remarkable thing happened in the 19th century: Taking the focus away from specific inventions and placing it instead on the method of invention. Key developments of the 19th century included contact between the romantic movement and science, the development of technology, and advances in biological sciences, including the theory of evolution.
As we entered the 20th century, we realized that “so many complexities have developed regarding material, space, time, and energy, that the simple security of the old orthodox assumptions has vanished” [p. 142]. Advances in instrument design came just in time to help us deal with such complexities. Very early in the 20th century came two major jolts, which necessitated a reexamination of much of physics: Planck’s quantum theory and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Of course, Whitehead could not talk or write about all the implications of the latter two jolts from his vantage point in 1925.
Let me end my review by quoting Whitehead’s final paragraph in the book, which shows his reverence for science and scientists: “The great conquerors, from Alexander to Caesar, and from Caesar to Napoleon, influenced, profoundly the lives of subsequent generations. But the total effect of this influence shrinks to insignificance, if compared to the entire transformation of human habits and human mentality produced by the long line of men of thought from Thales to the present day, men individually powerless, but ultimately the rulers of the world” [pp. 259-260].
June 24, 2024
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher, as bedeviled as so many by the problems of free will vs. determinism, of spirituality vs. materialism, and of failures to reconcile or even address the issues. The rise of big science was about to happen as he write this book in 1925; science had already birthed massive technology and mind-expanding scientific concepts, such as relativity that he cites. One might adapt the folk saying, "You ain't seen nothing yet," given the far more comprehensive expansion of the scientific viewpoint with modern quantum mechanics, dramatic demonstration of the power of general relativity (e.g., the pictures of black holes), cosmology, molecular biology, and more. At one point, Whitehead brings up a type of vitalism to explain free will, proposing that the electron in a body differs from an electron outside a body. It doesn't work for me as a scientist whose research covers physics, chemistry, biology, and applied sciences. The quandaries are brought up today as scientists see quantum mechanical theory work spectacularly well but with at least four major interpretations of what it means (pilot waves, collapse of the superposed states. alternative universes, etc.). The problems will be with us. In any case, my own world view is"nearly" gelled as a concordance of deep physics, core biology, and E. O. Wilson's sociobiology (most of it).
July 27, 2021
Whitehead was a genius polymath, he realized the metaphysical ramifications of relativity and quantum mechanics very very early... That the most fundamental basis of reality is not substance or material but Process. A fact that ongoing atom-smashing at CERN and Quantum Field Theory nearly 100 years later seems to ratify. We live in a universe of beauty and creative process that somehow builds upon previously achieved levels of complexity, and to which all events across all scales contribute. The universe is an organism, not a machine.
Whitehead rejected the non-romantic, mechanistic, and valueless depiction of the universe which results from over-specialization in Science.. "When you understand all about the sun and all about the atmosphere and all about the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset". Yes, his writing is hard to understand in a few chapters of this book, but have a quick glance at the first few pages of his Principia Mathematica to see just how far he has dumbed down his thoughts for us.
Whitehead rejected the non-romantic, mechanistic, and valueless depiction of the universe which results from over-specialization in Science.. "When you understand all about the sun and all about the atmosphere and all about the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset". Yes, his writing is hard to understand in a few chapters of this book, but have a quick glance at the first few pages of his Principia Mathematica to see just how far he has dumbed down his thoughts for us.
November 25, 2022
Whitehead is no doubt one of the greatest mathematician philosophers of the 20th century. This set of lectures is not for the faint of heart. But in the end, I had to quit before finishing it and the further I read, the more angry I became at the writer. Often I had to divulge into the literature to get help in understanding what he was saying, and came to the following conclusion after about six months of dealing with it - Whitehead might be a great philosopher/mathematician - but his ability to write undercuts him. I am a mathematician and a philosopher hobbyist and couldn't get through it. I'll give him 4/5 because I am sure the majority blame in this failed relationship is to be placed on me.
August 4, 2020
Science and the Modern World, organized as a series of lectures given at Harvard in the 1920s, is a book in which Alfred North Whitehead provides a modest history of science, mathematics, and philosophy by surveying their intellectual developments.
Beginning his survey with the Middle Ages, Whitehead adeptly points out that modern science would not have been born in the 17C if not for Scholasticism. Medieval thinkers were intellectual and rational; they simply didn’t apply their reasoning to observed facts and instead applied Aristotle’s philosophies and techniques to Christianity. Indeed, perhaps the most significant characteristic of Scholastic thought acting as progenitor to scientific method is the view of a causal nature; “every detailed occurrence can be correlated with antecedents in a perfectly definite manner”.
With this foundation, the book reviews certain intellectual achievements, with special topics like relativity; quantum theory; Romanticism; the relationship between science, philosophy, and religion; and God as well as particular concentrations on intellectual thought in the 17C, 18C, and the 19C. But this book isn’t just an historical survey coupled with Whitehead’s process philosophy. Rather, this survey is presented through the lens of his philosophy, in which he constructs a sweeping, occasionally nonlinear narrative between the methods and discoveries of science and his interpretation of the characteristics of the universe via his doctrine of organism. Specifically, its aim is to present an alternative to scientific materialism and expose its long-lasting damage to both scientific and philosophic thought.
Readers unfamiliar with Whitehead should expect to find themselves lost by his occasionally ambiguous writing and unfamiliar terminology. Contrary to the claims by some reviewers, Whitehead slowly introduces the reader to his philosophy at the outset – as early as Chapter 2 – where he mentions two fundamental “units” of process philosophy: occasion and occurrence. In the middle of this chapter, Whitehead presents us with his views on the historical development of mathematics, focusing explicitly on abstraction and analysis. In later chapters, he’ll return to abstraction and concentrate on unity with respect to events and concrete experience, which are fundamentally Whiteheadean. Readers may feel misled by the title, and rightly so, but make no mistake: Whitehead interweaves history, science, and metaphysics from beginning to end.
In addition to its cobbled-together language, there are other shortcomings, mostly minor. For example, Whitehead attributes the modern concept of atomicity to Dalton, but that honor belongs to Gassendi, and a list of references to outside sources would benefit (Whitehead addresses this absence in the preface). Nevertheless, these shortcomings do little to detract from his refreshing interpretation of mathematics, including its relationship (or lack thereof) to logic and its parallelism to language, as well as his then-novel observations of scientific advances between scholarship and technology. These interpretations and observations, crucial to understanding his genius, inform his worldview; Whitehead’s concern and interest in mathematics apply to his interests in external reality by way of physics, which is the foundation for his metaphysics. Readers may find similarities between Whitehead’s “organic philosophy” with Husserl and Weyl, with an almost irresistible urge to compare process philosophy with the latter’s agens theory.
This book, though far from perfect, is a great introduction to Whitehead’s thought in the 1920s, which he began formulating around or after Principia Mathematica. However, in addition to ambiguities in syntax, Whitehead’s account of modern physics may confuse unfamiliar readers; hence, such readers will benefit from skipping chapters on quantum theory (which is a recap of pre-1920 discoveries in atomic physics and how our understanding of the atomic world may fit into his organic theory of mechanism) and relativity, which, as outlined in his Principle of Relativity, is mathematically robust and at one point served as a viable alternative to Einstein’s, but which recent experiments have disproved (Gibbons and Will [2006]). His theory of relativity is an attempt to reconcile conflicting ideas surrounding absolutism, relativism, and infinity, among others.
Despite Whitehead's theory of relativity having been put to rest, his conceptual understanding of spacetime -- that it is an abstraction that “cannot in reality be considered as a self-subsistent entity” -- mirrors views by some mathematical physicists today (chiefly Rovelli).
The aforementioned shortcomings do little to take away from his philosophical process, which is as interesting and robust as ever and which is growing in research circles. The bottom line is this: do not read Science and the Modern World for an historical account of intellectual thought and progress through the ages. Although the book fulfills this preconception to some degree, it serves primarily as an introduction to Whitehead’s thought as it is shaped by his views on mathematics, philosophy, and physics.
Beginning his survey with the Middle Ages, Whitehead adeptly points out that modern science would not have been born in the 17C if not for Scholasticism. Medieval thinkers were intellectual and rational; they simply didn’t apply their reasoning to observed facts and instead applied Aristotle’s philosophies and techniques to Christianity. Indeed, perhaps the most significant characteristic of Scholastic thought acting as progenitor to scientific method is the view of a causal nature; “every detailed occurrence can be correlated with antecedents in a perfectly definite manner”.
With this foundation, the book reviews certain intellectual achievements, with special topics like relativity; quantum theory; Romanticism; the relationship between science, philosophy, and religion; and God as well as particular concentrations on intellectual thought in the 17C, 18C, and the 19C. But this book isn’t just an historical survey coupled with Whitehead’s process philosophy. Rather, this survey is presented through the lens of his philosophy, in which he constructs a sweeping, occasionally nonlinear narrative between the methods and discoveries of science and his interpretation of the characteristics of the universe via his doctrine of organism. Specifically, its aim is to present an alternative to scientific materialism and expose its long-lasting damage to both scientific and philosophic thought.
Readers unfamiliar with Whitehead should expect to find themselves lost by his occasionally ambiguous writing and unfamiliar terminology. Contrary to the claims by some reviewers, Whitehead slowly introduces the reader to his philosophy at the outset – as early as Chapter 2 – where he mentions two fundamental “units” of process philosophy: occasion and occurrence. In the middle of this chapter, Whitehead presents us with his views on the historical development of mathematics, focusing explicitly on abstraction and analysis. In later chapters, he’ll return to abstraction and concentrate on unity with respect to events and concrete experience, which are fundamentally Whiteheadean. Readers may feel misled by the title, and rightly so, but make no mistake: Whitehead interweaves history, science, and metaphysics from beginning to end.
In addition to its cobbled-together language, there are other shortcomings, mostly minor. For example, Whitehead attributes the modern concept of atomicity to Dalton, but that honor belongs to Gassendi, and a list of references to outside sources would benefit (Whitehead addresses this absence in the preface). Nevertheless, these shortcomings do little to detract from his refreshing interpretation of mathematics, including its relationship (or lack thereof) to logic and its parallelism to language, as well as his then-novel observations of scientific advances between scholarship and technology. These interpretations and observations, crucial to understanding his genius, inform his worldview; Whitehead’s concern and interest in mathematics apply to his interests in external reality by way of physics, which is the foundation for his metaphysics. Readers may find similarities between Whitehead’s “organic philosophy” with Husserl and Weyl, with an almost irresistible urge to compare process philosophy with the latter’s agens theory.
This book, though far from perfect, is a great introduction to Whitehead’s thought in the 1920s, which he began formulating around or after Principia Mathematica. However, in addition to ambiguities in syntax, Whitehead’s account of modern physics may confuse unfamiliar readers; hence, such readers will benefit from skipping chapters on quantum theory (which is a recap of pre-1920 discoveries in atomic physics and how our understanding of the atomic world may fit into his organic theory of mechanism) and relativity, which, as outlined in his Principle of Relativity, is mathematically robust and at one point served as a viable alternative to Einstein’s, but which recent experiments have disproved (Gibbons and Will [2006]). His theory of relativity is an attempt to reconcile conflicting ideas surrounding absolutism, relativism, and infinity, among others.
Despite Whitehead's theory of relativity having been put to rest, his conceptual understanding of spacetime -- that it is an abstraction that “cannot in reality be considered as a self-subsistent entity” -- mirrors views by some mathematical physicists today (chiefly Rovelli).
The aforementioned shortcomings do little to take away from his philosophical process, which is as interesting and robust as ever and which is growing in research circles. The bottom line is this: do not read Science and the Modern World for an historical account of intellectual thought and progress through the ages. Although the book fulfills this preconception to some degree, it serves primarily as an introduction to Whitehead’s thought as it is shaped by his views on mathematics, philosophy, and physics.
July 22, 2021
While I am sure this was an important work, I felt it tiresome at times. My main objection was his introduction of new terms without definition. I can remember several cases where he summarized something using three terms he had not used, and therefore not defined, before.
Read
October 6, 2021Difficult yet rewarding. Excellent history and philosophy of science becoming ecological science based upon events as processes and not substances and not upon enduring substances with only external relations obeying fixed and eternal laws.
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