Process and Reality, Whitehead’s magnum opus, is one of the major philosophical works of the modern world, and an extensive body of secondary literature has developed around it. Yet surely no significant philosophical book has appeared in the last two centuries in nearly so deplorable a condition as has this one, with its many hundreds of errors and with over three hundred discrepancies between the American and the English editions, which appeared in different formats with divergent paginations. The work itself (...) is highly technical and far from easy to understand, and in many passages the errors in those editions were such as to compound the difficulties. The need for a corrected edition has been keenly felt for many decades. (shrink)

These articles and speeches by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist date from 1934 to 1958. Rather than expositions on quantum physics, the papers are philosophical in nature, exploring the relevance of atomic physics to many areas of human endeavor. Includes an essay in which Bohr and Einstein discuss quantum and_wave equation theories. 1961 edition.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In Process and Reality and other works, Alfred North Whitehead struggled to come to terms with the impact the new science of quantum mechanics would have on metaphysics. -/- This ambitious book is the first extended analysis of the intricate relationships between relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and Whitehead's cosmology. Michael Epperson illuminates the intersection of science and philosophy in Whitehead's work-and details Whitehead's attempts to fashion an ontology coherent with quantum anomalies. -/- Including a nonspecialist introduction to quantum mechanics, Epperson (...) adds an essential new dimension to our understanding of Whitehead-and of the constantly enriching encounter between science and philosophy in our century. -/- ** NOTE: This book was recently selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities for their Humanities Open Book Program. As a result, you can download it for free at Fordham University Press and Amazon. (shrink)

A clear and accessible presentation of quantum theory, suitable for researchers yet accessible to graduates.

This is the first book in which contemporary scientists and mystics share with us-in their own words-their views on space, time, matter, energy, life, consciousness, creation and on our place in the scheme of things. The book is also the story of an American philosopher who-with these dialogues-ventures into ground-breaking territory, and of her search in America, Europe, India and Nepal for people whose work is at the center of our understanding of reality.

Focus, Organization, and Content This book, like the first edition, deals with the mass transport processes that take place in living systems, with a focus on the normal behavior of eukaryotic cells and the - ganisms they constitute, in their normal physiological environment. As a consequence of this focus, the structure and content of the book differ from those of traditional transport texts. We do not start with the engineering principles of mass transport (which are well presented elsewhere) and then (...) seek biological applications of these principles; rather, we begin with the biological processes themselves, and then - velop the models and analytical tools that are needed to describe them. This approach has several consequences. First of all, it drives the content of the text in a direction distinctively different from conventional transport texts. This is - cause the tools and models needed to describe complex biological processes are often different from those employed to describe more well-characterized inanimate systems. Many biological processes must still be described phenomenologically, using me- odologies like nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Simple electrical analogs employing a paucity of parameters can be more useful for characterization and prediction than complex theories based on the behavior of more well-defined systems on a laboratory bench. By allowing the biology to drive the choice of analysis tools and models, the latter are consistently presented in the context of real biological systems, and analysis and biology are interwoven throughout. (shrink)

Featuring discussions and dialogue by prominent scientists and philosophers, this book explores the rich interface of contemporary physics and Whitehead-inspired process thought.