Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. Reading (...) the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

This article addresses both philosophers of science and process philosophers. It shows that the acceptance of Einstein's general theory of relativity by British physicists in the early 1920s, and their rejection of Whitehead's experimentally indistinguishable theory of gravity, was a matter not only of empirical evaluation but also of aesthetic preference. To philosophers of science it offers a historical case study illustrating the entangled roles of empirical and aesthetic criteria in theory evaluation. To process philosophers it offers an answer to (...) the question of why Whitehead's alternative rendering of Einstein's general relativity has been neglected both by the majority of physicists, and by the majority of philosophers. (shrink)

A radically new philosophy of experience and speculation, based on a reading of Whitehead's Process and Reality. Can experience be thought systematically without transforming the richness of the world as it is lived into reductive philosophical generalities? Can the method of empiricism ever be reconciled with a method of systematic cosmological speculation? Didier Debaise's reading of Whitehead shows clearly what a philosophy that makes this possible looks like, how it works and what is at stake. He focuses in on Whitehead's (...) attempt to construct a metaphysical system of everything in the universe that exists whilst simultaneously claiming that it can account for every element of our experience: everything enjoyed and perceived, willed or thought. (shrink)

We have entered a new era of nature. What remains of the frontiers of modern thought that divided the living from the inert, subjectivity from objectivity, the apparent from the real, value from fact, and the human from the nonhuman? Can the great oppositions that presided over the modern invention of nature still claim any cogency? In _Nature as Event_, Didier Debaise shows how new narratives and cosmologies are necessary to rearticulate that which until now had been separated. Following William (...) James and Alfred North Whitehead, Debaise presents a pluralistic approach to nature. What would happen if we attributed subjectivity and potential to all beings, human and nonhuman? Why should we not consider aesthetics and affect as the fabric that binds all existence? And what if the senses of importance and value were no longer understood to be exclusively limited to the human? (shrink)

2014 Reprint of 1945 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The first part deals with Greek cosmology and is the longest, the most elaborate and, on the whole, the liveliest part of a book which never deviates into dullness. The dominant thought in Greek cosmology, Collingwood holds, was the microcosm-macrocosm analogy, nature being the substance of something ensouled where "soul" meant the self-moving. Part II is "The Renaissance View of Nature ." Collingwood describes (...) the rise and decline of the deists' view of Nature as a machine designed by the Great Contriver who, having turned it out, watches it go. Part III, "The Modern View of Nature," deals with very recent or contemporary philosophy and science, discerning in it a radical evolutionism first in biology and later in cosmology. Remains to this day a classic text in the history of ideas. (shrink)

This paper considers the attempts put forward by A.N. Whitehead and by Bertrand Russell to ‘construct’ points (and temporal instants) from what they regard as the more basic concept of extended ‘regions’. It is shown how what they each say themselves will not do, and how it should be filled out and amended so that the ‘construction’ may be regarded as successful. Finally there is a brief discussion of whether this ‘construction’ is worth pursuing, or whether it is better—as in (...) today’s mathematics—to prefer a ‘construction’ that goes the other way round, i.e. , to view a region as a set of points. (shrink)

While efforts to frame a Whiteheadian response to problems of quantum interpretation have looked primarily to the later metaphysical writings, a powerful potential in this regard is contained in the ideas of the philosophy of nature period.

As our civilization careens toward climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. The dominant worldview of disconnection, which tells us we are split between mind and body, separate from each other, and at odds with the natural world, has been invalidated by modern science. Award-winning author, Jeremy Lent, investigates humanity's age-old questions -- Who am I? Why am I? How should I live? -- from a fresh perspective, weaving together findings from modern systems thinking, (...) evolutionary biology, and cognitive neuroscience with insights from Buddhism, Taoism, and Indigenous wisdom. The result is a breathtaking accomplishment: a rich, coherent worldview based on a deep recognition of connectedness within ourselves, between each other, and with the entire natural world. It offers a compelling foundation for a new philosophical framework that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on a flourishing Earth. The Web of Meaning is for everyone looking for deep and coherent answers to the crisis of civilization. -- Amazon. (shrink)

This book introduces the reader to Whitehead’s complex and often misunderstood metaphysics by showing that it deals with questions about the nature of causation originally raised by the philosophy of Leibniz. Whitehead’s philosophy is an attempt at rehabilitating Leibniz’s theory of monads by recasting it in terms of novel ontological categories.

Analyst in training -- Becoming a philosopher -- Science, logic, and language -- Cambridge analysis -- Logical positivism and philosophy of language -- Wider audience -- Politics and critical thinking -- Logic and ideals -- Stebbing, philosophy, and linguistics.

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) gilt mit seiner Philosophie der symbolischen Formen als Begrunder der Kulturphilosophie. Henri Bergson (1859-1941) war lange Zeit einer der beruhmtesten franzosischen Denker und ist im Deutschen bekannt als Lebensphilosoph. Und Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) kennt man als Mathematiker und, mit Bertrand Russell, Herausgeber der Principia Mathematica, weniger als Philosophen. Doch dass sie alle drei in ahnlicher Weise eine Philosophie der Erfahrung als dynamisches System entworfen haben, das die philosophische Tradition revolutioniert und als Fundament fur die heute interessantesten (...) philosophischen Stromungen gelten kann, ist wenig bekannt. In diesem Buch wird die Originalitat und Eigenstandigkeit dieser drei grossen Philosophen gezeigt, indem ihr gemeinsamer phanomenologischer Ansatz vorgefuhrt und ausgebaut wird: die Dynamisierung der Form und die Betonung der Kreativitat, die es ermoglichen, Erfahrung als die Entstehung von etwas Neuem zu denken. (shrink)

La nature du Temps a fasciné bien des philosophes et des scientifiques, car ce concept paraît recouvrir une réalité bien plus complexe que la variable continue t qui nous est familière. Récemment, certains scientifiques ont même proposé qu’en réalité « le Temps n’existe pas ». Le point de vue très original d’Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) est que c’est l’instant qui n’existe pas. A partir de là, ce mathématicien-philosophe, trop peu connu en France, a développé une vision de la nature comme (...) une succession de cristallisations d’objets, ou comme il le dit de « concrescences d’entités actuelles » dont chacune apporte avec elle une poussière de temps finie. Sa vision n’est pas sans rappeler les principes de la mécanique quantique et de la relativité, et a le mérite de donner un statut spécial au présent. Par ailleurs, sa philosophie de la Nature, et la créativité qu’il voit dans son développement, prévoient une solidarité globale des entités actuelles qui par certains côtés rappelle la physique quantique, tout en nécessitant à ses yeux la coopération d’une entité divine. Sa vision, développée en particulier dans Process and Reality (1929), malgré sa difficulté et certains échecs qu’il ne faut pas oublier, reste une source puissante d’inspiration pour la réconciliation encore à accomplir entre les deux théories rivales de la nature, comme pour une approche apaisée de la science et de la religion. -/- . (shrink)

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity links the metrical structure of the cosmic order (or "cosmology") to the contingent distributions of matter and energy throughout the universe, one of the chief areas of investigation in astrophysics. However, presently we have neither devised nor discovered system of uniform relations whereby we can make our cosmological measurements intelligible. This is "the measurement problem of cosmology." Using both historical ideas (such as A.N. Whitehead's work in the 1920s) and contemporary evidence and theories, argue that (...) the measurement problem has neither been fully understood nor rightly interpreted. With better grasp of this problem, such as am attempting to provide, the prospects for solution look brighter. (shrink)

Ronny Desmet & Michel Weber (edited by), Whitehead. The Algebra of Metaphysics. Applied Process Metaphysics Summer Institute Memorandum, Louvain-la-Neuve, Les Éditions Chromatika, 2010. (978-2-930517-08-7 ; 378 p. ; 40 € ; ) Drawing upon the major Harvard works —Science and the Modern World (1925), Process and Reality (1929) and Adventures of Ideas (1933)—, the essays gathered here on the occasion of the creation of the Applied Process Metaphysics Summer Institute, seek, first, to introduce into Whitehead’s thought by clarifying what is (...) at stake in his philosophy and by providing a synoptic vision of his key categories in light of their historical development and, second, to foster a creative dialogue among all participants. These essays give the opportunity to travel through most aspects of Whitehead’s legacy: anthropology, ecology, education, epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, political theory and relativity physics. Ronny Desmet holds an M.A. in mathematics (1983), an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy (2005 and 2010). He is currently research assistant at the Centre of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Free University of Brussels. His research and publications have focused on Whitehead’s philosophy of mathematics and relativity. Michel Weber holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy (1991 and 1997). He is the director of the Centre for Philosophical Practice “Chromatiques whiteheadiennes.” He has published more than 50 books, e.g., Whitehead’s Pancreativism. The Basics (2006) and the Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought (2008). (shrink)

First published in 1903, _Principles of Mathematics_ was Bertrand Russell’s first major work in print. It was this title which saw him begin his ascent towards eminence. In this groundbreaking and important work, Bertrand Russell argues that mathematics and logic are, in fact, identical and what is commonly called mathematics is simply later deductions from logical premises. Highly influential and engaging, this important work led to Russell’s dominance of analytical logic on western philosophy in the twentieth century.

To mark the centenary of the 1910 to 1913 publication of the monumental Principia Mathematica by Alfred N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, this collection of fifteen new essays by distinguished scholars considers the influence and history of PM over the last hundred years.

Reality exists independently of human observers, but does the same apply to its structure? Realist ontologies usually assume so: according to them, the world consists of objects, these have properties and enter into relations with each other, more or less as we are accustomed to think of them. Against this view, Rein Raud develops a radical process ontology that does not credit any vantage point, any scale or speed of being, any range of cognitive faculties with the privilege to judge (...) how the world ‘really’ is. In his view, what we think of as objects are recast as fields of constitutive tensions, cross-sections of processes, never in complete balance but always striving for it and always reconfiguring themselves accordingly. The human self is also understood as a fluctuating field, not limited to the mind but distributed all over the body and reaching out into its environment, with different constituents of the process constantly vying for control. The need for such a process philosophy has often been voiced, but rarely has there been an effort to develop it in a systematic and rigourous manner that leads to original accounts of identity, continuity, time, change, causality, agency and other topics. Throughout his new book, Raud engages with an unusually broad range of philosophical schools and debates, from New Materialism and Object-Oriented Ontology to both phenomenological and analytical philosophy of mind, from feminist philosophy of science to neurophilosophy and social ontology. Being in Flux will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy and the humanities generally and to anyone interested in current debates about realism, materialism and ontology. (shrink)

Untying the Gordian Knot shows how the fundamental notions of process, logic and relations, woven with triads of input-output-context, can be combined with quantum distinctions associated with actuality and potentiality, enabling the leveraging of many advances in philosophy and physics to unravel several long-standing philosophical problems.

In this monograph, I argue that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a more adequate basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than a traditional substance metaphysics. I investigate the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compare Whitehead’s theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as another key proponent of this theory, W. V. Quine. In this manner, I defend the naturalized and (...) speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century. (shrink)

In this book, which contains several of his key papers as well as new material, he focuses on the problem of consciousness and explains how quantum mechanics...

The aim of this historically oriented article is to give an account of the methodological similarity of Whitehead and Russell with regard to the logico-mathematical mode of philosophical analysis, and of Whitehead and Moore with regard to common sense. According to the authors, these similarities, especially when taken together, justify the classification of Whitehead as an analytic philosopher. Because of the doctrinal uniqueness of Whitehead, however, they also hold that he will always remain an atypical analytic philosopher.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: (1) potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; (2) Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; (3) Process Physics (...) [ontological interpretation of relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; (4) on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RUSSELL AND G. H. HARDY: A STUDY OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS Faculty of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Middlesex Polytechnic Enfield, Middlesex EN3 45F, England I. INTRODUCTION Prom time to time the name of Hardy turns up in Russell's career: a common interest in set theory and the philosophy of mathematics, similar political and religious sentiments, and certain matters of mutual concern arising at Trinity College Cambridge and in (...) the university in general. However, there is no connected account of their contacts. The purpose of this article is to fill a gap in the literature on both men. After enduring private instruction at home, Bertrand Russell gained a minor scholarship in mathematics at Trinity College in 1890; he took Part I of the Mathematical Tripos until 1893 and then Part II of the Moral Sciences Tripos in the following year. In 1895 he gained a Prize Fellowship, which he held until 1901; in 19IO.he was awarded a college lectureship which he lost six years later under circumstances noted in section IV below. Much of the intervening time was spent in Oxford or London; however, he spent part of each year in Cambridge.1 The later years are brieHy recorded in section IV. Born into an intellectual family ofmodest means in 1877 (five years younger than Russell, therefore), Godfrey Harold Hardy won a scholarship to Winchester College and then went to Trinity College in I Standard biographical information on Russell is easily available; see, for example, R. W. Clark, The Life ofBertrand Russel~ specific phases and events are dealt with in succeeding footnotes. The Autobiography ofBertrand Russell is of lower quality than one might imagine; for example, Hardy is not mentioned at all! rus.ell: the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives McMasrer Unive~ity Library Press noS. 11 (wimer 1991-92): 165-79 ISSN 0036-01631 166 I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS 1896, just after Russell had gained his fellowship. He was elected to the Apostles (the "Society") in 1898, the year after Russell "took wings" after five years' active membership; he seems to have been less active than Russell as a speaker during his own three years there.2 At some stage he also joined the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, which Russell had joined in. 1891; a surprising contribution will be described in section IV.3 Graduating as fourth wrangler in Part I of the Mathematical Tripos in 1898 and gaining a high place in Part II in 1900, Hardy received at once a Prize Fellowship (like Russell). Upon its termination six years later, he obtained a colleg~ lectureship, which he held until 1919. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1910 (two years after Russell),4 and in the following year he began his life-long collaboration with his younger colleague ]. E. Littlewood (1885-1977), also a Trinity College graduate and then Fellow, and also a friend of Russell.5 The next stages of Hardy's career will be described in section IV: his personality is assessed in a concluding section v. 1 On Russell'~ and Hardy's roles in the Apostles, see passim in P. Levy, Moore: G. E Moore and the Cambridge Apostles (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979). 3 The chief obituary of Hardy is by E. C. Titchmarsh, published in slightly different forms in Obituary Notices ofthe Royal Society ofLondon, 6 (1949); 447-61, and Journal ofthe London Mathematical Society, 25 (1950): 81-101 (followed by more technical surveys of his mathematics by Titchmarsh and eight other authors on pp. 102-38). The first version is reprinted with a few changes in Hardy's Collected Papers, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1966-79), I: 1-12. No major study has been written on him since. 4 Hardy was n~minated for a Royal Sociery fellowship in 1907 by A. R. Forsyth, seconded by J. W L. Glaisher, and supported "on personal knowledge" by W Burnside, E. W Hobson, P. A. MacMahon, A. N. Whitehead, A. E. H. Love, E. B. Elliott and T.]. d'A. Bromwich; the proposal was "suspended" (put up for voring) in 1908, 1909 and 1910 (Royal Sociery Cettificates, 12: foJ. 311). Although Russell was... (shrink)

Whitehead's 1922 theory of gravitation continues to attract the attention of philosophers, despite evidence presented in 1971 that it violates experiment. We demonstrate that the theory strongly fails five quite different experimental tests, and conclude that, notwithstanding its meritorious philosophical underpinnings, Whitehead's theory is truly dead.

Craig Eisendrath reinterprets and unifies the writings of the late-nineteenth-century psychologist William James and the twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. James's psychology achieves greater depth by its grounding in philosophic doctrine, and Whitehead's abstract and frequently abstruse philosophy gains greater specificity through the concrete illustrations provided by a wealth of psychological evidence. The result is an extension of James and an exegesis of Whitehead. The merging of James's theory of will and Whitehead's theory of concrescence and organism is the central (...) pivot of the book. Eisendrath discusses as well the philosophical traditions behind both men and analyzes their theories on perception, time, space, causality, the nature and role of ideas, the laws of nature, God and civilization. (shrink)

On the occasion of the centenary of the publication of the first volume of Principia Mathematica, this article aims to shed some light on Whitehead’s philosophy of mathematics, to differentiate Whitehead’s version of logicism from Russell’s, and to show the unity of Whitehead’s thought. These aims rely on Whitehead’s basic insight that mathematics is the study of pattern.

In _Without Criteria_, Steven Shaviro proposes and explores a philosophical fantasy: imagine a world in which Alfred North Whitehead takes the place of Martin Heidegger. What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought? Heidegger asks, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" Whitehead asks, "How is it that there is always something new?" In a world where everything from popular music to DNA is being sampled and recombined, argues Shaviro, Whitehead's question is the truly urgent (...) one. _Without Criteria_ is Shaviro's experiment in rethinking postmodern theory, especially the theory of aesthetics, from a point of view that hearkens back to Whitehead rather than Heidegger. In working through the ideas of Whitehead and Deleuze, Shaviro also appeals to Kant, arguing that certain aspects of Kant's thought pave the way for the philosophical "constructivism" embraced by both Whitehead and Deleuze. Kant, Whitehead, and Deleuze are not commonly grouped together, but the juxtaposition of them in _Without Criteria_ helps to shed light on a variety of issues that are of concern to contemporary art and media practices. (shrink)

This monumental work breaks new ground in exploring some of the hermeneutical implications of Whitehead's philosophy. The book arises out of Stephen Franklin's quest to find a way of explaining how human language can speak of God. Whitehead's profound metaphysical vision--developed in his central work, Process and Reality, and in other writings--engages Franklin's quest.

Foundations of Relational Realism presents an intuitive interpretation of quantum mechanics, based on a revised decoherent histories interpretation, structured within a category theoretic topological formalism. -/- If there is a central conceptual framework that has reliably borne the weight of modern physics as it ascends into the twenty-first century, it is the framework of quantum mechanics. Because of its enduring stability in experimental application, physics has today reached heights that not only inspire wonder, but arguably exceed the limits of intuitive (...) vision, if not intuitive comprehension. For many physicists and philosophers, however, the currently fashionable tendency toward exotic interpretation of the theoretical formalism is recognized not as a mark of ascent for the tower of physics, but rather an indicator of sway—one that must be dampened rather than encouraged if practical progress is to continue. -/- In this unique two-part volume, designed to be comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists, the authors chart out a pathway forward by identifying the central deficiency in most interpretations of quantum mechanics: That in its conventional, metrical depiction of extension, inherited from the Enlightenment, objects are characterized as fundamental to relations—i.e., such that relations presuppose objects but objects do not presuppose relations. The authors, by contrast, argue that quantum mechanics exemplifies the fact that physical extensiveness is fundamentally topological rather than metrical, with its proper logico-mathematical framework being category theoretic rather than set theoretic. -/- By this thesis, extensiveness fundamentally entails not only relations of objects, but also relations of relations. Thus, the fundamental quanta of quantum physics are properly defined as units of logico-physical relation rather than merely units of physical relata as is the current convention. Objects are always understood as relata, and likewise relations are always understood objectively. In this way, objects and relations are coherently defined as mutually implicative. The conventional notion of a history as “a story about fundamental objects” is thereby reversed, such that the classical “objects” become the story by which we understand physical systems that are fundamentally histories of quantum events. -/- These are just a few of the novel critical claims explored in this volume—claims whose exemplification in quantum mechanics will, the authors argue, serve more broadly as foundational principles for the philosophy of nature as it evolves through the twenty-first century and beyond. (shrink)

This important and provocative book on the work of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) explores how his avowed atomism is consistent with his equally essential commitment to a view of reality as a thoroughly interconnected sphere of relations. Judith Jones challenges Whitehead's readers to reconsider certain prevailing interpretations of his organic philosophy.

Once largely ignored, the speculative philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has assumed a new prominence in contemporary theory across the humanities and social sciences. Philosophers and artists, literary critics and social theorists, anthropologists and computer scientists have all embraced Whitehead’s thought, extending it through inquiries into the nature of life, the problem of consciousness, and the ontology of objects, as well as into experiments in education and digital media. _The Lure of Whitehead_ offers readers not only a comprehensive introduction to (...) Whitehead’s philosophy but also a demonstration of how his work advances our emerging understanding of life in the posthuman epoch. Contributors: Jeffrey A. Bell, Southeastern Louisiana U; Nathan Brown, U of California, Davis; Peter Canning; Didier Debaise, Free U of Brussels; Roland Faber, Claremont Lincoln U; Michael Halewood, U of Essex; Graham Harman, American U in Cairo; Bruno Latour, Sciences Po Paris; Erin Manning, Concordia U, Montreal; Steven Meyer, Washington U; Luciana Parisi, U of London; Keith Robinson, U of Arkansas at Little Rock; Isabelle Stengers, Free U of Brussels; James Williams, U of Dundee. (shrink)

It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences hang “in the air” (Bowler, 1983; 2008) prior to their consummation. While neo-Darwinist biology has been powerfully served by its mechanistic metaphysic and a reductionist methodology in which living organisms are considered machines, many of the chapters in this volume place this paradigm into question. Pairing scientists and philosophers together, this volume explores what might be termed “the New Frontiers” of biology, namely contemporary areas (...) of research that appear to call an updating, a supplementation, or a relaxation of some of the main tenets of the Modern Synthesis. Such areas of investigation include: Emergence Theory, Systems Biology, Biosemiotics, Homeostasis, Symbiogenesis, Niche Construction, the Theory of Organic Selection (also known as “the Baldwin Effect”), Self-Organization and Teleodynamics, as well as Epigenetics. Most of the chapters in this book offer critical reflections on the neo-Darwinist outlook and work to promote a novel synthesis that is open to a greater degree of inclusivity as well as to a more holistic orientation in the biological sciences. (shrink)

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

The classical mechanistic idea of nature that prevailed in science during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an essentially mindless conception: the ...