Whitehead's Metaphysics of Power
Whitehead's Metaphysics of Power

Author: Pierfrancesco Basile

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2017-03-08

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1474404154

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Shows how Whiteheads metaphysics developed from his reading of early modern philosophyAt the beginning of his magnum opus, Process and Reality (1929), Whitehead lists a series of beliefs which he thinks are widely held by contemporary philosophers. They are all condemned as dangerously mistaken.What are these myths?Why are they rejected?In the works of which modern thinker did they arise?What precisely went wrong?At what stage in the development of Western thought did this happen?By tackling these questions, Pierfrancesco Basile makes it possible to grasp the main concepts of Whiteheads process metaphysics especially the crucial notion that being and power are one and the same and appreciate the complex way this is rooted in the modern philosophical tradition.Key FeaturesShows how Whiteheads metaphysics of power and events is deeply rooted in mainstream Western philosophyIllustrates how our understanding of the great masters of the past Descartes, Locke, Hume, Leibniz and Spinoza benefit from viewing them from the standpoint of Whiteheads metaphysicsProvides a critical assessment of Whiteheads metaphysics and his overall philosophy

Process-Relational Philosophy
Process-Relational Philosophy

Author: C. Robert Mesle

Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press

Published: 2009-07-23

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1599472082

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Process thought is the foundation for studies in many areas of contemporary philosophy, theology, political theory, educational theory, and the religion-science dialogue. It is derived from Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy, known as process theology, which lays a groundwork for integrating evolutionary biology, physics, philosophy of mind, theology, environmental ethics, religious pluralism, education, economics, and more. In Process-Relational Philosophy, C. Robert Mesle breaks down Whitehead's complex writings, providing a simple but accurate introduction to the vision that underlies much of contemporary process philosophy and theology. In doing so, he points to a "way beyond both reductive materialism and the traps of Cartesian dualism by showing reality as a relational process in which minds arise from bodies, in which freedom and creativity are foundational to process, in which the relational power of persuasion is more basic than the unilateral power of coercion." Because process-relational philosophy addresses the deep intuitions of a relational world basic to environmental and global thinking, it is being incorporated into undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy, educational theory and practice, environmental ethics, and science and values, among others. Process-Relational Philosophy: A Basic Introduction makes Whitehead's creative vision accessible to all students and general readers.

Whitehead’s Radically Temporalist Metaphysics
Whitehead’s Radically Temporalist Metaphysics

Author: George Allan

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-03-05

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1793620040

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In Whitehead's Radically Temporalist Metaphysics: Recovering the Seriousness of Time, George Allan argues that Whitehead’s introduction of God into his process metaphysics renders his metaphysics incoherent. This notion of God, who is the reason for both stability and progressive change in the world and who is both the infinite source of novel possibilities and the everlasting repository for the finite values, inserts into a reality that is supposedly composed solely of finite entities an entity both infinite and everlasting. By eliminating this notion of God, Allan draws on the temporalist foundation of Whitehead’s views to recover a metaphysics that takes time seriously. By turning to Whitehead’s later writings, Allan shows how this interpretation is developed into an expanded version of the radically temporalist hypothesis, emphasizing the power of finite entities, individually and collectively, to create, sustain, and enhance the dynamic world of which we are a creative part.

The Oxford Handbook of Dewey
The Oxford Handbook of Dewey

Author: Steven Fesmire

Publisher: Oxford Handbooks

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 809

ISBN-13: 0190491191

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This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

Event Universe
Event Universe

Author: Leemon B. McHenry

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2015-07-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1474404782

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Leemon McHenry argues that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a better basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than a traditional substance metaphysics. He investigates the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compares Whitehead's theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as W. V. Quine. In this way, McHenry defends the naturalised and speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century.

The Concept of Nature
The Concept of Nature

Author: Alfred North Whitehead

Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1602062137

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Hailed as "one of the most valuable books on the relation of philosophy and science," Alfred North Whitehead's The Concept of Nature, first published in 1920, was an important contribution to the development of philosophic naturalism. Examining the fundamental problems of substance, space, and time, Whitehead assesses the impact of Einstein's theories as well as the then-recent findings of modern physics on the concept of nature. For students and teachers of natural philosophy, this is essential reading. English mathematician and philosopher ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1861-1947) contributed significantly to 20th-century logic and metaphysics. With Bertrand Russell he cowrote the landmark Principia Mathematica, and also authored An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, The Function of Reason, and Process and Reality.

The Lure of Whitehead
The Lure of Whitehead

Author: Nicholas Gaskill

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2014-10-01

Total Pages: 535

ISBN-13: 1452943214

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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.

Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy
Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy

Author: David Ray Griffin

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0791480305

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Postmodern philosophy is often dismissed as unintelligible, self-contradictory, and as a passing fad with no contribution to make to the problems faced by philosophers in our time. While this characterization may be true of the type of philosophy labeled postmodern in the 1980s and 1990s, David Ray Griffin argues that Alfred North Whitehead had formulated a radically different type of postmodern philosophy to which these criticisms do not apply. Griffin shows the power of Whitehead's philosophy in dealing with a range of contemporary issues—the mind-body relation, ecological ethics, truth as correspondence, the relation of time in physics to the (irreversible) time of our lives, and the reality of moral norms. He also defends a distinctive dimension of Whitehead's postmodernism, his theism, against various criticisms, including the charge that it is incompatible with relativity theory.