(The title of this entry refers
to the book Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898), by the English
mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who is the subject of
this entry.)
This entry honors the English
mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), teacher and
collaborator of the great Bertrand Russell on the epic Principia
Mathematica. Although his philosophical stature is universally recognized,
he was to me a fairly minor philosopher, so that, but for his historic collaboration
with his brilliant Cambridge student Russell, he would hardly have been given a
place among the entries of this section, or elsewhere. (Obviously I have no
distinctive personal experience of him or of his work in my subjective arsenal,
to justify a special mention of him, either.)
A. N. Whitehead is one of those
lucky figures in history whose fame is larger than their proper significance.
There are several reasons for that, including his co-authorship of the
supremely influential Principia Mathematica. To be fair, in the division
of labor on this momentous project, the work was predominantly done by Russell,
particularly, all of its properly philosophical parts, including the
brilliant Introduction. It was a testimony to Russell’s own intellectual
generosity to divide the resulting credit equally between the two of them,
which under the circumstances he did not have to do. But perhaps the biggest
reason for Whitehead’s good fortune was that he was himself a good man. As Britannica
puts it, Whitehead’s habit of helpfulness made him
universally beloved. In its additional general assessment Britannica adds:
Whitehead has not had disciples (which is of
course consistent with the fact that he was only a minor philosopher, one
incapable of attracting notable intellectual disciples)
though his admirers have included leaders in every field of thought. (The
causes of such admiration lie in his character, rather than in his
philosophical power, as we noted earlier...) …His
educational and philosophical books have been translated into many languages.
His metaphysics has been keenly studied, in the United States most of all. (From
1924 to the end of his life he resided mostly in the United States, teaching at
Harvard, and retiring there.) What is now called
Whitehead’s “process theology” is, easily, the most influential part of
his system… Though his courtesy was perfect, there was nothing soft about
him... Never contentious, he was astute, charitable, and quietly stubborn. He
had a realistic, well-poised mind, and a fine irony, free of malice. Whitehead
combined singular gifts of intuition, intellectual power, and goodness with
firmness and wisdom.
In a very peculiar overreach (as
it seems to me), Britannica makes the following comment, set in italics,
on the start of Whitehead’s career in America:
In the
early 1920s Whitehead was clearly the most distinguished philosopher of
science writing in English. When a friend of Harvard University the
historical scholar Henry Osborn Taylor pledged the money for his salary (rather
humiliating to my Russian taste, I confess), Harvard,
early in 1924, offered Whitehead a five-year appointment as professor of
philosophy. He was sixty-three years old… The idea of teaching philosophy
appealed to him, and his wife wholeheartedly concurred in the move. (Not
a minor detail… But wait, now comes the clincher!) Harvard
soon found out that it had acquired more than a philosopher of science; it had
acquired a metaphysician comparable in stature to Leibniz and Hegel. (!!!)
In order to merit such a
stupendous distinction, any philosopher must have something to show for it.
Frankly, I am at a loss here, and for this reason, I shall return to the very
first introductory paragraph of the Britannica article on Whitehead. The
same entry author who compared him to Leibniz and Hegel introduces him thus: “English mathematician and philosopher, who collaborated with
Bertrand Russell on Principia Mathematica (1910-1913) (we have
touched upon this collaboration already, but at any rate, a Leibniz or a
Hegel ought not to be primarily introduced through an association or a
collaboration!), and from the mid-1920’s taught at
Harvard University (Harvard has had many teachers throughout its
history, and this distinction by itself is not sufficient for a Leibniz or
a Hegel!) and developed a comprehensive
metaphysical theory.” Now, this already is something to explore, and so
let us do it. The following differently-colored segment is unapologetically
appropriated from reference sources. ---
The
genesis of Whitehead’s process philosophy may be attributed to his
having witnessed the overthrow of Newtonian physics as a result of Einstein’s
work; his metaphysical views emerged in his 1920 The Concept of Nature, and
expanded in his 1925 Science and the Modern World, also an important
study in the history of ideas, and the role of science and mathematics in the
rise of Western civilization. Indebted as he was to Bergson’s philosophy of
change, Whitehead was also a Platonist who “saw the definite character of
events as due to the ingression of timeless entities.” (Encyclopaedia
Britannica)… In 1927, Whitehead was asked to give the Gifford Lectures at
the University of Edinburgh. These were published in 1929 as Process and
Reality, the book that founded process philosophy, a major
contribution to Western metaphysics.
Process
and Reality is famous for its defense of
theism, although Whitehead’s God differs essentially from the revealed God of
Abrahamic religion. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism originated process
theology. Some Christians and Jews find process theology a fruitful way of
understanding God and the universe. Just as the entire universe is in constant
flow and change, God as the source of the universe is viewed as growing and
changing. His rejection of the mind-body dualism is similar to elements in
traditions such as Buddhism.
The main
tenets of Whitehead’s metaphysic are summarized in his last and most readable
work Adventures of Ideas (1933).
In Britannica’s general
assessment, Adventures of Ideas offers penetrating, balanced reflections on the parts played
by brute forces and by general ideas about humanity, God, and the universe, in
shaping the course of Western civilization. Whitehead emphasized the impulse of
life toward newness, and the absolute need for societies stable enough to
nourish adventure which is fruitful, rather than anarchic. In this book, Whitehead
summarized his metaphysics, and used it to elucidate the nature of beauty,
truth, art, adventure, and peace. By “peace” he meant a religious
attitude that is “primarily a trust in the efficacy of beauty.”
Aside from him being a good man
and admittedly minor collaborator with Russell on Principia Mathematica, I have not been able to get a better feel
for Whitehead’s philosophy. The concept of the aesthetical determining the
ethical, which I have gleaned from it, is not an original concept by any
stretch of imagination. (Although I can perfectly imagine to myself a hideous
Quasimodo troll with a heart of gold and a scoundrel Prince Charming.) But any
manifestation of goodness ought to be rewarded by at least a grateful honorable
mention, and in this sense, Whitehead well deserves to be recommended to the
readers of my blog.
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