Alfred North Whitehead

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Alfred North Whitehead

1861–1947

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

The world is not made of solid things that persist but of events that come into being and pass away – reality is process.

Placement

Pragmatism & US Philosophy · Northern Europe · Metaphysics, Logic, Science, Religion

Mathematician, co-author of Principia Mathematica with Russell, and from 1924 at Harvard the founder of process philosophy: reality consists not of enduring substances but of events, “actual occasions” of experience.

Key ideas

Process philosophy
Actual occasions
Fallacy of misplaced concreteness
Bifurcation of nature

Students: Bertrand Russell, Susanne K. Langer, W. V. O. Quine

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Influence

Influenced by 4

Plato

influenced by
Whitehead called the European philosophical tradition ‘a series of footnotes to Plato’ (Process and Reality, 1929) and drew on the Timaeus for his cosmology of creative process. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929); Adventures of Ideas (1933); SEP “Alfred North Whitehead”
Evidence: AI draft
Plato › 428–348 BCE
William James

influenced by
In Science and the Modern World (1925) Whitehead compared James’s essay ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ (1904) with Descartes’s Discourse as marking the start of a new philosophical period. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925); W. James, “Does Consciousness Exist?” (1904)
Evidence: AI draft
William James › 1842–1910
Henri Bergson

influenced by
In Science and the Modern World (1925) Whitehead linked his ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’ to Bergson’s protest against the intellect’s spatialisation of nature, while denying it is inevitable. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925); SEP “Alfred North Whitehead”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Henri Bergson › 1859–1941
John Dewey

influenced by
In the preface to Process and Reality (1929) Whitehead acknowledged his debt to Dewey, Bergson and James, seeking to rescue their thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929), Preface; “John Dewey and His Influence”, in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of John Dewey (1939)
Evidence: AI draft
John Dewey › 1859–1952

Influenced 6

Bertrand Russell taught

taught ✓
Whitehead examined Russell for his entrance scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1890 and taught him there; the former pupil became his co-author of Principia Mathematica (1910–13). B. Russell, Autobiography I (1967), ch. 3
Evidence: AI draft
Bertrand Russell › 1872–1970
Susanne K. Langer taught

taught
At Radcliffe Langer studied logic with Henry M. Sheffer and with Whitehead, attending the lectures that became Process and Reality (1929); Whitehead supervised her doctoral thesis (1926) and wrote the introduction to her first book, The Practice of Philosophy (1930). IEP “Langer, Susanne K.”
Evidence: AI draft
Susanne K. Langer › 1895–1985
W. V. O. Quine taught

taught
Quine took his PhD at Harvard in 1932, after two years, under Whitehead with The Logic of Sequences, a generalisation of Principia Mathematica. W. V. Quine, The Time of My Life (1985)
Evidence: AI draft
W. V. O. Quine › 1908–2000
Gilles Deleuze

influenced ✓
In The Fold (1988) Deleuze read Whitehead’s events and prehensions as a successor to Leibniz’s monadology, with chaos, extension and intensity as conditions of the event. G. Deleuze, Le pli. Leibniz et le baroque (1988); A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929); SEP “Alfred North Whitehead”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Gilles Deleuze › 1925–1995
Bruno Latour

influenced
Latour took up Whitehead’s critique of the ‘bifurcation of nature’ for his ‘matters of concern’ (What Is the Style of Matters of Concern?, lectures 2005, publ. 2008). B. Latour, What Is the Style of Matters of Concern? Two Lectures in Empirical Philosophy (Spinoza Lectures 2005; publ. 2008); A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920); SEP “Alfred North Whitehead”
Evidence: AI draft
Bruno Latour › 1947–2022
Isabelle Stengers

influenced
Stengers read Whitehead’s cosmology as ‘a free and wild creation of concepts’ and took up his refusal of the bifurcation of nature (Penser avec Whitehead, 2002). I. Stengers, Penser avec Whitehead: Une libre et sauvage création de concepts (2002; Eng. Thinking with Whitehead, 2011)
Evidence: AI draft
Isabelle Stengers › b. 1949

Works

1910Principia Mathematica
Mathematics derived from logic – the proposition from which 1+1=2 follows comes only at *54.43, on page 379 of the first volume.
1925Science and the Modern World
Lowell Lectures on how modern science took its abstractions for concrete reality – the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”.
1929Process and Reality
Gifford Lectures of 1927–28: a speculative cosmology in which the world is a process of interlinked occasions of experience.

Position

Whitehead’s first philosophy was logic: Principia Mathematica tried to derive mathematics from logic. In London he worked on the concepts of physics and attacked the “bifurcation of nature”, the split between a world of colourless particles and a world of perceived colours and sounds. Science and the Modern World (1925) diagnosed the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”: modern science mistook its abstractions, such as bits of matter at points in time, for concrete reality. Process and Reality (1929), based on his Gifford Lectures of 1927–28, offered a speculative cosmology. The final constituents of the world are not substances but “actual occasions”, momentary events of experience that take up (“prehend”) earlier occasions and pass into later ones; enduring things are societies of such occasions, and God is both the ground of possibilities and affected by the world. In the preface he named his debt to Bergson, William James and Dewey, and in the book he remarked that European philosophy is “a series of footnotes to Plato”. At Harvard he supervised Quine’s doctorate. His metaphysics has been carried on in process theology, especially by Charles Hartshorne, and was taken up by Deleuze, Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour.

Life & context

Alfred North Whitehead was born in 1861 in Ramsgate, Kent, the son of an Anglican clergyman. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1880 and taught mathematics there for some twenty-five years; among his students was Bertrand Russell. A Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898) led to his election to the Royal Society. With Russell he wrote Principia Mathematica (1910–1913). In 1910 he moved to London, where he became professor at Imperial College and turned to the philosophy of science and education; his younger son Eric was killed as a pilot in 1918. In 1924, at the age of 63, he accepted a chair of philosophy at Harvard, where he taught until 1937. He received the Order of Merit in 1945 and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1947.