阿尔弗雷德·诺思·怀特海

Agora

阿尔弗雷德·诺思·怀特海

1861–1947

初步了解有意简化——人物介绍讲得更多

世界不是由持存的固定事物构成的，而是由生成又消逝的事件构成的——实在就是过程。

定位

实用主义与美国哲学 · 北欧 · 形而上学, 逻辑学, 科学, 宗教

数学家，与罗素合著《数学原理》，1924年起在哈佛，是过程哲学的创立者：实在不是由持存的实体构成，而是由事件，即经验的“现实际遇”构成。

核心思想

过程哲学
现实际遇
误置具体性的谬误
自然的二分

学生: 伯特兰·罗素, 苏珊·K. 朗格, W. V. O. 奎因

在星图中打开

影响

受影响于 4

柏拉图

受其影响
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”
依据: AI 草稿
柏拉图 › 公元前428—前348年
威廉·詹姆斯

受其影响
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)
依据: AI 草稿
威廉·詹姆斯 › 1842–1910
亨利·柏格森

受其影响
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”
依据: 亦见于 InPhO · InPhO
亨利·柏格森 › 1859–1941
约翰·杜威

受其影响
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)
依据: AI 草稿
约翰·杜威 › 1859–1952

影响了 6

伯特兰·罗素教过

教过 ✓
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
依据: AI 草稿
伯特兰·罗素 › 1872–1970
苏珊·K. 朗格教过

教过
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.”
依据: AI 草稿
苏珊·K. 朗格 › 1895–1985
W. V. O. 奎因教过

教过
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)
依据: AI 草稿
W. V. O. 奎因 › 1908–2000
吉尔·德勒兹

影响了 ✓
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”
依据: 亦见于 Wikidata · Wikidata
吉尔·德勒兹 › 1925–1995
布鲁诺·拉图尔

影响了
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”
依据: AI 草稿
布鲁诺·拉图尔 › 1947–2022
伊莎贝尔·斯唐热

影响了
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)
依据: AI 草稿
伊莎贝尔·斯唐热 › 1949年生

作品

1910数学原理
从逻辑推导出数学——由此可推出1+1=2的命题，直到第一卷第379页的*54.43才出现。
1925科学与近代世界
洛厄尔讲座，论近代科学如何把它的抽象当作具体的实在——即“具体性误置的谬误”。
1929过程与实在
1927—28年的吉福德讲座：一种思辨宇宙论，其中世界是相互关联的经验事态的过程。

立场

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.

生平与背景

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.