Alfred North Whitehead...
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
was an English mathematician and philosopher. He graduated from Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1884. There he was a lecturer in mathematics until 1911. At the
Univ. of London he was a lecturer in applied mathematics and mechanics
(1911-14) and professor of mathematics (1914-24). From 1924 onward, he was
professor of philosophy at Harvard. Whiteheads distinction rests upon
his contributions to mathematics and logic, the philosophy of science, and
the study of metaphysics. In the field of mathematics, Whitehead extended
the range of algebraic procedures and, in collaboration with Bertrand
Russell, wrote Principia Mathematica (3 vol., 1910-13), a
landmark in the study of logic. His inquiries into the structure of
science provided the background for his metaphysical writings. He
criticized traditional categories of philosophy for their failure to
convey the essential interrelation of matter, space, and time. For this
reason he invented a special vocabulary to communicate his concept of
reality, which he called the philosophy of organism. He formulated a
system of ultimate and universal ideas and justified them by their
fruitful interpretation of observable experience. His philosophic
construction as applied to religion offered a
concept of God as interdependent with the world and developing with it;
he rejected the notion of a perfect and omnipotent God. In 1945 he
received the Order of Merit. His works include The Organisation of
Thought (1916), Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919), The
Concept of Nature (1920), The Principle of Relativity (1922),
Science and the Modern World (1925), Religion in the Making
(1926), Symbolism (1927), The Aims of Education and Other
Essays (1929), Process and Reality (1929), Adventures of
Ideas (1933), and Essays in Science and Philosophy (1947).
( Copyright 200104
Columbia University Press. Published January 2004 by Bartleby.com.)
Other biographies
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry
- Alfred Whitehead, Mathematician and Philosopher
- Alfred North Whitehead: Great Ideas
Our Special Collection
The library of the Center for Process Studies has obtained some material from the Whitehead and Lowe Collections at Milton S. Eisenhower Library of Johns Hopkins University. This material includes the following:
- Some of the unpublished personal and professional correspondence of Whitehead.
- Photocopies of relevant pages in Whitehead's annotated books in his personal library (25 books)
- Student Notes of Whitehead's seminars, for example notes by Victor Lowe, Charles Hartshorne, W.V. Quine, T.G. Henderson, Edwin L. Marvin, George Conger, Everett Nelson, William Frankena, and John L. Motherhead
This material can be viewed at the Center for Process Studies. If you would like to obtain reproductions of this material or any other items from the archive, please contact the Eisenhower Library directly.
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