process studies supplement...
Process Studies Supplement 11, 2007
Whitehead and the British Reception of Einstein’s Relativity: An Addendum to Victor Lowe’s Whitehead Biography
by Ronny DesmetThe scope of this biographical essay on Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) is very limited. To start with, leaving out his career as a mathematician at Cambridge University (1880-1910) and his career as a philosopher at Harvard University (1924-1947), I will focus on his involvement with Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity during the London period of his life (1910-1924). Furthermore, numerous mathematical, physical, and philosophical influences converge in Whitehead’s work on relativity, but I will only touch upon the influence of a restricted number of mathematical physicists and philosophers, and will only treat his friendship with Lord Haldane in more detail, e.g., by taking into account some unpublished letters from Whitehead to Haldane which are part of the Haldane Papers at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.
And yet, despite the limited scope of this essay, it will contain some hints to enrich the part of Victor Lowe’s Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work dealing with Whitehead’s London period. I will explain in more detail than Lowe why Hermann Minkowski and a number of mathematical physicists inspired by Minkowski, and why some of the members of the Aristotelian Society, were important influences when Whitehead developed his views on relativity. Also, I will add a relevant fact, missing in Lowe’s biography: Whitehead and Einstein discussed their divergent views on relativity in person on Friday, June 10th, and Saturday, June 11th, 1921.
. . . . .