process studies articles @ religion online...
Volume 4 (1974)
- Number 1, Spring 1974
- Eros and Agape in Creative Evolution: A Peircean Insight by Carl R. Hausman
- Kirkpatrick on Subjective Becoming by Lewis S. Ford
- Panpsychism and Parsimony by John J. Shepherd
- Why Psychicalism? Comments on Keeling’s and Shepherd’s Criticisms by Charles Hartshorne
Hausman believes that Peirce's insight is restricted in the role of eros and agape in creative evolution, but he also suggests the fruitfulness of his insight. The notion of agape introduced here is preferable to the use of the notion of eros in accounting for creativity.
Lewis Ford gives a response to Frank Kirkpatrick’s view that "The fundamental difficulty which the process model faces is trying to retain language appropriate only to a subject (decision, purpose, intention, action) for a process which is not yet a subject but which is becoming a subject." Ford says this presupposes that it can be meaningful to analyze the becoming apart from (because prior to) the being it becomes.
Dr. Shepherd holds that Whiteheadian panpsychism, from the argument of parsimony, is unwarranted, but also that it is actually incompatible with what it seems responsible to take to be facts about a physical world, and should therefore be deemed false.
Hartshorne responds to comments by L. Bryant Keeling essay entitled "Feeling as a Metaphysical Category." Quantum physics in its present form cannot be the whole and literal truth of organic behavior.
- Number 2, Summer 1974
- A Mathematical Root of Whitehead’s Cosmological Thought by Robert Andrew Ariel
- Bergson’s Dualism in ‘Time and Free Will’ by Andrew C. Bjelland
- Camus, God, and Process Thought by James Goss
- The Disembodied Soul by John C. Bennett
Whitehead’s thought is not limited to metaphysics and science, but to diverse fields of inquiry -- mathematical logic, the philosophy of science, cosmology. A synthesis of these various systems were vital to the growth of his thought.
Bergsonian philosophy consists in a bold attempt to justify metaphysical knowledge on an intuitional basis. This current in Bergson’s thought is professedly anti-Cartesian. Bergson’s doctrine of durational embodiment constitutes, in fact, an early and highly original chapter in the effort to by-pass the nineteenth-century stalemate between intellectualistic-idealism and objectivistic-empiricism.
Goss is not concerned here with the validity of Whitehead’s conception of God, but rather to demonstrate that Camus’ writings leave open the possibility of God as understood by Whitehead, and that Camus’ thoughts on rebellion and its source in the beauty of nature are compatible with and made consistent by a process notion of God.
Whitehead alludes to a disembodied existence in one passage, but he writes counter to this in other places. Whitehead’s system does not provide the conditions for speaking of continued, ongoing personal existence after death in separation from one’s body.
- Number 3, Fall 1974
- Justice and Class Struggle: A Challenge for Process Theology by George V. Pixley
- Neville’s Critique of Hartshorne by David A. Pailin
- The Status of Artistic Illusion in Concrescence by Wayne A. Dalton
- Whitehead as Counterrevolutionary? Toward Christian-Marxist Dialogue by Clark M. Williamson
- Whitehead’s Harvard Lectures, 1926-27, Compiled by George Bosworth Burch by Dwight C. Stewart (ed.)
Process theology’s task is to gain sensitivity to God’s voice in the cry of our downtrodden brothers. Our response to this cry may be rendered more intelligent if we understand the call within the framework of a good metaphysical system.
David A. Pailin comes to the defense of Hartshorne in some of Robert Neville’s criticisms (see "Genetic Succession, Time, and Becoming," by Robert Neville). In contrast, Pailin believes Hartshorne may provide us with (or perhaps put us on the road toward) "genuine philosophic wisdom" as well as "mere metaphysical clarity".
The function of artistic illusion is not "make-believe," as many philosophers and psychologists assume, but the very opposite -- disengagement from belief. The author’s purpose is to show how Susanne K. Langer’s view of art may be understood within the philosophy of organism, wherein all things must satisfy the Ontological Principle.
Both the Marxist analysis of history and Whitehead’s metaphysics require modification in light of each other. The author indicates both the adequacy and applicability of Whitehead’s philosophy to Marx’s social analysis.
These notes were written by Professor Burch, for many years Professor of Philosoophy at Tufts University, in several courses he took under Whitehead at Harvard University. The excerpts deal in particular with what, according to Berkeley and Whitehead, are the consequences of denying the "bifurcation of nature"?
- Number 4, Winter 1974
- Disconfirmation of Whitehead’s Relativity Theory -- A Critical Reply by Dean R. Fowler
- Mosa-Dharma and Prehension: Nagarjuna and Whitehead Compared by Ryusei Takeda and John B. Cobb, Jr.
- Recent Empirical Disconfirmation of Whitehead’s Relativity Theory by Robert Andrew Ariel
- The Temporality of Divine Freedom by James W. Felt
- Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty: Some Moral Implications by William S. Hamrick
- Whitehead’s Principle of Process by Jorge Luis Nobo
- Whitehead’s Psychological Physiology: A Third View by William Gallagher
The author seeks to correct some weaknesses in Ariel’s article Recent Empirical Disconfirmation of Whitehead’s Relativity Theory and to caution against too hasty a rejection of Whitehead’s theory of relativity (and with it his philosophy of nature) as a viable and living alternative to Einstein’s proposal. Currently there is considerable interest in correlating relativity theory with quantum mechanics. The efforts made in this direction tend to support Whitehead rather than Einstein.
The authors compare the Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna and Whitehead. When levels of Buddhist and Western thoughts are analyzed, the religious differences are profound. Conceptually, Buddhists insist on nothingness while Westerners characteristically speak of being and think of things as having substantial reality.
Whitehead’s linear theory of evolution gave identical predictions as Einstein’s, but was far simpler. There are differences between the two, however, that are exploited to the disconfirm of one or the other.
Dr. Felt calls attention to a peculiar aspect of one the arguments used to support the "societal" view. He thinks it betrays an inadequacy in all current Whiteheadian views which has not been appreciated.
How would Whitehead explain, within the context of his Psychological Physiology, certain of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological evidences which are central for understanding personal identity? His evidences show that, as against Weiss, Whitehead’s work can yield a fruitful concept of personal identity based on behavioral habits, a sense of moral responsibility, and a legitimate notion of guilt.
Apart from its establishment of the interdependence of the two partial descriptions of an actual entity, the true significance of the Principle of Process is this: the final definiteness of an actual entity is determined, or created, by how the subject conducts its process.
The Sherburne model, with certain modifications, is closer to Whitehead’s intentions than Cobb’s model, and fits the spirit of Whitehead’s philosophy better. It also is closer to the facts of empirical psychology. Thus it is not necessary to reconceive the relation of "soul" to body in terms of regional inclusion.