Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science.

This classic text in American Philosophy by one of the foremost figures in American philosophy offers a concise analysis of the various factors in human nature which go toward forming a religion, to exhibit the inevitable transformation of religion with the transformation of knowledge and to direct attention to the foundation of religion on our apprehension of those permanent elements by reason of which there is a stable order in the world, permanent elements apart from which there could be no (...) changing world. (shrink)

Philospher, mathematician, and general man of science, Alfred North Whitehead was a polymath whose interests and generous sympathies encompassed entire worlds.

Through the use of particular pedagogies and the adoption of new modes of thinking, physical literacy promises more realistic models of physical competence and ...

Process and Reality, Whitehead’s magnum opus, is one of the major philosophical works of the modern world, and an extensive body of secondary literature has developed around it. Yet surely no significant philosophical book has appeared in the last two centuries in nearly so deplorable a condition as has this one, with its many hundreds of errors and with over three hundred discrepancies between the American and the English editions, which appeared in different formats with divergent paginations. The work (...) itself is highly technical and far from easy to understand, and in many passages the errors in those editions were such as to compound the difficulties. The need for a corrected edition has been keenly felt for many decades. (shrink)

The title of this book, Adventures of Ideas, bears two meanings, both applicable to the subject-matter.

The contents of this book were originally delivered at Trinity College in the autumn of 1919 as the inaugural course of Tarner lectures.

Modes of Thought was written 20 years ago from lectures delivered by Whitehead at Wellesley, the University of Chicago, and Harvard. In it Whitehead developed the brilliant new concepts of clarity and precision of statement which have since become fundamental principles of construction underlying all of the fields of modern intellectual analysis.

In the following ethnography of the California Coalition of Women Prisoners (CCWP), who exist at the forefront of feminist prison activism, I address canonical feminist debates focused on the relationship between subjectivity, experience, knowledge, and power by closely following an explicit attempt at political reform by and for women. I argue that feminist prison activists' attempts to reform the American prison system reveal why feminist theorists must remain committed to a specific, contextual, and localized analysis of the prospects for political (...) empowerment. (shrink)

History of the human race from the point of view of mankind's changing ideas--sociological, cosmological, philosophica.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead was a prominent English mathematician and philosopher who co-authored the highly influential Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell. Originally published in 1919, and first republished in 1925 as this Second Edition, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge ranks among Whitehead's most important works; forming a perspective on scientific observation that incorporated a complex view of experience, rather than prioritising the position of 'pure' sense data. Alongside companion volumes The Concept of Nature and The Principle (...) of Relativity, it created a framework for Whitehead's later metaphysical speculations. This is an important book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the relationship between science and philosophy. (shrink)

Importance.--Expression.--Understanding.--Perspective.--Forms of process.--Civilized universe.--Nature lifeless.--Nature alive.--The aim of philosophy.

In 1998 I asked my friend Tjiniman, who is a stone-age hunter, to give us his non-western perspective on ‘Tucson III’ (Murinbata&Whitehead, 1998).Most people thought I just made Tjiniman up and the whole thing was intended as a joke, and he has spent the last two years worrying about this. Since then he has gained a modest BSc in Social Anthropology, though in my view the examiners failed to appreciate some of his less obvious insights, and he deserved a (...) higher mark. He now has a better understanding of us white people and our ways, and this is his second attempt to make us see the truth. He did ask me to edit his text and take out anything that white people might mistake for a joke, but in many cases he accused me of cutting the best bits and made me put them back in. I had to add the notes and references because Tjiniman thinks all ideas come from the ancestors and no one should claim credit for them — CW. (shrink)

A key consideration in the selection of these eight titles was the scarcity of the original editions - most have never been reprinted and should therefore supplement existing library holdings of 17th and 18th century British thought. The only title published more recently, Luce's definitive biography of Berkeley, was selected because of its exceptional importance for modern scholarship - here it is included with a new introduction by David Berman.

Purely parallel neural networks can model object recognition in brief displays – the same conditions under which illusory conjunctions have been demonstrated empirically. Correcting errors of illusory conjunction is the “tag-assignment” problem for a purely parallel processor: the problem of assigning a spatial tag to nonspatial features, feature combinations, and objects. This problem must be solved to model human object recognition over a longer time scale. Our model simulates both the parallel processes that may underlie illusory conjunctions and the serial (...) processes that may solve the tag-assignment problem in normal perception. One component of the model extracts pooled features and another provides attentional tags that correct illusory conjunctions. Our approach addresses two questions: How can objects be identified from simultaneously attended features in a parallel, distributed representation? How can the spatial selectional requirements of such an attentional process be met by a separation of pathways for spatial and nonspatial processing? Our analysis of these questions yields a neurally plausible simulation of tag assignment based on synchronizing feature processing activity in a spatial focus of attention. (shrink)

The great three-volume Principia Mathematica is deservedly the most famous work ever written on the foundations of mathematics. Its aim is to deduce all the fundamental propositions of logic and mathematics from a small number of logical premisses and primitive ideas, and so to prove that mathematics is a development of logic. This abridged text of Volume I contains the material that is most relevant to an introductory study of logic and the philosophy of mathematics (more advanced students will wish (...) to refer to the complete edition). It contains the whole of the preliminary sections (which present the authors' justification of the philosophical standpoint adopted at the outset of their work); the whole of Part 1 (in which the logical properties of propositions, propositional functions, classes and relations are established); section 6 of Part 2 (dealing with unit classes and couples); and Appendices A and B (which give further developments of the argument on the theory of deduction and truth functions). (shrink)

When The Concept of Nature by Alfred North Whitehead was first published in 1920 it was declared to be one of the most important works on the relation between philosophy and science for many years, and several generations later it continues to deserve careful attention. Whitehead explores the fundamental problems of substance, space and time, and offers a criticism of Einstein's method of interpreting results while developing his own well-known theory of the four-dimensional 'space-time manifold'. With a specially (...) commissioned new preface written by Michael Hampe, this book is presented in a fresh series livery for the twenty-first century for a new generation of readers. (shrink)

One of the major philosophical texts of the 20th century, Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead’s influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy. Whitehead’s master work in philsophy, Process and Reality propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality into a consistent relation to each other. It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of (...) the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant. The ultimate edition of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds. (shrink)

Studies of animal culture have not normally included a consideration of cetaceans. However, with several long-term field studies now maturing, this situation should change. Animal culture is generally studied by either investigating transmission mechanisms experimentally, or observing patterns of behavioural variation in wild populations that cannot be explained by either genetic or environmental factors. Taking this second, ethnographic, approach, there is good evidence for cultural transmission in several cetacean species. However, only the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops) has been shown experimentally to (...) possess sophisticated social learning abilities, including vocal and motor imitation; other species have not been studied. There is observational evidence for imitation and teaching in killer whales. For cetaceans and other large, wide-ranging animals, excessive reliance on experimental data for evidence of culture is not productive; we favour the ethnographic approach. The complex and stable vocal and behavioural cultures of sympatric groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) appear to have no parallel outside humans, and represent an independent evolution of cultural faculties. The wide movements of cetaceans, the greater variability of the marine environment over large temporal scales relative to that on land, and the stable matrilineal social groups of some species are potentially important factors in the evolution of cetacean culture. There have been suggestions of gene-culture coevolution in cetaceans, and culture may be implicated in some unusual behavioural and life-history traits of whales and dolphins. We hope to stimulate discussion and research on culture in these animals. (shrink)

The first three chapters are personal history, highly picturesque and amusing, illumined by flashes of his lively humor....From here the chapters go on into Philosophy, Education, and Science. covering a span of thrity years though these writings do, they are surprizingly unified. Atlantic.

'...In these pages I consider Reason in its relation to these contrasted aspects of history. Reason is the self-discipline of the originative element in history. Apart from the operations of Reason, this element is anarchic.' -From the Summary.

Why does the air-target and its associated practices matter? This special section is about the politics, practices and ethics surrounding the target and efforts to subvert or circumvent them. Since Eyal Weizman’s groundbreaking essay on the ‘politics of verticality’ in 2002, there have been numerous attempts to critically open up the aerial gaze, but rarely have they come together for sustained analysis and critique, to explore the implications of the air-target’s techniques, processes, visual cultures and aesthetics for politics and life (...) itself. This special section brings together leading international experts in order to open out a fuller and more complete analysis of the kinds of tensions of verticality that lie at the heart of today’s warfare, security and politics. This introduction outlines three dominant problematics of the air-target, which the articles in the section will go on to explore in more detail. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

First published as part of the Cambridge Miscellany series in 1934, this book presents the content of two lectures delivered by Alfred North Whitehead at the University of Chicago in October 1933. The volume concerns itself chiefly with the complex relationship between nature, philosophy and science.

In addition to his brilliant achievements in theoretical mathematics, Alfred North Whitehead exercised an extensive knowledge of philosophy and literature that informs and elevates all of his works. In this book, he offers undergraduate students and other readers an absorbing exploration of the fundamental problems of substance, space, and time. The Concept of Nature originated with Whitehead's Tarner Lectures of 1919, and its discussions are highlighted by a criticism of Einstein's method of interpreting results, and by the author's (...) alternative development of the celebrated theory of the four-dimensional space-time manifold. 1920 ed. (shrink)

We humans have a formidable armamentarium of social display behaviours, including song-and-dance, the visual arts, and role-play. Of these, role-play is probably the crucial adaptation which makes us most different from other apes. Human childhood, a sheltered period of ‘extended irresponsibility’, allows us to develop our powers of make-believe and role-play, prerequisites for human cooperation, culture, and reflective consciousness. Social mirror theory, originating with Dilthey, Baldwin, Cooley and Mead, holds that there cannot be mirrors in the mind without mirrors in (...) society. I will present evidence from the social and behavioural sciences to argue that self-awareness depends on social mirrors and shared experiential worlds. The dependence of reflectivity on shared experience requires some reframing of the ‘hard problem’, and suggests a non-trivial answer to the zombie question. (shrink)