Journal of the History of Philosophy

460 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:3 JULY 1987 I agree with the editors that the selections contained in this important book constitute the most significant contributions which Dilthey made to poetics and literary criticism. In my opinion, the translations of the essays contained in this book are of very high quality. The translations are accurate. The translators have usually stayed very close to the German original; and yet they have succeeded in expressing Dilthey's reflections in very good, readable English. The book will be welcomed by philosophers and literary critics. JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS The Pennsylvania State University Victor Lowe. Alfred North Whitehead. The Man and His Work. Vol. I: z86z-x91o. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, x985. Pp. xi + 351. $27.5o. Most thinkers come to Whitehead in order to gain insight into the fundamental categorial structures of the world and the divine. The interest in the later writings, roughly those after 1925, has served to locate Whitehead within a particular conception of metaphysical query. The systematic analysis of basic constitutive traits, especially those pertaining to actual occasions and eternal entities, has left a legacy that still promises to bear great fruit for fundamental reflection. Whitehead's sparse treatment of the divine natures has, by its very incompletion, served to generate a series of further elaborations by those who remain faithful to his general conceptual structure . For many, Whitehead's true historical import lies in his drive to sustain a philosophical cosmology in the face of a profession seemingly addicted to either non-generic or piecemeal pursuits. Conceptual boldness and interpretive richness are combined in a categorial framework which has few equals. Given the contemporary interest in the later Whitehead, Victor Lowe's masterful intellectual biography is a highly welcome and important event. One of the chief merits of this work is the detailed treatment of Whitehead's years as a student, and later as a Lecturer, at Trinity College, Cambridge. For the first time, scholars are given a chance to reflect on the development of Whitehead's mathematical interests as these relate both to the emerging post-Newtonian physics and the developirrg systems of symbolic logic. Lowe paints a lively and detailed portrait of the intellectual milieu in and around Cambridge in the 188os. In particular he traces Whitehead's interest in newer fields of mathematics and their attendant symbol systems. While other Cambridge dons were concerned with elaborating specific problems, and with finding more puzzles to throw at students on the Tripos, Whitehead was driving toward the foundations of a universal algebra which would exhibit the features of inference and of a notation system of general applicability. Even in the early writings it is clear that Whitehead turned his reflection toward issues of generic import. In his reflections on geometry, always a fundamental discipline in his mind, he pushes toward a new conception of space and time which incorporates non-Euclidean geometry and the new physics. Lowe's detailed account of the x9o6 essay, "On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World," shows how BOOK REVIEWS 461 Whitehead moved beyond classical accounts of "points" and "instants" toward a relativistic understanding of space/time. Lowe is cautious about reading too much of the later thinking into the pre-191o writings. Whitehead's interest in philosophy was satisfied mainly through his discussions with fellow members of the Cambridge Apostles who met regularly to discuss issues of a general nature. Among the Apostles McTaggart stands out as having had the most important influence on Whitehead's philosophical development. McTaggart 's staunch neo-Hegelianism served as a stimulus to Whitehead but he retained an independent outlook throughout. Readers of Process and Reality will be interested in Lowe's treatment of Whitehead's flirtation with Roman Catholicism and his subsequent agnosticism during the last decade of the nineteenth century. By 19~5 he had regained his theism and found a place for it in his system. Much care is given to the collaboration with Russell on Principia Mathematica during the first decade of the new century. Lowe corrects the oft-held belief that Whitehead let Russell do most of the work on the text. By a careful study of the...