Abstract

In an effort to give a "personal account of the impact of Whitehead on one reader" and to promote the enthusiasm of others who have not yet discovered Whitehead, Jordan takes off to give his readers an aerial view of the Whiteheadian panorama, flying high enough to avoid becoming entangled in the Whiteheadian word thicket below. This is not to say that Jordan ignores Whiteheadian terminology. On the contrary he has enhanced Whitehead's famous mute appeal for an imaginative leap with a string of ingenious metaphors which serve well to explicate Whitehead's key technical terms and concepts. The result is actually more of a commentary and exposition than is advertised in the introduction. The final chapters come closer to the autobiographical emphasis promised in the introduction. There Jordan makes some general observations on Whitehead's language, his method, and the place of reason in his thought. He affirms the importance and modern relevance of Whitehead as a whole in spite of some misgivings about Whitehead's theism in an age of justifiable skepticism. The importance of the book is its metaphors and images. At last someone has made a responsible effort to explicate Whitehead in everyday terms. Obviously this involves distortions, but the book has no pretensions about its authority and is coupled with an invitation to read Whitehead himself and his more technical commentators. There are no footnotes.--S. O. H.