ARISTOTLE'S DESCRIPTION OF GOD'S ACTIVITY as νόησις νοήσεως, a "thinking of thinking," in chapters 7 and 9 of Metaphysics 12 raises some of the most significant and challenging questions in philosophy. These and other related chapters surely deserve Whitehead's praise in his own chapter on God in Science and the Modern World, where he accords to Aristotle "the position of the greatest metaphysician," adding, concerning Aristotle's God, "in his consideration of this metaphysical question [Aristotle] was entirely dispassionate; and he is (...) the last European metaphysician of first-rate importance for whom this claim can be made.... It may be doubted whether any properly general metaphysics can ever, without the illicit introduction of other considerations, get much farther than Aristotle.". (shrink)