Most Popular Books by Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead''s Science and the Modern World, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science. Taking readers through the history of modern science, Whitehead shows how cultural history has affected science over the ages in relation to such major intellectual themes as romanticism, relativity, quantum theory, religion, and movements for social progress.

Considered the "high water mark of his philosophical achievement," Whitehead''s book is a rigorous inquiry into the data of science and will be enjoyed by students of philosophy and physics alike. English mathematician and philosopher ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1861-1947) contributed significantly to 20th-century logic and metaphysics. With Bertrand Russell he cowrote the landmark Principia Mathematica, and also authored The Concept of Nature, The Function of Reason, and Process and Reality.

The Tarner Lectures delivered in Trinity College November 1919.

Following up on his two previous works, The Principles of Natural Knowledge and The Concept of Nature, Whitehead explains his alternative theory of relativity, which "cuts away the casual heterogeneity" of Einstein''s later theory. Dividing his book into three parts--General Principles, Physical Applications, and Elementary Theory of Tensors--the author''s arguments and observations utilize his own unique mix of nature, philosophy, and "the old division between physics and geometry." This work, first published in 1922, is essential reading for students, teachers, scientists, or anyone interested in the relationship of physics to philosophy. English mathematician and philosopher ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1861-1947) contributed significantly to 20th-century logic and metaphysics. With Bertrand Russell he cowrote the landmark Principia Mathematica, and also authored The Concept of Nature, The Function of Reason, and Process and Reality.

Philospher, Mathematician, and general man of science, Alfred North Whitehead was a polymath whose interests and generous sympathies encompassed entire worlds. Here, clearly modelled on Eckermann''s conversations with Goethe and recorded in Whitehead''s own home, are some of the landmarks, signposts, milestones, and noble scenery of that extraordinary mind.

Whitehead''s ten American essays in social philosophy are here reprinted in their original form, although not in chronological sequence. They have been rearranged to present first Whitehead''s statement of general social principles and are followed by those essays in which he discusses problems of internal social reform and the factors which influence human societies. Next come those essays in which Whitehead is primarily concerned with international relations and last are the essays dealing specifically with educational problems.

"This distinguished little ''book'' is a brisk introduction to a series of mathematical concepts, a history of their development, and a concise summary of how the contemporary reader may use them."- Publisher

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.

Prologue. Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) is an English philosopher. Reason is an impulse toward empty concreteness. That impulse is not empty. It is a fundamental force that can give birth to something. This impulse of mind is appetition. It is an inherent agent of transcendental goals. Therefore, the empty concreteness is embodied as material enjoyment. Whitehead''s reason cannot leave appetition. Jeong Yi-cheon of the Northern Song Dynasty, who developed Neo-Confucianism, also believes that the main body cannot leave the phenomenon. Whitehead advocates Plato, saying that all of the Western philosophy is just a footnote to Plato''s philosophy. However, he overcomes Plato by creating his own organic philosophy. Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud are also Übermensch against the Platonic system. Plato''s original sin is his ideology that isolates humans into the world and alienates humans for 2000 years. Idea corresponds to all phenomena in a monolithic and organic manner. Whitehead is a Copernican Übermensch. The Function of Reason is a lecture at Princeton University in 1929. This book is an easy condensed form of a long and difficult text in a summary format.

This abridged text of the most famous work ever written on the foundations of mathematics contains material that is most relevant to an introductory study of logic and the philosophy of mathematics.

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.

Principia Mathematica was first published in 1910 13; this is the ninth impression of the second edition of 1925 7. The Principia has long been recognised as one of the intellectual landmarks of the century. It was the first book to show clearly the close relationship between mathematics and formal logic. Starting from a minimal number of axioms, Whitehead and Russell display the structure of both kinds of thought. No other book has had such an influence on the subsequent history of mathematical philosophy.

Attempts to assess the differences between ancient and contemporary philosophical thought on the nature of society

This is another book by English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas.Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to philosophy of science, and finally to metaphysics. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of western philosophy. Whitehead argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects, and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another.[ Today Whitehead''s philosophical works - particularly Process and Reality - are regarded as the foundational texts of process philosophy.Whitehead''s process philosophy argues that "there is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have consequences for the world around us." For this reason, one of the most promising applications of Whitehead''s thought in recent years has been in the area of ecological civilization and environmental ethics pioneered by John B. Cobb, Jr