R.E. Slater - Quotes & Sayings on Whiteheadian Metaphysical Cosmology

Alfred North Whitehead

 Quotes & Sayings on Whiteheadian Metaphysical Cosmology

by R.E. Slater

Whitehead questioned Western philosophy's most dearly held assumptions about how the universe works — but in doing so, he managed to anticipate a number of 21st century scientific and philosophical problems and provide novel solutions." - Wikipedia

Who is the metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead?

Alfred North Whitehead OM FRS FBA (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is 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.

In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), which he wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library.

Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to the philosophy of science, and finally to [cosmological] 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.

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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 philosophy, Process and Reality, propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality [exist in a consistent relationship to one another.] 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. 

 

On the value of curiosity and speculation

when working with scientific facts...

"Imagination is not to be divorced from the fact;: it is a way of illuminating the facts. It works by eliciting the general principles which apply to the facts, as they exist, and then by an intellectual survey of alternative possibilities which are consistent with those principles. It enables men to construct an intellectual vision of a new world." - A.N. Whitehead

"This is my journey into the world of men. In its study of the bible, church, church history, tradition, and folklore. Of literature, anthropology, psychology, even that of intersectional sociology (as referring to the interrelational web of humanitarian, ecological, economic, political, and legal interaction of societies with one another). 

To this journey we must have a working knowledge of religion, the sciences, philosophy, and importantly, theology itself. Like a working poet, without imagination, without creativity, there can be no movement within the transdisciplinary education and beliefs of men and societies, or into any possible constructionism for the future." - R.E. Slater

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"Whitehead regarded metaphysical investigations as essential to both good science and good philosophy." Let's also include Christianity, religion in general, and all our beliefs, opinions, folklores, superstitions, common logic, and such like. Without investigation, critique, and unorthodox thinking nothing good may come however sincere or deeply believed." - R.E. Slater

"You cannot step twice into the same stream. All things change. It is in their nature." - Heraclitus

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The Ontology of Reality, of Beingness, of Becoming

The Ontology of Being

by R.E. Slater

"We are of the earth, the skies, the heavens.

All that we are was already present."

- re slater

Reality is as indefinable without event

as Time and Conscience are as byproducts

of particulate forces dancing around

interacting with each other

as the unreal consequences

of relational event.

Event depends upon relationality to be real.

Each, taken together, create

a cosmic processual organism in

intra/inter-relational complex of

panexperiential,

panrelational, and

panpsychic

transient processes...

all in motion...

all in intricate dance...

all dependent on one another.

Processual reality,

like processual events,

are incomplete in themselves alone.

Each require the other,

and without the other,

there is neither event nor reality.

These insubstantive elementa

we may call particle, force, or quanta,

are the building blocks

of creation,

the cosmos,

the world.

One cannot simply say the

fundamental forces of the cosmos

are the foundational structures of reality.

No. That was yesteryear.

These quanta bits of

forces,

energies, and

matter,

whizzing around

smashing into one another

mixing chaos with wonder

must interact which each other

else they are not,

ever,

not even alone. 

Nor may the form of our universe,

or relational world,

or that of nature itself,

possibly form the structures

we know as the cosmos today

invested in momentary motion

giving life to that which dances.
without a nature of beingness

devoted to dance.

R.E. Slater

March 22, 2022

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Process philosophy, as described by Alfred North Whitehead, might be stated as the "Metaphysics of ontology in the process of becoming." Or, more simply, the state of relational processualism resulting from events in motion" moving from states of being-ness to states of becoming-ness. - R.E. Slater

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Process philosophy, as described by Whitehead, might be stated as the "Metaphysics of ontology in the process of becoming." Or, more simply, the state of relational processualism with events in motion" moving from states of being-ness to states of becoming-ness. - R.E. Slater

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The Metaphysics of Being and Becoming

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

• Process philosophy is an approach to cosmological metaphysics which identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects or [immaterial] thoughts) as abstractions from - or ontological dependents on - processes.

• In opposition to the classical view of "change as illusory" (as argued by Parmenides) or "accidental" (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.

• Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.

• "Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to Continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in Continental departments. However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus Continental methods in contemporary philosophy.

• Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as...

• "Process thought describes truth as "movement" in and through substance (Hegelian truth), rather than substances as fixed concepts or "things" (Aristotelian truth). Since Whitehead, process thought is distinguished from Hegel in that it describes entities that arise or coalesce in becoming, rather than being simply dialectically determined from prior posited determinates. These entities are referred to as 'complexes of occasions of experience'. It is also distinguished in being not necessarily conflictual or oppositional in operation. Process may be integrative, destructive or both together, allowing for aspects of interdependence, influence, and confluence, and addressing coherence in universal as well as particular developments, i.e., those aspects not befitting Hegel's system. Additionally, instances of determinate occasions of experience, while always ephemeral, are nonetheless seen as important to define the type and continuity of those occasions of experience that flow from or relate to them."

• "In his book 'Science and the Modern World' (1925), Whitehead noted that the human intuitions and experiences of science, aesthetics, ethics, and religion influence the worldview of a community, but that in the last several centuries science dominates Western culture. Whitehead sought a holistic, comprehensive cosmology that provides a systematic descriptive theory of the world which can be used for the diverse human intuitions gained through ethical, aesthetic, religious, and scientific experiences, and not just the scientific....Whitehead's influences were not restricted to philosophers or physicists or mathematicians...."

• "... Actual entities are spatiotemporally extended events or processes. An actual entity is how something is happening, and how its happening is related to other actual entities. The actually existing world is a multiplicity of actual entities overlapping one another...."

• "...The ultimate abstract principle of actual existence for Whitehead is creativity. Creativity is a term coined by Whitehead to show a power in the world that allows the presence of an actual entity, a new actual entity, and multiple actual entities. Creativity is the principle of novelty."

• "The one exceptional actual entity is at once both temporal and atemporal: God. God is objectively immortal, as well as being immanent, in the world. He is objectified in each temporal actual entity; but He is not an eternal object" in the process sense of non-Platonic eternal "objects". God is however, persistently eternal (Thomas Oord perfers the term, 'everlasting') and is eternally informing, urging, partnering with creational concresences of being towards a valuative becoming of wellbeing in the events taking place within an indeterminate, freewilled creation. All of which requires a relentlessly churning pan-en-theistic (not pan-theistic nor classic theistic) structure of operative consequence across events, aesthetics, ethics and being. Consequently, free will is essential and inherent to a panentheistic universe of panexperiential, panrelational, and panpsychic experience of itself in response to the very God whose "imago dei" dwells within its indeterminate and freewilled structure, essence, forms, compositions, or reulting telos. The hope of the cosmos rests not only in its relationship to the divine but in the very indwelling of the divine throughout all its everlasting spaces and concreascing realities as given to it by its Maker.

• Beginning with an examination of religious (or mythological) cosmologies vs. philosophical cosmologies, the logical synthesis is that of a philosophic theology leaning equally into both perspectives dependent upon the approach used.

• "Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions of creation and eschatology.

• "Philosophical cosmology deals with the world as the totality of space, time and all phenomena. Historically, it has had quite a broad scope, and in many cases was found in religion. In modern use "metaphysical cosmology" addresses questions about the Universe which are beyond the scope of science. It is distinguished from religious cosmology in that it approaches these questions using philosophical methods like dialectics. [Meta]modern metaphysical cosmology tries to address questions such as:

• 1- "What is the origin of the Universe? What is its first cause? Is its existence necessary? (see monism, pantheism, emanationism, creationism, [and panentheism]);
• 2 - "What are the ultimate material components of the Universe? (see mechanism, dynamism, hylomorphism, atomism);
• 3 - "What is the ultimate reason for the existence of the Universe? Does the cosmos have a purpose? (see teleology);
• 4 - "Does the existence of consciousness have a purpose? How do we know what we know about the totality of the cosmos? Does cosmological reasoning reveal metaphysical truths? [See panpsychism]."

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As a metaphysical cosmology, "Process Philosophy and Theology" does this very thing providing to all religions - including that of Christianity - with a number of real world sympathies and perspectives as a better explanation than can be found elsewhere in lesser, non-integral, philosophies. Which is why Whiteheadian thought may be ascribed the place of an Integral Theory of all things, whether Western, Continental, African, Middle Eastern, or Oriental. - R.E. Slater

 

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The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest galaxies ever photographed. Except for the few stars in the foreground (which are bright and easily recognizable because only they have diffraction spikes), every speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 2 trillion galaxies.

Cosmology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Cosmology (disambiguation).

Cosmology (from Ancient Greek κόσμος (kósmos) 'world', and -λογία (-logía) 'study of') is a branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term cosmology was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's Glossographia, and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher Christian Wolff, in Cosmologia Generalis.

Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions of creation myths and eschatology.

In the science of astronomy it is concerned with the study of the chronology of the universe.

Physical cosmology is the study of the observable universe's origin, its large-scale structures and dynamics, and the ultimate fate of the universe, including the laws of science that govern these areas.

It is investigated by scientists, such as astronomers and physicists, as well as philosophers, such as metaphysicians, philosophers of physics, and philosophers of space and time.

Because of this shared scope with philosophy, theories in physical cosmology may include both scientific and non-scientific propositions, and may depend upon assumptions that cannot be tested.

Physical cosmology is a sub-branch of astronomy that is concerned with the Universe as a whole. Modern physical cosmology is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which attempts to bring together observational astronomy and particle physics; more specifically, a standard parameterization of the Big Bang with dark matter and dark energy, known as the Lambda-CDM model.

Theoretical astrophysicist David N. Spergel has described cosmology as a "historical science" because "when we look out in space, we look back in time" due to the finite nature of the speed of light.

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Metaphysics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Metaphysics (disambiguation).

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility.

It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.

The word "metaphysics" comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean "after or behind or among [the study of] the natural". It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, meta ta physika, lit. 'after the Physics ', another of Aristotle's works).

Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fully general manner, the questions:

• What is there?
• What is it like?

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility.

Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.

“Philosophy is akin to poetry, and both of them seek to express that ultimate good sense which we term civilization. In each case there is reference to form beyond the direct meanings of words. Poetry allies itself to metre [to music!], philosophy to mathematical pattern.” – Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought, 174

Process philosophy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as abstractions from, or ontological dependents on, processes.

In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory (as argued by Parmenides) or accidental (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, classical ontology has posited ordinary world reality as constituted of enduring substances, to which transient processes are ontologically subordinate, if not denied [completely]. If Socrates changes, becoming sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, and devoid of primary reality, whereas the substance is essential.

Philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Heraclitus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Iain McGilchrist, Thomas Nail, Alfred Korzybski, R. G. Collingwood, Alan Watts, Robert M. Pirsig, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare, Nicholas Rescher, Colin Wilson, Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, William E. Connolly, and Gilles Deleuze. In physics, Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.

Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to Continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in Continental departments. However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus Continental methods in contemporary philosophy.