Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

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 [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Alfred North Whitehead - Collection of Publications, Part 1



Alfred North Whitehead

Nationality: British

Description

Alfred North Whitehead (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 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.






Alfred North Whitehead's "Philosophy of Organism"
with Matthew D. Segall
by Dartington Trust
June 4, 2021   |   1:36:01

This talk introduces Alfred North Whitehead’s “Philosophy of Organism,” a novel metaphysical scheme that he articulated in the first half of the twentieth century not only as a protest against the lifeless Nature imagined by scientific materialism, but also as a rejection of the narrow linguistic analysis and sterile logical positivism of his philosophical contemporaries. His was an attempt to make natural science philosophical again by asking whether physical causes and motions need be so violently segregated from the conscious reasons and emotions by which we apprehend them. We will explore the major themes of his magnum opus, Process & Reality, wherein Whitehead attempts to construct an organic system of the universe that not only brings quantum and relativity theories into coherence, but gathers up scientific truths, aesthetic feelings, and religious values into an integral vision of reality. 
ABOUT THE SPEAKER 
Matthew D. Segall is a process philosopher whose research focuses on process-relational thought (especially Alfred North Whitehead) and German Idealism (especially Friedrich Schelling). He is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA (CIIS.edu). He has published articles on a wide-array of topics, including metaphysics, Gaia theory, religious studies, psychedelics, and architecture. He also blogs regularly at footnotes2plato.com. 
This talk is part of the Holistic Science programme at Schumacher College. Find out more about the programme and register for updates about the course: https://campus.dartington.org/study/courses/



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Alfred North Whitehead and James Haughton Woods


Alfred North Whitehead
and James Haughton Woods
George R. Lucas, Jr., our General Editor for the Critical Edition of Whitehead, recently completed an east coast crawl that included visits to several archives that held Whitehead-related papers. While combing through the Victor Lowe and Whitehead papers held at Johns Hopkins, he not only recovered numerous letters, photographs, and student notes, but also one item of special interest: Whitehead’s appointment book for 1924-26. This is an exciting resource for us to have as we are in the midst of editing student notes for 1925-27, as it gives us a better idea of when Whitehead met individually with students, when he met with other friends and colleagues, and explains some of his classroom absences.
In reviewing this appointment book, I noticed something interesting. For the fall of 1925, Whitehead wrote “Woods at 3-4” (or some variation thereof) for every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. James Haughton Woods (1864-1935) was the philosophy department chair, so it’s possible that these could have been departmental or private meetings, but it seems more likely that Whitehead was regularly attending one of Woods’ classes.
That semester, Woods co-taught a seminar on the history of philosophy, but if we assume that seminars were commonly once a week, the more likely class that Whitehead was attending was Woods’ “Philosophy 12: Early Greek philosophy, with especial reference to Plato.”
How much might Woods (who was an expert in Greek and Indian/Buddhist thought) have influenced Whitehead’s thought, particularly with regard to Plato and Buddhism? Lowe opined that Whitehead’s references to Buddhism in the Lowell lectures owed much to Woods (volume 2, p. 195), who was apparently Whitehead’s closest friend in the department.
From Lowe (volume 2, 137-138):
Woods, at fifty-nine, was the oldest of the tenured philosophers at Harvard. His teacher, William James, had suggested that he enter the field of Indian philosophy. He became expert in it, in Far Eastern thought, and in Greek philosophy. He is now forgotten because he published so little… He was intensely proud of the Harvard Philosophy Department, and raised money from outside sources to strengthen it. Woods was the one who got assurance from President Lowell that he would not veto Whitehead’s appointment on ground of age (as he had vetoed the offer of a professorship to John Dewey [Whitehead was only a year and a half younger than Dewey])… Whitehead felt more at ease with [Woods] than with anyone else in the Department… Woods helped him with everything, and for many years was his most valued colleague in the Philosophy Department.
Speaking of publishing little, Whitehead co-wrote a “Minute on the Life and Services of Professor James Haughton Woods” upon his death in 1935 for the Harvard University Gazette, the final paragraph of which reads:
It is inevitable that a man so extravagantly endowed should be imperfectly embodied in his published works. The soil from which these sprang, their context of unused learning, their surrounding and sustaining medium of experience and sensitive discernment, are perpetuated in what he gave during his life to his students and friends, and in the grateful love which this giving inspired.
We may never know the extent to which Whitehead’s thought on Plato was influenced by what he heard in Woods’ lectures. Unless someone later digs up notes from Woods’ classes in the same way that we’ve dug up notes for Whitehead’s, we have no points of comparison. But this recent discovery is a good reminder that Whitehead’s philosophy, as startlingly original as it is, did not emerge out of a vacuum, with Woods being only the latest example of a largely overlooked influence to whom Whitehead may have owed an intellectual debt.

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How to cite this blog: Petek, Joseph. “Whitehead and James Haughton Woods.” whiteheadresearch.org: 


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Online Books by

Alfred North Whitehead

(Whitehead, Alfred North, 1861-1947)

An online book about this author is available, as is a Wikipedia article.

Help with reading books -- Report a bad link -- Suggest a new listing

Additional books from the extended shelves:



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Alfred North Whitehead -
Collection of Publications
Part 1
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