Whitehead at Harvard, 1924-1925

by Brian G. Henning (Editor), Joseph Petek (Editor)

Overview

In these newly commissioned essays, leading Whitehead scholars ask a range of important questions about Whitehead's first year of philosophy lectures. Do these lectures challenge or confirm previous understandings of Whitehead's published works? What is revealed about the development of Whitehead's thought in the crucial period after London but before the publication of Science and the Modern World? What should we make of concepts and terms that were introduced in these lectures but were never incorporated into subsequent publications?

Also included in this volume is the text of Whitehead's first lecture at Harvard, recently gifted to the Critical Edition of Whitehead, allowing for a clearer understanding of Whitehead's plans and goals for his first course of lectures in philosophy than has previously been possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474461351
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	01/07/2020
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Brian G. Henning, Founding Executive Editor of the Critical Edition of Whitehead, is Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.

Joseph Petek is Assistant Editor and Archivist at the Whitehead Research Project, Claremont School of Theology.

Table of Contents

Preface
A Brief History of the Critical Edition of Whitehead
Brian G. Henning

Introduction
Tales from the Whitehead Mines: On Whitehead, His Students, and the challenges of Editing the Critical Edition
Joseph Petek

Part I: The First Lecture
1. First lecture: September, 1924
Alfred North Whitehead

2. Examining Whitehead's 'First lecture: September, 1924'
Paul A. Bogaard

Part II: The Fitness of the Environment
3. Whitehead and his Philosophy of Evolution
Paul A. Bogaard

4. Some Clarifications on Evolution and Time
Maria-Teresa Teixeira

5. Whitehead's Biological Turn
Dennis Sölch

Part III: Physics and Relativity
6. Quanta and Corpuscles: The Influence of Quantum Mechanical Ideas on Whitehead's Transitional Philosophy in Light of The Harvard Lectures
Gary L. Herstein

7. From Physics to Philosophy, and from Continuity to Atomicity
Ronny Desmet

8. Whitehead's Highly Speculative Lectures on Quantum Theory
Ronny Desmet

9. On Herstein's 'Quanta and Corpuscles'
Ronny Desmet

10. Reply to Desmet
Gary L. Herstein

Part IV: Whitehead's Philosophical Context
11. Whitehead and Kant at Copenhagen
Jason Bell, Seshu Iyengar

12. Whitehead's Early Harvard Period, Hartshorne, and the Transcendental Project
George W. Shields

13. Footnotes to Plato
Aljoscha Berve

Part V: Metaphysical Reflections
14. Diagrams and Myths
George Allan

15. How 'Eternity' got 'Thrown Forward' into 'Perishing'
Jude Jones

Part VI: Reinterpreting Whitehead
16. Uncovering a 'New' Whitehead
George R. Lucas, Jr.

17. Whitehead in Class: Do the Harvard-Radcliffe Course Notes Change How we Understand Whitehead's Thought?
Brian G. Henning

Notes on Contributors
Index