Whitehead at Harvard, 1924-1925 / edited by Brian G. Henning and Joseph Petek.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Henning, Brian G., Author.

Contributor:

Henning, Brian G., editor.

Petek, Joseph, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Philosophy--History--20th century.

Science.

Whitehead, Alfred North, 1861-1947.

Whitehead, Alfred North.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (401 pages)

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2020]

Summary:

Examines the significance of The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924–1925Responds to the question of whether the Harvard Lectures and The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead project change our understanding of the meaning or development of Whitehead’s thoughtWritten by international experts on Whitehead – including Maria-Teresa Teixeira, Gary Herstein and Jude Jones – who address a range of different aspects of the scholarly implications of the LecturesThe first monograph responding to the Critical Edition: has the potential to establish the tone and influence the direction of subsequent workIncludes the text of Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, recently gifted to the Critical EditionContributes towards setting scholarly conventions for how to cite and reference the volumes of the Critical EditionIn 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Preface: A Brief History of the Critical Edition of Whitehead

Introduction: Tales from the Whitehead Mines – On Whitehead, His Students and the Challenges of Editing the Critical Edition

Part I: The First Lecture

1. First Lecture: September, 1924

2. Examining Whitehead’s ‘First Lecture: September, 1924’

Part II: The Fitness of the Environment

3. Whitehead and His Philosophy of Evolution

4. Some Clarifications on Evolution and Time

5. Whitehead’s Biological Turn

Part III: Physics and Relativity

6. Quanta and Corpuscles: The Infl uence of Quantum Mechanical Ideas on Whitehead’s Transitional Philosophy in Light of The Harvard Lectures

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

8. Whitehead’s Highly Speculative Lectures on Quantum Theory

9. On Herstein’s ‘Quanta and Corpuscles’

10. Reply to Desmet

Part IV: Whitehead’s Philosophical Context

11. Whitehead and Kant at Copenhagen

12. Whitehead’s Early Harvard Period, Hartshorne and the Transcendental Project

13. Footnotes to Plato

Part V: Metaphysical Reflections

14. Diagrams and Myths

15. How ‘Eternity’ Got ‘Thrown Forward’ Into ‘Perishing’

Part VI: Reinterpreting Whitehead

16. Uncovering a ‘New’ Whitehead

17. Whitehead in Class: Do the Harvard-Radcliffe Course Notes Change How We Understand Whitehead’s Thought?

Notes on Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781474480871

147448087X

9781474459426

1474459420

OCLC:

1312726384