Rémy Lestienne 
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD, PHILOSOPHER OF TIME [EPUB ebook] 

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), a mathematician and logician by training, was the author of highly original works at the crossroads of science and philosophy which explore the nature of the world around us and its temporal flow.

Convinced that everyday terms distort reality, Whitehead invented or borrowed terms more appropriate to his project. The word ‘Process’, which gives its title to his most famous work Process and Reality (1929), is central to his thinking. Process introduces his vision of nature as a succession of crystallizations, each of which proves the finite granularity of time: the instant does not exist. It also implies a confrontation with the theory of relativity and quantum physics. Whitehead’s perspective allows for the occurrence of creative novelties, but necessitates that the world cooperates with a deity, the role of which is examined in this book’s last chapter.

In Alfred North Whitehead, Philosopher of Time, the author mixes biographical elements with intellectual advances, from logicism to philosophies of nature. A compelling introduction to Whitehead’s demanding work, this book deciphers a metaphysical landscape often considered too abstract to be approachable, but points out the philosopher’s imperfections with respect to the scientific advances of our time.

Contents:

• Preface


• About the Author


• A Brilliant Mathematician


• The Point is an Abstraction: The Method of Extensive Abstraction


• Whitehead in London: Philosophical Encounters


• The Instant Does Not Exist: Rebuttal of Descartes’ and Newton’s Time


• The Successive Crystallisations or ‘Concrescences’ of Reality


• Permanence of Objects, Causality, and Bifurcations of the Becoming


• World Solidarity and Quantum Entanglement


• The Space-Time of Relativity and Whitehead’s Extensive Continuum


• Process and Time


• Free Will Saved from Determinism?


• Whitehead’s God


• Epilogue


• Bibliography


• Index of Names


• Glossary and Thematic Index

Readership: Students and scholars in philosophy of science, metaphysics, history of science, and general philosophers. Suitable for a general audience with some training in science and interest in metaphysical questions, particularly about time.

Rémy Lestienne, honorary research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, has successively devoted his research to high-energy physics and to neuroscience. From 1998 to 2004, he was President of the International Society for the Study of Time. He is the author of The Children of Time and The Creative Power of Chance (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995 and 1998), and Le Cerveau Cognitif (CNRS Editions, 2016).

‘A compelling introduction to Whitehead’s demanding work, this book deciphers a metaphysical landscape often considered too abstract to be approachable, but points out the philosopher’s imperfections with respect to the scientific advances of our time.’ – zb MATH