![]() ![]() The incarnate God is determined by the sum of all past actualities, and the transcendent God is limited within a matrix of future possibilities. God is a category that Whitehead feels compelled to invoke in his process philosophy of every “actual occasion,” but it is God of all past realities and all future possibilities. Most philosophical problems in the metaphysics of contemporary science disappear with Whitehead’s event-centered process philosophy. ![]() The differences are not in any essentialized notions of natural kinds. The difference between atoms, animals, artifacts, and humans is in the degrees of complexity, the intensity of causal relationships, and the extent of self-creative freedom integrated in these various phenomena. We no longer need to be troubled about the distinctions between matter and mind, animate and inanimate, created and evolved, nature and nurture, or reductionism and emergence. Whitehead’s process metaphysics does not rely on the usual dualisms that have vexed previous metaphysical systems. All events also exhibit some modicum of internal self-creative freedom that is not fully determined by their causal antecedents nor is it predictable in their causal consequences. They have causal antecedents and causal consequences in webs of varying complexity, significance, and intensity. What is fundamentally real, says Whitehead, are not things but events. A general description of reality is the goal. Note that while Whitehead references fantastic inventions of human imagination, his objective is objectivity. Whitehead warns that “hilosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world-the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross” ( Process and Reality, 338). It is not adequate to construct a metaphysics that renders the full spectrum of the emotional and imaginative life invisible or insignificant. “Nothing must be omitted,” writes Whitehead, “experience drunk and experience sober” ( Adventures of Ideas, 226). Indeed, the metaphysics is such that the normal uses of the terms subjective and objective no longer apply. Whitehead’s metaphysics is especially constructed with reference to the emerging objective scientific worldview, but not to the neglect of subjective human experience. Thus the philosophical scheme should be coherent, logical, and in respect to its interpretation, applicable and adequate…( Process and Reality, 3)Īn adequate metaphysics, then, must apply in general terms to the whole of reality, including all human subjective experiences. By this notion of “interpretation” I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme. The endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. Whitehead refers to this project as “speculative philosophy,” which he defines as, Once these points are established, it is then possible to seek a partial solution to these problems by synthesizing Whitehead’s thought with that of his successors.Īlfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) created a comprehensive metaphysical system for understanding science, society, and self. However, I will argue that Whitehead’s process metaphysics tends to 1) depersonalize God to the extent of rendering theism irrelevant and 2) naturalize moral evil in the service of evolution. The key to Whitehead’s lasting consequence is that his process relational metaphysics solves many philosophical problems in understanding and interpreting contemporary science. Indeed, Whitehead’s signature can even be traced in the very name of Metanexus Institute. One sees this, for instance, in the reliance on Whitehead’s thought by many of the luminaries in the field of religion and science including Ian Barbour, Holmes Rolston, and John Haught. Today, Whitehead’s influence has not abated. His talks were published two years later as Process and Reality, the book that introduced Whitehead’s process philosophy to the world and secured him a place in the canon of Western metaphysics. In 1927, British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead was asked to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology at the University of Edinburgh. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |