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Whitehead's Extensive Continuum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

David L. Miller
David L. Miller*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin, Tex.
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Extract

It seems that Whitehead's original problem, as evidenced in his earlier works, was epistemological and metaphysical dualism. His method of extensive abstraction is an attempt to bring the factual world and the abstract world of thought together. So far as his books on nature are concerned, then, Whitehead denied the ultimate reality of a static world and accepted the reality of dynamic relations analogous to the relations found in a biological organism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1946 , pp. 144 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1946

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Footnotes

1

See Process and Reality, Chapter II.

References

Notes

2 Process and Reality, P. 102.

3 Ibid., pp. 104, 105.

4 Ibid., P. 103.

5 Ibid., P. 124.

6 Ibid., P. 107.

7 Ibid., P. 104.

8 Ibid., P. 109.

9 Ibid., P. 113.

10 Ibid., P. 112.

11 Ibid., P. 268.

12 The main problem is with regard to a generalization of human experience which has in it a past and a future. In any human thinking it is both the past and the future which determine ones conduct. But what evidence have we for saying that this ability to select and exclude is true also of subconscious activity? The only logical evidence which Whitehead has brought to bear on this point is that with respect to such things as atoms, velocity, etc., which are what they are in relation to other things. But this relation is purely in terms of efficient causation, and does not demand envisagement. In older times the question would be, Are we going to say with Aristotle that everything has an entelechy, a soul such as the vegetable soul, or are some things what they are because of outside forces determining them? Whitehead, in his realistic manner, wants to reinstate Aristotle at this point. It seems to me that evidence is lacking for his position.

13 Ibid., Pp. 119, 121.

14 Ibid., P. 124.

15 Ibid., P. 133.

16 See C. D. Broad, Scientific Thought, P. 66 esp.

17 Process and Reality, P. 107.

18 Ibid., P. 124.

19 Ibid., PP. 19, 40.

20 Ibid., PP. 384, 40.

21 Ibid., PP. 268, 323.