Waterstones Process and Reality
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Price: £14.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: One of the major philosophical texts of the 20th century, Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead's influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy. Whitehead's master work in philsophy, Process and Reality propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality into a consistent relation to each other. It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant. The ultimate edition of Whitehead's magnum opus, Process and Reality is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds.
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9780029345702
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9780029345702
Author: Angus Jenkinson
Rating: 5
Review: Whitehead is not of course light reading, but within his scientific/philosophical genre, he is a master stylist, clear, compelling and illuminating. Whitehead is most famous for his collaboration with Bertrand Russell, but this is actually the more important work. His thesis turns on its head the 19th-century view of matter, science and the cosmos. Nevertheless, science and philosophy has been relatively slow to realize the enormous significance of his work, recognition which is now coming his way. What Whitehead does is transform things into activities and events. Instead of seeing atoms, molecules and the physical world composed of them as things, relatively hard nuggets seen independently of time, they become processes taking place in time, and therefore activities and events in continual actualization. Such thinking is important to or accords with Deleuze and post structure and thinking, Heidegger, Gadamer and phenomenology, morphogenetic fields and a more dynamic understanding of the organic world, and is equally important to the practising manager today. It means that we begin to think in terms of activities and processes, a much more fluid dynamic view of everything. We begin to see ourselves as activating events, organisational culture as a dynamic field, and the universe as altogether more remarkable.
Author: William M Owen
Rating: 3
Review: Despite te author's high standing among philosophers he is thoroughly unfit to be writing for a beginner like myself in the subject. Clarity and avoidance of complications are not in his line. He seems to be making a point then immediately subdivides it into 8 or 9 sub-points which fogs the meaning of what he has to say and wearies the life out of a novice . What the students of his time thought of him thought of him I dread to think. Give me Roger Scruton any day. W.M. Owen
