[sciborg2]

Was just put on to this, thought I'd share. I've not yet read it myself but I recall someone commenting on Three Pound Brain suggested people read Whitehead:

Science and the Modern World. Lowell lectures, 1925, by Alfred North Whitehead.

"These pages may be freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. Please go to http://www.umdl.umich.edu/ for more information."

From the IEP:

'Facing mandatory retirement in England, Whitehead accepted a position at Harvard in 1924, where he continued his philosophical output. His Science and the Modern World offers a careful critique of orthodox scientific materialism and presents his first worked-out version of the related fallacies of “misplaced concreteness” and “simple location.” The first fallacy is the error of treating an abstraction as though it were concretely real. The second is the error of assuming that anything that is real must have a simple spatial location.'

[Kellais]

Thanks for the link. Very interesting chapters in that book. I read a bit into the mathematic chapter and the Quantum Theory chapter. Nice stuff. If i find the time, i will return to it.

[sciborg2]

I'm still, very slowly, trying to make my way through his ideas. This helped somewhat:

Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology


    Introduction: From Physics to Philosophy
    The Sunset of Materialism: Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science
    Whitehead’s Ontology of Organism
    Whitehead and Contemporary Scientific Theory
    The Imaginative Generalization of Evolutionary Theory
    Space-Time in an Ontology of Organism
    Quantum Decoherence and the Incompleteness of Nature
    Conclusion: Towards a Physics of the World-Soul
    Bibliography

[sciborg2]

A.N. Whitehead and Subjectivity

This paper comes at subjectivity from a Whiteheadian perspective. It argues that Whitehead provides us with a “deep” form of empiricism grounded in the notion of the “actual occasion” of experience and in the temporal and spatial co-assembly of multiplicities of such occasions. A deep empiricism that embraces process, affirms creativity, foregrounds value and refuses to bifurcate nature into irreconcilable subjective and objective aspects, it is argued, might serve as a useful corrective to current tendencies in social theory to avoid subjectivity and to elide the differences between forms of subjectivity.

[Kellais]

...current tendencies in social theory to avoid subjectivity ...

I always have to shake my head at such proclamations. As if there is such a thing as "avoiding subjectivity" when we talk about the work of people. It's impossible.
Maybe those social theory scientiest should brush up on their definitions...or better yet, let someone with a good grasp on sharp definitions take a look at theirs (i am still trying to unsee some of the things the social sciences tried to pass up as a Definition...).

[sciborg2]

Sorry Kellais I'm not sure I understand your objection?

What do you think the author's conception of subjectivity is missing?

=-=-=

Here's some saving grace for anyone trying to read Whitehead ->

A GLOSSARY with Alphabetical Index to Technical Terms in Process and Reality

'This glossary is intended as a companion to the study of Process and Reality. Process and Reality is a difficult book, but many of us think it is a profound and profoundly revelatory one. It teaches us to see the world in a new way. And some of us find that this new way illuminates much that has been otherwise obscure. Process and Reality brings together much that has been fragmented in the modern world. In short, it is eminently worth studying.'

[Kellais]

Hey sciborg2, sorry i guess i just went on a rant triggered by that quote i made. It's a petpeeve of mine that a lot of people seem to think that there is something like objectivity. There might be if there is something like an omnipotent and omniscient being...anyone else is subjective and ever will be. You can try to be as open-minded and neutral as possible, but a person can never be objective (because you always will bring with you your biases, upbringing, cultural viewpoints etc etc ).
The second paragraph was a second rant about the willy-nilly tendencies of some sciences with precision (for example with definitions). But i guess i am spoiled, working for a longer stretch in mathematics