The Philosophy of Organism

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sciborg2

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« on: February 22, 2019, 04:31:29 pm »
The Philosophy of Organism

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The philosophy of organism is the name of the metaphysics of the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Born in Kent in 1861, schooled in Dorset, Alfred headed north and taught mathematics and physics in Cambridge, where he befriended his pupil Bertrand Russell, with whom he came to collaborate on a project to develop logically unshakable foundations for mathematics. In 1914, Whitehead became Professor of Applied Mathematics at Imperial College, London. However, his passion for the underlying philosophical problems never left him, and in 1924, at the age of 63, he crossed the Atlantic to take up a position as Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1947. His intellectual journey had traversed mathematics, physics, logic, education, the philosophy of science, and matured with his profound metaphysics, a complex systematic philosophy that is most comprehensively unfolded in his 1929 book, Process and Reality.

The philosophy of organism is a form of process philosophy. This type of philosophy seeks to overcome the problems in the traditional metaphysical options of dualism, materialism, and idealism. From the perspective of process philosophy, the error of dualism is to take mind and matter to be fundamentally distinct; the error of materialism is to fall for this first error then omit mind as fundamental; the error of idealism is also to fall for the first error then to omit matter as fundamental. The philosophy of organism seeks to resolve these issues by fusing the concepts of mind and matter, thereby creating an ‘organic realism’ as Whitehead also named his philosophy. To gain an overview of this marvelous, revolutionary, yet most logical philosophy, let’s first look at what Whitehead means by ‘realism’, then at the meaning of its prefix, ‘organic’.

Francis Buck

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« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2019, 01:49:00 am »
Immediately going to my "must read articles" list. The last one you posted about Whitehead and the "Great God Pan" was fantastic so I'm definitely into anything this dude has to say about, well, pretty much anything!

Thanks for the good stuff as always, Sci!

sciborg2

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« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2019, 04:18:45 am »
Immediately going to my "must read articles" list. The last one you posted about Whitehead and the "Great God Pan" was fantastic so I'm definitely into anything this dude has to say about, well, pretty much anything!

Thanks for the good stuff as always, Sci!

Glad you liked it, perhaps you will one day explain Whitehead to me as I can only stand on the shores of his philosophy, going deeper into the country of his mind has so far proven impossible - I'm sadly always driven back...