The Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead- The Concept of Reality and Organism (An Old and Rare Book)

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The central purpose of this thesis is to give a critical exposition of the concept of reality and organism in the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. The course of our inquiry, in broad lines, will be as follows.

Chapter 1. Introduction, begins with a general survey of contemporary thought and deals with the repudiation of the nine fallacious habits of thought prevalent in modern and contemporary philosophy. This repudiation is undertaken in the light of the positive doctrine of the philosophy of organism which is stated here more or less summarily. In particular, a critical discussion of language together with an examination of 'the subject-predicate form of expression' and the sensationalist doctrine of perception is undertaken in the light of modern and contemporary philosophy. The examination of the sensationalist doctrine of perception is of special importance for a proper understanding of Whitehead's philosophy.

Chapter II, on General Characteristics and Antecedents of Whitehead's philosophy, deals with the key conceptions such as 'process' and 'reality'. Also, our attention is drawn to the wide range of interests and affinities of the Organic Philosophy together with its synoptic standpoint. Of particular importance is the balanced vision of Whitehead in reconciling the mutual claims of intuitionism and rationalism, of analysis and synthesis. Mention is also made of the resolute way in which the organic philosophy reconciles the various claims of science, religion and philosophy. Finally, the usual question of Whiteheads's philosophical antecedents is raised. Though the synthetic nature of the organic philosophy is based on the positive and constructive elements of the great masters of thought such as Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Bergson and Bradley, emphasis is laid here on the writings of the two outstanding philosophers, Plato and Locke, who have been the sources of deepest inspiration for the philosophy of organism which is an unusual combination of the insights of Plato and Locke.

Chapter III, on Whitehead's conception of Philosophical Method, is a critical exposition and defence of the philosophy of organism as a system of speculative philosophy. Here we have a critical discussion of the concept of coherence of the philosophy of organism. The reader's attention is drawn to the great originality of Whitehead's conception of philosophical method as one of descriptive generalization and of working hypothesis'.

Years ago, when I was Professor of Philosophy in the University of Mysore, I had a very able student, Sri L. V. Rajagopal. He was awarded Professor Hiriyanna gold medal at the B.A. examination and Bhabha memorial gold medal at the M.A. examination which he passed in First Class. For his thesis required for the M.A. examination he chose as his subject, Whitehead's philosophy. He wrote it under my guidance and it was found by the examiners an excellent piece of work. Since then he has continued his study of Whitehead very conscientiously and zealously. After years of work he wrote a voluminous thesis on his favourite philosopher and was awarded the Ph.D. degree for it. He had as his examiners two distinguished philosophers: Dr. John E. Smith of Yale University and Dr. W. Mays of Manchester University. They have recorded their high opinion of Dr. Rajagopal's work, and even recommended it for publication. With such a fine record of work he should have achieved a high place in the academic world of India. But conditions in India are very disappointing and many of her best sons have had better appreciation at the hands of foreign scholars than at the hands of Indian Universities. I am glad that his Alma Mater, Mysore University, has agreed to publish his thesis on Whitehead.

I have always looked upon Whitehead as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. Beginning as a mathematician he has ended as a great philosopher. In him we find a synthesis of science and philosophy, of philosophy and religion, of Idealism and Realism. Though a lucid writer, it is not always easy to understand him, especially his Process and Reality. I am sure a book like Dr. Rajagopal's will make him more easily understood and appreciated. I have been myself attracted to Whitehead's philosophy by the fact that he has not allowed his erudite metaphysics to interfere with his human approach to many social problems. A mind so rich and encyclopaedic cannot but have a permanent message for his own generation and the generations to follow.

I cannot but feel happy that a seed I helped to implant nearly three decades ago has now grown into a good-sized tree. I am bappy too that in this age of tensions and suspicions, a great Western philosopher has had an acute Indian scholar to interpret his thought to the World. Truly is philosophy universal; it knows neither East nor West. It knows only zenith.

The philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead may be regarded as the most celebrated and highest effort of philosophic thinking of recent and contemporary. times and it is on a par with the great classical and speculative philosophies of the past. Generally speaking we may say that Whitehead is following the speculative tradition of philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel.

In contemporary British philosophy it is well known that Whitehead's Process and Reality' is a metaphysical work of major importance after Bradley's 'Appearance and Reality' and Alexander's 'Space, Time and Deity". But by the time 'Process and Reality appeared, English philosophical thought had clearly turned its back on metaphysics with the result that Whitehead's great metaphysical work was never studied and his philosophy of organism had no appreciable influence on Cambridge, the then centre of positivism and empiricism, though it had wide reception in American universities.

Why did Whitehead, a great thinker in mathematics and physics, attempt to write on speculative metaphysics? Is not metaphysics a waste of one's time and logically an impossible enterprise in the very nature of language, as Wittgenstein had argued? It is well known that in a famous passage "Hume had consigned all metaphysics to the flames as worthless; Kant had likened the attempt to construct a metaphysical system to the beating of wings in the void; Comte had rejected metaphysics as a stage on the road to positive science which the world had now outgrown." Kant had argued that a metaphysics of inferred entities was illegitimate. Many empiricist philosophers had said that there was something bogus about the philosopher's inferences to entities which are never given. Now in the light of such considerations, is not Whitehead attempting the impossible in his speculative system of philosophy? Hume, followed by Kant and the positivists of our day, had mistakenly thought that he knew with absolute certainty the nature of the "given as datum in one's experience and consequently he argued the impossibility of any speculative metaphysics. Again Kant starting with a particular preconception of the nature of the given which he took over from Hume, had argued the impossibility of any teleological and speculative metaphysics vindicating the truth of God, moral freedom and immortality of the soul. Moreover Kant was fully steeped in the materialistic and mechanistic physical science of Newton according to which the fundamental physical quantity was scalar and this lent plausibility to Kant's argument regarding the impossibility of metaphysics.

**Contents and Sample Pages**