Friday, May 18, 2007

Alfred North Whitehead: Brief Biographical Notes

There is a pretty good brief biography of Whitehead available on the wikipedia, and no doubt there are some other good ones online. Therefore, I won't go into all the biographical details, but only mention some of the highlights.

Alfred North Whitehead was born in 1861 and raised in Ramsgate, Kent, in England. His was a family of Anglican clergymen. He studied mathematics and went on to teach mathematics for many years at Cambridge University. Together with his famous student, Bertrand Russell, he wrote a substantial tome in three volumes on the logical foundations of mathematics called the Principia Mathematica (first published in the years 1910-1913).

Despite their early relationship and collaboration, it seems that Whitehead and Russell could not have been more different in temperament and outlook. Their collaboration did not survive the initial publication of the Principia, and at about that time, Whitehead left Cambridge for good. There are a number of apocryphal stories relating exchanges between Russell and Whitehead, or highlighting philosophical differences. I can recount the gist, but not the exact words, of one of these stories. It was said (perhaps by Whitehead himself) that Russell saw philosophy as clear-cut and distinct, as if seen by the noon-day sun, while Whitehead saw it as murky and mysterious, like the twilit hours at dawn and dusk. To Whitehead, reality was dauntingly complex, while Russell saw things in simple, orderly terms.

Whether or not this anecdote represents the thought of either men fairly, it does seem to indicate their temperamental differences.

After Cambridge, Whitehead spent quite a lot of time in London, where his attentions turned to such projects as mathematical education at London University, and the theoretical underpinnings of physics. It was during this time that his philosophical interests started to come to the fore.

Having written several interesting articles and books on the philosophy of education, theoretical physics and the philosophy of science, he was invited to join the philosophy faculty at Harvard University in 1924. He had never formally taught philosophy before. He stayed at Harvard until his retirement in 1937, and continued to live with his wife in the United States until his death in 1947.

His major work, Process and Reality, the primary subject of this blog, was produced during his Harvard years. It was published in 1929 and has since remained in print to fascinate succeeding generations of philosophers and theologians.

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