Science and the Modern World

Perfect! thank you

This year, 2016, almost 100 years after Whitehead moved to Harvard from Cambridge, England, and shifted his academic focus from mathematics to philosophy, I had the privilege of re-reading this book from college days, (1960-64), and found it as satisfying and important as I did then, as a young man majoring in chemistry and philosophy, and influenced by Dr. Charles Bigger, who finished his career in philosophy at Louisiana State University. As a history of the impact of the scientific revolutions of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries, it is unsurpassed in its summaries, coming from lectures at Harvard on those centuries and their impact of forming the 'scientific materialism' of the Cartesian paradigm, still dominant among my science professors in the last century. Perhaps the more innovative aspects of the book, philosophically speaking, are his short chapters on relativity, and then current developments in subatomic physical science theory, and its relation to parallel developments in biology, physiology, as well as philosophy, in the writing of such French theorists as Bergson, and 'organic theory' of reality, which is Whitehead's own attempt to reconcile current science, and religion, in a coherent metaphysics in which the 'event' is the ultimate 'material of reality.' Whether one's field is chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, theology, or literary theory, this is a unique, and powerful survey of scientific, literary, and philosophic reactions to the evolution of scientific invention and innovation, which is still the main driver of the Process and Reality of the 21st Century, the title, cribbed from Plato, of one of Whitehead's more detailed arguments of his own views, summarily described in SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD.
by H M. Romaine

We are somewhere in the 1920's, Whitehead starts assuming that we did our homework; meaning that we know a great deal about Bacon, Harvey, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Huygens, Boyle, Newton, Locke, Spinoza and Leibniz. My homework wasn't finished, but I kept going anyway (the plan was learn something from his lectures). Then he goes about knitting together the evolution of science through the 18th and 19th centuries. He lost me in two chapters about his own definition of abstraction and on the Aristotelian definition of god, but finished strong with a sober view of social progress.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an English mathematician [he is credited as co-writer with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica] and philosopher, best known for developing Process Philosophy. He wrote many other books such as Process and Reality,Religion in the Making, etc.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1925 book, “The present book embodies a study of some aspects of Western culture during the past three centuries, in so far as it has been influenced by the development of science. This study has been guided by the conviction that the mentality of an epoch springs from the view of the world which is, in fact, dominant in the educated sections of the communities in question… The various human interests which suggest cosmologies, and also are influenced by them, are science, aesthetics, ethics, religion…I have avoided the introduction of a variety of abstruse detail respecting scientific advance. What is wanted… is a systematic study of main ideas as seen from the inside.” (Pg. vii-viii)

In the first chapter, he makes a famous (and widely-quoted) statement: “the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement … [is] the inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction … which is the motive power of research---that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted on the European mind?... there seems to be but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality… In Asia, the conceptions of God were of a being who was either too arbitrary or too impersonal for such ideas to have much effect … There was not the same confidence as in the intelligible rationality of a personal being… My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.” (Pg. 12-13)

He summarizes, “In my last lecture I developed a … line of argument, which would lead to a system of thought basing nature upon the concept of organism, and not upon the concept of matter. In the present lecture, I propose in the first place to consider how the concrete educated thought of men has viewed this opposition of mechanism and organism. It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.” (Ch. V, pg. 75) Later, he adds, “In the previous lecture, I was chiefly considering the relation to space-time of things which, in my sense of the term, are eternal. It was necessary to do so before we can pass to the consideration of the things which endure.” (Pg. 87) And then, “My previous lecture was occupied with the comparison of the nature-poetry of the romantic movement in England with the materialistic scientific philosophy inherited from the eighteenth century. It noted the entire disagreement of the two movements of thought. The lecture also continued… to outline an objectivist philosophy, capable of bridging the gap between science and that fundamental intuition of mankind which finds its expression in poetry and its practical exemplification in the presuppositions of daily life.” (Ch. VI, pg. 95)

He argues, “we must provide a ground for limitation which stands among the attributes of the substantial activity. This attribute provides the limitation for which no reason can be given: for all reason flows from it. God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality. For no reason can be given for just that limitation which it stands in His nature to impose. God is not concrete, but He is the ground for concrete actuality. No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality… Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to Him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success. If He be conceived as the supreme ground for limitation, it stands in His very nature to divide the Good from the Evil, and to establish Reason ‘within her dominions supreme.’” (Ch. XI, pg. 178-179)

He observes, “In the first place, there has always been a conflict between religion and science; and in the second place, both religion and science have always been in a state of continual development.” (Ch. XII, pg. 182) He suggests, “Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.” (Pg. 189) He adds, “religion is the expression of one type of fundamental experiences of mankind: that religious thought develops into an increasing accuracy of expression, disengaged from adventitious imagery: that the interaction between religion and science is one great factor in promoting this development.” (Pg. 190) And “The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience. The vision claims nothing but worship; and worship is a surrender to the claim for assimilation, urged with the motive force of mutual love. The vision never overrules. It is always there, and it has the power of love presenting the one purpose whose fulfillment is eternal harmony… The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.” (Pg. 192)

Those who simply quote Whitehead’s statement in the first chapter are “missing out,” not to mention taking his words out of context. (See his “Process and Reality” for a fuller development of his ideas about God, etc.)