Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947)

Whitehead made fundamental contributions to modern logic and created one of the most controversial metaphysical systems of the twentieth century. He drew out what he took to be the revolutionary consequences for philosophy of the new discoveries in mathematics, logic and physics, developing these consequences first in logic and then in the philosophy of science and speculative metaphysics. His work constantly returns to the question: what is the place of the constructions of mathematics, science and philosophy in the nature of things? Whitehead collaborated with Bertrand Russell on Principia Mathematica (1910-13), which argues that all pure mathematics is derivable from a small number of logical principles. He went on in his philosophy of science to describe nature in terms of overlapping series of events and to argue that scientific explanations are constructed on that basis. He finally expanded and redefined his work by developing a new kind of speculative metaphysics. Stated chiefly in Process and Reality (1929), his metaphysics is both an extended reflection on the character of philosophical inquiry and an account of the nature of all things as a self-constructing process. On this view, reality is incomplete, a matter of the becoming of occasions which are centres of activity in a multiplicity of serial processes whereby the antecedent occasions are taken up in the activities of successor occasions.

1 Life
Alfred North Whitehead studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1884 he became a Fellow of Trinity, where he taught mathematics, Bertrand Russell and J.M. Keynes being among his pupils. He was a liberal in politics and an advocate of womens rights. He wrotePrincipia Mathematica (1910-13) with Russell, moving to London in 1910, where he taught mathematics at University College and was active in educational reform. He became Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1914, thereafter writing on the philosophy of science. In 1924 he took up a chair in philosophy at Harvard, where he produced a series of works in speculative metaphysics. Whiteheads work falls into three periods: the early period of mathematics and logic, the middle period concerned with the philosophy of science; and the late period of speculative metaphysics. Although a matter of debate, his philosophical development is best seen as a shifting, ever-widening analysis of the concept of construction (see Constructivism 1; Constructivism in mathematics 6).

2 Mathematics and logic

Whiteheads three main early works indicate the central role played by mathematics, logic and science in shaping the themes and models which inform his philosophical thought. His first book, A Treatise on Universal Algebra: With Applications (1898), develops Grassmanns work in what was then the new field of abstract algebra. Although it had little influence on the subsequent development of mathematics, the Treatise has at least three philosophically significant features. First, it is concerned with the universalization or generalization of variables beyond their traditional restriction as symbols for numbers. Generalization takes the form of substitutive schemes, which at this stage in Whiteheads career are non-axiomatized algebraic formulae having the status of a calculus which symbolizes the operations of addition and multiplication. He holds that the construction of substitutive schemes involves some (here unspecified) relation to the empirical world and that, to be significant, such schemes must have applications or substitutions in some field. In turn, application assists in the investigation of the schemes themselves, which have heuristic value even if they are only partially interpretable at a given stage of knowledge. Second, alongside the emphasis on empirical connection and a realist concern with the significant application of schematized structures, a strong formalist tendency is evident in the Treatise: while consistency is repudiated as the sole ground for existence-theorems, mathematical schemes are defined as conventional idealizations independent of perceptual content (see Realism in the philosophy of mathematics 2). Third, however, Whitehead also emphasizes the synthetic processes of intellectual construction involved in mathematical inference. Like the mathematical intuitionists later on, he regards 2 + 3 and 3 + 2 as nonidentical (see Intuitionism 1); he holds that the difference of order directs different processes of thought and that equivalence is a matter of identity-in-difference.
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The development of a philosophy which would coherently relate the different orientations - realist, formalist and intuitionist - evident in the treatment of construction in his mathematical writings is a central concern of Whiteheads subsequent thought. Whiteheads Royal Society memoir On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World (1906) offers different logical schemes or models for different theories of the structure of the physical world. As later in Process and Reality (1929), Whitehead employs the axiomatic method in constructing a scheme and defines a scheme as a hypothesis to be assessed on the principle of Ockhams razor (see William of Ockham 2): the preferred scheme in the memoir is that which posits only one class of ultimate entities. He anticipates his later thought by criticizing the Newtonian account of nature as composed of externally related atoms each occupying a position in absolute space at an absolute time (see Mechanics, classical 1, 4-5; Newton, I. 3-4). His preferred scheme is constructed on the model of electromagnetic theory in terms of the flux of energy. The ultimate entities are complexes of relations: points are classes of linear relations which can be given an empirical interpretation in terms of vectors or lines of force. The emphasis is on a logic of relations as a way of uniting permanent structure and change in one schematized serial order - an issue which occupied Whitehead for the rest of his career. Principia Mathematica (1910-13), written in collaboration with Russell, (see Russell, B. 3) is best seen as an account of the logic of relations and an attempt to develop as far as possible the hypothesis of logicism - the claim that all pure mathematics can be derived from an axiomatic scheme of logical concepts taken as primitive (see Logicism 4). The effect of the difficulties which subsequently emerged in the logicist project was to strengthen the mathematical-intuitionist tendencies in Whiteheads thought: he later treats Gdels incompleteness theorem as indicating that mathematical logic is an instance of the finite character of all constructions (see Gdels theorems 3-5).

3 Philosophy of science
Whiteheads philosophy of science analyses the ontological status of scientific and mathematical concepts in terms of their derivation from the elements and relations of nature as disclosed in sense-experience. He abandons the Newtonian concept of nature at an instant and rejects the bifurcation of nature into perceived qualities and the theoretical entities of science (such as electrons), in particular Russells phenomenalist view of theoretical entities as constructions out of atomic sense-data. The new theories of physics, the new logic of relations and Bergsons account of the fluidity of nature are seen as making possible an empiricism which is neither representationalist nor phenomenalist. Logical constructions and perceived qualities are to be analysed as features of one system of multiple relations by means of a redefinition of sense-experience as the disclosure of the passage of nature, that is, of occurrences or events with spatiotemporal spread. Events are one of the two basic constituents of nature that Whitehead holds to be disclosed in sense-experience. Taking the place of traditional concepts of substance, events are unrepeatable, relational entities which overlap or extend over one another (see Substance 3). Their nature as spatiotemporal regions, however, expresses only some of the features of this fundamental relation of extension, for Whitehead also terms it process and creative advance. Events thus imply a special kind of activity pointing towards the later, speculative account of reality as creativity (see Events). Objects are the second basic constituent of nature disclosed in sense-experience. Objects take the place of universals: they are repeatable characters or properties which are neither Platonic forms nor nominalist resemblances but, as ingredients in events, are like Aristotelian universalia in rebus (see Aristotle 15; Universals 1). However, objects do not act and do not stand to events in an invariable two-termed relation of predication; they are terms in a multiple relation of ingression. Thus a sense-object - for example, a colour which is perceived as situated in an event - involves multiple relations between the percipient event (the relevant bodily state of the observer), the event which is the situation of the object, and the conditioning events relating the percipient event to the situation. As this multiple relation is a facet of nature, the perspective relative to the percipient event is not outside the world but belongs to the world in that relation, thereby dissolving the duality of subjectivity and objectivity. Scepticism is never an issue for Whitehead, as scepticism assumes that duality has fundamental metaphysical status (see Scepticism 1). His complex account of different types of objects is replaced in his later work by an account of the relation of what he calls eternal objects to the becoming of

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occasions. What Whitehead called his Method of Extensive Abstraction is primarily an application of a constructivist logic of classes to the question of the status of such theoretical entities as instants of time and points in space. Instants and points are routes of approximation across, respectively, the durations of events and spatial volumes, which are arranged in a continuum of whole and part like a nest of Chinese boxes. As we descend in the series we progressively reach durations and volumes of ever smaller extension. Instants and points are sets or classes of the whole - part relations of the durations and volumes which enclose them. Whiteheads attempt to unify space, time and matter in a single system of relations led him to address Einsteins theory of relativity critically. He agrees with Einstein that space and time are abstractions from spacetime events and that there is an infinite plurality of different time-series. However, Whiteheads analysis of the perceptual relations between events allows him to maintain the objectivity both of the distinction between space and time for the observer and of the relative position of the observer. Further, the problems of rotation, incongruent counterparts and the application of geometries lead him to give the passage of events its own internal, uniform (homoloidal) spatial structure, independent of any relation to the objects of which they are the situations, and he treats that structure as actual. This brings him into conflict with the general theory of relativity in which spacetime varies with its (material) contents (see Relativity theory, philosophical significance of 2).

4 Speculative metaphysics
Whiteheads speculative thought challenges the critique of metaphysics characteristic of twentieth-century Anglo-American and European philosophy. In contrast to Russell and his successors who interpret modern mathematical and logical developments in the context of a weak theory of being or existence as quantification, Whitehead sees these developments as reopening the possibility of a strong theory of being or existence as act (see Being 4; Existence 2). Like Bergson and the later Heidegger (see Heidegger, M. 2), Whitehead defines the act of being in terms of finite self-actualization, independent of any metaphysically complete cause or ground; but unlike them, he regards self-actualization as rationally analysable. There is no longer any foundationalist appeal to sense-experience in Whiteheads metaphysics (see Foundationalism 1). The subject matter of his speculative scheme is the empirical side of the analysis, defined as everything of which we are conscious as historically situated beings. The construction of an axiomatized scheme of categories is a matter of imaginative generalization: significant features of the historical world are employed as analogues for the analysis of the nature of all things. The cogency of the categories depends upon the range of their substitutions or applications on the empirical side. Categories and applications stand in a relation of proportional analogy (as A is to B, so C is to D). As a generalized mathematics, Whiteheads speculative scheme of categories can be epitomized as universalizing the mathematical concept of series and as closely akin to the mathematical intuitionists theory of number construction. The self-actualization of all things is interpreted as a finite series of acts of self-construction which are asymmetrical, transitive and irreflexive, constituting an iterative, infinitely proceeding multiplicity of sequences. This is the process of actual [that is, actualizing] entities, or actual occasions which constitute the one genus by which the scheme aspires to describe everything. Whitehead terms the scheme the philosophy of organism to indicate that it embraces biology as much as physics and constitutes a theory of the experience of all things as self-constructing centres of activity (see Processes 4). Whiteheads complex analysis of the serial process of the becoming of occasions employs a variety of analogies with mentality, feeling and the vectorial transfer of energy. Although they do not overlap, there are no single occasions, for occasions are relational or serially constituted entities in two senses. First, the completion of an occasion in a series of occasions is its objectification by successor occasions. Second, a successor occasion has its own internal serial structure as a self-constructing synthesis or concrescence. The relation of freedom and determination simply depends on an occasions complexity of response, allowing it to modify the extent to which it is determined by its predecessors and environment. Whiteheads theory of eternal objects or pure potentials is modelled on that of the propositional function. However, the theory does not grant the propositional function any metaphysically primitive status but explains what makes the propositional function possible. In the state of general potentiality eternal objects do not form an
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infinite class of possibilities, but a matrix of the multiplicity of the endlessly nested possibilities which finite actualizations afford. As components of predecessor occasions which are objectifiable by successor occasions, eternal objects have the status of real potentiality. Potentiality and actuality are defined as relations of seriality, states or stages of actualization, which stand in a strictly functional relation of satisfaction and not in any of the traditional relations of agency, resemblance or imitation. Eternal objects of a special kind, the objective species, constitute the extensive continuum or abstract system of part and whole relations. The key philosophical difference with Whiteheads middle-period extension is that the extensive continuum is potential, not actual, and is actualized by the becoming of occasions. Mathematical relations can thus be intuitionistically defined as equivalently ideal and real, potential and actual: that is to say, they are definable as states or stages of serial actualization. Whiteheads scheme of categories has a number of significant applications, some of which can be summarized here. Epistemological Realism. By serializing occasions, Whitehead would reconcile the claim that knowledge is perspectival or situated with the claim that knowledge is to be defined in terms of objects distinct from and independent of the subject or concrescent occasion. Relations. Whitehead would dissolve the opposition between F.H. Bradley and Russell on relations by interpreting the doctrines of internal and external relations in the context of his serial pluralism (see Bradley, F.H. 4-5): a successor occasion is internally related to its antecedent occasions, but its antecedent occasions (as completed or perished) are not internally related to it. Internal and external relations are thus states or stages of seriality. Perception. The primary mode of perception is not a matter of distinct impressions or sense-data but, under the principle of serial connection, is the direct experience of the causal efficacy of the antecedent world. The other mode of perception is presentational immediacy, which is the presented locus or spacetime region of the percipient occasion. The two are combined in an adverbial theory of sensation. God. Whitehead does not attempt to prove Gods existence but to show that, contrary to the views of many theorists of finite self-actualization, there is nothing to prevent the redefinition of the concept of God in that context. Thus eternal objects in their state of general potentiality are termed God because of the ultimate, underivable character of possibilities of structure: as the final principle of determination, the concept of God is their nearest conceptual correlate. Similarly, real potentiality can be said to be derived from God because the experience of potentiality from an occasions standpoint is nothing other than the ultimacy of appetition for actualization. Interpreted as God, these aspects are termed his primordial nature and revise the concept of God as creator: he does not create occasions but provides them with potentiality. In his consequent nature God objectifies and transforms occasions in the eternal harmony of his nature. As a nontemporal being, God is an actual entity, not an occasion, but his primordial and consequent natures define him as a component of serial process. This dipolar nature expresses the way in which the scheme has a place for the concept of God as both first cause and redeemer (see Process theoism). Speculative Analysis. Whiteheads general strategy is to define ideality and reality, not as fundamental metaphysical opposites, but as states or stages of the serial process of self-construction. While his universalization of the concept of finite or serial construction makes him a speculative realist, his metaphysics is also self-referentially inclusive, that is, the metaphysical scheme is an instance of finite or serial intellectual construction which as such is not subject to the law of the excluded middle (see Intuitionistic logic and antirealism 1). The scheme can thus be regarded as real inasmuch as it is constructed or applied, and ideal or hypothetical inasmuch as it is finite and revisable and consequently does not exclude alternative analyses. While most readers of Whitehead interpret his speculative realism to mean that his categories are accounts of the metaphysical contents of the world, one can also regard them as conditions of the contents of the world, that is, as transcendental categories of a new kind which are neither real in the medieval sense nor ideal in the Kantian sense, but fallible, historically situated constructions, formulating the ultimate generalities which constitute the nature of things. JAMES BRADLEY

List of works

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Whitehead, A.N. (1898) A Treatise on Universal Algebra: With Applications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.(A pioneer work in the field of abstract algebra.) Whitehead, A.N. (1906) On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series A, in F.S.C. Northrop and Mason W. Gross, Alfred North Whitehead: An Anthology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953, 11-82.(This book contains extensive extracts from Whiteheads main works.) Whitehead, A.N. and Russell, B.A.W. (1910-13) Principia Mathematica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3 vols; 2nd edn, 1927.(One of the central works in modern logic and the philosophy of mathematics.) Whitehead, A.N. (1911) An Introduction to Mathematics, London: Williams & Norgate; repr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948, 1958, 1969.(A clear, elegant account of the basic elements of modern mathematics.) Whitehead, A.N. (1917) The Organization of Thought, London: Williams & Norgate, and Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott.(This collection of papers, with others presented to the Aristotelian Society between 1916 and 1923, notably Uniformity and Contingency (1922), is reprinted in A.H. Johnson (ed.) Alfred North Whitehead: The Interpretation of Science, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961.) Whitehead, A.N. (1919, 1925) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.(The second edition of 1925, with additional notes, should be consulted.) Whitehead, A.N. (1920) The Concept of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. (A nontechnical analysis of the philosophy of science and nature which Whitehead sees as required by physics.) Whitehead, A.N. (1922) The Principle of Relativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; philosophical sections repr. in Whitehead (1906).(A critical analysis of the theory of relativity from the point of view of Whiteheads philosophy of science.) Whitehead, A.N. (1925) Science and the Modern World, New York: Macmillan, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926; New York: The Free Press, 1967.(A critical history of the development of modern science, concentrating on the concept of organism as the basic principle of modern scientific thought.) Whitehead, A.N. (1926) Religion in the Making, New York: Macmillan, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926; New York: Meridan, 1974.(A historical and critical reflection on the nature of religion in the light of Whiteheads metaphysics. References are usually to this or the Cambridge edition.) Whitehead, A.N. (1926) Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; New York: Macmillan, 1927; London: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1959.(A clear statement of Whiteheads theory of perception, later elaborated in Process and Reality.) Whitehead, A.N. (1929) The Aims of Education and Other Essays, New York: Macmillan, and London: Ernest Benn, 1929; New York: The Free Press, 1967.(This work is essentially a shorter version of The Organization of Thought.) Whitehead, A.N. (1929) The Function of Reason, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1929. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1958.(A prolegomenon to Process and Reality, this work presents philosophy as a matter of the creation of novel concepts.) Whitehead, A.N. (1929) Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, New York: Macmillan, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; corrected edn, with comparative readings and detailed index, by D.R. Griffin and D.W. Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978. (Whiteheads central work in speculative metaphysics, presented in axiomatized form with extensive applications.) Whitehead, A.N. (1933) Adventures of Ideas, New York: Macmillan, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; New York: The Free Press, 1967.(An analysis of the concepts of civilization and history from the standpoint of Whiteheads metaphysics, this work includes a clear statement of his position and a redefinition of the transcendentals of medieval philosophy.) Whitehead, A.N. (1938) Modes of Thought, New York: Macmillan, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; New York: The Free Press, 1968.(A rich and suggestive restatement of Whiteheads metaphysics, clearly underlining his mathematical intuitionist orientation.) Whitehead, A.N. (1947) Essays in Science and Philosophy, New York: The Philosophical Library. (An important collection of papers, including some of Whiteheads clearest programmatic and methodological statements, notably Uniformity and Contingency, Analysis of Meaning, Process and Reality and Mathematics and the Good.) Woodbridge B.A. (ed.) (1977) Alfred North Whitehead: A Primary-Secondary Bibliography, Bowling Green, OH: Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green State University.(A complete bibliography of Whiteheads works and the secondary literature up to 1977, totalling 1,868 entries.)

References and further reading

Braithwaite, R.B. (1926) Review of Science and the Modern World, Mind 35: 489-500.(A clear, critical analysis
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of Whiteheads metaphysics in the light of his earlier work.) Braithwaite, R.B. (1927) Contribution to Symposium: Is The "Fallacy of Simple Location" A Fallacy?, Aristotelian Society supplementary vol. 7: 224-36.(A clear, critical analysis of Whiteheads philosophy of science.) Christian, W.A. (1959) An Interpretation of Whiteheads Metaphysics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.(A standard, detailed analysis.) Deleuze, G. (1988) Le Pli: Leibnix et le Baroque, Paris: Les ditions de Minuit; trans. T. Conley, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992; London: The Athlone Press, 1993.(The importance of Whiteheads metaphysics in the modern philosophical tradition.) Dewey, J. (1937) Whiteheads Philosophy, Philosophical Review 46: 170-7; also in Problems of Men, New York: Philosophical Library, 1946, 410-18.(Whiteheads response is Analysis of Meaning in Whitehead (1947): 122-31.) Emmet, D. (1946) The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking, London: Macmillan; repr. New York: St Martins Press, 1966.(The role of analogy in metaphysical thinking, with valuable analyses of Whiteheads theory of perception and use of analogy). Fitch, F.B. (1957) Combinatory Logic and Whiteheads Theory of Prehensions, Philosophy of Science 24: 331-5.(A partly technical analysis, presenting combinatory logic as the basis of the theory of prehensions and eternal objects.) Ford, L.S. (1984) The Development of Whiteheads Metaphysics, 1925-1929, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.(A detailed discussion of the development of Whiteheads central metaphysical concepts). Ford, L.S. (ed.) (1971) Process Studies, California: Claremont.(A journal devoted to Whitehead and process philosophies.) Ford, L.S. and Kline, G.L. (1983) Explorations in Whiteheads Philosophy, New York: Fordham University Press.(A useful collection which includes essays by Buchler, Christian, Cobb, Henry, Kline, Ford and Rorty.) Haack, S (1979) Descriptive and Revisionary Metaphysics, Philosophical Studies 35: 361-71.(An instructive comparison of The Concept of Nature with P.F. Strawsons Individuals.) Hampe, M. and Maassen, H. (eds) (1991) Prozess, Gefhl und Raum-Zeit: Materialen zu Whiteheads Prozess und Realitt, vol. 1; Die Gifford Lectures und Ihre Deutung: Materialen zu Whiteheads Prozess und Realitt, vol. 2, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.(A valuable collection, historical and contemporary. Some of the material translated into German has not been published in English.) Harris, E.E. (1954) Nature, Mind and Modern Science, New York: The Macmillan Company.(A valuable analysis and critique of Whiteheads metaphysics from a British Idealist viewpoint, with comparisons to Hegel). Holz, H. and Wolf-Gazo, E. (eds) (1981) Whitehead and the Idea of Process, Proceedings of the First International Whitehead Symposium, Freiburg and Munich: Karl Alber.(A wide-ranging collection of essays by American, British and Continental philosophers.) Kline, G.L. (ed.) (1963) Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. (A useful collection which includes essays by Hall, Hartshorne, Leclerc and Rorty.) Lawrence, N. (1956) Whiteheads Philosophical Development: A Critical History of the Background of Process and Reality, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (A useful account, which reads Whiteheads development in terms of a tension between realism and conceptualism - a view strongly challenged by Schmidt (1967).) Leclerc, I. (1958) Whiteheads Metaphysics: An Introductory Exposition, London: Allen & Unwin; 2nd edn, 1965. (A standard introductory text to Whiteheads metaphysics.) Leclerc, I. (ed.) (1961) The Relevance of Whitehead, New York: Humanities Press and London: Allen & Unwin. (A collection which includes indispensable essays by Leclerc on Aristotle and Whitehead, and Mays on the Royal Society Memoir of 1906.) Lowe, V. (1962) Understanding Whitehead, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2nd edn, 1966. (The standard introductory text to Whiteheads entire oeuvre.) Lowe, V. (1985, 1990) Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2 vols.(A detailed biography of Whitehead, with analyses of his works.) Mays, W. (1959) The Philosophy of Whitehead, New York: The Macmillan Company and London: Allen & Unwin.(An indispensable, nontechnical analysis of Whiteheads metaphysics, relating it to his logical and mathematical work.) Murphy, A.W. (1927) Objective Relativism in Dewey and Whitehead, Philosophical Review 36: 121-44; also in W. Hay and M.G. Singer (eds) Reason and the Common Good: Selected Essays of A.W. Murphy, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc., 1963, 163-77.(A striking analysis of the significance and relation of the philosophies of Dewey and Whitehead.)
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Nobo, J.L. (1986) Whiteheads Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986.(This work contains very useful analyses and clarifications of Whiteheads central concepts.) Palter, R.M. (1960) Whiteheads Philosophy of Science, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; 2nd edn, 1970. (A technical and detailed analysis of Whiteheads theories of extension, including an account of his relativity theory.) Quine, W.V. (1941) Whitehead and the Rise of Modern Logic in P.A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of A.N. Whitehead, The Library Of Living Philosophers, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 127-63.(An indispensable analysis, partly technical, which presents Whitehead as tending to platonic realism.) Rapp, F. and Wiehl R. (eds) (1983) Whiteheads Metaphysics of Creativity, Proceedings of the International Whitehead Symposium, Freiburg and Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1986; trans. G. Treash et al. New York: State University of New York Press, 1990. (A useful collection of essays mainly by German philosophers and theologians.) Russell, B. (1948) Whitehead and Principia Mathematica, Mind 57, 137-8. (An account of the co-authorship of Principia, emphasizing Whiteheads role.) Russell, B. (1956) Portraits From Memory, London: Allen & Unwin, 1956, ch. 5.(An historically important and amusing account of the influence on Russell of Whiteheads early thoughts on construction.) Schmidt, P.F. (1967) Perception and Cosmology in A.N. Whiteheads Philosophy, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967.(A clear and detailed analysis of Whiteheads philosophical development.) Wahl, J. (1932) Vers le concret, Paris: Vrin.(An influential analysis of Whiteheads place in twentieth-century philosophy, relating him to Heidegger and others.) Wilson, E. (1931) Axels Castle, New York: Charles Scribners Sons. (The conceptual connections between Whiteheads thought and twentieth-century literature, Proust in particular.)

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