WEBVTT

00:01.790 --> 00:05.510
>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

00:05.510 --> 00:19.210
[ Pause ] 

00:19.210 --> 00:23.340
>>It's a pleasure to welcome you here to the Library of Congress,

00:23.340 --> 00:27.650
I am Carolyn Brown, I direct the Office of Scholarly Programs

00:27.650 --> 00:31.900
and the John W. Kluge Center here at the library.

00:31.900 --> 00:35.260
And before we proceed, the first thing I always request is

00:35.260 --> 00:40.750
that you turn off all cellphones and other electronic equipment

00:40.750 --> 00:44.770
which can bing and bonk and sing and interrupt the speaker

00:44.770 --> 00:49.390
and perhaps also interfere with the recording.

00:49.390 --> 00:50.840
 

00:50.840 --> 00:54.150
This morning's symposium will consider the intellectual legacy

00:54.150 --> 00:58.450
of Alfred North Whitehead, it's sponsored by the Manuscript Division

00:58.450 --> 01:03.710
of the Library of Congress and the Office of Scholarly Programs

01:03.710 --> 01:10.570
and happens to really coincide with the 150th anniversary

01:10.570 --> 01:15.720
of Alfred North Whitehead's birth and a 100th anniversary,

01:15.720 --> 01:17.100
more or less of the publication 

01:17.100 --> 01:22.600
of Principia Mathematica written with Bertrand Russell.

01:22.600 --> 01:26.830
The particular occupation and motivation for the symposium,

01:26.830 --> 01:31.480
however, lies in the very generous donation to the Manuscript Division

01:31.480 --> 01:38.380
of a very rare 1936 letter by Alfred North Whitehead to his colleague

01:38.380 --> 01:43.020
and research assistant, Henry Leonard in this letter

01:43.020 --> 01:48.460
which we had an opportunity to see in the back of the room was donated

01:48.460 --> 01:52.440
to the library by Dr. Leonard's son who's here with us this morning

01:52.440 --> 01:53.950
and we'll hear from him in a moment. 

01:53.950 --> 01:57.040
Let me say a few words about the Kluge Center

01:57.040 --> 01:59.750
and the Manuscript Division. 

01:59.750 --> 02:04.130
The Kluge Center was established through a generous donation

02:04.130 --> 02:09.710
of John W. Kluge in the year 2000 and was given with the intent

02:09.710 --> 02:15.560
of bringing together the world's best thinkers and the doers,

02:15.560 --> 02:21.980
the scholars and the legislators and other public officials.

02:21.980 --> 02:27.280
The idea was that the legislators, the doers need access to some

02:27.280 --> 02:30.800
of the very best thought being generated.

02:30.800 --> 02:33.900
The center supports the world's most accomplished senior scholars

02:33.900 --> 02:37.750
and most promising, rising junior fellows.

02:37.750 --> 02:42.810
We also promote small conferences and lectures such as this one.

02:42.810 --> 02:47.240
For those of you who are local you can sign up for more information

02:47.240 --> 02:49.860
about the center or if you're not local--

02:49.860 --> 02:52.520
in our programs, you've got-- 

02:52.520 --> 02:55.780
on the library's front page on the right hand side,

02:55.780 --> 02:59.200
you'll see Kluge Center and you could follow the instructions.

02:59.200 --> 03:02.530
And I should say, since we're sitting right here,

03:02.530 --> 03:04.950
the Kluge Center is literally through those doors.

03:04.950 --> 03:09.600
So, perhaps later if you'd like a tour, I can provide that.

03:09.600 --> 03:13.290
Our partner in this enterprise though, and the real heroes

03:13.290 --> 03:17.470
of the day is the Manuscript Division.

03:17.470 --> 03:23.340
Manuscript Division is-- is the home of this very rare letter

03:23.340 --> 03:25.390
which joins a distinguished collection

03:25.390 --> 03:30.730
of 11,000 individual collections of papers that document all aspects

03:30.730 --> 03:33.860
of American history and culture. 

03:33.860 --> 03:37.670
These include not only the papers of many US Presidents,

03:37.670 --> 03:40.940
Cabinet Secretaries, members of the Supreme Court,

03:40.940 --> 03:44.520
but also some of the nation's greatest manuscript treasures,

03:44.520 --> 03:49.340
such as Jefferson's rough draft of The Declaration of Independence

03:49.340 --> 03:50.910
which is a wonder to-- to behold. 

03:50.910 --> 03:54.640
Every student who's writing should see the drafts

03:54.640 --> 03:57.580
with the lines crossed out and the letters and whatnot,

03:57.580 --> 04:02.490
Lincoln's Gettysburg address, the paper tape

04:02.490 --> 04:04.880
of the telegraphic message 

04:04.880 --> 04:08.610
and Alexander Graham Bells' first drawing for the telephone,

04:08.610 --> 04:10.780
and lots of other treasures as well. 

04:10.780 --> 04:14.040
So we're really honored and privileged to have been chosen

04:14.040 --> 04:17.050
as the recipients of this rare letter.

04:17.050 --> 04:20.060
We invite everyone to take a look at in the book--

04:20.060 --> 04:24.680
in the Principia Mathematica, a copy signed by Bertrand Russell,

04:24.680 --> 04:30.280
and their copies of the letter in transcript's available.

04:30.280 --> 04:35.070
I wanna thank particularly the Manuscript Division

04:35.070 --> 04:38.770
for their excellent work making the symposium possible.

04:38.770 --> 04:42.150
First to Jim Hutson who was very disappointed

04:42.150 --> 04:46.070
that he couldn't be here, he was really the cause

04:46.070 --> 04:49.510
of this you might say when he heard about the letter.

04:49.510 --> 04:51.700
He said, "You know, people don't know enough about Whitehead,

04:51.700 --> 04:56.150
we ought to do a lecture or symposium or something."

04:56.150 --> 04:59.560
Also, I would like to thank Karen Stuart who's over there in--

04:59.560 --> 05:05.250
in the back, a very special invaluable technical assistant

05:05.250 --> 05:07.040
in the Manuscript Division. 

05:07.040 --> 05:10.250
And you'll notice the books are never left alone--

05:10.250 --> 05:11.740
or that letters are left alone. 

05:11.740 --> 05:18.140
She's part of the guard here and then especially to Len Bruno,

05:18.140 --> 05:20.260
who many of you have met in the back,

05:20.260 --> 05:24.120
who is the manuscript specialist for Science and Technology who attended

05:24.120 --> 05:28.050
to every detail of this event, the fact that things are

05:28.050 --> 05:33.630
so well prepared and that you have handouts et cetera is thanks to Len.

05:33.630 --> 05:37.550
I hope you picked up files of the speakers, we have a lot crammed

05:37.550 --> 05:40.850
in this morning, so I'm not gonna do the usual introductions.

05:40.850 --> 05:43.240
I think you can just read these. 

05:43.240 --> 05:48.380
I-- I told all the speakers that I would try to be generous

05:48.380 --> 05:51.570
in my introduction then I would turn into a tyrant.

05:51.570 --> 05:55.500
'Cause I am gonna keep people on time with my little warning minutes,

05:55.500 --> 05:57.000
3 minutes, 1 minute left. 

05:57.000 --> 06:01.130
And I don't think I'll have the nerve to use this, but I have been

06:01.130 --> 06:06.260
in conferences where people use an egg timer to keep people on track.

06:06.260 --> 06:08.540
I don't think I'll do that, but we'll see.

06:08.540 --> 06:15.780
Let me say something then more about the structure.

06:15.780 --> 06:19.830
When we get to the ten-minute mark, I will-- or whatever the time is,

06:19.830 --> 06:23.310
'cause our key note has 40 minutes, I will stand up

06:23.310 --> 06:26.850
and it may seem crude, my mother would probably think it was rude

06:26.850 --> 06:30.760
but anyway, we do need to sort of stay on-- on more or less on track.

06:30.760 --> 06:35.450
And then the questions as you'll see will follow the block of speakers.

06:35.450 --> 06:40.180
The restrooms, this is a wonderful building

06:40.180 --> 06:43.020
but things can be hard to find. 

06:43.020 --> 06:46.420
The men's room is down McCarter and 1 flight down,

06:46.420 --> 06:49.370
for the ladies you can go down McCarter

06:49.370 --> 06:53.500
across the Great Hall behind the giant Bible of Mainz is

06:53.500 --> 06:55.590
like a secret entrance to the ladies room.

06:55.590 --> 06:59.120
But you'll see it when you'll see it when you get-- when you get close.

06:59.120 --> 07:02.660
We'll take a break a break at 10:30 resume promptly at 10:45.

07:02.660 --> 07:07.150
So, I'll be out trying to round people up trying to be sure you're--

07:07.150 --> 07:12.270
you're back here, and because the 2nd panel is in 2 stages,

07:12.270 --> 07:15.580
when the 1st 3 speakers finish I'll ask the others

07:15.580 --> 07:19.010
to just get up and switch places. 

07:19.010 --> 07:22.350
I think that's all for the preliminaries, and oh,

07:22.350 --> 07:27.500
I've been a little bit blessed than my 10 minutes,

07:27.500 --> 07:30.290
so that's great we save a little time here.

07:30.290 --> 07:37.860
I do at this point want to ask you to welcome Dr. Henry Leonard Jr.

07:37.860 --> 07:41.410
to talk about his father and the Whitehead connection

07:41.410 --> 07:45.370
and how the letter came to be at the library.

07:45.370 --> 07:46.230
So, please Henry. 

07:46.230 --> 07:49.770
You can stay seated or stand whatever you prefer.

07:49.770 --> 07:52.010
[ Applause ]   [ Pause ]

07:52.010 --> 08:00.110
 

08:00.110 --> 08:00.730
>> Good morning. 

08:00.730 --> 08:06.830
It's thrilling to be here in this beautiful room with all you people

08:06.830 --> 08:10.320
to tell you a bit about my father, Henry S. Leonard

08:10.320 --> 08:14.310
and Alfred North Whitehead and the letter from Whitehead.

08:14.310 --> 08:20.630
My father was born in West Newton, Massachusetts in 1905 and took all

08:20.630 --> 08:27.510
of his degrees at Harvard University, the PhD in 1931.

08:27.510 --> 08:32.390
He was awarded the Boden Prize in Philosophy in 1929,

08:32.390 --> 08:36.290
one of Harvard's most prestigious awards.

08:36.290 --> 08:41.250
During the year 1929-'30, he was a travelling fellow from Harvard

08:41.250 --> 08:44.150
at the University of Munich in Germany.

08:44.150 --> 08:51.870
My parents were married in early October 1929 just before starting

08:51.870 --> 08:53.720
the trip. 

08:53.720 --> 08:57.120
At Harvard, Henry Leonard studied mainly under C.I.

08:57.120 --> 09:01.410
Lewis, H.M. Sheffer and A.N. Whitehead.

09:01.410 --> 09:05.100
He taught at Harvard and Rochester during the depression

09:05.100 --> 09:10.220
and in 1937 he went to Duke University for 12 years.

09:10.220 --> 09:15.320
In 1949, he became professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy

09:15.320 --> 09:17.480
at Michigan State University. 

09:17.480 --> 09:20.400
I think later the title head was changed, but that--

09:20.400 --> 09:23.430
on those days it was Head. 

09:23.430 --> 09:30.040
And there he remained until his sudden death in July 1967.

09:30.040 --> 09:33.540
At MSU he played an important part in the development

09:33.540 --> 09:37.920
of the Philosophy Department and of the university as a whole.

09:37.920 --> 09:42.410
He was appointed to one of the first special university professorships

09:42.410 --> 09:43.900
in 1961. 

09:43.900 --> 09:50.530
From 1959 to 1961, Henry Leonard was a fellow of the Institute

09:50.530 --> 09:53.580
for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

09:53.580 --> 09:55.040
 

09:55.040 --> 10:01.000
In 1936, the book Philosophical Essays was published in honor

10:01.000 --> 10:02.040
of Alfred North Whitehead. 

10:02.040 --> 10:06.340
>> It consisted of essays written by some

10:06.340 --> 10:11.290
of his former students including the essay Logical Positivism

10:11.290 --> 10:15.190
and Speculative Philosophy written by my father.

10:15.190 --> 10:17.580
Shortly after the book was published,

10:17.580 --> 10:21.830
my father received a six-paged hand written letter from Whitehead.

10:21.830 --> 10:26.430
To quote my father, "The letter opens with appreciative comments

10:26.430 --> 10:30.500
on my contributions to the Whitehead's fast drift.

10:30.500 --> 10:35.380
But Whitehead's uses these comments only as a stepping stone to remarks

10:35.380 --> 10:40.190
of a more general import which perhaps throw some additional light

10:40.190 --> 10:46.000
on Whitehead's intellectual stance, it is primarily for this reason

10:46.000 --> 10:51.610
that I have decided to publish the letter here."

10:51.610 --> 10:58.030
My father wrote these words about 1966 as part of a manuscript

10:58.030 --> 10:59.940
that was intended to be a collection 

10:59.940 --> 11:04.290
with commentaries of some of his papers.

11:04.290 --> 11:07.570
Unfortunately, the manuscript, while carefully planned

11:07.570 --> 11:10.140
and outlined was left very incomplete

11:10.140 --> 11:13.240
by his sudden untimely death. 

11:13.240 --> 11:16.480
I believe the letter from Whitehead was seldom far

11:16.480 --> 11:19.610
from my father's thinking. 

11:19.610 --> 11:24.990
Apparently his essay in the fast drift, his comments about the essay,

11:24.990 --> 11:28.350
the letter and comments about the letter would have constituted the

11:28.350 --> 11:31.190
first chapter of his book. 

11:31.190 --> 11:33.720
My mother wrote a transcript of the letter because some

11:33.720 --> 11:38.430
of the handwriting is difficult to read.

11:38.430 --> 11:41.090
After my father's death, my mother kept the letter

11:41.090 --> 11:44.450
in her safe deposit box at her bank. 

11:44.450 --> 11:50.320
When she died in 1980 it became my responsibility to place the letter--

11:50.320 --> 11:54.320
the Whitehead letter in a suitable repository.

11:54.320 --> 11:59.100
In May 2009, Ronald Phipps learned of my e-mail address

11:59.100 --> 12:02.870
and we've been good-- have become good friends.

12:02.870 --> 12:03.910
 

12:03.910 --> 12:06.990
He had been my father's personal teaching

12:06.990 --> 12:13.400
and research assistant from1961 until 1967.

12:13.400 --> 12:16.780
Soon after Phipps contacted me, I sent him a copy

12:16.780 --> 12:20.520
of Whitehead's letter and some related papers.

12:20.520 --> 12:21.830
As one thing led to another, 

12:21.830 --> 12:25.440
the Library of Congress expressed an interest in the letter.

12:25.440 --> 12:33.450
It became joyfully clear to me that here was a wonderful opportunity

12:33.450 --> 12:35.520
to preserve the letter and to make it available

12:35.520 --> 12:37.450
to interested scholars and to the public.

12:37.450 --> 12:41.920
I am privilege to be here to participate in this meeting

12:41.920 --> 12:45.760
to celebrate where I'd headed my father's association with him.

12:45.760 --> 12:48.640
It is indeed gratifying to know that my father's work

12:48.640 --> 12:52.960
and his relationship to Whitehead are important to scholars.

12:52.960 --> 12:55.510
I look forward to this morning's talks.

12:55.510 --> 13:09.440
[ Applause ] 

13:09.440 --> 13:13.620
>> Next, we're going to here from Dr. Ronan Farber

13:13.620 --> 13:18.340
and this is our opportunity, and especially my opportunity,

13:18.340 --> 13:23.530
I would say-- all of us to get a good overview

13:23.530 --> 13:28.220
of Whitehead's thought and his legacy.

13:28.220 --> 13:32.120
To really answer the question, why are we here

13:32.120 --> 13:34.100
and why is this so important?   So please welcome, Dr. Farber.

13:34.100 --> 13:36.510
 

13:36.510 --> 13:45.040
[ Applause ]   >> Good morning!

13:45.040 --> 13:45.670
 

13:45.670 --> 13:48.300
I wanna thank Carolyn Brown for inviting us here

13:48.300 --> 13:50.340
to this important event and I say this

13:50.340 --> 13:52.630
for all the participants if I may. 

13:52.630 --> 13:58.810
And also her Manuscript Division for preparing everything, for this,

13:58.810 --> 14:01.850
you know, conference and symposium. 

14:01.850 --> 14:07.930
So, in celebration of Whitehead's 150th birthday, and in conjunction

14:07.930 --> 14:14.690
with this appearance and publication of a letter of Whitehead

14:14.690 --> 14:19.410
to his assistant that the assistant of the assistant brought back

14:19.410 --> 14:23.420
to light, so to say, I was asked to reflect

14:23.420 --> 14:26.400
on Whitehead's work and its importance.

14:26.400 --> 14:30.820
So please for the next 40 minutes sit back, fasten your seatbelts

14:30.820 --> 14:37.610
and relax or pass out maybe at a certain point.

14:37.610 --> 14:41.640
[Laughter] I will go like within 4 phases, the first phase it will be

14:41.640 --> 14:44.850
like an overview, a kind of a vision.

14:44.850 --> 14:46.540
Second one is about what's it worth. 

14:46.540 --> 14:52.630
The third phase will be about the future of Whitehead

14:52.630 --> 14:55.320
and importance, the fourth one. 

14:55.320 --> 15:00.720
So, how to approach the phenomenon of Whitehead in 40 minutes?

15:00.720 --> 15:06.030
And if you have kind of thought of Whitehead like for 15 years or so,

15:06.030 --> 15:10.880
then that's really a problem to get everything back into 40 minutes.

15:10.880 --> 15:16.690
How to unfold such a complex work, reaching from mathematics and logic

15:16.690 --> 15:19.870
to philosophy and theology, and physics

15:19.870 --> 15:22.990
 

15:22.990 --> 15:24.070
 

15:24.070 --> 15:28.560
Whatever our highlight will be overshadowed by a much greater cloud

15:28.560 --> 15:32.360
of oblivion, so I should concede to the impossibility

15:32.360 --> 15:36.050
of the impossible and just step down.

15:36.050 --> 15:37.300
 

15:37.300 --> 15:41.050
While pondering this calamity, it appears to me that the landscape

15:41.050 --> 15:45.640
of Whitehead's universe itself structures this impossibility.

15:45.640 --> 15:53.830
I call it Whitehead's Binocular View of Things, a polarity in all things.

15:53.830 --> 15:56.490
Not only does it indicate the advantage of more

15:56.490 --> 15:59.220
than one perspective, but it suggests

15:59.220 --> 16:03.200
that reality is always incurably complex while turning

16:03.200 --> 16:07.990
against our understanding through antagonisms of opposites.

16:07.990 --> 16:11.990
My title already hints at such a polarity 300 years

16:11.990 --> 16:13.930
of Whitehead halfway. 

16:13.930 --> 16:18.230
It is enough to review-- is it enough to review the past,

16:18.230 --> 16:21.730
the genesis of Whitehead's thoughts, it's influence and currency?

16:21.730 --> 16:26.230
As important as it may be, it should not be also envisioned the future

16:26.230 --> 16:28.070
or it's potency. 

16:28.070 --> 16:32.440
Why did he intensely concern himself with the intellectual reconstruction

16:32.440 --> 16:37.760
of the preceding 3 centuries, their inventions and revolutions of though

16:37.760 --> 16:42.280
and social life while adamantly critiquing their shortcomings

16:42.280 --> 16:47.110
and downfalls especially the newly arrived ideologists of positivism

16:47.110 --> 16:49.750
and scientific materialism? 

16:49.750 --> 16:53.660
Yet Whitehead was also deeply engaged in matters of the future,

16:53.660 --> 16:56.680
the latencies of society and structure of thought

16:56.680 --> 16:59.520
that would avoid the pitfalls of the past,

16:59.520 --> 17:03.330
and instead express the transformative processes his own

17:03.330 --> 17:06.280
thinking was meant to initiate. 

17:06.280 --> 17:12.140
In 1940, he suggested in a conversation with Charles Lindberg

17:12.140 --> 17:18.940
that despite the Great War underway, he believed that over the next 2

17:18.940 --> 17:22.480
or 3 centuries humanity might be able to works

17:22.480 --> 17:26.850
out its problems without undue suffering.

17:26.850 --> 17:31.720
Whitehead obviously demonstrates a deep trust in the human ability

17:31.720 --> 17:37.450
to always decide anew on a civilized world.

17:37.450 --> 17:41.330
And his life's work can be understood to spell out this trust

17:41.330 --> 17:45.530
with a virtually unending series of binocular perspectives.

17:45.530 --> 17:50.370
From the twin perspectives of Mathematics and Philosophy

17:50.370 --> 17:54.280
and the rejection of the bifurcation of nature into independent systems

17:54.280 --> 17:58.730
of matter and mind, to the covalence of science and religion,

17:58.730 --> 18:03.670
from the critique of abstractions if taken for the concrete and

18:03.670 --> 18:07.510
yet the cherishing of abstractions as motor of evolutionary--

18:07.510 --> 18:11.940
of the evolutionary process to an organic philosophy

18:11.940 --> 18:17.260
in which both ideas and processes are reconciled, from the rhythms

18:17.260 --> 18:21.850
of becoming and perishing, to the intersection of fact and value

18:21.850 --> 18:27.020
and the meaningful oscillation between the world and God.

18:27.020 --> 18:29.400
All oppositions, checks to positions 

18:29.400 --> 18:33.300
and double perspectives move neither [inaudible]

18:33.300 --> 18:39.430
on abstract grounds not resting fused in a higher unity.

18:39.430 --> 18:43.360
Whitehead found ultimate refuge in this dynamics itself

18:43.360 --> 18:48.310
as it motivates all binaries to coalesce in forming contrasts

18:48.310 --> 18:51.940
of differentiated complex moving cosmos comes alive,

18:51.940 --> 18:57.740
neither dissolving into sameness nor breaking apart into mere opposites.

18:57.740 --> 19:00.490
No wonder that Whitehead in his magnum Opposed Process

19:00.490 --> 19:04.700
and Reality Claims, the ultimate ground of everything not

19:04.700 --> 19:11.100
to be anything we can arrest, being or God, matter or mind,

19:11.100 --> 19:16.200
but the creative process itself graciously countless.

19:16.200 --> 19:18.950
Whitehead may well have been one of the first thinkers

19:18.950 --> 19:24.610
to reference creativity in such ultimate metaphysical terms

19:24.610 --> 19:28.770
yet this hub is another binocular mystery.

19:28.770 --> 19:32.620
If you read Whitehead the first time and even if you become a specialist,

19:32.620 --> 19:37.550
it is puzzling why this philosophy of creativity is enveloped

19:37.550 --> 19:42.390
in the most complex conceptual system.

19:42.390 --> 19:46.480
We may begin to grasp this paradox by recognizing that its aim is

19:46.480 --> 19:51.520
to avoid the tendency to stabilize fluency instead of making us kings

19:51.520 --> 19:54.340
of reality by mastering fixed abstractions,

19:54.340 --> 19:58.650
its complex conceptual apparatus presents itself as a gift,

19:58.650 --> 20:02.870
a method of unthinking if you will, forcing us always

20:02.870 --> 20:05.920
to render the process of-- 

20:05.920 --> 20:08.980
to reenter the process of thinking again.

20:08.980 --> 20:12.850
>> Always anew to become seekers of new ideas and creators

20:12.850 --> 20:17.760
of new realities in the pursuit of the art of life.

20:17.760 --> 20:21.350
With creativity as ground and contrasting as method

20:21.350 --> 20:24.330
in mind we can add two further characteristics

20:24.330 --> 20:29.080
of Whitehead's binocular perspectivism, mutuality,

20:29.080 --> 20:34.490
the mode of togetherness and the event, the place of its happening.

20:34.490 --> 20:36.440
The first mutuality appears 

20:36.440 --> 20:39.060
in endless variation throughout Whitehead's work.

20:39.060 --> 20:45.030
In his last public lecture Immortality given in 1941 Whitehead

20:45.030 --> 20:50.330
in the strongest and most universal terms possible summarizes his view

20:50.330 --> 20:53.560
in terms of the essential relevance of every factor

20:53.560 --> 20:55.990
of the universe for the other.   Everything is a contrast of finitude

20:55.990 --> 20:58.440
 

20:58.440 --> 21:02.910
and infinity involving an indefinite array of perspectives.

21:02.910 --> 21:06.720
No finer perspective can ever shake off the essential connection

21:06.720 --> 21:09.290
with its infinite background. 

21:09.290 --> 21:14.150
However, since these mutually contrasting perspectives are in need

21:14.150 --> 21:18.210
of a meeting place within the flux of things Whitehead envisions them

21:18.210 --> 21:24.910
to convene in events momentarily unifications of differences becoming

21:24.910 --> 21:29.140
from the complex multiplicities they gather, they add themselves

21:29.140 --> 21:31.870
to a new multiplicity of perspectives issuing

21:31.870 --> 21:36.540
into novel creative processes that generates the universe.

21:36.540 --> 21:39.800
Yes, Whitehead was a pluralist. 

21:39.800 --> 21:43.250
Yet he filtered his pluralism through concrete events

21:43.250 --> 21:46.300
in which past and future, abstract and concrete,

21:46.300 --> 21:51.330
flux and permanence find themselves in mutual enjoyment.

21:51.330 --> 21:54.280
In a momentary suspension of inherent conflicts,

21:54.280 --> 21:59.160
their contrasted opposites avoid the impasse of a motionless coagulation

21:59.160 --> 22:04.370
and instead generate a creative passage into the unprecedented.

22:04.370 --> 22:07.140
Because of the enjoyment of togetherness,

22:07.140 --> 22:11.320
the contrasting perspectives convene in events of experience

22:11.320 --> 22:17.740
and the universe exhibits the convergence of diverse perspectives

22:17.740 --> 22:21.940
in the mutual immanence of experiences of events.

22:21.940 --> 22:25.500
In his rhythms of synthesis, Whitehead finds a sign

22:25.500 --> 22:29.180
of eternal greatness already incarnate in the passage

22:29.180 --> 22:31.950
of temporal fact as he says. 

22:31.950 --> 22:35.970
Beyond all technicalities, this may explain Whitehead's trust

22:35.970 --> 22:36.870
in the future. 

22:36.870 --> 22:41.550
Diffused through its intricate modes of flux the world process

22:41.550 --> 22:45.790
yet displays essential rightness of things.

22:45.790 --> 22:49.790
Well not the means for preservation, it reveals itself as harbinger

22:49.790 --> 22:54.320
of the ever renewed potential to create a world

22:54.320 --> 22:57.020
and since the creation of the world strolls in the mutuality

22:57.020 --> 23:02.220
of perspectives it [inaudible] the victory of persuasion over force.

23:02.220 --> 23:07.150
It is not dominated by the iron necessity of a harmonic of logic.

23:07.150 --> 23:11.790
Instead it is vivified as what it says by an aesthetic harmonics

23:11.790 --> 23:15.490
that stands before it as a living ideal.

23:15.490 --> 23:18.130
Its promise is beyond our grasp. 

23:18.130 --> 23:21.660
It always-- but it always steers the channel of flux

23:21.660 --> 23:26.690
in its broken progress towards finer, subtler issues.

23:26.690 --> 23:30.240
So what does this first sketch of Whitehead's thoughts reveal

23:30.240 --> 23:34.780
if not a polyglot thinker inviting us to embark on the adventure

23:34.780 --> 23:43.480
of a cosmos that in its very texture manifests one vast aesthetic whole.

23:43.480 --> 23:47.990
This process even patiently awaits the appearance

23:47.990 --> 23:50.430
of human civilization. 

23:50.430 --> 23:53.440
While refining itself through the intensities of art,

23:53.440 --> 23:57.640
ethics and religion, it also invites instigation

23:57.640 --> 24:01.680
into its nature revealing its mathematical, physical,

24:01.680 --> 24:04.060
 

24:04.060 --> 24:05.780
 

24:05.780 --> 24:09.100
But how did Whitehead's universe become?

24:09.100 --> 24:13.970
The furthest way to circumscribe the career that created it is

24:13.970 --> 24:18.230
to recall its inception at the Trinity College in Cambridge,

24:18.230 --> 24:21.490
England and its summit at Harvard University

24:21.490 --> 24:24.220
in Cambridge, New England. 

24:24.220 --> 24:27.020
While the roles with mathematics and the tradition of Plato,

24:27.020 --> 24:30.560
it transmuted into metaphysics in the tradition of Plato.

24:30.560 --> 24:36.000
In fact, both mathematics and philosophy were already confluent

24:36.000 --> 24:39.740
in Plato of whom Whitehead henceforth thought

24:39.740 --> 24:43.000
that the western philosophic tradition only adds itself

24:43.000 --> 24:46.280
as a series of extended footnotes.   But Whitehead was not a Platonist.

24:46.280 --> 24:48.540
 

24:48.540 --> 24:53.240
He admired the depth of Plato's thought and his biological methods,

24:53.240 --> 24:55.410
never fixing on anything. 

24:55.410 --> 24:57.680
It always uncovers missed alternatives

24:57.680 --> 25:00.770
in any crystallization of thought.   Depth can never be systematized.

25:00.770 --> 25:03.580
 

25:03.580 --> 25:06.770
Its truth can only be approximated with utmost sensitivity

25:06.770 --> 25:08.870
to the vastness of the universe 

25:08.870 --> 25:13.150
and humility before its never seizing becoming.

25:13.150 --> 25:17.250
If we are meant to find rhythms in it mathematical, physical,

25:17.250 --> 25:20.510
metaphysical then it is because of the relation

25:20.510 --> 25:24.240
of the cosmic ingredients rather than any prefabricated

25:24.240 --> 25:28.150
or they're simply there to be discovered.

25:28.150 --> 25:31.810
We can divide Whitehead's work into 3 phases roughly coinciding

25:31.810 --> 25:38.390
with the positions he held in Cambridge in London and Harvard.

25:38.390 --> 25:42.820
Although Whitehead, early on already explored many areas history,

25:42.820 --> 25:47.610
philosophy, theology, politics, women's emancipation, education,

25:47.610 --> 25:51.470
his professional focus at Cambridge was mathematics

25:51.470 --> 25:54.850
or more precisely its interface with the physical universe

25:54.850 --> 25:58.450
in terms of topology and logics. 

25:58.450 --> 26:01.710
The major works of these periods such as Universal Algebra,

26:01.710 --> 26:04.490
Mathematical Concepts of the Material World

26:04.490 --> 26:09.640
or the Principia Mathematica circumscribe his interest

26:09.640 --> 26:12.280
to explore the relations between the fundamental units

26:12.280 --> 26:15.750
of the physical world and their conceptualization.

26:15.750 --> 26:22.120
His quest has a distinctive flavor as it favors expansive concreteness,

26:22.120 --> 26:23.820
reality cannot be restruc-- 

26:23.820 --> 26:27.330
reconstructed by mere abstractions built

26:27.330 --> 26:32.620
up from dimensionless points arrested by exact measurement

26:32.620 --> 26:36.340
or captured in lifeless logical concepts.

26:36.340 --> 26:40.110
Instead, since reality is fundamentally relational becoming

26:40.110 --> 26:42.840
connections extend of space and time 

26:42.840 --> 26:45.640
and reasoning employs fluent symbolisms rather

26:45.640 --> 26:48.540
than fixed formulae. 

26:48.540 --> 26:51.880
With Whitehead's move to London the [inaudible] philosophical

26:51.880 --> 26:53.630
presuppositions of mathematic, 

26:53.630 --> 26:56.800
logic and scientific reasoning become prominent

26:56.800 --> 26:58.940
and a new element appears. 

26:58.940 --> 27:01.920
By conceptualizing nature from its perception,

27:01.920 --> 27:05.750
Whitehead defines his task against the prevailing bifurcation

27:05.750 --> 27:09.150
of external and internal reality Without

27:09.150 --> 27:13.870
yet addressing the philosophical discussion in Hume, Locke, Descartes

27:13.870 --> 27:17.850
and Kant he asserts that any knowledge of nature

27:17.850 --> 27:22.370
that includes its very perception already undercuts the dualistic

27:22.370 --> 27:27.720
isolation of natural objects from human experience.

27:27.720 --> 27:31.180
The works of this period, Principles of Natural Knowledge,

27:31.180 --> 27:33.950
The Concept of Nature and The Principle

27:33.950 --> 27:37.990
of Relativity refine Whitehead's earlier proposal

27:37.990 --> 27:42.550
that reality is expansive and that measurement is secondary

27:42.550 --> 27:45.810
and contingent on the rules of the concrete universe

27:45.810 --> 27:49.080
which in turn are contingent too. 

27:49.080 --> 27:53.030
His method of expanse-- extensive abstraction only demonstrates his

27:53.030 --> 27:57.250
philosophical agenda of redefining concrete reality as events

27:57.250 --> 28:01.860
that in their interaction form relatively persistent characters

28:01.860 --> 28:05.520
in a web of threads of space time. 

28:05.520 --> 28:08.810
He now famously interprets natural universe by a series

28:08.810 --> 28:15.520
of mutually interacting polarities, events and objects, expansion

28:15.520 --> 28:22.150
and process, abstract persistence and creative passage.

28:22.150 --> 28:24.620
This was revolutionary indeed. 

28:24.620 --> 28:30.970
If the stuff of the world itself consists impulses of fleeting events

28:30.970 --> 28:34.450
of which objects are iterations than scientific

28:34.450 --> 28:37.760
and more broadly conceptual knowledge are far

28:37.760 --> 28:41.180
from capturing nature as the Tractatus

28:41.180 --> 28:45.380
of the early Wittgenstein has made us believe.

28:45.380 --> 28:50.640
But it is more a far cry of its creative passage.

28:50.640 --> 28:54.040
Its abstractions are but snapshots of a life

28:54.040 --> 28:58.710
that if it were substantialized into merely external particles

28:58.710 --> 29:01.090
of matter invokes the image 

29:01.090 --> 29:06.590
of a funeral service mourning the ghosts of disappeared souls.

29:06.590 --> 29:10.290
Therefore, Whitehead also objects to the philosophical underpinning

29:10.290 --> 29:14.890
of Einstein's general relativity, a very tricky issue.

29:14.890 --> 29:17.830
Not relativity per se to be sure, 

29:17.830 --> 29:20.490
rather Whitehead attacks the implication

29:20.490 --> 29:26.890
that it's topology be bound by the very particles matter, their mass

29:26.890 --> 29:31.000
and gravity that are mere abstractions from the continuum

29:31.000 --> 29:34.650
of events in production of a general geometry.

29:34.650 --> 29:36.250
 

29:36.250 --> 29:42.540
Third phase, this coincides with Whitehead's move to America.

29:42.540 --> 29:45.790
Since it is known as a metaphysical phase,

29:45.790 --> 29:48.570
one may wonder whether it constitutes a break

29:48.570 --> 29:51.200
with the earlier development. 

29:51.200 --> 29:54.580
All the readers of Whitehead who at the time may have mistaken him

29:54.580 --> 29:57.530
for a mere mathematician, logician, or philosopher

29:57.530 --> 30:02.370
of science were indeed as found by his metaphysical turn.

30:02.370 --> 30:06.010
>> They may have expected a different trajectory

30:06.010 --> 30:08.530
because of what they believe to be the true potential

30:08.530 --> 30:13.660
of Whitehead's work such as being explorations into logical positivism

30:13.660 --> 30:18.590
or analytical philosophy or to simply stop reading Whitehead.

30:18.590 --> 30:20.750
 

30:20.750 --> 30:22.590
From today's perspective however, 

30:22.590 --> 30:25.360
we can better understand this conversion

30:25.360 --> 30:29.620
as a fairly logical conclusion of Whitehead's earlier thoughts.

30:29.620 --> 30:32.760
With his philosophical reconfigurations in place,

30:32.760 --> 30:37.190
creative advance, extended events, abstract objects and the relation

30:37.190 --> 30:40.880
between causality and perception, the philosophical synthesis

30:40.880 --> 30:45.150
as critic of abstractions seems almost inevitable.

30:45.150 --> 30:48.230
The major works of this period, Science and the Modern World,

30:48.230 --> 30:52.130
Process and Reality, and Adventures of Ideas

30:52.130 --> 30:55.940
like the holy triads speaks not only 

30:55.940 --> 30:59.860
to the new metaphysical method they employ and the inherent will

30:59.860 --> 31:02.930
to create a comprehensive cosmological system

31:02.930 --> 31:06.780
but they also precisely therefore answer the lingering metaphysical

31:06.780 --> 31:10.280
problem inherent in the rise of modern science and philosophy

31:10.280 --> 31:13.000
of the previous 300 hundred years.   Now Whitehead directly attacks

31:13.000 --> 31:14.990
 

31:14.990 --> 31:19.260
and systematically deconstructs the lingering scientific materialism

31:19.260 --> 31:23.030
that was still underpinning the new physics of relativity

31:23.030 --> 31:25.580
and was only slowly loosening its grip

31:25.580 --> 31:29.650
on the revolutionary concepts of quantum physics.

31:29.650 --> 31:32.700
Since this materialism interacted with modern philosophy

31:32.700 --> 31:36.770
by isolating human subjectivity from physical reality,

31:36.770 --> 31:39.930
its mechanism also led to the dismissal

31:39.930 --> 31:43.000
of value creating life leaving us 

31:43.000 --> 31:46.460
with a meaningless and dull universe.

31:46.460 --> 31:50.090
This is I think the intellectual problem to which Whitehead's letter

31:50.090 --> 31:55.360
to Leonard that this symposium is gathered to evaluate reacts.

31:55.360 --> 31:58.400
Whitehead's new metaphysics is a grand proposal,

31:58.400 --> 32:02.950
a proposal that inverts the hardened oppositions

32:02.950 --> 32:06.530
and oppressive abstractions that motivated no less than the wars

32:06.530 --> 32:10.990
of the last centuries intellectually and socially.

32:10.990 --> 32:16.430
Its new organic paradigm establishes itself as a series of alternatives.

32:16.430 --> 32:19.810
Instead of invoking a ground of being,

32:19.810 --> 32:23.770
Whitehead posits the immanence of creativity as the driving force

32:23.770 --> 32:26.030
of the becoming of the universe. 

32:26.030 --> 32:29.320
Instead of Descartes' disconnection of extension of mind

32:29.320 --> 32:33.560
or Spinoza's assumption of the both under a divine substance,

32:33.560 --> 32:37.740
Whitehead proposes an open universe comprised of myriads of events

32:37.740 --> 32:41.730
in their organizationally diverse nexuses.

32:41.730 --> 32:45.130
Instead of adopting Leibniz's view of a preexistent

32:45.130 --> 32:50.160
or pre-established order of this multiplicity in the mind of God,

32:50.160 --> 32:54.260
Whitehead delegates order to the interplay of all actualities

32:54.260 --> 32:58.090
as their decisions to realize their potentials even

32:58.090 --> 33:02.080
if they were offered by the mind of God.

33:02.080 --> 33:04.400
Instead of Plato's system of ideas flowing

33:04.400 --> 33:08.470
from an essentialized structure, Whitehead insists on grounding ideas

33:08.470 --> 33:13.510
in their relative inherence in the actual process of the cosmos

33:13.510 --> 33:16.690
against Aristotle's isolated substances,

33:16.690 --> 33:21.800
Hume's dreams of impressions and Leibniz's hermeticism of mentality

33:21.800 --> 33:25.280
and physicality, Whitehead fuses all fears--

33:25.280 --> 33:30.880
spheres in the growing together of physical and creative events.

33:30.880 --> 33:34.960
In their momentary synthesis, the whole universe convergence

33:34.960 --> 33:39.360
and in their surrender, it effectively releases itself again

33:39.360 --> 33:44.110
to a transcended future beyond itself.

33:44.110 --> 33:48.240
These alternatives again affected reversals

33:48.240 --> 33:53.390
of the philosophical tradition while the substantialists' scheme

33:53.390 --> 33:56.520
of the past was hounded by the division of active form

33:56.520 --> 34:01.630
and passive matter Whitehead reverses this association, forms,

34:01.630 --> 34:06.140
structures, patterns, characters and laws of nature are not the origin

34:06.140 --> 34:09.900
of activity but sedimentations of the possible.

34:09.900 --> 34:13.760
Events of becoming are not the mere realization of given forms

34:13.760 --> 34:18.860
but the harmonization of actualities and their associated possibilities.

34:18.860 --> 34:23.450
Potentials which Whitehead calls eternal objects are not possible

34:23.450 --> 34:28.310
actual realities as yet unrealized or realized in an alternative world

34:28.310 --> 34:33.560
but a vocations and invitations for creative actualization.

34:33.560 --> 34:36.920
While Kant could not overcome the isolation of subjectivity

34:36.920 --> 34:40.980
from physical reality Whitehead reverses the generative relations.

34:40.980 --> 34:44.630
If subjects are effects of real objects

34:44.630 --> 34:48.300
from which they gather themselves they become not only all relative

34:48.300 --> 34:52.760
to the reality they gather in their process of concretization

34:52.760 --> 34:57.060
or concrescence but also to a reality beyond themselves

34:57.060 --> 35:01.060
in which they affect new synthesis of becoming.

35:01.060 --> 35:04.750
In reversing the western preference of being over becoming,

35:04.750 --> 35:09.820
Whitehead upsets also the undisputed primacy of the higher capacities

35:09.820 --> 35:14.930
of intellect and consciousness as inherited by Descartes, Hume, Kant,

35:14.930 --> 35:16.770
Hegel, [inaudible] and Heidegger. 

35:16.770 --> 35:21.410
With the cosmic primordiality of each event feeling its actual past

35:21.410 --> 35:24.660
and desiring its relative possibilities intellect

35:24.660 --> 35:28.070
in consciousness are only complex modes if they're contrasting.

35:28.070 --> 35:33.130
T his again inverses the status of humanity in the universe instead

35:33.130 --> 35:36.510
of disconnecting humanity from evolution

35:36.510 --> 35:40.650
and nature Whitehead articulates its ecological trend,

35:40.650 --> 35:45.600
a last observation. 

35:45.600 --> 35:49.600
In a quartet of books accompanying the metaphysical phase,

35:49.600 --> 35:53.940
religion in the making, symbolism, the function of reason and modes

35:53.940 --> 35:59.220
of thoughts, Whitehead emerges as a thinker on civilization.

35:59.220 --> 36:03.200
He has already made his metaphysical case for the mutuality of fact

36:03.200 --> 36:08.770
and value in all cosmic processes without any anthropocentric bias.

36:08.770 --> 36:11.290
In these works however he demonstrates

36:11.290 --> 36:15.140
that the factors driving the development of human existence,

36:15.140 --> 36:18.600
aesthetics, symbolism, art, religion,

36:18.600 --> 36:23.010
reason and social organization emerge from cosmic forces

36:23.010 --> 36:26.940
that suggest a civilized universe as he says.

36:26.940 --> 36:30.980
They are the excess of the creative process but must be refined in order

36:30.980 --> 36:35.560
to contribute to the delicate aim Whitehead attributes

36:35.560 --> 36:40.430
to the universal process as a whole, the appearance of intensifications

36:40.430 --> 36:43.940
and harmonization within cosmic organizations.

36:43.940 --> 36:47.280
Surveying the development of Whitehead's thought

36:47.280 --> 36:52.260
over these 4 phases leads me to a conclusion that it was driven

36:52.260 --> 36:57.620
by a polarity, an expansive move towards utmost metaphysical

36:57.620 --> 37:02.690
magnitude and an inversive move toward a humble relativity

37:02.690 --> 37:10.140
of all universal insights in the arousal of its aesthetic aim.

37:10.140 --> 37:12.730
 

37:12.730 --> 37:17.280
To estimate Whitehead's importance is an extremely delicate matter

37:17.280 --> 37:18.350
for 3 reasons. 

37:18.350 --> 37:25.070
First, since the breadth of his vision is in--

37:25.070 --> 37:28.900
is a comprehensive reversal of the intellectual sedimentations

37:28.900 --> 37:31.410
of the last 300 years we may not 

37:31.410 --> 37:36.390
yet have found an excess reality to its significance.

37:36.390 --> 37:41.370
Second, since the depth of its intuition develops considerably

37:41.370 --> 37:45.640
over his own lifetime, any appraisal of his work is crucially limited

37:45.640 --> 37:48.120
by the perspective from which it starts

37:48.120 --> 37:51.120
or the phase in which it is anchored.

37:51.120 --> 37:55.700
Third, if Whitehead's universe of thought is itself untimely,

37:55.700 --> 37:58.520
it remains at some tension with the orthodox

37:58.520 --> 38:01.870
as it questions the prevalent paradigms

38:01.870 --> 38:04.270
by which it is scrutinized. 

38:04.270 --> 38:06.290
While Whitehead undertook the reshaping

38:06.290 --> 38:10.110
of the conceptual conditions under which the scientific revolutions

38:10.110 --> 38:14.590
of the early 20th century departed from past paradigms,

38:14.590 --> 38:20.960
his new philosophical prospect may well be ahead of their limitations.

38:20.960 --> 38:25.300
As Whitehead in a prophetic passage in Adventures of Ideas foresees

38:25.300 --> 38:28.650
when one introduces relevant alternatives excluded

38:28.650 --> 38:33.260
from physical realization one may not be appreciated.

38:33.260 --> 38:35.250
In other words, when the virus 

38:35.250 --> 38:40.010
of novelty strikes an established organism may initiate defensive

38:40.010 --> 38:45.150
counter measures to immunize its old ways of life.

38:45.150 --> 38:47.290
Consider that cohabitation of mathematics

38:47.290 --> 38:48.810
and philosophy in Whitehead's work. 

38:48.810 --> 38:53.870
Does the metaphysical phase subsume the mathematical critically

38:53.870 --> 38:59.810
resituated or even at least partly append on its earlier preconditions.

38:59.810 --> 39:02.740
Does the critic of the scientific, philosophical,

39:02.740 --> 39:07.390
and religious traditions isolate it outside their sphere

39:07.390 --> 39:12.510
or instigate a new contrast with ignored alternatives?

39:12.510 --> 39:15.190
Does it secularize cosmological function

39:15.190 --> 39:18.290
of God make Whitehead a dead man walking?

39:18.290 --> 39:20.830
Given the magnitude natures declaration of the death

39:20.830 --> 39:24.680
of God has had on the intellectual climate of the 20th century

39:24.680 --> 39:27.550
with its two all encompassing wars 

39:27.550 --> 39:31.270
or does it harbor a viable alternative whose relevance we have

39:31.270 --> 39:34.560
hardly understood yet? 

39:34.560 --> 39:37.840
And finally, is Whitehead's organic paradigm that finds a place

39:37.840 --> 39:42.530
for purpose in all realms of the universe a dream of a lost time

39:42.530 --> 39:46.640
which meaningful science and philosophy must resist

39:46.640 --> 39:49.640
or is it the stroke of a genius that will be part

39:49.640 --> 39:51.570
of any satisfying understanding 

39:51.570 --> 39:55.710
of the equal cosmic continuum in the future?

39:55.710 --> 40:00.370
A certain air of surprise remains in all of its moves irrespective

40:00.370 --> 40:04.780
of the subtle continuity found from a later standpoint

40:04.780 --> 40:09.040
and the harvest remains ambivalent. 

40:09.040 --> 40:14.050
>> Was the principia arguably one of the most impressive works

40:14.050 --> 40:18.150
of 20th century mathematics and logic dethroned

40:18.150 --> 40:24.480
or its logocentrism abandoned by Whitehead's own metaphysics or not?

40:24.480 --> 40:28.690
Is Whitehead's alternative relativity theory although it had

40:28.690 --> 40:32.290
some currency at the time of its inception date in light

40:32.290 --> 40:35.300
of the predictive power of Einstein's version

40:35.300 --> 40:40.750
or is its underlying logical approach still a future project?

40:40.750 --> 40:43.740
Was Whitehead's metaphysical term the last rearing

40:43.740 --> 40:49.280
of a dinosaur helplessly out of sync with the pulse of post-modern times?

40:49.280 --> 40:54.680
Or is it a subversive spark we have yet to fully grasp?

40:54.680 --> 40:57.160
The last judgment has not yet arrived.

40:57.160 --> 41:01.900
Whitehead's philosophy also leaves us

41:01.900 --> 41:05.710
with a fascinating picture [inaudible] and Heidegger are taught

41:05.710 --> 41:09.800
at the same time as Whitehead was leaving for Harvard.

41:09.800 --> 41:13.420
Existentialism and phenomenology attacked metaphysics

41:13.420 --> 41:17.550
as logical positivists like Karl Marx, [inaudible], Whitehead writes

41:17.550 --> 41:20.610
when he turns to metaphysics.   Wittgenstein himself, a student

41:20.610 --> 41:22.810
 

41:22.810 --> 41:26.110
of Whitehead's colleague Russell changed the philosophic outlook

41:26.110 --> 41:31.460
yet again just as Whitehead has found his cosmological voice.

41:31.460 --> 41:35.280
All sides it seems of the philosophical empire took turns

41:35.280 --> 41:40.180
in directions counter to Whitehead's intuition in turn diminishing

41:40.180 --> 41:46.790
as a perceptivity and relativity for the case.

41:46.790 --> 41:51.140
Alternatives of credibility, such as American pragmatism were marked

41:51.140 --> 41:55.190
by James, Dewey, and Bergson rather that Whitehead.

41:55.190 --> 41:58.010
Why? Because of the paradoxical nature

41:58.010 --> 42:01.610
of his philosophical contrasts concerning this,

42:01.610 --> 42:04.950
[inaudible] denigrated as a realm of rationalism

42:04.950 --> 42:10.070
or alternatively unbridled fantasy Whitehead's metaphysical emphasis--

42:10.070 --> 42:15.800
emphasizes, metaphysics emphasizes empirical endeavor like pragmatism,

42:15.800 --> 42:20.330
interpretation like hermeneutics, decision like existentialism,

42:20.330 --> 42:22.850
experience like phenomenology, 

42:22.850 --> 42:25.310
coherence like the analytic tradition,

42:25.310 --> 42:27.920
symbolism like language philosophy. 

42:27.920 --> 42:30.210
Yet Whitehead subversively counters them

42:30.210 --> 42:34.790
with equally disturbing contrasts while empirical metaphysics remain

42:34.790 --> 42:36.780
stubbornly speculative. 

42:36.780 --> 42:40.300
While hermeneutical it remains stubbornly systematic.

42:40.300 --> 42:44.260
While close to phenomena it resists the primacy of consciousness.

42:44.260 --> 42:47.510
While coherent, it prioritizes life's chaotic character

42:47.510 --> 42:51.520
over the limited instrumental usefulness of logics.

42:51.520 --> 42:54.430
While deeply engaged with matters of language,

42:54.430 --> 42:58.780
it insists on pre-symbolic reality. 

42:58.780 --> 43:03.280
Nevertheless, these paradoxes may prove vital embedding mathematics

43:03.280 --> 43:08.730
and logics in the actual life of the cosmos may add an interesting voice

43:08.730 --> 43:12.650
through the current discussion of their foundations.

43:12.650 --> 43:16.510
Emphasizing topology may hold hidden treasures given the neutral

43:16.510 --> 43:19.290
inconsistencies of current philosophic--

43:19.290 --> 43:22.900
physical theories that still await a revolution

43:22.900 --> 43:26.720
of understanding including aesthetic purpose,

43:26.720 --> 43:29.540
my proof quite visionary given the current research

43:29.540 --> 43:31.000
within life sciences 

43:31.000 --> 43:34.710
and ecologically imperative of our times.

43:34.710 --> 43:39.500
Envisioning a cosmos of infinite rhythmic cycles fits well

43:39.500 --> 43:46.180
with current concepts of eternal inflation but remains attractive

43:46.180 --> 43:48.470
because of its impulse towards novelty.

43:48.470 --> 43:52.960
Finally, including the sacred may prove superior

43:52.960 --> 43:58.060
to both religious fanaticism and irreligious indifference

43:58.060 --> 43:59.940
for a future civilization 

43:59.940 --> 44:04.550
that neglects spiritual dimension only at its own risk.

44:04.550 --> 44:08.540
It is hard to estimate Whitehead's influence

44:08.540 --> 44:11.500
and time forbids name dropping. 

44:11.500 --> 44:17.310
I will only allude to some examples with the flavor of the unexpected.

44:17.310 --> 44:23.700
Who else would enjoy long walks with Whitehead than Gertrude Stein?

44:23.700 --> 44:28.130
Who else would appear in an essay on creativity of [inaudible]?

44:28.130 --> 44:33.830
Who could write poems on him other than Charles Olson?

44:33.830 --> 44:37.680
Who could be spoken through the dialogue of both a dragon

44:37.680 --> 44:44.040
and a blind priest as in John Grendel-- John Gardner's Grendel?

44:44.040 --> 44:48.520
Whom else could Aldous Huxley have quoted in support of his hopes

44:48.520 --> 44:50.390
for a more liberated society? 

44:50.390 --> 44:55.400
And who would we not expect to appear in the science fiction vision

44:55.400 --> 44:56.840
of a future universe 

44:56.840 --> 45:00.910
of interconnected organisms from van Vogt's pen?

45:00.910 --> 45:02.890
 

45:02.890 --> 45:07.170
Let me in the final section risk a look into the future.

45:07.170 --> 45:11.000
Today, Whitehead's voice is alive and it is being heard.

45:11.000 --> 45:15.350
His work is being taken up by fellow travelers

45:15.350 --> 45:19.520
who themselves are often visionaries creatively transforming it

45:19.520 --> 45:21.880
in their own field or using it 

45:21.880 --> 45:25.860
to establish connections beyond classical boundaries.

45:25.860 --> 45:29.750
Over decades Whitehead's legacy was persistently upheld

45:29.750 --> 45:32.570
by process philosophy and process theology.

45:32.570 --> 45:37.150
Yet it was never removed from innovative movements in education,

45:37.150 --> 45:41.330
psychology, sociology, economics and ecology.

45:41.330 --> 45:45.170
Its current proliferation in China in which there have been established

45:45.170 --> 45:49.400
around 20 centers for process studies as mostly seen

45:49.400 --> 45:53.600
by Joseph Needham in the 1950s and Whitehead's own suggestion

45:53.600 --> 45:56.910
that his philosophy is in many regards more genuine

45:56.910 --> 45:59.400
to Indian and Chinese thoughts. 

45:59.400 --> 46:02.330
The east-west and north-south dialogue are ingrained

46:02.330 --> 46:07.530
in his very outlook and a fundamentally equal logical instead

46:07.530 --> 46:12.610
of a merely logical character of his cosmology is recognized today.

46:12.610 --> 46:17.200
Several longstanding initiatives such as the Center

46:17.200 --> 46:19.980
for Process Studies at Claremont, 

46:19.980 --> 46:22.790
the International Whitehead Conferences held in many parts

46:22.790 --> 46:27.030
of the world or the International Process Network facilitate

46:27.030 --> 46:28.660
such developments. 

46:28.660 --> 46:31.900
The recent work of European Whitehead scholars has produced new

46:31.900 --> 46:36.090
lines of research as has the Whitehead Research Project

46:36.090 --> 46:38.830
with its international conferences and books,

46:38.830 --> 46:42.800
its contemporary Whitehead theories and most recently

46:42.800 --> 46:45.570
by gaining the permission of the Whitehead estate

46:45.570 --> 46:51.570
to create the first critical edition of Whitehead's works ever.

46:51.570 --> 46:55.760
These initiatives have again inspired interest far beyond the

46:55.760 --> 46:58.870
sphere of just insiders. 

46:58.870 --> 47:03.180
Probably the most important event in the newer history of philosophy--

47:03.180 --> 47:07.340
of Whitehead's philosophical reception was the untimely

47:07.340 --> 47:10.110
and rather unexpected influence of his work

47:10.110 --> 47:14.040
on the now famous French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

47:14.040 --> 47:17.390
Not only did he name process and reality,

47:17.390 --> 47:20.000
one of the most important works in philosophy

47:20.000 --> 47:26.160
but he united the universe with James Joyce term "chaosmos".

47:26.160 --> 47:30.160
Such a fresh look counters a tradition that has labeled

47:30.160 --> 47:35.380
and filed away Whitehead maybe far too early.

47:35.380 --> 47:37.240
Even with the arrival of new philosophy

47:37.240 --> 47:40.830
such as Bruno Latour's philosophy of cosmic communities,

47:40.830 --> 47:43.110
the objective realism of Graham Harman

47:43.110 --> 47:46.760
or Judith Butler's recent more ecological work the profound

47:46.760 --> 47:50.890
paradigm shift Whitehead initiated is no longer overlooked,

47:50.890 --> 47:55.660
rather it is recognized as part of the heritage from which they depart.

47:55.660 --> 47:59.810
This is a new situation and indeed it can be expected

47:59.810 --> 48:03.030
to continue to unfold. 

48:03.030 --> 48:08.200
In looking forward, what makes Whitehead's cosmology attractive

48:08.200 --> 48:12.960
today is its vision of the future of humanity and the planet.

48:12.960 --> 48:15.250
I will only hint at 3 perspectives. 

48:15.250 --> 48:20.580
First, it embraces the very small, the grain of reality,

48:20.580 --> 48:25.240
and the very large, an infinite universe with organic processes

48:25.240 --> 48:29.270
that initiate all kind of ecological rhythms at large.

48:29.270 --> 48:35.460
This chaosmos comes forth from unimaginable pasts and ventures

48:35.460 --> 48:38.160
into unimaginable futures. 

48:38.160 --> 48:43.270
Gathered from its becoming, we are no strangers to it but children.

48:43.270 --> 48:49.110
Second, pervading the simplest path of the--

48:49.110 --> 48:53.360
of empty space and the biophysical organisms building up planets

48:53.360 --> 48:55.330
and once they harbor on their crust 

48:55.330 --> 49:02.400
like fragile form Whitehead finds an inherent eros of adventure.

49:02.400 --> 49:07.960
Every creature is in its peculiar way responsible for its enactment.

49:07.960 --> 49:10.760
What if the majestic laws of nature 

49:10.760 --> 49:16.010
where neither mechanical devices nor external of divine decrease,

49:16.010 --> 49:19.400
but communal effects of a myriad of creatures,

49:19.400 --> 49:24.250
a metrics of their passionate feeling of causality and novelty?

49:24.250 --> 49:27.440
For Whitehead their passion expresses the presence

49:27.440 --> 49:31.500
of an eternal tone that always incarnates itself anew

49:31.500 --> 49:33.010
in all events and [inaudible]. 

49:33.010 --> 49:39.220
This is a meaningful universe, a meaningful awe.

49:39.220 --> 49:42.920
Its ecological depth makes us earthbound

49:42.920 --> 49:47.390
yet its spirit opens never seizing niches of life in the midst

49:47.390 --> 49:52.530
of all the tragedies of its perpetual perishing.

49:52.530 --> 49:55.630
Third, invite this paradigm of experience,

49:55.630 --> 50:00.540
all abstract opposites needs to conspire in creative becoming,

50:00.540 --> 50:02.900
instead of seeking a world formula ala--

50:02.900 --> 50:07.200
let's say Stephen Hawking Whitehead thoughts balances all polarities

50:07.200 --> 50:12.160
on the pivot of poetics sharing patterning with mathematics

50:12.160 --> 50:16.950
and also inviting our coordination of depth alongside philosophy.

50:16.950 --> 50:21.190
>> Where both mathematics and philosophy may cling to the wonders

50:21.190 --> 50:26.960
of their abstractions and what they can reveal,

50:26.960 --> 50:28.770
discovering order upon order. 

50:28.770 --> 50:32.860
Poetics reminds them of the racked beauty of the multiplicity

50:32.860 --> 50:39.120
of experiences upon experiences in which those structures are steeped.

50:39.120 --> 50:45.490
For Whitehead, this poetics is divine and it vivifies, as he says,

50:45.490 --> 50:49.880
the good sense which we term civilization.

50:49.880 --> 50:54.840
Herein, I suggest lies the very reason for Whitehead's juxtaposition

50:54.840 --> 50:59.450
of positivism and speculative metaphysics when in his letter

50:59.450 --> 51:04.310
to Leonard, he seems distressed, even annoyed, by the very inception

51:04.310 --> 51:07.960
of positivism, so because of the lack of imagination

51:07.960 --> 51:11.200
and the muted sense of depth and future.

51:11.200 --> 51:16.230
If reason becomes reduced to an is and the is to a method

51:16.230 --> 51:19.150
of the imitation of a dreamless universe

51:19.150 --> 51:22.200
of material particles we are left 

51:22.200 --> 51:25.820
with the lifeless logic of their mapping.

51:25.820 --> 51:30.650
Conversely, Whitehead's end-- Whitehead ends his last book,

51:30.650 --> 51:34.120
Modes of Thought with a very different imperative.

51:34.120 --> 51:37.380
Only a philosophy that is sensitive to depths as

51:37.380 --> 51:41.020
yet unspoken will allow us to maintain a social--

51:41.020 --> 51:47.590
a novelty of fundamental ideas illuminating the social process.

51:47.590 --> 51:51.560
No wonder then that trusty metaphysics however slight,

51:51.560 --> 51:56.890
superficial and incomplete its insights may be is the one

51:56.890 --> 52:01.060
presupposition for Whitehead without which there can be no civilization

52:01.060 --> 52:04.100
because it harbors that which guides its imagination

52:04.100 --> 52:07.380
 

52:07.380 --> 52:08.390
 

52:08.390 --> 52:13.230
The evil of the future, Whitehead says, is the suppression

52:13.230 --> 52:17.410
of aesthetic creativeness. 

52:17.410 --> 52:20.470
He once confessed that he owes this insight

52:20.470 --> 52:23.700
to the vivid life of his wife Evelyn.

52:23.700 --> 52:24.810
 

52:24.810 --> 52:27.280
This insight that as Whitehead says, 

52:27.280 --> 52:30.080
"Aesthetics is the aim of existence."

52:30.080 --> 52:34.990
And kindness, love, and artistic satisfaction are among its molds

52:34.990 --> 52:38.950
of attainment must be considered the very motif of Whitehead's work

52:38.950 --> 52:42.510
and the impulse it hopes to release. 

52:42.510 --> 52:46.250
In his conversation with Charles Lindbergh, Whitehead confirms

52:46.250 --> 52:51.850
that in the midst of the most devastating war that the very force

52:51.850 --> 52:55.430
that alone is meant to withstand the violence or destruction

52:55.430 --> 53:00.790
and the decline of civilized worlds is gentleness,

53:00.790 --> 53:05.190
as it is the very force that slowly and in quietness operates

53:05.190 --> 53:10.070
at the heart of the universe, may we nourish it.

53:10.070 --> 53:11.510
Thank you.   [ Applause ]

53:11.510 --> 53:23.010
 

53:23.010 --> 53:32.540
[ Pause ] 

53:32.540 --> 53:35.730
>> Yeah. Thank you so very, very much.

53:35.730 --> 53:39.940
Before we have questions and answers,

53:39.940 --> 53:43.140
we're going to invite another speaker forward,

53:43.140 --> 53:48.510
Dr. AbdolKarim Soroush, who will give us a--

53:48.510 --> 53:53.510
I think I'm gonna call it a footnote, on the influence

53:53.510 --> 53:55.750
of Whitehead and in other parts of the world.

53:55.750 --> 54:02.510
Dr. Soroush is a well-known Iranian scholar and you have his file.

54:02.510 --> 54:12.740
[ Pause ] 

54:12.740 --> 54:17.960
>> Okay. Good morning everybody and thank you for giving me the chance

54:17.960 --> 54:26.550
to take you thousands of kilometers from here to Iran

54:26.550 --> 54:28.670
and to tell you something about what's going

54:28.670 --> 54:32.690
on in Iran nowadays about Whitehead. 

54:32.690 --> 54:37.890
I tell you my personal story which is exemplary.

54:37.890 --> 54:41.170
I did science before I did philosophy

54:41.170 --> 54:47.170
and when I first encountered with Whitehead was

54:47.170 --> 54:54.020
with the Harvard Whitehead rather than the London Whitehead

54:54.020 --> 54:58.890
as Mr. Faber actually mentioned. 

54:58.890 --> 55:03.960
Whitehead made his way into Iran through his book Adventures

55:03.960 --> 55:09.160
and Ideas and that was the first book by him well known

55:09.160 --> 55:12.640
and then translated with some very heavy footnotes

55:12.640 --> 55:15.930
by one of the clerics in Iran. 

55:15.930 --> 55:21.470
And I mentioned especially clerics because he was liked and admired

55:21.470 --> 55:25.060
by clerics because of his religious philosophy and because

55:25.060 --> 55:30.940
of the divine spirituality which you can find in his writings.

55:30.940 --> 55:36.440
I remember that especially I liked and others also like the phrase,

55:36.440 --> 55:40.850
the remark by Whitehead in Adventures and Ideas

55:40.850 --> 55:45.590
that in the modern times professors have replaced prophets.

55:45.590 --> 55:49.960
So this dichotomy or perhaps the contrast between prophets

55:49.960 --> 55:56.900
and professors was very illuminating of the idea and the thoughts

55:56.900 --> 56:03.620
of Whitehead, and also mentions and explains why he was so admired

56:03.620 --> 56:09.070
by some of members of the clerical establishment

56:09.070 --> 56:13.020
and also some of the general readers.

56:13.020 --> 56:15.920
Now, that was perhaps my first encounter then

56:15.920 --> 56:19.590
when I did some philosophy of science, of course,

56:19.590 --> 56:22.950
I came to appreciate much more Whitehead especially

56:22.950 --> 56:29.970
when I did read his theory of relativity and his perhaps criticism

56:29.970 --> 56:35.750
of Einstein, and of course, his anti-Wittgenstein stand,

56:35.750 --> 56:39.900
his anti-positivism stands, and all these things are quite,

56:39.900 --> 56:47.880
quite telling and worth reading and contemplating.

56:47.880 --> 56:56.420
Now, I am one of the translators of Whitehead in Iran, into Persian.

56:56.420 --> 56:59.040
I would say one of rare translators 

56:59.040 --> 57:01.520
because actually there are only people

57:01.520 --> 57:03.970
who have translated Whitehead. 

57:03.970 --> 57:09.570
One of them is this modest gentleman here and the other one is no longer

57:09.570 --> 57:13.060
in the world and so he lives with his God.

57:13.060 --> 57:20.520
Now, I came across his book Science in the Modern World.

57:20.520 --> 57:26.660
I liked it because, at that time, I was doing my philosophy-- sorry--

57:26.660 --> 57:33.820
philosophy of science so Whitehead did give me some very creative

57:33.820 --> 57:38.200
and imaginative ideas about science, especially what he said

57:38.200 --> 57:43.690
about the current materialism in science and especially, I liked,

57:43.690 --> 57:46.910
again, let us say, his discovery, 

57:46.910 --> 57:49.860
the fallacy of misplaced concreteness

57:49.860 --> 57:54.020
which I had a hard time translating it into Persian.

57:54.020 --> 57:58.290
And I mean, eventually, I came across a very apt, I think,

57:58.290 --> 58:02.990
phrase in order to render it into Persian and now it is--

58:02.990 --> 58:05.760
I am glad that it is in wide use. 

58:05.760 --> 58:10.310
And now, everybody understands what he meant by the fallacy

58:10.310 --> 58:14.180
of misplaced concreteness and this is the fallacy

58:14.180 --> 58:18.740
which is always committed by materialist scientists

58:18.740 --> 58:23.360
who misplace the concreteness and who do not know

58:23.360 --> 58:26.030
where the concreteness lies and resides.

58:26.030 --> 58:32.250
So that was-- and then I translated one of the chapters of the Science

58:32.250 --> 58:36.780
in the Modern World and that was the last chapter of the book

58:36.780 --> 58:39.370
under the title Science and Religion.

58:39.370 --> 58:43.590
Actually, I included this chapter in one of my books

58:43.590 --> 58:46.930
which has got the same title, actually, Science and Religion,

58:46.930 --> 58:52.400
so I though that it was most relevant to include that.

58:52.400 --> 58:56.020
It was, again, a very, you know, 

58:56.020 --> 59:03.140
good and I would say educating addition to my book

59:03.140 --> 59:07.370
because there actually, he mentioned that the conflict,

59:07.370 --> 59:11.720
the conflict of science and religion is not a threat but a chance

59:11.720 --> 59:15.480
so we have to, you know, appreciate it and to work on it,

59:15.480 --> 59:19.260
and perhaps to forge a real relationship

59:19.260 --> 59:22.830
and connection between-- friendly connection between science

59:22.830 --> 59:25.970
and religion where science gives you the small picture,

59:25.970 --> 59:30.280
religion gives you the grand picture of the universe.

59:30.280 --> 59:34.180
And through this, you can come perhaps, to the conclusion

59:34.180 --> 59:39.550
where to locate science within religion or side by side religion.

59:39.550 --> 59:44.570
That was a really good vision by Mr. Whitehead which I used it

59:44.570 --> 59:49.940
and found it quite interesting and useful, then, of course,

59:49.940 --> 59:55.380
I did not forsake Whitehead so I continued.

59:55.380 --> 59:59.520
And when I was in London, I came across a very good book written

59:59.520 --> 1:00:02.760
by an American, Ian Barbour.   Perhaps some of you might know him.

1:00:02.760 --> 1:00:06.320
 

1:00:06.320 --> 1:00:09.520
He is a man who works and his main expertise, of course,

1:00:09.520 --> 1:00:13.650
he's a physicist but his main expertise is on the relationship

1:00:13.650 --> 1:00:15.040
between science and religion. 

1:00:15.040 --> 1:00:19.550
>> He has produced volumes upon volumes on the same subject

1:00:19.550 --> 1:00:23.950
and he shows that it's quite, quite familiar with the ideas

1:00:23.950 --> 1:00:27.920
in philosophy of science and of course in science and so on.

1:00:27.920 --> 1:00:35.160
One of his earlier books is Issues in Science and Religion and that's--

1:00:35.160 --> 1:00:36.890
I took it with me to Iran. 

1:00:36.890 --> 1:00:44.260
That was in 1980, roughly, yes, 1980.

1:00:44.260 --> 1:00:50.550
And I found a very good translator. 

1:00:50.550 --> 1:00:53.500
And the book was translated into Persian,

1:00:53.500 --> 1:00:57.040
one of the best translations, a very good chapter

1:00:57.040 --> 1:01:01.550
on Whitehead you can find in this book under the title

1:01:01.550 --> 1:01:08.370
of Process Philosophy or Process Spirituality, something.

1:01:08.370 --> 1:01:11.640
So there you find, you know, a very good exposition

1:01:11.640 --> 1:01:16.450
of the process philosophy of Whitehead together with the ideas

1:01:16.450 --> 1:01:18.520
of Ian Barbour and some Whiteheadians,

1:01:18.520 --> 1:01:20.650
of course, here in America. 

1:01:20.650 --> 1:01:23.400
So that was a very good introduction,

1:01:23.400 --> 1:01:27.480
much better than the previous works on Whitehead in Iran,

1:01:27.480 --> 1:01:31.550
and I think now through this book people come to realize

1:01:31.550 --> 1:01:36.340
and to appreciate more and more the ideas of Whitehead.

1:01:36.340 --> 1:01:40.990
Again, I did some other things and that was then I, again,

1:01:40.990 --> 1:01:46.210
found the book by Arthur Bert [phonetic], one of the professors

1:01:46.210 --> 1:01:50.090
on history of philosophy in Colorado University.

1:01:50.090 --> 1:01:57.780
The book is written in 1930s and the author is a rather obscure one,

1:01:57.780 --> 1:02:00.630
but the book is one of the classics on the history

1:02:00.630 --> 1:02:02.950
of philosophy of science. 

1:02:02.950 --> 1:02:09.170
The book's title is Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.

1:02:09.170 --> 1:02:13.160
There actually he mentions Whitehead.

1:02:13.160 --> 1:02:18.250
In actually two different context-- 

1:02:18.250 --> 1:02:24.420
in the first context is that Whitehead does not take history

1:02:24.420 --> 1:02:28.700
of science seriously and because of that, there are flaws

1:02:28.700 --> 1:02:33.750
in his philosophy when he speaks about science, and then he goes

1:02:33.750 --> 1:02:39.320
on and, of course, after a while he corrects himself and says "Now,

1:02:39.320 --> 1:02:43.680
Mr. Whitehead is taking history of science into account

1:02:43.680 --> 1:02:50.150
and that makes his philosophy more complete

1:02:50.150 --> 1:02:52.830
and more serious according to him. 

1:02:52.830 --> 1:02:55.490
Because Arthur Bert, actually, you know,

1:02:55.490 --> 1:03:00.410
he thinks that Newton is the Aristotle of the modern time

1:03:00.410 --> 1:03:05.100
and so unless you know and you understand Newton and his place

1:03:05.100 --> 1:03:07.860
in history of science, you will not be able

1:03:07.860 --> 1:03:12.500
to understand neither the modern science nor the modern philosophy.

1:03:12.500 --> 1:03:16.490
Therefore, in order to understand it, you have to go, you know,

1:03:16.490 --> 1:03:19.630
deeply in the history of science and he thinks

1:03:19.630 --> 1:03:27.420
that Whitehead's philosophy is a philosophy which is blind

1:03:27.420 --> 1:03:31.590
to history, and being blind to history is a deep, deep,

1:03:31.590 --> 1:03:34.830
flaw and a shortcoming and which is quite, quite right.

1:03:34.830 --> 1:03:38.240
And then, as I said, he said that now, Whitehead is coming

1:03:38.240 --> 1:03:41.450
to be analyze and to understand the value of history

1:03:41.450 --> 1:03:46.350
and then his philosophy now is becoming better and better.

1:03:46.350 --> 1:03:50.620
Actually, that was the last thing I did

1:03:50.620 --> 1:03:59.490
on Whitehead translating the book by Arthur Bert

1:03:59.490 --> 1:04:04.350
and on the process philosophy, but I must admit, you know,

1:04:04.350 --> 1:04:10.480
these are my last remarks that I found Whitehead a very hard thinker

1:04:10.480 --> 1:04:13.810
and especially his language is impenetrable.

1:04:13.810 --> 1:04:17.120
If you, I mean, read his Gifford lectures.

1:04:17.120 --> 1:04:19.100
It's virtually incomprehensible. 

1:04:19.100 --> 1:04:24.870
I personally cannot, you know, make much from what he says.

1:04:24.870 --> 1:04:28.380
His Adventures of Ideas is for the general reader,

1:04:28.380 --> 1:04:31.380
his Science in the Modern World is for the general reader,

1:04:31.380 --> 1:04:36.020
let alone his Principia Mathematica and so on which no longer--

1:04:36.020 --> 1:04:40.070
nobody, I think, reads it except the historians of logic,

1:04:40.070 --> 1:04:42.830
historians of mathematics. 

1:04:42.830 --> 1:04:45.410
And I would say that Bertrand Russell,

1:04:45.410 --> 1:04:49.270
the co-author of the Principia Mathematica is much,

1:04:49.270 --> 1:04:53.000
much more invoked in Iran and in whole Islamic world,

1:04:53.000 --> 1:04:58.970
not because of his important ideas but because of his heretical ideas,

1:04:58.970 --> 1:05:03.170
and his heresies are so dear to the heart of the Muslims

1:05:03.170 --> 1:05:07.930
and the religious people who would like to see the ideas of others,

1:05:07.930 --> 1:05:16.410
of the outsiders, let us say, and especially the irritating language

1:05:16.410 --> 1:05:20.540
of Bertrand Russell when he speaks about religion, about God,

1:05:20.540 --> 1:05:24.760
about why he was not a Christian and so on, and so forth.

1:05:24.760 --> 1:05:30.250
So his books makes it, you know, a better reading than Whitehead who is

1:05:30.250 --> 1:05:35.950
so concise and even-- you see, in the letter he has written

1:05:35.950 --> 1:05:40.050
to Leonard that, you know, he makes use of expressions and remarks

1:05:40.050 --> 1:05:43.120
which you have to have a deep knowledge of his philosophy in order

1:05:43.120 --> 1:05:47.580
to understand what he says in such a short letter.

1:05:47.580 --> 1:05:51.090
So may God bless his soul and God bless you, and thank you all.

1:05:51.090 --> 1:05:52.510
Thank you for everything.   [ Applause ]

1:05:52.510 --> 1:05:59.800
 

1:05:59.800 --> 1:06:07.090
[ Inaudible Remarks ] 

1:06:07.090 --> 1:06:11.390
>> The floor is open for questions and comments.

1:06:11.390 --> 1:06:13.510
Yes sir?   [ Inaudible Remark ]

1:06:13.510 --> 1:06:21.540
 

1:06:21.540 --> 1:06:21.940
>> Oh, I'm sorry. 

1:06:21.940 --> 1:06:25.970
I should have asked you to wait for the microphone.

1:06:25.970 --> 1:06:28.780
 

1:06:28.780 --> 1:06:32.310
Oh okay. We have multiple helpers now.

1:06:32.310 --> 1:06:35.030
Over here.   >> Oh, here.

1:06:35.030 --> 1:06:38.400
 

1:06:38.400 --> 1:06:42.730
[ Laughter ]   >> Oh, here.

1:06:42.730 --> 1:06:45.850
 

1:06:45.850 --> 1:06:46.410
[ Laughter ]   >> My question is for you 2.

1:06:46.410 --> 1:06:49.490
 

1:06:49.490 --> 1:06:55.220
You made a passing remark about Whitehead and Einstein.

1:06:55.220 --> 1:07:07.260
I'm just asking for an elaboration of Whitehead's critique of Einstein.

1:07:07.260 --> 1:07:11.960
>> Well, is that working or--   [ Inaudible Remark ]

1:07:11.960 --> 1:07:12.910
 

1:07:12.910 --> 1:07:23.720
>> Okay. So I guess, basically, Whitehead was very much concerned

1:07:23.720 --> 1:07:26.230
with relativity theory and early quantum physics,

1:07:26.230 --> 1:07:28.850
and this is a matter of research how far

1:07:28.850 --> 1:07:33.920
that really goes whether he left off later on or not on that matter.

1:07:33.920 --> 1:07:36.560
But from-- so he was always kind of--

1:07:36.560 --> 1:07:39.840
there was almost this differentiation between the kind

1:07:39.840 --> 1:07:46.360
of scientific approach or the formulization of things

1:07:46.360 --> 1:07:49.880
and the philosophic conditions under which they are done.

1:07:49.880 --> 1:07:53.060
And his kind of criticism was that we have--

1:07:53.060 --> 1:07:58.570
so his criticism of history, I in this sense do not agree that--

1:07:58.570 --> 1:08:01.690
I don't know at which point Whitehead was interested in history,

1:08:01.690 --> 1:08:03.940
he was meticulously interested in history at least

1:08:03.940 --> 1:08:09.320
in his later works they are all historical working through history

1:08:09.320 --> 1:08:14.870
in this sense if that was the context?

1:08:14.870 --> 1:08:15.270
>> Yeah. 

1:08:15.270 --> 1:08:20.990
>> Yeah. That the revolutions of modern science and in particular,

1:08:20.990 --> 1:08:23.340
relativity theory, were kind 

1:08:23.340 --> 1:08:28.870
of overcoming the early philosophical conditions of Newton

1:08:28.870 --> 1:08:32.220
and other ones under which they have formulated the understanding

1:08:32.220 --> 1:08:33.790
of the cosmos, right? 

1:08:33.790 --> 1:08:39.050
As the basic concept of meta particles and other things,

1:08:39.050 --> 1:08:44.890
how the universe works together and how it can be abstracted

1:08:44.890 --> 1:08:47.250
in mathematical formula and so on. 

1:08:47.250 --> 1:08:51.710
And he found that modern science was actually giving us a way

1:08:51.710 --> 1:08:58.260
for philosophy to catch up, so to say, in a certain way if we could,

1:08:58.260 --> 1:09:00.960
at the same time, also criticize the conditions

1:09:00.960 --> 1:09:04.920
under which itself still was bound to the old philosophical concepts

1:09:04.920 --> 1:09:08.080
so there was something new but it was still underpinned

1:09:08.080 --> 1:09:11.400
by old philosophical concepts, and I guess this was more

1:09:11.400 --> 1:09:13.950
or less the point where he criticized Whitehead's relativity

1:09:13.950 --> 1:09:19.430
theory to be still in a certain-- 

1:09:19.430 --> 1:09:23.510
with preconditions which are not fitting the new situation

1:09:23.510 --> 1:09:24.860
that it actually opens up. 

1:09:24.860 --> 1:09:28.320
It's the relativity that it opens actually up.

1:09:28.320 --> 1:09:33.520
So in concrete-- I mean there are a lot of discussions around how

1:09:33.520 --> 1:09:36.550
that is actually working out. 

1:09:36.550 --> 1:09:42.470
His formula he came up with on relativity was quite similar

1:09:42.470 --> 1:09:46.470
and there were early tests that kind of seemed

1:09:46.470 --> 1:09:48.760
to say the classical tests are passing so it's like--

1:09:48.760 --> 1:09:50.490
it gets the same expressions, 

1:09:50.490 --> 1:09:54.990
but he wants to say I can make it much more easier,

1:09:54.990 --> 1:09:59.190
the formula is actually easier, it makes a more concrete way

1:09:59.190 --> 1:10:03.860
to articulate what Einstein made complicated which is mathematics.

1:10:03.860 --> 1:10:06.650
>> And later on, there were other tests which showed

1:10:06.650 --> 1:10:10.420
that there are actually not-- certain tests would not be--

1:10:10.420 --> 1:10:12.630
modern test would not possible between--

1:10:12.630 --> 1:10:16.300
after the classical tests were passed.

1:10:16.300 --> 1:10:18.560
And so there is a kind of division whether

1:10:18.560 --> 1:10:22.270
in what sense Whitehead's formula actually mathematically

1:10:22.270 --> 1:10:27.830
and physically can be tested and hold up, and this is an--

1:10:27.830 --> 1:10:29.880
I would say on the one hand a closed discussion

1:10:29.880 --> 1:10:35.570
but on the other hand we do find, you know, restatements of that.

1:10:35.570 --> 1:10:41.110
Now the-- one or two of the basic kind of visions that Whitehead had,

1:10:41.110 --> 1:10:45.240
why he thought that was complicated or problematic in Einstein,

1:10:45.240 --> 1:10:50.820
was that he thought that the mathematics that formulates itself

1:10:50.820 --> 1:10:55.890
from mathematical points can-- is actually already an abstraction

1:10:55.890 --> 1:10:59.180
of a concrete universe that is always extended,

1:10:59.180 --> 1:11:03.990
and this extension produces a geometry that is so to say

1:11:03.990 --> 1:11:06.840
in a cosmos-- in a cosmos because he knows there are, you know,

1:11:06.840 --> 1:11:10.170
there could be different cosmic [inaudible] or different universes,

1:11:10.170 --> 1:11:14.840
formulates a very basic geometry. 

1:11:14.840 --> 1:11:19.980
And how can it be that particles of matter with their mass

1:11:19.980 --> 1:11:24.050
and so on can curve space time? 

1:11:24.050 --> 1:11:28.060
So the geometry, if the geometry is more basic than these particles

1:11:28.060 --> 1:11:31.940
of matter, this was one of the unsolved problems that he saw,

1:11:31.940 --> 1:11:37.530
that the abstract can actually create the concrete.

1:11:37.530 --> 1:11:40.510
That's his basic problem so to say.   [ Pause ]

1:11:40.510 --> 1:11:49.100
 

1:11:49.100 --> 1:11:51.830
>> So with these wonderful representations,

1:11:51.830 --> 1:11:56.300
we've heard a couple of examples from each of the speakers one

1:11:56.300 --> 1:11:58.390
by Professor Faber about China 

1:11:58.390 --> 1:12:03.460
and you said there is a Process Studies there and Professor Soroush

1:12:03.460 --> 1:12:06.120
of the Iranian connection. 

1:12:06.120 --> 1:12:11.010
So there are these possible bridges between cultures or examples

1:12:11.010 --> 1:12:14.440
of them, I'd like perhaps each of the speakers to comment

1:12:14.440 --> 1:12:16.980
on the potential of Whiteheadian thought

1:12:16.980 --> 1:12:20.080
 

1:12:20.080 --> 1:12:24.210
 

1:12:24.210 --> 1:12:29.620
>> Well, as far as I can gather, 

1:12:29.620 --> 1:12:35.270
I mean Whitehead also although was somehow influential in the past

1:12:35.270 --> 1:12:39.110
in the-- I mean before the Islamic revolution in Iran.

1:12:39.110 --> 1:12:47.320
After the revolution, I think he has fallen into oblivion, if you like,

1:12:47.320 --> 1:12:52.250
although as I said, I mean some clerics are more interested

1:12:52.250 --> 1:12:56.420
in his works, some of the religious people rather than scientists.

1:12:56.420 --> 1:13:01.210
So among scientists perhaps he doesn't have a reputation

1:13:01.210 --> 1:13:06.760
or rather a good reputation and even then you, you know,

1:13:06.760 --> 1:13:12.670
you do philosophy of logic seldom I have heard anybody mentioned name

1:13:12.670 --> 1:13:18.100
of Whitehead and his contribution to Principia Mathematica.

1:13:18.100 --> 1:13:23.700
And Frege for example is invoked and is in very good reputation

1:13:23.700 --> 1:13:28.370
and even sometimes Bertrand Russell, and most of his books are translated

1:13:28.370 --> 1:13:32.910
into Persian, the heretical ones, the scientistic ones,

1:13:32.910 --> 1:13:35.550
the philosophical ones and so on.   But Whitehead apart from the bits

1:13:35.550 --> 1:13:38.270
 

1:13:38.270 --> 1:13:44.460
and pieces I mentioned here is no longer there.

1:13:44.460 --> 1:13:47.470
Actually, before this I mentioned to Carolyn

1:13:47.470 --> 1:13:51.550
that these meetings now encourages me to suggest to some

1:13:51.550 --> 1:13:58.790
of my Iranian colleagues, perhaps to hold a seminar on Whitehead

1:13:58.790 --> 1:14:05.650
and perhaps to bring to the attention of especially the students

1:14:05.650 --> 1:14:10.500
who do not know much of him to, you know, have an idea and perhaps

1:14:10.500 --> 1:14:15.220
to go back to his books and now that I hear the good news

1:14:15.220 --> 1:14:19.700
that the whole series of his work is being reedited, you know so,

1:14:19.700 --> 1:14:23.360
and this makes available his thoughts.

1:14:23.360 --> 1:14:28.020
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any traces of Whitehead

1:14:28.020 --> 1:14:31.540
in the Islamic world worldwide, you know?

1:14:31.540 --> 1:14:35.300
I am not sure how much and how he has been received

1:14:35.300 --> 1:14:37.620
by other Muslim countries 

1:14:37.620 --> 1:14:42.100
and how much his philosophy has been influential among others.

1:14:42.100 --> 1:14:47.250
Perhaps that might be a subject of another study which I have to do

1:14:47.250 --> 1:14:51.030
and perhaps I have-- perhaps I reported

1:14:51.030 --> 1:14:56.400
in the next meeting here or elsewhere.

1:14:56.400 --> 1:15:02.590
But his understanding of God, you know, which is an evolving god

1:15:02.590 --> 1:15:06.070
which flies into the face of the traditional god

1:15:06.070 --> 1:15:10.150
which is not an evolving god, it's a constant god, a fixed god,

1:15:10.150 --> 1:15:12.870
if you like a god which does not change,

1:15:12.870 --> 1:15:17.800
a god which is absolutely perfect and there is no more perfection

1:15:17.800 --> 1:15:24.830
to be gained by God, so this is a matter of concern for Muslims,

1:15:24.830 --> 1:15:28.030
for perhaps Christians, for Jews and so on.

1:15:28.030 --> 1:15:34.090
So His divinity is a special divinity and reconciling His divine

1:15:34.090 --> 1:15:35.670
with the Islamic divine 

1:15:35.670 --> 1:15:39.730
or with Christian divine is a little bit different--

1:15:39.730 --> 1:15:46.890
difficult, and Mr. Ian Barbour who tried to, you know,

1:15:46.890 --> 1:15:55.950
invoke the Whiteheadian god, you know, has taken, you know,

1:15:55.950 --> 1:16:01.630
a very difficult job and that is out of the necessity of bringing

1:16:01.630 --> 1:16:05.880
in science and in order to have science and evolution together

1:16:05.880 --> 1:16:11.870
with God so he could not do with the constant god therefore he actually

1:16:11.870 --> 1:16:16.550
had to bring in a god which is evolving all the time

1:16:16.550 --> 1:16:21.350
and does not have all perfections at hand so he is no--

1:16:21.350 --> 1:16:23.420
making himself more perfect.   So this is as far as I can say.

1:16:23.420 --> 1:16:30.300
 

1:16:30.300 --> 1:16:36.820
>> There's a Pakistani, very famous philosopher--

1:16:36.820 --> 1:16:37.360
[ Inaudible Remark ]   >> Akbar, who was kind of a--

1:16:37.360 --> 1:16:40.510
 

1:16:40.510 --> 1:16:41.420
>> A little--   [ Inaudible Remark ]

1:16:41.420 --> 1:16:41.820
 

1:16:41.820 --> 1:16:45.030
>> More on the Bergson influence than Whitehead but,

1:16:45.030 --> 1:16:46.560
yes, he mentions Whitehead. 

1:16:46.560 --> 1:16:50.600
>> I do have some Islamic students and we have some especially

1:16:50.600 --> 1:16:57.130
from Turkey who are trying to engage with Whitehead even

1:16:57.130 --> 1:17:02.170
in his theological thinking in relation to Islam actually.

1:17:02.170 --> 1:17:05.280
So where probably there's a connection for them is

1:17:05.280 --> 1:17:11.440
that it is quite easy from Sufi-influenced metaphysics to talk

1:17:11.440 --> 1:17:13.970
about the becoming universe that-- 

1:17:13.970 --> 1:17:16.440
that is the connection less than the god problem.

1:17:16.440 --> 1:17:16.930
[ Inaudible Remark ]   >> Yeah, yes, yes, yeah.

1:17:16.930 --> 1:17:18.540
 

1:17:18.540 --> 1:17:23.920
So I guess really one of the basic problems is the question

1:17:23.920 --> 1:17:29.330
of reading Whitehead for how they make an impact

1:17:29.330 --> 1:17:33.620
in a certain culture or not. 

1:17:33.620 --> 1:17:38.470
You see, as originally and with my mother tongue speaking German I

1:17:38.470 --> 1:17:41.540
should say to retackle and [inaudible] should be easier for me

1:17:41.540 --> 1:17:46.920
than for you to do it English but I can tell you to read them

1:17:46.920 --> 1:17:49.690
in English is easier than to read them in German.

1:17:49.690 --> 1:17:53.180
So sometimes reading the translations are helping

1:17:53.180 --> 1:17:56.820
to reduce the heavy loads, it's a filter, right?

1:17:56.820 --> 1:17:59.250
So it's even easier maybe to read them

1:17:59.250 --> 1:18:01.250
in other languages at first, right? 

1:18:01.250 --> 1:18:04.950
If you get to the original text then they become extremely complicated

1:18:04.950 --> 1:18:07.200
because all the feelings of what their language means

1:18:07.200 --> 1:18:10.860
and how they formulate that bring concepts together is much

1:18:10.860 --> 1:18:13.050
more complicated. 

1:18:13.050 --> 1:18:18.160
So mostly it begins with the translation of Whitehead somewhere

1:18:18.160 --> 1:18:22.110
and it's interesting that there are still ongoing translation projects

1:18:22.110 --> 1:18:25.340
so we have at least two sets of translations in China

1:18:25.340 --> 1:18:29.910
and every translator says about the other has a bad translation,

1:18:29.910 --> 1:18:34.590
which is good so you get differences and read all of them, kind of.

1:18:34.590 --> 1:18:38.250
We do have specially research and since you want true translations

1:18:38.250 --> 1:18:43.610
in Eastern Europe, in Poland and Hungary for many, you know,

1:18:43.610 --> 1:18:49.200
10 to 15 years already and Romania and other countries

1:18:49.200 --> 1:18:50.940
which is quite interesting. 

1:18:50.940 --> 1:18:52.940
There was a long tradition of Whitehead

1:18:52.940 --> 1:18:57.980
and the text were always available in the German-speaking world

1:18:57.980 --> 1:19:04.470
and so there was a thorough going tradition from the late '50s

1:19:04.470 --> 1:19:07.220
in philosophy with a small group that was still--

1:19:07.220 --> 1:19:08.390
was present all the time. 

1:19:08.390 --> 1:19:11.560
There was an established Whitehead tradition that's different

1:19:11.560 --> 1:19:12.420
from the American one. 

1:19:12.420 --> 1:19:15.520
It was not influenced by [inaudible] thinking for instance

1:19:15.520 --> 1:19:18.850
or free of it, kind of thing. 

1:19:18.850 --> 1:19:23.280
And that is again coming back today with, I think, major interest

1:19:23.280 --> 1:19:26.440
so Whitehead was included also in conferences,

1:19:26.440 --> 1:19:28.700
in Berlin for instance several years ago.

1:19:28.700 --> 1:19:32.030
Creativity there was not really to Whitehead at all but they said, "Ah,

1:19:32.030 --> 1:19:34.000
Whitehead creativity, that's an important thing."

1:19:34.000 --> 1:19:37.400
So there is a kind of virus.   It is different in French language.

1:19:37.400 --> 1:19:39.670
 

1:19:39.670 --> 1:19:43.000
It was a long, long time that Whitehead was not translated

1:19:43.000 --> 1:19:46.440
in France so people had to read it in the original

1:19:46.440 --> 1:19:49.810
and I can imagine Gilles Deleuze reading it in English

1:19:49.810 --> 1:19:52.570
and then he didn't probably like to do it at all,

1:19:52.570 --> 1:19:55.580
because it was not present so it is still ongoing

1:19:55.580 --> 1:19:58.070
that you get all the texts there. 

1:19:58.070 --> 1:20:02.790
Much-- so today this is the most lively, I guess in Europe,

1:20:02.790 --> 1:20:06.400
is the French speaking area right now.

1:20:06.400 --> 1:20:08.860
>> But in Spanish today or even 

1:20:08.860 --> 1:20:13.450
in Portuguese you find virtually nothing and/or it's kind

1:20:13.450 --> 1:20:15.790
of there's-- it's gone. 

1:20:15.790 --> 1:20:18.050
In a sense there were translations, the same is true

1:20:18.050 --> 1:20:22.520
for Southern America, it has to be reinvigorated by translators, right?

1:20:22.520 --> 1:20:26.070
So they have to either republish old translations

1:20:26.070 --> 1:20:31.290
or become translators again or they like English, right?

1:20:31.290 --> 1:20:35.730
It's the easiest way to get to it as in certain areas of Africa,

1:20:35.730 --> 1:20:39.680
Central Africa where Whitehead is present in universities

1:20:39.680 --> 1:20:42.220
where they read English and not French for instance,

1:20:42.220 --> 1:20:45.480
right or speak in the sense? 

1:20:45.480 --> 1:20:50.910
I think one of the-- to mention China again the more interesting

1:20:50.910 --> 1:20:53.340
thing is not science, Whitehead and science

1:20:53.340 --> 1:20:54.870
but it's Whitehead and education. 

1:20:54.870 --> 1:20:59.130
So he kind of has taken over certain educational issues

1:20:59.130 --> 1:21:03.760
since his early days in Cambridge especially

1:21:03.760 --> 1:21:05.640
for instance you will think women's education

1:21:05.640 --> 1:21:09.430
that they get the same rights at the university was really a problem.

1:21:09.430 --> 1:21:13.300
He was sitting up on such panels fighting for that

1:21:13.300 --> 1:21:19.270
and he was mentioning that it was not only once that he got oranges

1:21:19.270 --> 1:21:25.000
and eggs thrown at him for things like this.

1:21:25.000 --> 1:21:28.380
So he had a political stance and education became important in London

1:21:28.380 --> 1:21:34.100
where he took over a post as a dean and was engaged in education

1:21:34.100 --> 1:21:37.570
for London, the greater London and so on and wrote

1:21:37.570 --> 1:21:41.850
about education a lot and so China kind of develops--

1:21:41.850 --> 1:21:46.590
asks the questions of how can we resituate

1:21:46.590 --> 1:21:50.390
for a new ecological future? 

1:21:50.390 --> 1:21:55.270
And Whitehead comes to mind and has a certain currency right there.

1:21:55.270 --> 1:21:59.470
And they come here too to Claremont for instance in regular conferences,

1:21:59.470 --> 1:22:06.530
public official of states, all of the government to kind

1:22:06.530 --> 1:22:07.840
of learn something about that.   So there's an interesting kind of--

1:22:07.840 --> 1:22:10.860
 

1:22:10.860 --> 1:22:14.420
it's neither philosophical nor theological it's nothing nor

1:22:14.420 --> 1:22:18.370
scientific but it's more about how do we figure

1:22:18.370 --> 1:22:22.490
out a new ecological civilization.   [ Inaudible Remark ]

1:22:22.490 --> 1:22:28.780
 

1:22:28.780 --> 1:22:32.480
>> I see no immediate question, I'm gonna ask a question of my own.

1:22:32.480 --> 1:22:40.210
It has always seemed to me that Chinese civilization

1:22:40.210 --> 1:22:46.150
from its earliest periods, and I'm thinking I guess especially

1:22:46.150 --> 1:22:48.050
of Daoism and not the Confucian strand

1:22:48.050 --> 1:22:56.960
but the Daoist strand has premised becoming as opposed to being.

1:22:56.960 --> 1:23:03.420
And if you just think of the very familiar Daoist notion of Yin Yang

1:23:03.420 --> 1:23:05.900
and turning into one another. 

1:23:05.900 --> 1:23:08.400
It's a little different from what you're talking about

1:23:08.400 --> 1:23:15.600
but there's a fundamental notion of becoming as primary and I think

1:23:15.600 --> 1:23:23.740
when you get to Neo-Confucianism which then begins to incorporate--

1:23:23.740 --> 1:23:26.610
figure out how to incorporate the Daoist perspective

1:23:26.610 --> 1:23:32.620
and then the impact to Buddhism, that notion of becoming becomes--

1:23:32.620 --> 1:23:37.320
is extended into the human realm I think,

1:23:37.320 --> 1:23:38.860
tell me if I've got this right.   But my-- I was guessing from that.

1:23:38.860 --> 1:23:43.130
 

1:23:43.130 --> 1:23:48.560
Oh and then, another little small connection, it's my understanding

1:23:48.560 --> 1:23:57.140
that some of the Chinese thinking about process as fundamental entered

1:23:57.140 --> 1:24:04.880
into Europe through Leibniz coming from Jesuits in Beijing.

1:24:04.880 --> 1:24:11.540
So I'm wondering even though as you said in China the interest

1:24:11.540 --> 1:24:16.000
in Whitehead seems to be focused in arenas of education

1:24:16.000 --> 1:24:19.970
and ecological understanding of the world,

1:24:19.970 --> 1:24:25.800
if there isn't a fundamental compatibility that's built

1:24:25.800 --> 1:24:32.890
into the very-- may be unspoken premises of least strong strands

1:24:32.890 --> 1:24:39.030
of Chinese thinking and if you-- what do make of that?

1:24:39.030 --> 1:24:42.030
Or any-- well [laughs], does anyone make anything of it?

1:24:42.030 --> 1:24:42.430
[ Laughter ]   >> Well--

1:24:42.430 --> 1:24:43.380
 

1:24:43.380 --> 1:24:45.030
>> Oh, good. 

1:24:45.030 --> 1:24:48.870
>> Shall I say-- I mean just a few things.

1:24:48.870 --> 1:24:56.010
You know, there is a very well known philosopher

1:24:56.010 --> 1:25:05.670
in Iran whose name is Shirazi and he lived about 400 years ago

1:25:05.670 --> 1:25:12.100
under this-- in the Safavid period and he is, I mean by far,

1:25:12.100 --> 1:25:17.260
perhaps the most prominent philosopher in Iran and perhaps

1:25:17.260 --> 1:25:22.740
in all Islamic world compared to Ibn Sina, Avicenna and others.

1:25:22.740 --> 1:25:27.170
Now, one of his main perhaps discoveries in philosophy,

1:25:27.170 --> 1:25:31.160
I have written a whole book on this particular discovery,

1:25:31.160 --> 1:25:37.260
is the philosophy of substantial change and, you know,

1:25:37.260 --> 1:25:41.740
my book title is The Restless Nature of Universe.

1:25:41.740 --> 1:25:47.430
So this actually tells you a lot about the nature and the spirit

1:25:47.430 --> 1:25:51.470
of his philosophy, The Restless Nature of Universe.

1:25:51.470 --> 1:25:56.820
There, actually, he mentions I mean in, you know, and he argues,

1:25:56.820 --> 1:26:00.020
you know, in metaphysical and philosophical terms

1:26:00.020 --> 1:26:05.800
about the restless nature and the becoming which is inherent in being.

1:26:05.800 --> 1:26:10.310
So from that point of view it makes it somehow, you know,

1:26:10.310 --> 1:26:15.230
a cousin of Chinese philosophy and to some extent, you know,

1:26:15.230 --> 1:26:19.660
I think is closed to Whiteheadian process philosophy,

1:26:19.660 --> 1:26:23.090
although Whitehead did not perhaps like his metaphysics,

1:26:23.090 --> 1:26:25.090
I mean metaphysics of Shirazi, 

1:26:25.090 --> 1:26:30.220
because his metaphysics is very Aristotelian rather than Platonic.

1:26:30.220 --> 1:26:34.070
And as Faber actually mentioned that he was fond

1:26:34.070 --> 1:26:38.820
of Plato, I mean that's Whitehead.   >> Right, Ron?

1:26:38.820 --> 1:26:43.350
 

1:26:43.350 --> 1:26:45.410
[ Inaudible Remark ]   >> Yeah. Would you wait for the mic?

1:26:45.410 --> 1:26:47.960
 

1:26:47.960 --> 1:26:52.610
Here comes [inaudible] with the mic.   >> Thank you.

1:26:52.610 --> 1:26:53.510
 

1:26:53.510 --> 1:26:59.780
I'd like to make a little comment in respect to Carolyn's question.

1:26:59.780 --> 1:27:06.120
The Chinese I can tell you right now are translating Professor Chen Gong

1:27:06.120 --> 1:27:09.590
from the Beijing University of Science

1:27:09.590 --> 1:27:14.770
and Technology is translating this letter from Whitehead

1:27:14.770 --> 1:27:21.490
to Professor Leonard's father and publications will occur.

1:27:21.490 --> 1:27:27.050
I spoke about this letter in a seminar in November that went

1:27:27.050 --> 1:27:33.450
into theoretical physics not just theory of education or ecology.

1:27:33.450 --> 1:27:39.780
I also have some friends from the Chinese Academy of Particle Physics,

1:27:39.780 --> 1:27:44.630
high-energy physicists, and low-energy physicists who worked

1:27:44.630 --> 1:27:50.200
at Brookhaven, who worked in Brookhaven National Laboratory,

1:27:50.200 --> 1:27:53.580
who worked in MIT with Professor Ting,

1:27:53.580 --> 1:27:57.390
a Nobel Prize winning particle physicist

1:27:57.390 --> 1:28:02.010
and also spent the decade in CERN. 

1:28:02.010 --> 1:28:05.510
The interesting thing when I described the implications

1:28:05.510 --> 1:28:09.290
of Whitehead's philosophy to a theoretical physics

1:28:09.290 --> 1:28:14.620
and particle physics, I remember Professor saying this is exactly the

1:28:14.620 --> 1:28:16.250
way I've been thinking. 

1:28:16.250 --> 1:28:23.070
So the resonance of Whitehead's thought to traditional mode

1:28:23.070 --> 1:28:27.810
of Chinese thinking and especially if you correctly say Carolyn,

1:28:27.810 --> 1:28:37.130
Daoism with the sense of integration [inaudible] is a kinship that's felt

1:28:37.130 --> 1:28:41.050
in theoretical physics in the center for--

1:28:41.050 --> 1:28:47.980
the International Center for Process Science, Philosophy

1:28:47.980 --> 1:28:54.330
and Education we have members who are Chinese physicists.

1:28:54.330 --> 1:29:00.200
And so I think this point that you make is very valid,

1:29:00.200 --> 1:29:03.680
it comes from Whitehead's own intuition but it's extending

1:29:03.680 --> 1:29:05.780
into the realm of pure science 

1:29:05.780 --> 1:29:11.100
and I believe cosmology as well as ontology.

1:29:11.100 --> 1:29:14.000
>> Second part of the morning's program is to--

1:29:14.000 --> 1:29:24.360
I think you're in middle there, to have several scholars reflect

1:29:24.360 --> 1:29:30.300
on different aspects of Whitehead's thought and legacy.

1:29:30.300 --> 1:29:32.720
To take the conversation a little deeper

1:29:32.720 --> 1:29:41.260
in certain particular areas both scholarly and in some cases personal

1:29:41.260 --> 1:29:43.200
and each speaker will speak 

1:29:43.200 --> 1:29:49.570
for 10 minutes then the second three will come forward.

1:29:49.570 --> 1:29:53.340
There wasn't enough room to have everybody

1:29:53.340 --> 1:29:54.680
up here all at the same time. 

1:29:54.680 --> 1:30:00.100
And then we will do questions and answers after that.

1:30:00.100 --> 1:30:04.980
>> And I do want to thank our two photographers,

1:30:04.980 --> 1:30:09.470
Jim Piper a secret Whitehead scholar, we didn't--

1:30:09.470 --> 1:30:13.650
I didn't know about 'til recently and then Abby Brack

1:30:13.650 --> 1:30:16.630
from the Public Affairs Office. 

1:30:16.630 --> 1:30:21.310
So, our first-- I didn't bring my crib sheet

1:30:21.310 --> 1:30:27.660
but the first speaker knows who he is, so if you would-- George, okay.

1:30:27.660 --> 1:30:29.210
 

1:30:29.210 --> 1:30:30.510
>> Good Morning.   [ Pause ]

1:30:30.510 --> 1:30:39.720
 

1:30:39.720 --> 1:30:44.760
>> Alright, I'll do this from the podium.

1:30:44.760 --> 1:30:45.800
 

1:30:45.800 --> 1:30:50.170
Thanks. And, put a watch where I could see it so I don't go over,

1:30:50.170 --> 1:30:53.050
Carolyn made it very clear that we would be dispatched summarily

1:30:53.050 --> 1:30:55.370
in good military fashion, pushed off the sea wall,

1:30:55.370 --> 1:30:58.210
hung from the yard arms, or shot to death

1:30:58.210 --> 1:31:00.180
if we went over our 10 minutes. 

1:31:00.180 --> 1:31:06.230
I'm supposed to speak on the Whitehead and Wittgenstein

1:31:06.230 --> 1:31:08.530
and I really wanna offer a few informal comments

1:31:08.530 --> 1:31:10.550
that a really mostly personal. 

1:31:10.550 --> 1:31:13.130
It says something there also about ethics

1:31:13.130 --> 1:31:15.400
and I won't say anything about ethics.

1:31:15.400 --> 1:31:17.170
That's my vocation now. 

1:31:17.170 --> 1:31:20.800
I teach ethics, I have a chair in what is called the Stockdale Center

1:31:20.800 --> 1:31:23.600
at the Naval Academy as well as ethics in public policy

1:31:23.600 --> 1:31:26.610
at the Naval Post Graduate School at Monterey.

1:31:26.610 --> 1:31:31.680
And I mentioned that only because sadly the opportunity to talk

1:31:31.680 --> 1:31:35.510
about Whitehead, think about process philosophy is more of an avocation

1:31:35.510 --> 1:31:39.630
in those situations than a vocation so it's a great privileged even

1:31:39.630 --> 1:31:43.240
to be included in this very distinguished group

1:31:43.240 --> 1:31:45.500
at this very special occasion. 

1:31:45.500 --> 1:31:49.510
And I'll try not to rain on the parade.

1:31:49.510 --> 1:31:51.810
I don't want you to think that Carolyn and Tim ended

1:31:51.810 --> 1:31:56.100
up inviting the Grinch or Eeyore to come and speak

1:31:56.100 --> 1:32:04.780
but after the beautiful eloquent opening address by Roland Faber

1:32:04.780 --> 1:32:09.080
on Whitehead's importance, his significance, the discussion of him

1:32:09.080 --> 1:32:14.310
as a cultural bridge connecting not only cultures

1:32:14.310 --> 1:32:19.510
but different faiths I tend or where others are exuberant

1:32:19.510 --> 1:32:21.740
about these things, to be melancholy.

1:32:21.740 --> 1:32:27.190
And when others look the tremendous influence that Whitehead has,

1:32:27.190 --> 1:32:31.140
I lament in good Eeyorean fashion. 

1:32:31.140 --> 1:32:34.770
The decline of disappearance of Whitehead among the communities

1:32:34.770 --> 1:32:40.400
of scholars in whom he was most interested and engaged himself.

1:32:40.400 --> 1:32:43.720
Of that decline, I'd sight two disturbing examples

1:32:43.720 --> 1:32:47.510
that I deeply regret and present very much,

1:32:47.510 --> 1:32:50.210
first there's only one graduate program,

1:32:50.210 --> 1:32:54.020
a PhD program in philosophy left in the country where someone can go

1:32:54.020 --> 1:33:01.090
and study Whitehead that is PhD philosophy program and that is due

1:33:01.090 --> 1:33:03.540
to the presence of my former graduate student,

1:33:03.540 --> 1:33:09.720
Judith Jones at Fordham University, a shadow of its former self

1:33:09.720 --> 1:33:15.220
and it was there at Fordham that she herself mentored a student,

1:33:15.220 --> 1:33:20.540
a young colleague, Bryan Penning who together with Roland

1:33:20.540 --> 1:33:23.640
that their efforts have brought 

1:33:23.640 --> 1:33:28.210
about this Whitehead research project and the collected edition

1:33:28.210 --> 1:33:31.570
of Whitehead's works that Roland mentioned towards the end

1:33:31.570 --> 1:33:36.220
of his talk and that's wonderful but that's not enough.

1:33:36.220 --> 1:33:39.150
It's hardly the critical mass we need and when you look

1:33:39.150 --> 1:33:43.650
at the other great programs in the past, Harvard, Yale, Emery, Chicago,

1:33:43.650 --> 1:33:49.250
Texas, they no longer have Whitehead scholars nor did they have any

1:33:49.250 --> 1:33:53.430
intentions as far as I know to replace them.

1:33:53.430 --> 1:33:57.780
Even more poignant for me working as I do with naval personnel

1:33:57.780 --> 1:34:01.310
who are deeply enamored of the legacy

1:34:01.310 --> 1:34:05.140
of Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale the Navy's main philosopher.

1:34:05.140 --> 1:34:09.520
Where are the Phil Rhinelanders? 

1:34:09.520 --> 1:34:13.300
Phil Rhinelander was a very eminent interpreter

1:34:13.300 --> 1:34:14.870
of Whitehead at Stanford University. 

1:34:14.870 --> 1:34:18.320
He is also a Dean of the graduate program, the graduate studies the

1:34:18.320 --> 1:34:21.730
and it was he who mentored the young Lieutenant Commander Stockdale

1:34:21.730 --> 1:34:24.510
when he came to take his degree in international relations and ended

1:34:24.510 --> 1:34:27.670
up doing independent studies and philosophy with Phil Rhinelander,

1:34:27.670 --> 1:34:31.100
where are we going to get people like that now who have

1:34:31.100 --> 1:34:34.310
such a tremendous influence far outside the fields

1:34:34.310 --> 1:34:35.940
of philosophy alone? 

1:34:35.940 --> 1:34:42.640
So, I tend in my old age to look at these things and lament them rather

1:34:42.640 --> 1:34:48.520
than celebrate them and wonder, you know, what will become of us.

1:34:48.520 --> 1:34:53.200
Another example, some years ago, I did an accreditation site visit

1:34:53.200 --> 1:34:58.310
from a Department of Education licensed accrediting institution

1:34:58.310 --> 1:35:02.030
to the University of London's external program.

1:35:02.030 --> 1:35:04.220
It's a very eminent program. 

1:35:04.220 --> 1:35:07.220
Nelson Mandela got his degree while in prison in South Africa.

1:35:07.220 --> 1:35:09.090
He got a lot of degree from the external program

1:35:09.090 --> 1:35:10.250
at the University of London. 

1:35:10.250 --> 1:35:14.730
Mohandas Gandhi is an alumnus or was an alumnus.

1:35:14.730 --> 1:35:21.090
It's a pretty good program and it has this interesting legacy

1:35:21.090 --> 1:35:24.960
of bringing together all the campuses at the University of London

1:35:24.960 --> 1:35:27.110
who otherwise had very little to do with one another,

1:35:27.110 --> 1:35:29.800
deeply proud of their own traditions and, you know,

1:35:29.800 --> 1:35:33.840
disdainful of their colleagues in the other campuses as I said

1:35:33.840 --> 1:35:37.700
in my report to the department, the University of London is a hole

1:35:37.700 --> 1:35:41.490
which is considerably less than the sum of its parts.

1:35:41.490 --> 1:35:46.010
One of those very eminent parts along with London School

1:35:46.010 --> 1:35:51.070
of Economics and Jeremy Bentham's University College is the Imperial

1:35:51.070 --> 1:35:55.760
College of Science and Technology and indeed I took this task on,

1:35:55.760 --> 1:35:58.200
kind of thankless accreditation task because it would give me chance

1:35:58.200 --> 1:36:05.460
to go to this place that Whitehead served as dean for most

1:36:05.460 --> 1:36:08.460
of the useful years of his career. 

1:36:08.460 --> 1:36:11.620
Most of the-- what have been sort of most productive years

1:36:11.620 --> 1:36:15.640
in any ordinary person's career were spent at--

1:36:15.640 --> 1:36:24.350
as their first dean taking what had been really founded to serve

1:36:24.350 --> 1:36:29.020
as a grimy, grubby, urban polytechnic institute

1:36:29.020 --> 1:36:34.580
to teach vocational studies to the lesser classes and lifting it up to

1:36:34.580 --> 1:36:37.830
that vision of education that we find so eloquently portrayed

1:36:37.830 --> 1:36:42.630
in his essay on the aims of education much later.

1:36:42.630 --> 1:36:47.020
That vision of liberal education that transforms the vocations

1:36:47.020 --> 1:36:50.820
from merely the grimy, grubby, pursuit of technique

1:36:50.820 --> 1:36:56.890
into ennobling professions in their own right, we know from the letters

1:36:56.890 --> 1:37:00.770
that we did have, the few from Whitehead during this time,

1:37:00.770 --> 1:37:05.730
that this was a very difficult task for him and it took a lot of energy

1:37:05.730 --> 1:37:09.560
and time, burdens of administrative duties while trying to carry

1:37:09.560 --> 1:37:14.510
on a useful program of scholarship, some of the highlights of which,

1:37:14.510 --> 1:37:19.450
again Professor Faber mentioned in his eloquent address.

1:37:19.450 --> 1:37:22.480
But those all came at a terrible personal price and it was

1:37:22.480 --> 1:37:27.700
for that reason that Whitehead was so eager essentially

1:37:27.700 --> 1:37:31.720
to shake the dust from his feet and turn his back on his native land

1:37:31.720 --> 1:37:35.820
at the relatively advanced stage of 63, I say as I approach

1:37:35.820 --> 1:37:40.360
that age myself, and leave his native land and come

1:37:40.360 --> 1:37:42.840
to United States and accept this position at Harvard

1:37:42.840 --> 1:37:45.610
which had last gave him the opportunity to indulged

1:37:45.610 --> 1:37:47.930
in his scholarly interest unfettered 

1:37:47.930 --> 1:37:50.340
by the crushing administrative burdens

1:37:50.340 --> 1:37:53.220
that he had faced at the Imperial College.

1:37:53.220 --> 1:37:55.510
Well, that piece of the history is probably well known

1:37:55.510 --> 1:37:59.940
to you though perhaps not portrayed in so grim a fashion as I just have,

1:37:59.940 --> 1:38:03.420
what I think is disappointing is to go back there

1:38:03.420 --> 1:38:09.860
and find there is no portrait, there is no bust, there is no sense

1:38:09.860 --> 1:38:12.490
of the legacy of this man who built the college into one

1:38:12.490 --> 1:38:13.810
of the premiere scientific 

1:38:13.810 --> 1:38:16.940
and technological institutions in the world today.

1:38:16.940 --> 1:38:19.580
I think Whitehead deserves a great deal of credit for that

1:38:19.580 --> 1:38:21.830
but no credit to my knowledge is given to him

1:38:21.830 --> 1:38:23.480
in his native land or in this place. 

1:38:23.480 --> 1:38:28.230
There is a library dedicated to his friend, Lord Haldane in which some

1:38:28.230 --> 1:38:30.830
of Whitehead's books are to be found but there is no--

1:38:30.830 --> 1:38:34.550
at least I was unable to find in my visit there any mention

1:38:34.550 --> 1:38:37.940
of the history of the school that mentioned Alfred North Whitehead

1:38:37.940 --> 1:38:43.030
and his pioneering work to build the institution that it is today.

1:38:43.030 --> 1:38:44.090
 

1:38:44.090 --> 1:38:49.640
Well, I could go on and I can't go on or Carolyn is gonna do me in.

1:38:49.640 --> 1:38:53.640
I'm supposed to talk about Wittgenstein and the donation

1:38:53.640 --> 1:38:57.490
of this letter and Professor Henry's own comments about his father's work

1:38:57.490 --> 1:38:59.260
on Whitehead on logical positivism. 

1:38:59.260 --> 1:39:03.250
I remember looking at that when I was interested in Wittgenstein,

1:39:03.250 --> 1:39:04.860
a logical positivist myself. 

1:39:04.860 --> 1:39:08.470
And I'm embarrassed to say, I can't remember the thrust and the details

1:39:08.470 --> 1:39:11.490
of the paper and I had no idea who it was or who I was reading.

1:39:11.490 --> 1:39:12.770
It was just some other author 

1:39:12.770 --> 1:39:15.410
who have thought deeply about these questions.

1:39:15.410 --> 1:39:19.140
But I think I recall either the phrase or at least the though

1:39:19.140 --> 1:39:22.270
that this relentlessly narrow and destructive dialectic

1:39:22.270 --> 1:39:27.590
of logical positivism would end up obscuring the very real

1:39:27.590 --> 1:39:32.320
and important areas of common interest problems of common concern

1:39:32.320 --> 1:39:36.240
that Whitehead shared with his predecessor and colleagues

1:39:36.240 --> 1:39:39.110
in that field including Wittgenstein and would end

1:39:39.110 --> 1:39:42.430
up marginalizing the broader and more profound interest

1:39:42.430 --> 1:39:44.670
of Whitehead the philosopher 

1:39:44.670 --> 1:39:48.660
and I fear that's exactly what come to pass.

1:39:48.660 --> 1:39:52.190
In my own work on Whitehead and Wittgenstein subsequently, you know,

1:39:52.190 --> 1:39:59.640
Wittgenstein Congress outside of Vienna in 1994, I was invited only

1:39:59.640 --> 1:40:03.720
because I had written on Whitehead, Hegel, analytic philosophy

1:40:03.720 --> 1:40:06.980
and the history of process thought and ways that seemed useful

1:40:06.980 --> 1:40:10.090
to the conference organizers, [inaudible] and others

1:40:10.090 --> 1:40:12.790
who were interested in Wittgenstein and the legacy

1:40:12.790 --> 1:40:15.890
of 20th century British philosophy. 

1:40:15.890 --> 1:40:21.560
>> Well I pointed out there that Whitehead, Whitehead's process

1:40:21.560 --> 1:40:24.190
and reality in particular had appeared

1:40:24.190 --> 1:40:27.790
at a time roughly equivalent to the appearance of being in time

1:40:27.790 --> 1:40:31.830
and Wittgenstein's Tractatus so we had Heidegger, Wittgenstein,

1:40:31.830 --> 1:40:34.660
and Whitehead all sort of a triumvirate.

1:40:34.660 --> 1:40:37.200
I didn't include Husserl as Professor Faber did today.

1:40:37.200 --> 1:40:40.310
I still haven't made up my mind where he belongs in this

1:40:40.310 --> 1:40:43.590
but that was a useful triumvirate because the other two,

1:40:43.590 --> 1:40:45.390
one representing continental thinking,

1:40:45.390 --> 1:40:49.280
the other British analytic tradition even though carried

1:40:49.280 --> 1:40:53.080
up by an Austrian engineer had turned their backs on the sort

1:40:53.080 --> 1:40:59.970
of thing that Whitehead was doing and so it was interesting

1:40:59.970 --> 1:41:04.650
to consider whether theirs was the harbinger of the age and the future

1:41:04.650 --> 1:41:09.330
or whether this legacy that Whitehead represented,

1:41:09.330 --> 1:41:16.080
the grand tradition of philosophical speculative thought would emerge one

1:41:16.080 --> 1:41:20.830
day again as carrying that tradition forward for the future.

1:41:20.830 --> 1:41:24.560
The other historical observation I made since there was very little

1:41:24.560 --> 1:41:27.940
to work with other than the fact that Wittgenstein had dinner

1:41:27.940 --> 1:41:31.860
at the Whitehead's a couple of times and certainly commented

1:41:31.860 --> 1:41:33.380
on the principia from time to time. 

1:41:33.380 --> 1:41:36.590
He really didn't have much to do with or have much in the way

1:41:36.590 --> 1:41:39.240
of influence of Whitehead so what was one to do

1:41:39.240 --> 1:41:40.310
at a conference like this? 

1:41:40.310 --> 1:41:42.800
Well I'll talk about what had happened subsequently

1:41:42.800 --> 1:41:44.760
to Wittgenstein as well as to Russell

1:41:44.760 --> 1:41:47.010
and more alongside Whitehead. 

1:41:47.010 --> 1:41:50.670
All four of them were the great founding figures of what came

1:41:50.670 --> 1:41:56.980
to be known as the 20th century tradition of analytic philosophy

1:41:56.980 --> 1:42:01.640
and interestingly enough that was a tradition that in the subtitle

1:42:01.640 --> 1:42:04.960
of my talk which was the critique of enlightenment

1:42:04.960 --> 1:42:07.920
and the question concerning metaphysics.

1:42:07.920 --> 1:42:11.630
That was an enlightenment project. 

1:42:11.630 --> 1:42:15.790
It carried on that grand tradition of looking for perfection

1:42:15.790 --> 1:42:20.130
and progress in the form in the 20th century of looking for precision,

1:42:20.130 --> 1:42:24.190
exactness, and lack of ambiguity. 

1:42:24.190 --> 1:42:27.690
To think not only of the Tractatus but also of the search

1:42:27.690 --> 1:42:31.920
for protocol language and the pricipia itself,

1:42:31.920 --> 1:42:37.210
all of these were projects designed to try and delve and plum the depths

1:42:37.210 --> 1:42:39.740
of things and bring analytic rigor to them,

1:42:39.740 --> 1:42:42.840
that here to for have been lacking and remove questions

1:42:42.840 --> 1:42:45.130
of ambiguity and unclarity. 

1:42:45.130 --> 1:42:48.170
And all of those thinkers in various ways turned their backs

1:42:48.170 --> 1:42:51.070
on that project over the course of their careers.

1:42:51.070 --> 1:42:53.990
Wittgenstein followed more retreating

1:42:53.990 --> 1:42:56.960
into the ambiguities and-- 

1:42:56.960 --> 1:42:59.820
of ordinary language and turned his back

1:42:59.820 --> 1:43:02.690
on the project of the Tractatus. 

1:43:02.690 --> 1:43:06.710
Whitehead of course, we know attributed most of that work,

1:43:06.710 --> 1:43:11.870
I think falsely to Russell but he himself later said the exactness

1:43:11.870 --> 1:43:16.140
of logic is a fake and it is more interesting that--

1:43:16.140 --> 1:43:17.610
it is more important 

1:43:17.610 --> 1:43:20.600
that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

1:43:20.600 --> 1:43:25.360
And it's very hard to understand utterances of a person

1:43:25.360 --> 1:43:29.060
who had the kind of background Whitehead had an influence he had

1:43:29.060 --> 1:43:33.270
unless one sees all of these figures as subsequently

1:43:33.270 --> 1:43:36.000
as they did Russell the last of them and took him and told

1:43:36.000 --> 1:43:40.290
to the 1940s before he gave up on his project and his anger

1:43:40.290 --> 1:43:42.940
at Wittgenstein is well known over this.

1:43:42.940 --> 1:43:46.140
Mr. Wittgenstein has coming to think that the utterances

1:43:46.140 --> 1:43:48.980
of everyone are meaningful except philosophers.

1:43:48.980 --> 1:43:52.650
It was one of his famous quotes denouncing the sub--

1:43:52.650 --> 1:43:56.110
the later Wittgenstein's work with language.

1:43:56.110 --> 1:43:58.540
And yet, one wonders why did they do that?

1:43:58.540 --> 1:44:01.140
What was it that led them back? 

1:44:01.140 --> 1:44:05.170
Led I say by Whitehead in the end and at the very tale had Russell

1:44:05.170 --> 1:44:10.230
who finally turns to a kind of having made fun of James as well.

1:44:10.230 --> 1:44:13.690
William James most of his life and James in neutral monism

1:44:13.690 --> 1:44:16.920
as a metaphysical position that he thinks most in keeping

1:44:16.920 --> 1:44:20.170
with that picture of the world that Whitehead was trying to sketch

1:44:20.170 --> 1:44:24.540
so difficultly and-- at such difficulty in process in reality.

1:44:24.540 --> 1:44:28.670
Russell himself comes to that view and-- but only much later.

1:44:28.670 --> 1:44:30.190
I think there is something to be said

1:44:30.190 --> 1:44:33.410
for understanding the continuity and the conversation

1:44:33.410 --> 1:44:35.830
that Whitehead was involved in and carried

1:44:35.830 --> 1:44:38.380
on with his colleagues in contemporaries.

1:44:38.380 --> 1:44:42.200
And the way in which that concept-- sorry, that conversation evolved,

1:44:42.200 --> 1:44:47.070
if we were to understand what are otherwise lamentably obscure words

1:44:47.070 --> 1:44:51.440
like process reality and understand what the project was Whitehead was

1:44:51.440 --> 1:44:53.760
trying to carry out to give a sketch,

1:44:53.760 --> 1:44:57.820
a picture in this famous distinction that Wittgenstein makes

1:44:57.820 --> 1:45:02.050
between what can be said and what can only be shown to show

1:45:02.050 --> 1:45:06.400
in words what can only be shown in process and reality,

1:45:06.400 --> 1:45:11.010
what the world must be like, what the entities in that world must be

1:45:11.010 --> 1:45:15.720
like if all we know from our understanding relativity physics,

1:45:15.720 --> 1:45:19.070
quantum mechanics, and evolution are true.

1:45:19.070 --> 1:45:23.090
I think it's a brilliant achievement and we haven't fully understood yet

1:45:23.090 --> 1:45:27.060
or grasped its significance and I hope that day will come when we do.

1:45:27.060 --> 1:45:28.510
Thank You.   [ Applause ]

1:45:28.510 --> 1:45:34.300
 

1:45:34.300 --> 1:45:37.830
>> I just noticed that my attempt to opposed being

1:45:37.830 --> 1:45:39.460
on a flexibility universe, 

1:45:39.460 --> 1:45:42.680
I've mixed up the panel members a little bit and we're

1:45:42.680 --> 1:45:46.550
in the wrong order but why don't we proceed and just know that the flux

1:45:46.550 --> 1:45:50.510
of the universe has had the last laugh, so Derek.

1:45:50.510 --> 1:45:56.100
[ Pause ] 

1:45:56.100 --> 1:45:59.270
>> But I have a couple of pieces of good news for George

1:45:59.270 --> 1:46:00.940
that may lift his spirits. 

1:46:00.940 --> 1:46:03.470
There is a new PhD program in process though

1:46:03.470 --> 1:46:07.260
at the Claremont School of Theology PhD in Process Thought.

1:46:07.260 --> 1:46:10.900
So that's happy and I actually participated in October

1:46:10.900 --> 1:46:16.420
in a symposium at the University of Chicago on process political theory.

1:46:16.420 --> 1:46:19.660
So, some green shoots perhaps. 

1:46:19.660 --> 1:46:22.060
I've been asked to speak about the relationship

1:46:22.060 --> 1:46:23.700
between Whitehead's thought and that 

1:46:23.700 --> 1:46:26.880
of the great [inaudible] philosopher Immanuel Kant.

1:46:26.880 --> 1:46:30.710
And this topic seems to me to be especially appropriate in relation

1:46:30.710 --> 1:46:35.170
to the Leonard letter because the problematic intellectual negations

1:46:35.170 --> 1:46:37.380
of logical positivism have as their--

1:46:37.380 --> 1:46:42.450
as one as their key intellectual antecedents Kant's central theoretic

1:46:42.450 --> 1:46:46.950
notion of the noumenon, that is the concept of the unknowable

1:46:46.950 --> 1:46:48.700
which Kant associates with the objects

1:46:48.700 --> 1:46:51.390
of traditional metaphysical analysis.

1:46:51.390 --> 1:46:55.170
Yet for Kant, this is a negation that is made as a gesture

1:46:55.170 --> 1:46:57.970
of humility, epistemic humility. 

1:46:57.970 --> 1:47:01.710
Whereas as Whitehead indicates in the Leonard letter,

1:47:01.710 --> 1:47:05.550
the logical positivist come eventually to wield this negation

1:47:05.550 --> 1:47:09.100
as an arrogant dismissal of all other approaches to philosophy

1:47:09.100 --> 1:47:11.600
and the analysis of human experience,

1:47:11.600 --> 1:47:14.750
Wittgenstein annoys me intensely to I have to say.

1:47:14.750 --> 1:47:18.250
Moreover, Whitehead viewed logical positivism's rejection

1:47:18.250 --> 1:47:23.430
of metaphysical inquiry as a covert form of anti-rationalism and so far

1:47:23.430 --> 1:47:24.770
as it entails the denial 

1:47:24.770 --> 1:47:29.760
of inescapable practical presuppositions of human experience

1:47:29.760 --> 1:47:32.550
and it is worth noting that Whitehead's insistence

1:47:32.550 --> 1:47:34.220
that philosophy take seriously 

1:47:34.220 --> 1:47:38.680
such inescapable practical presuppositions, aligns in a way

1:47:38.680 --> 1:47:41.670
with Kant's use of practical reason. 

1:47:41.670 --> 1:47:45.910
Yet, Kant employs this notion of that which we inevitably

1:47:45.910 --> 1:47:50.840
and inescapably presuppose in our living as a way

1:47:50.840 --> 1:47:55.350
around his own prohibition against inquiry into the true nature

1:47:55.350 --> 1:48:01.180
of things and thereby introduces an irrationalism into his own theory,

1:48:01.180 --> 1:48:04.580
a tension in fact between the theoretical and the practical.

1:48:04.580 --> 1:48:09.000
Whereas Whitehead seeks to resolve such tension by using the criterion

1:48:09.000 --> 1:48:13.330
of practical necessity to cleanse philosophy of those abstractions

1:48:13.330 --> 1:48:17.820
and sensibilities that had grown up over the preceding 300 years

1:48:17.820 --> 1:48:22.900
that had divorced intellectual analysis from intuition and feeling.

1:48:22.900 --> 1:48:25.230
Whitehead I believe considered Kant one

1:48:25.230 --> 1:48:28.260
of his most important historical interlocutors.

1:48:28.260 --> 1:48:31.790
At the end of the chapter in process and reality titled from Descartes

1:48:31.790 --> 1:48:35.860
to Kant, Whitehead invokes Kant's recognition of the relationship

1:48:35.860 --> 1:48:39.450
between the epistemic constitution, the constitution as a knower

1:48:39.450 --> 1:48:43.000
and a believer and as an experience right,

1:48:43.000 --> 1:48:46.530
more fundamentally for Whitehead. 

1:48:46.530 --> 1:48:49.130
An epistemic constitution of the subject and the ordering

1:48:49.130 --> 1:48:52.670
of the external world in a deeply appreciative way in summing

1:48:52.670 --> 1:48:54.660
up the trajectory of thought that culminates

1:48:54.660 --> 1:48:57.210
in Kant's transcendental idealism 

1:48:57.210 --> 1:48:59.400
and framing Whitehead's own crucial discussion

1:48:59.400 --> 1:49:03.650
of what he calls the subjectivist principle in the following chapter.

1:49:03.650 --> 1:49:07.410
Whitehead writes "We have now come to Kant, the great philosopher

1:49:07.410 --> 1:49:09.940
who first fully and explicitly introduced

1:49:09.940 --> 1:49:13.290
into philosophy the conception of an active experience

1:49:13.290 --> 1:49:17.490
as constructive functioning, transforming subjectivity

1:49:17.490 --> 1:49:21.850
into objectivity and objectivity into subjectivity.

1:49:21.850 --> 1:49:26.590
The order is immaterial in comparison with the general idea."

1:49:26.590 --> 1:49:30.560
Of course, Kant presupposes and by the way I should say,

1:49:30.560 --> 1:49:33.680
forgive me in 10 minutes to say anything about two figures as dense

1:49:33.680 --> 1:49:36.510
and obscure as Kant and Whitehead is difficult, I may be dense

1:49:36.510 --> 1:49:38.960
and obscure myself a bit in the next paragraph or so

1:49:38.960 --> 1:49:41.350
but I'll unpack it later if you ask questions.

1:49:41.350 --> 1:49:45.570
Kant presupposes the long-standing Aristotelian ontology

1:49:45.570 --> 1:49:47.700
of enduring substances. 

1:49:47.700 --> 1:49:51.850
In his account of subjectivity, things never change

1:49:51.850 --> 1:49:55.690
through time really they just sort of undergo appearances of change

1:49:55.690 --> 1:50:00.990
for Kant whereas Whitehead shifts to a serially-ordered ontology,

1:50:00.990 --> 1:50:03.900
and therefore conception of personhood.

1:50:03.900 --> 1:50:08.230
For Kant ontologically speaking, the self is a static thing

1:50:08.230 --> 1:50:10.910
that endures unchanging through time 

1:50:10.910 --> 1:50:14.050
and time itself is ultimately unreal for Kant.

1:50:14.050 --> 1:50:16.840
>> For Whitehead-- at least in our empirical observation,

1:50:16.840 --> 1:50:18.490
for Whitehead each moment 

1:50:18.490 --> 1:50:22.420
of the self's existence is in effect a new self.

1:50:22.420 --> 1:50:27.590
A sui generis self-created entity related to its personal antecedents

1:50:27.590 --> 1:50:33.830
and descendants that is its past and future instances of itself.

1:50:33.830 --> 1:50:38.090
By threads of shared character with temporality understood

1:50:38.090 --> 1:50:43.480
as a fundamental element of reality as such Whitehead's understanding

1:50:43.480 --> 1:50:47.230
of the metaphysically basic character of subjective freedom

1:50:47.230 --> 1:50:50.590
that is the expression of creativity in the formation

1:50:50.590 --> 1:50:53.320
of the actual occasion's subjective aim.

1:50:53.320 --> 1:50:54.660
That is its goal for itself 

1:50:54.660 --> 1:51:02.470
as it becomes is substantive rather than merely formal.

1:51:02.470 --> 1:51:06.860
Indeed, creativity is and Whitehead put's this in a discussion

1:51:06.860 --> 1:51:09.500
of Aristotle at the beginning of process and reality.

1:51:09.500 --> 1:51:13.010
Creativity is the ontological substance of the becoming event.

1:51:13.010 --> 1:51:18.060
He put this in replacement of Aristotle's Prima Materia.

1:51:18.060 --> 1:51:19.090
 

1:51:19.090 --> 1:51:21.430
For Whitehead agrees with Plato and Locke

1:51:21.430 --> 1:51:26.660
that to be an actual individual is to exercise power.

1:51:26.660 --> 1:51:30.790
There can be no merely passive or purely receptive actuality

1:51:30.790 --> 1:51:35.110
and for Whitehead this point further implies that to choose is

1:51:35.110 --> 1:51:37.070
to exert an influence on the character

1:51:37.070 --> 1:51:39.550
and constitution of one's environment.

1:51:39.550 --> 1:51:43.170
It is to do real work in the world, to reshape in accordance

1:51:43.170 --> 1:51:45.920
with one's choice and in proportion to the efficacy

1:51:45.920 --> 1:51:50.200
of that choice the conditions of reality as related to the context

1:51:50.200 --> 1:51:52.310
and scope of the choice at hand. 

1:51:52.310 --> 1:51:56.270
Certainly, receptivity is involved in the process of choosing,

1:51:56.270 --> 1:51:59.860
the agent, the self, must chose from some given set

1:51:59.860 --> 1:52:02.330
of possible alternatives for it 

1:52:02.330 --> 1:52:06.580
and on Whitehead's account these alternatives are apprehended

1:52:06.580 --> 1:52:12.740
by the becoming subject as elements in the many which are the received--

1:52:12.740 --> 1:52:16.310
what he call superjective environmental conditions

1:52:16.310 --> 1:52:18.620
that are presented to the emergent subject

1:52:18.620 --> 1:52:21.040
through the efficient causal efficacy

1:52:21.040 --> 1:52:25.900
of the past agents whose own choices have defined the environmental

1:52:25.900 --> 1:52:31.230
context of the congressing subjects alternatives for self realization.

1:52:31.230 --> 1:52:32.810
But even this receptive aspect 

1:52:32.810 --> 1:52:35.740
of the subjects becoming is not wholly passive,

1:52:35.740 --> 1:52:42.850
for the subject actively represents to itself this many as a function

1:52:42.850 --> 1:52:46.360
of its very subjectivity which is emergent from

1:52:46.360 --> 1:52:50.590
but definitively not identical to the objectivity

1:52:50.590 --> 1:52:53.110
of its antecedent causal circumstances.

1:52:53.110 --> 1:52:56.780
There is no determinism here for Whitehead, right?

1:52:56.780 --> 1:53:00.130
The changes that happened temporarily are real.

1:53:00.130 --> 1:53:03.530
To be clear, this is not representation

1:53:03.530 --> 1:53:05.590
in the sense developed in the work of Descartes,

1:53:05.590 --> 1:53:09.300
Locke and other pre Kantian representational lists

1:53:09.300 --> 1:53:12.440
who Kant takes to task in Critique of Pure Reason

1:53:12.440 --> 1:53:15.570
but rather representation in the sense that one finds under the label

1:53:15.570 --> 1:53:20.030
of synthesis in Kant's treatment of the spontaneous unity

1:53:20.030 --> 1:53:22.480
of transcendental apperception 

1:53:22.480 --> 1:53:25.110
in his great work The Critique of Pure Reason.

1:53:25.110 --> 1:53:29.390
As a function that is this synthesis is a function of the activity

1:53:29.390 --> 1:53:32.780
of the faculty of understanding and the constitution

1:53:32.780 --> 1:53:35.210
of the individual's experience 

1:53:35.210 --> 1:53:38.880
and in an important sense therefore is the constitutive faculty

1:53:38.880 --> 1:53:45.640
of the individual's personhood as such to have or rather to be a self,

1:53:45.640 --> 1:53:50.900
Kant tells us, is to actively synthesize, that is to represent

1:53:50.900 --> 1:53:54.130
to oneself the data of one's experience.

1:53:54.130 --> 1:53:57.430
The data floods in but you have to make it your own, right?

1:53:57.430 --> 1:54:00.800
You have to put your own perspective to it for it to be the data

1:54:00.800 --> 1:54:05.180
of yourself, of your personal experience.

1:54:05.180 --> 1:54:06.440
 

1:54:06.440 --> 1:54:10.980
The first thing to observe is that for Kant and Whitehead this activity

1:54:10.980 --> 1:54:14.700
of synthesis or Kant presents that constitutes the emerging unity

1:54:14.700 --> 1:54:15.920
of personal experience 

1:54:15.920 --> 1:54:20.700
for the subject is [inaudible] the intersection of ontological

1:54:20.700 --> 1:54:23.510
and epistemic conditions of selfhood 

1:54:23.510 --> 1:54:25.740
at which personal freedom is located.

1:54:25.740 --> 1:54:28.830
For Kant the transcendental synthesis affected

1:54:28.830 --> 1:54:32.510
by the understanding necessarily functions in accordance

1:54:32.510 --> 1:54:35.530
with the universal and deterministic laws

1:54:35.530 --> 1:54:38.130
of empirical advance as he calls them.

1:54:38.130 --> 1:54:41.640
However, as a transcendental function

1:54:41.640 --> 1:54:47.120
of human subjectivity this synthesis is also by definition an activity

1:54:47.120 --> 1:54:49.930
of noumenal self, the soul 

1:54:49.930 --> 1:54:53.800
as the transcendental object grounding the possibility

1:54:53.800 --> 1:54:58.590
of subjectivity which again by definition cannot be conceived

1:54:58.590 --> 1:55:00.750
of in terms of any dependence upon the laws

1:55:00.750 --> 1:55:06.310
that regulate merely apparent that is empirical, temporal objects.

1:55:06.310 --> 1:55:09.740
In other words, there is bifurcation in Kant between the noumenal

1:55:09.740 --> 1:55:15.910
and the empirical self and it's at this bifurcated point

1:55:15.910 --> 1:55:19.490
that personal freedom is introduced in coherently.

1:55:19.490 --> 1:55:21.360
 

1:55:21.360 --> 1:55:24.740
Indeed, it seems to me that Kant is somewhat unreflectively developing

1:55:24.740 --> 1:55:26.960
the fundamental underpinnings for the ontology

1:55:26.960 --> 1:55:30.620
of serial awarded selfhood, the probable course that he fails

1:55:30.620 --> 1:55:34.660
to perceive the full implications this potentially epic making shift

1:55:34.660 --> 1:55:37.170
and therefore attempts to graft it on to and--

1:55:37.170 --> 1:55:38.920
graph this revolutionary insight 

1:55:38.920 --> 1:55:41.610
about the self-constructive character of each moment

1:55:41.610 --> 1:55:45.500
of subjectivity onto a traditional and enduring substance conception

1:55:45.500 --> 1:55:49.640
of the noumenal self and thus his system lapses into incoherence.

1:55:49.640 --> 1:55:55.070
So Whitehead-- so Kant gives us a serially ordered phenomenology

1:55:55.070 --> 1:55:58.510
with an enduring substance ontology and it remained therefore

1:55:58.510 --> 1:56:02.100
for Whitehead to recognize and develop the full implications

1:56:02.100 --> 1:56:05.500
of Kant's insight in process and reality.

1:56:05.500 --> 1:56:09.850
Whiteheads saw clearly that freedom or more precisely creativity

1:56:09.850 --> 1:56:14.450
as he terms it must be eminent within rather than transcended

1:56:14.450 --> 1:56:18.260
of the temporal order of subjective experience.

1:56:18.260 --> 1:56:21.960
This is why Whitehead's insistence on the substantive character

1:56:21.960 --> 1:56:25.990
of the act of creativity as constitutive of the actuality

1:56:25.990 --> 1:56:29.500
of the concresent subject as that which is required

1:56:29.500 --> 1:56:35.110
to manifest an abstract determinant possibility for the self

1:56:35.110 --> 1:56:39.190
in the concrete superjective determination that it makes

1:56:39.190 --> 1:56:42.480
as itself creates that is why this is so crucial

1:56:42.480 --> 1:56:46.610
to the ultimate coherence of the account of creaturely freedom

1:56:46.610 --> 1:56:50.750
that Whitehead develops and here I think lies the primary resource

1:56:50.750 --> 1:56:53.960
that Whitehead offers to contemporary theology going back

1:56:53.960 --> 1:56:56.380
to the problems that were mentioned in the first panel.

1:56:56.380 --> 1:56:59.510
The incoherence of the notion of divine omnipotence

1:56:59.510 --> 1:57:01.140
and omnicausality is it's worked 

1:57:01.140 --> 1:57:06.640
out in traditional Abrahamic monotheism, I think is insoluble.

1:57:06.640 --> 1:57:11.020
Whitehead saw that clearly and he revised his understanding of God

1:57:11.020 --> 1:57:14.840
and of the self precisely in order to rescue the notion

1:57:14.840 --> 1:57:19.190
that the self is a free independent locus of power related to God

1:57:19.190 --> 1:57:24.750
but not deterministically ruled over by God as despot.

1:57:24.750 --> 1:57:25.650
Thanks.   [ Applause ]

1:57:25.650 --> 1:57:35.040
 

1:57:35.040 --> 1:57:39.960
>> Well, first I want to say that George's comment,

1:57:39.960 --> 1:57:45.800
I think strikes all of us with its truth because no one

1:57:45.800 --> 1:57:50.790
who have been steered by Whitehead's adventure

1:57:50.790 --> 1:57:54.440
in speculative philosophy can 

1:57:54.440 --> 1:58:01.980
in Whitehead's terminology perceive these objective antecedent events

1:58:01.980 --> 1:58:07.780
without the form, the subjective form of lamentation.

1:58:07.780 --> 1:58:13.650
But I also will add when we had the first conference on Whitehead

1:58:13.650 --> 1:58:19.920
in China in the third millennium I wrote a poem, Cosmology.

1:58:19.920 --> 1:58:28.060
And within that poem there's a stanza, "To wait for but a century

1:58:28.060 --> 1:58:33.110
as Buck did, what is that to truth and beauty?"

1:58:33.110 --> 1:58:39.630
So, let me begin on my remarks please.

1:58:39.630 --> 1:58:47.590
I also want to thank Professor Leonard for his donation

1:58:47.590 --> 1:58:51.080
of this rare and historically significant letter

1:58:51.080 --> 1:58:56.710
from the great mathematician, mathematical logician,

1:58:56.710 --> 1:59:01.800
and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, to his father--

1:59:01.800 --> 1:59:08.050
to who he his father Henry F. Leonard who had the unique privilege

1:59:08.050 --> 1:59:13.180
of serving as Whiteheads personal assistant during the period

1:59:13.180 --> 1:59:20.180
in which Whitehead's philosophy found its most mature

1:59:20.180 --> 1:59:25.510
and comprehensive expression culminating

1:59:25.510 --> 1:59:31.380
in the magnum opus process in reality and other signature work

1:59:31.380 --> 1:59:34.260
such as Adventures of Ideas. 

1:59:34.260 --> 1:59:37.430
As Victor Lowe, Whitehead's biographer

1:59:37.430 --> 1:59:44.810
and Professor Leonard Sr. classmate at Harvard knew it was to Henry

1:59:44.810 --> 1:59:52.480
to whom Whitehead would most openly and explicitly express his appraisal

1:59:52.480 --> 1:59:59.080
of the tendencies in philosophy which ran contrary

1:59:59.080 --> 2:00:04.050
to Whitehead's endeavors [inaudible] to philosophy.

2:00:04.050 --> 2:00:08.720
>> Lowe sort to obtain this letter from Professor Richard Redner,

2:00:08.720 --> 2:00:12.900
Chairman of the Philosophy Department of Washington University

2:00:12.900 --> 2:00:18.180
who for a time held the letter and he also sought it

2:00:18.180 --> 2:00:22.850
from Priscilla Leonard, Professor Leonard's wife.

2:00:22.850 --> 2:00:28.460
While Priscilla could not put her hands on the letter she recall

2:00:28.460 --> 2:00:31.650
to Lowe that the charm and the wit 

2:00:31.650 --> 2:00:35.760
with which Whitehead described contending schools

2:00:35.760 --> 2:00:43.780
of thought made Henry laugh whenever he reread the letter.

2:00:43.780 --> 2:00:51.530
The letter has a rare fusion of caustic tone and witty charm.

2:00:51.530 --> 2:00:56.400
This was so atypical of Whitehead whose kind

2:00:56.400 --> 2:00:59.670
and gentle soul touched so many people.

2:00:59.670 --> 2:01:07.870
But it manifested the intensity of Whitehead's perception

2:01:07.870 --> 2:01:13.770
of the sterilizing consequences of those modes of thought

2:01:13.770 --> 2:01:20.940
which suppressed inquiry wonder and the spirit of adventure.

2:01:20.940 --> 2:01:25.770
Whitehead found in Henry S. Leonard more

2:01:25.770 --> 2:01:33.480
than in any other eminent student in Cambridge, London or Harvard,

2:01:33.480 --> 2:01:38.330
a kindred spirit who integrated a love

2:01:38.330 --> 2:01:43.140
of mathematical, logic, and metaphysics.

2:01:43.140 --> 2:01:48.030
It is worthy to know that Whitehead and Leonard served as presidents

2:01:48.030 --> 2:01:51.190
of the American Philosophical Association.

2:01:51.190 --> 2:01:56.150
Leonard is also regarded as father of the mathematical field

2:01:56.150 --> 2:02:01.930
of Mariology through his work with Nelson Goodman on The Calculus

2:02:01.930 --> 2:02:08.150
of Individuals that work represents a development of Whitehead's method

2:02:08.150 --> 2:02:11.600
of extensive abstraction and its relation--

2:02:11.600 --> 2:02:15.200
in its study of the relation between wholes and parts

2:02:15.200 --> 2:02:20.680
and the relations of parts within wholes.

2:02:20.680 --> 2:02:25.780
During his 10 year at Harvard, Leonard was Whitehead's student

2:02:25.780 --> 2:02:28.620
and then his personal assistant. 

2:02:28.620 --> 2:02:32.440
Leonard was also a student and later a friend

2:02:32.440 --> 2:02:37.210
of the modal logician CI Lewis. 

2:02:37.210 --> 2:02:40.500
At the Princeton Institute of Advance Studies,

2:02:40.500 --> 2:02:43.280
Leonard spent two years working 

2:02:43.280 --> 2:02:47.800
with the Austrian mathematical logician Kurt Godel.

2:02:47.800 --> 2:02:53.610
During that period, Leonard developed Wide Language W [phonetic]

2:02:53.610 --> 2:02:58.510
which is a synthesis of propositional and modal logic

2:02:58.510 --> 2:03:05.010
which provides the most accurate and deepest logical system

2:03:05.010 --> 2:03:11.330
for understanding the logic which underlies the axiomatic system

2:03:11.330 --> 2:03:16.900
within process and reality, Wide Language W more

2:03:16.900 --> 2:03:26.120
than Principia Mathematica itself reflects the underlying logic

2:03:26.120 --> 2:03:32.490
to the ontology and cosmology or process in reality in which the role

2:03:32.490 --> 2:03:39.790
of possibilities and potentialities play such a crucial role,

2:03:39.790 --> 2:03:46.220
Henry has given me the unpublished manuscript for Wide Language W

2:03:46.220 --> 2:03:52.080
which manuscript I look forward to sharing with other scholars.

2:03:52.080 --> 2:03:56.700
After Leonard left the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies,

2:03:56.700 --> 2:03:59.660
I became his personal assistant 

2:03:59.660 --> 2:04:05.630
and at Washington University Leonard presented this important work.

2:04:05.630 --> 2:04:10.280
While his presidential address touched on this,

2:04:10.280 --> 2:04:16.670
a further exposition and development of Wide Language W is part

2:04:16.670 --> 2:04:23.660
of Leonard's legacy that awaits its maturation.

2:04:23.660 --> 2:04:29.760
In process and reality Whitehead develops great attention

2:04:29.760 --> 2:04:33.930
to contrasting his philosophy of science and organism

2:04:33.930 --> 2:04:40.570
with a broad sweep of western philosophical traditions originating

2:04:40.570 --> 2:04:46.070
in the spectacular genius of grief antiquity and running

2:04:46.070 --> 2:04:51.210
through British and continental philosophical traditions.

2:04:51.210 --> 2:04:56.660
He also cryptically remarks that the modes of thought of process

2:04:56.660 --> 2:05:03.260
and reality are more akin to ancient Easton mode of thoughts

2:05:03.260 --> 2:05:10.740
and intuition than they are to the atomism, mechanical, materialism,

2:05:10.740 --> 2:05:16.690
and reductionism that had prevailed in western philosophy

2:05:16.690 --> 2:05:22.090
and western science for over two and a half millennium.

2:05:22.090 --> 2:05:28.120
What Whitehead did not do is publicly address how his philosophy

2:05:28.120 --> 2:05:32.320
contrasted with the philosophical tendencies

2:05:32.320 --> 2:05:38.870
that were emerging concurrent with his own speculative philosophy.

2:05:38.870 --> 2:05:44.100
These tendencies would grip 20th century philosophy

2:05:44.100 --> 2:05:52.400
in a protracted period of what we may call anti-philosophy.

2:05:52.400 --> 2:05:59.100
Seventy-five years ago, in response to the volume Philosophical Essays:

2:05:59.100 --> 2:06:05.060
Celebrating Whitehead's 75th Birthday, Henry Leonard along

2:06:05.060 --> 2:06:08.050
with other of Whitehead's eminent students

2:06:08.050 --> 2:06:15.870
at Harvard composed a meticulously argued essay entitled Logical

2:06:15.870 --> 2:06:19.940
Positivism and Speculative Philosophy.

2:06:19.940 --> 2:06:26.200
It was Leonard's essay which elicited this six-paged letter

2:06:26.200 --> 2:06:34.450
from today with what is today formally [inaudible]

2:06:34.450 --> 2:06:38.390
in the magnificent Library of Congress.

2:06:38.390 --> 2:06:45.070
I believe Tim has obtained a copy of Philosophical Essays.

2:06:45.070 --> 2:06:53.610
In this letter, Whitehead writes, every mathematician

2:06:53.610 --> 2:06:58.150
and symbolic logician is in its habit

2:06:58.150 --> 2:07:01.770
of thought a logical positivist. 

2:07:01.770 --> 2:07:08.760
Yet, to some of the expositions I find myself

2:07:08.760 --> 2:07:14.850
in violent opposition especially to the very habit

2:07:14.850 --> 2:07:22.930
of dismissing questions as unmeaning that is unable

2:07:22.930 --> 2:07:26.690
to be expressed in existing symbolism.

2:07:26.690 --> 2:07:34.080
Wittgenstein annoys me intensely. 

2:07:34.080 --> 2:07:39.600
He is a complete example of the saying I am master of this college,

2:07:39.600 --> 2:07:43.330
what I know not is not knowledge.   Logical positivism in this mode,

2:07:43.330 --> 2:07:47.530
 

2:07:47.530 --> 2:07:54.630
its early mode will produced a timid shut in an enterprising state

2:07:54.630 --> 2:08:04.000
of mind engaged in the elaboration of details.

2:08:04.000 --> 2:08:09.830
I always test these general rules by trying

2:08:09.830 --> 2:08:16.700
to imagine their sterilizing effect of such as state of mind

2:08:16.700 --> 2:08:19.380
if perceived in any time-- 

2:08:19.380 --> 2:08:25.650
if prevalent at any time in the last 10,000 years.

2:08:25.650 --> 2:08:28.590
It's interesting because the Chinese think

2:08:28.590 --> 2:08:32.950
of units an eon of 10,000 years.   The fact is that thought

2:08:32.950 --> 2:08:37.070
 

2:08:37.070 --> 2:08:44.420
in the previous two centuries has been engaged in disengaging itself

2:08:44.420 --> 2:08:53.460
from the shackles of dogmatic divinity thus it unconsciously seeks

2:08:53.460 --> 2:08:59.970
[inaudible] namely anything offensive to the pope of Rome.

2:08:59.970 --> 2:09:01.210
 

2:09:01.210 --> 2:09:08.480
But I see not, I see no reason to believe that the stretch

2:09:08.480 --> 2:09:13.170
of Bertrand Russell's mind or of Wittgenstein's mind

2:09:13.170 --> 2:09:18.960
or of [inaudible] mind has attained the limits of insight

2:09:18.960 --> 2:09:25.040
or expression possible in the evolution of intelligent beings.

2:09:25.040 --> 2:09:32.430
They are bright boys, expressive of a stage

2:09:32.430 --> 2:09:37.110
of rationalism but nothing more. 

2:09:37.110 --> 2:09:42.430
Three decades later after restive of the letter,

2:09:42.430 --> 2:09:48.590
Professor Leonard prepared formal comments which were a company

2:09:48.590 --> 2:09:51.170
and publication of this letter. 

2:09:51.170 --> 2:09:57.060
Unfortunately, as his son indicated, he suddenly died during a trip

2:09:57.060 --> 2:10:03.270
to Germany and the letter and his comments eluded for all

2:10:03.270 --> 2:10:08.310
of these decades the light of public recognition.

2:10:08.310 --> 2:10:14.420
>> Leonard revealed his change of perception of the relation

2:10:14.420 --> 2:10:19.370
of logical positivism and analytical philosophy

2:10:19.370 --> 2:10:28.030
to the traditional metaphysical task of philosophy from Leonard I quote.

2:10:28.030 --> 2:10:35.560
"As I reread the essay today, I find myself tempted to say

2:10:35.560 --> 2:10:39.080
that there's practically nothing in it

2:10:39.080 --> 2:10:47.720
that I would change were I writing today, except the whole thing.

2:10:47.720 --> 2:10:53.060
Finally, they [inaudible] so philosophy is nothing more

2:10:53.060 --> 2:11:02.020
than analysis, an inquiry into the logic, the syntax of language

2:11:02.020 --> 2:11:08.610
of science whereas I have seen man and even

2:11:08.610 --> 2:11:12.400
to a greater extent now see philosophy

2:11:12.400 --> 2:11:19.810
as an enterprise including speculative analysis,

2:11:19.810 --> 2:11:25.020
but as also including legitimate speculative inquiry

2:11:25.020 --> 2:11:30.940
which incorporates both a critique of current scientific speculation

2:11:30.940 --> 2:11:34.310
and a venturing beyond them." 

2:11:34.310 --> 2:11:39.860
Okay, Carolyn encouraged me to finish.

2:11:39.860 --> 2:11:47.570
So, let me just speak a minute or two extemporaneously, what Whitehead

2:11:47.570 --> 2:11:54.920
and Leonard came to see was that philosophy required an integration

2:11:54.920 --> 2:11:58.830
of synthetic and analytic modes of thought.

2:11:58.830 --> 2:12:02.940
Whitehead was one of the world's greatest analytic thinkers

2:12:02.940 --> 2:12:06.710
if not the precision and meaning 

2:12:06.710 --> 2:12:12.730
of Principia Mathematica never would have emerged to shock the world

2:12:12.730 --> 2:12:18.330
of mathematics and to elicit the great German mathematician David

2:12:18.330 --> 2:12:21.090
Hilbert's reply-- comment 

2:12:21.090 --> 2:12:24.540
that Principia is the greatest axiomatic system

2:12:24.540 --> 2:12:27.370
in the human history.   And Whitehead deduced most of that.

2:12:27.370 --> 2:12:30.330
 

2:12:30.330 --> 2:12:37.760
But the proclivity for precision of thought was not adequate

2:12:37.760 --> 2:12:44.180
from Whitehead's point of view and logical positivism in its rigidity,

2:12:44.180 --> 2:12:55.450
in its formality, the same as analytic philosophy in its acuity

2:12:55.450 --> 2:12:59.390
when it's divorced from synthetic integrating

2:12:59.390 --> 2:13:02.500
in speculative modes of thought. 

2:13:02.500 --> 2:13:09.750
And common language philosophy in its utter banality

2:13:09.750 --> 2:13:15.090
as expressed in Wittgenstein's work. 

2:13:15.090 --> 2:13:22.810
Those three tendencies that grip 20th century philosophy so firmly,

2:13:22.810 --> 2:13:32.260
so relentlessly those really would if they prevailed as they did bring

2:13:32.260 --> 2:13:42.730
in the death of philosophy, Steven Hawking in 2010

2:13:42.730 --> 2:13:49.900
in his book Grand Design, once again declares philosophy is dead.

2:13:49.900 --> 2:13:58.630
Whitehead's letter to Leonard really foreshadows us that very fate

2:13:58.630 --> 2:14:04.710
because philosophy is dead if it's divorced of wonder, intuition,

2:14:04.710 --> 2:14:08.270
adventures of ideas, et cetera. 

2:14:08.270 --> 2:14:13.710
I have a larger formal essay on the background and significance

2:14:13.710 --> 2:14:17.840
of this letter if people are interested in,

2:14:17.840 --> 2:14:22.460
it's gonna be published shortly but I have a copy with me,

2:14:22.460 --> 2:14:24.860
I'll be glad to show it and I try 

2:14:24.860 --> 2:14:29.690
to illustrate the revolutionary implications

2:14:29.690 --> 2:14:34.650
of Whitehead's metaphysics to philosophy

2:14:34.650 --> 2:14:41.200
and to theoretical physics and maybe this event today

2:14:41.200 --> 2:14:47.050
in the magnificent Library of Congress, we can look upon

2:14:47.050 --> 2:14:51.150
as the resurrection of the great adventure

2:14:51.150 --> 2:14:55.510
that Whitehead's philosophy offers humanity.

2:14:55.510 --> 2:15:03.010
[ Applause ]   [ Pause ]

2:15:03.010 --> 2:15:08.150
 

2:15:08.150 --> 2:15:13.000
>> Principia Mathematica is a continental divide

2:15:13.000 --> 2:15:14.990
in the Whitehead continent. 

2:15:14.990 --> 2:15:18.480
In one hand it's a peak in the development

2:15:18.480 --> 2:15:22.010
of the philosophical language, a search that goes back

2:15:22.010 --> 2:15:30.880
to Ramon Lowe [phonetic] and Bruno and Leibnitz and the law's

2:15:30.880 --> 2:15:35.490
of thought of whole and on the other hand,

2:15:35.490 --> 2:15:38.100
it's not the wave of the future. 

2:15:38.100 --> 2:15:44.110
If I criticize it I'll try to be gentler than Whitehead would be.

2:15:44.110 --> 2:15:47.730
Whitehead was not only a philosopher of process, he was a philosopher

2:15:47.730 --> 2:15:55.010
in process and first some words about Principia,

2:15:55.010 --> 2:16:02.350
it begins with the most finite basic experience of attraction,

2:16:02.350 --> 2:16:07.600
the typical page that looks like a cross between a Cherokee syllabary

2:16:07.600 --> 2:16:10.360
and the Glacolithic alphabet. 

2:16:10.360 --> 2:16:16.080
The dominant symbol is the horseshoe which can appear either as a cup

2:16:16.080 --> 2:16:21.790
or cap or on its side with various meanings.

2:16:21.790 --> 2:16:26.890
And the underlying algebra is not exactly

2:16:26.890 --> 2:16:31.410
that of Boole it's rather what's called Boolean algebra.

2:16:31.410 --> 2:16:32.950
 

2:16:32.950 --> 2:16:41.620
Two at-- Boolean algebra is a great bleacher or preposition or classes

2:16:41.620 --> 2:16:46.300
with the same room of elements are the same in Boolean algebra.

2:16:46.300 --> 2:16:50.250
The group is the permutation group of end things,

2:16:50.250 --> 2:16:53.750
as it's sort of the constant. 

2:16:53.750 --> 2:17:02.730
Complexity arises from the process of extraction which is represented

2:17:02.730 --> 2:17:08.860
in Principia primarily by the letter iota,

2:17:08.860 --> 2:17:17.260
if X is anything iota X is the unit class whose only element is X.

2:17:17.260 --> 2:17:23.250
And by applying iota infinitely often you get all the real numbers.

2:17:23.250 --> 2:17:25.580
First of all the integers and then from then

2:17:25.580 --> 2:17:28.110
on the construction follows [inaudible]

2:17:28.110 --> 2:17:29.710
 

2:17:29.710 --> 2:17:37.250
in one sense Principia satisfies or was intended to satisfy the urge

2:17:37.250 --> 2:17:42.670
to have a language through which you could put in any question

2:17:42.670 --> 2:17:46.320
and get an answer in which you could be confident.

2:17:46.320 --> 2:17:51.230
A language which had a vocabulary rich enough to describe anything

2:17:51.230 --> 2:17:56.750
and a logic enabled to decide the important question.

2:17:56.750 --> 2:18:02.840
In fact, however, the language of Principia is added only

2:18:02.840 --> 2:18:06.230
for the world of mathematics. 

2:18:06.230 --> 2:18:08.430
Before Principia I think there was some doubt

2:18:08.430 --> 2:18:11.120
about what mathematics was about. 

2:18:11.120 --> 2:18:13.070
It seemed to be a world of many different countries

2:18:13.070 --> 2:18:17.690
which hardly speak to each other and now everybody knows mathematics is

2:18:17.690 --> 2:18:25.870
about set theory and Principia made the transformation from a scattered

2:18:25.870 --> 2:18:28.270
to an integrated mathematics. 

2:18:28.270 --> 2:18:32.740
The story isn't over, modern category theorists are tempted

2:18:32.740 --> 2:18:36.040
to expand this notion but always it turns

2:18:36.040 --> 2:18:42.680
out that it's just another version of set theory written different.

2:18:42.680 --> 2:18:47.650
Of course the story has a tragic ending.

2:18:47.650 --> 2:18:49.570
The book had hardly published. 

2:18:49.570 --> 2:18:52.050
Perhaps it was in the process of publication.

2:18:52.050 --> 2:18:55.680
When Russell discovered that it was not self consistent,

2:18:55.680 --> 2:18:59.940
you couldn't rely on it for any arguments and you remember

2:18:59.940 --> 2:19:07.850
that Russell paradox of the non self-containing set.

2:19:07.850 --> 2:19:12.020
Does it-- is it self-containing itself?

2:19:12.020 --> 2:19:15.580
And you can prove yes and you can prove no

2:19:15.580 --> 2:19:24.430
and the concept is completely within the rules of syntax of Principia

2:19:24.430 --> 2:19:29.060
to deal with this also propose a theory of types

2:19:29.060 --> 2:19:35.080
of [inaudible] simplified the resolution considerably

2:19:35.080 --> 2:19:40.780
and today Principia lives on in a couple of forms.

2:19:40.780 --> 2:19:50.770
But perhaps the greatest blow to the idea that one had a language

2:19:50.770 --> 2:19:56.290
that you could trust to decide any question is the result of girdle

2:19:56.290 --> 2:20:02.140
which flowed out of the paradox of Russell namely the consistency

2:20:02.140 --> 2:20:06.290
of set theory is not a theorem of set theory.

2:20:06.290 --> 2:20:09.330
>> And it turns out that one can either add the set theory,

2:20:09.330 --> 2:20:13.650
the statement that it's consistent or that it's inconsistent.

2:20:13.650 --> 2:20:16.040
 

2:20:16.040 --> 2:20:17.990
Probably didn't say that exactly right,

2:20:17.990 --> 2:20:25.330
but my time is a little limited. 

2:20:25.330 --> 2:20:35.490
The-- I'm pretty sure that when Whitehead was doing Principia,

2:20:35.490 --> 2:20:39.370
he thought of it as a world of mathematics but he also thought

2:20:39.370 --> 2:20:43.140
of the world of mathematics as imaging nature.

2:20:43.140 --> 2:20:44.940
He thought himself as creating a language

2:20:44.940 --> 2:20:46.830
that could be used for physics. 

2:20:46.830 --> 2:20:51.080
And indeed all mathematical physics is expressed in the language

2:20:51.080 --> 2:20:57.330
of Principia if you push the rigor hard enough.

2:20:57.330 --> 2:21:05.950
But the actual direction that Whitehead thinking took was

2:21:05.950 --> 2:21:10.110
to doubt the adequacy of this particular system and any

2:21:10.110 --> 2:21:13.520
such system for describing nature-- 

2:21:13.520 --> 2:21:18.710
a loss of faith and language as a tool for the expression

2:21:18.710 --> 2:21:23.350
of propositions is a way he put it. 

2:21:23.350 --> 2:21:29.770
This comes up more strongly in his philosophy of organism

2:21:29.770 --> 2:21:33.880
which is presented as a self theory of nature.

2:21:33.880 --> 2:21:35.710
 

2:21:35.710 --> 2:21:39.290
I don't think the argument for a self theory of nature have been

2:21:39.290 --> 2:21:43.580
up strongly, even by Whitehead as it could be.

2:21:43.580 --> 2:21:48.250
I myself personally am quite convinced that that's the way we go.

2:21:48.250 --> 2:21:52.580
Consider how, for example, the atomic theory was discovered.

2:21:52.580 --> 2:21:55.760
It's true that Einstein got the Nobel Prize for his work

2:21:55.760 --> 2:22:01.000
on Brownian motion which finely convinced most hard-nosed physicists

2:22:01.000 --> 2:22:05.330
that atoms exist even though you couldn't touch them or see them.

2:22:05.330 --> 2:22:10.250
But in fact chemists had taken for granted that there are atoms

2:22:10.250 --> 2:22:13.250
for centuries before Einstein. 

2:22:13.250 --> 2:22:15.930
And they came to this conclusion just from the fact

2:22:15.930 --> 2:22:19.930
that you find the same chemicals everywhere and they combine

2:22:19.930 --> 2:22:23.090
in certain fixed ways everywhere. 

2:22:23.090 --> 2:22:28.390
The simplest way to handle this without invoking a lot of deities is

2:22:28.390 --> 2:22:31.330
to say they're all made of the same little particles

2:22:31.330 --> 2:22:35.040
and their properties are derived from those of the particles.

2:22:35.040 --> 2:22:40.070
So chemical atoms existed long before physical atoms,

2:22:40.070 --> 2:22:41.400
you could say. 

2:22:41.400 --> 2:22:46.930
Just-- in order to account for the remarkable uniformity

2:22:46.930 --> 2:22:49.750
of the properties of nature. 

2:22:49.750 --> 2:22:55.710
Today, we have changed physics into what is virtually a theory

2:22:55.710 --> 2:23:00.560
of the symmetry of nature and at each point

2:23:00.560 --> 2:23:04.850
of the world one finds a gauge group characterizing the symmetry

2:23:04.850 --> 2:23:11.120
of the immediate neighbor of that point and miracle of miracles,

2:23:11.120 --> 2:23:14.330
a gauge group is the same everywhere,

2:23:14.330 --> 2:23:16.570
are all of these points talking to each other?

2:23:16.570 --> 2:23:19.630
Is there some miracle going on? 

2:23:19.630 --> 2:23:23.000
And again, the simplest way to understand this is to say

2:23:23.000 --> 2:23:27.420
that nature is cellular and the gauge group tells you the symmetry

2:23:27.420 --> 2:23:31.860
or the dynamics of the individual cell for I simply have no doubt

2:23:31.860 --> 2:23:39.120
that the practical road for physical research today is in the direction

2:23:39.120 --> 2:23:43.370
of cellularity and this is not my conclusion especially,

2:23:43.370 --> 2:23:47.100
there's a long line of physicist following this road

2:23:47.100 --> 2:23:48.400
but because it's a difficult 

2:23:48.400 --> 2:23:53.370
and rather branching one we haven't gotten very far

2:23:53.370 --> 2:23:58.870
and one doesn't expect a physicist to earn is living at physics

2:23:58.870 --> 2:24:02.470
to undertake this particular adventure.

2:24:02.470 --> 2:24:12.930
If you look in the process of reality, it's pretty clear

2:24:12.930 --> 2:24:20.250
that Whitehead takes as the basic process of nature concrescence

2:24:20.250 --> 2:24:23.760
in which 2 or several things die 

2:24:23.760 --> 2:24:27.610
and their concrescence is born is the way he puts it.

2:24:27.610 --> 2:24:28.790
 

2:24:28.790 --> 2:24:33.630
And this is a pretty description of the iota of Principia and I must say

2:24:33.630 --> 2:24:37.000
that for an unpleasant number of decades I've pushed the idea

2:24:37.000 --> 2:24:40.210
that the passage of time was represented

2:24:40.210 --> 2:24:43.110
by a quantum version of iota. 

2:24:43.110 --> 2:24:52.450
And I think that a deep mistake, iota is deeply irreversible,

2:24:52.450 --> 2:24:56.590
it doesn't-- it doesn't have an inverse,

2:24:56.590 --> 2:25:00.070
the empty set is not the iota of anything.

2:25:00.070 --> 2:25:01.660
There is no reason to doubt 

2:25:01.660 --> 2:25:07.780
that at the microscopic level nature is reversible.

2:25:07.780 --> 2:25:10.930
The cause and effect irreversibility that was we see

2:25:10.930 --> 2:25:18.030
in the large is very likely matter of thermodynamic irreversibility,

2:25:18.030 --> 2:25:20.480
a matter of there being too many variables

2:25:20.480 --> 2:25:24.120
for our mere model tools to control. 

2:25:24.120 --> 2:25:35.530
We can't put the steam back into the teapot just by turning off the heat.

2:25:35.530 --> 2:25:46.220
So-- well, I think with Whitehead that the process

2:25:46.220 --> 2:25:48.040
of abstraction is a fundamental one.   It ain't the passage of time.

2:25:48.040 --> 2:25:50.760
 

2:25:50.760 --> 2:25:57.790
On the contrary, the passage of time is one of the basic symmetries dealt

2:25:57.790 --> 2:26:03.530
with in quantum theory today by standard measures

2:26:03.530 --> 2:26:10.110
of group theory used for any other translation or rotation.

2:26:10.110 --> 2:26:17.520
The catch being that when you put many elements

2:26:17.520 --> 2:26:21.210
of resistance together an irreversibility arises

2:26:21.210 --> 2:26:25.870
out of complexity, a complexity which you can't build just

2:26:25.870 --> 2:26:32.610
with the Boolean algebra, that was the main language before

2:26:32.610 --> 2:26:34.680
Principia Mathematica. 

2:26:34.680 --> 2:26:40.080
You can say when Heisenberg described the quantum theory

2:26:40.080 --> 2:26:42.820
in the earlier years, he said, 

2:26:42.820 --> 2:26:46.380
quantum theory is non-objective physics.

2:26:46.380 --> 2:26:51.090
I guess he didn't have the word process here so he had to put it

2:26:51.090 --> 2:26:54.820
in a negative way, but it's true that quantum theories deals

2:26:54.820 --> 2:26:58.580
with operations and the main difference between them

2:26:58.580 --> 2:27:04.580
and the propositions of Boole is it don't commute and handy

2:27:04.580 --> 2:27:08.960
to represent them if you like [inaudible] as Heisenberg did,

2:27:08.960 --> 2:27:12.170
but in fact another way to express the--

2:27:12.170 --> 2:27:17.490
what replaces Boole in quantum theory is projective geometry,

2:27:17.490 --> 2:27:19.510
 

2:27:19.510 --> 2:27:20.590
 

2:27:20.590 --> 2:27:24.670
I'm not sure that Whitehead ever had enough confidence

2:27:24.670 --> 2:27:29.120
in projective geometry to suggest it as the next language

2:27:29.120 --> 2:27:34.630
after Principia, I think that's the way things are going though.

2:27:34.630 --> 2:27:38.700
And that-- that language of quantum theory today,

2:27:38.700 --> 2:27:42.210
although I think most physicist don't take courses

2:27:42.210 --> 2:27:46.200
in projected geometry Derek did 

2:27:46.200 --> 2:27:50.050
and it profoundly influenced his pioneering work in quantum theory

2:27:50.050 --> 2:27:52.780
as he describes it his own biographical--

2:27:52.780 --> 2:27:55.590
 

2:27:55.590 --> 2:28:00.280
 

2:28:00.280 --> 2:28:06.840
Let me just close by saying that every few years, I go back

2:28:06.840 --> 2:28:12.550
and reread Whitehead, mostly a result of some gentle stimulation

2:28:12.550 --> 2:28:18.040
by Timothy Eastman and I discover that Whitehead is one

2:28:18.040 --> 2:28:21.760
of those fortunate individuals who doesn't let the mere accident

2:28:21.760 --> 2:28:26.240
of death interfere with his intellectual development.

2:28:26.240 --> 2:28:29.740
Each time I go back to him, 

2:28:29.740 --> 2:28:34.010
I find him inconsiderably wiser from the previous time.

2:28:34.010 --> 2:28:35.510
[Laughter] Thank you.   [ Applause ]

2:28:35.510 --> 2:28:45.010
 

2:28:45.010 --> 2:28:51.450
[ Pause ] 

2:28:51.450 --> 2:28:54.880
>> Hi! Well, David that was great, thanks so much

2:28:54.880 --> 2:28:56.510
for introducing physics, it makes-- 

2:28:56.510 --> 2:28:59.370
it's gonna make my job a little bit easier because it's difficult

2:28:59.370 --> 2:29:02.030
to talk about something as complex as Whitehead and something

2:29:02.030 --> 2:29:05.950
as complex as modern physics in a very short period of time

2:29:05.950 --> 2:29:09.880
without either frightening all of you or frightening myself away,

2:29:09.880 --> 2:29:12.290
if I do run away, don't take it personally,

2:29:12.290 --> 2:29:14.990
it's really-- it's just doing my best.

2:29:14.990 --> 2:29:18.320
But actually the thing about Whitehead and the thing

2:29:18.320 --> 2:29:22.830
about modern physics for me is that yes, its complex

2:29:22.830 --> 2:29:25.970
but it's deeply intuitive, I think. 

2:29:25.970 --> 2:29:29.440
I-- I find-- I find the quantum theory to be deeply intuitive

2:29:29.440 --> 2:29:32.480
in the same way that I find Whiteheadian cosmology

2:29:32.480 --> 2:29:36.220
and metaphysics to be deeply intuitive and so if I'm right

2:29:36.220 --> 2:29:39.800
after 10 minutes I think everyone should be happy.

2:29:39.800 --> 2:29:42.070
I think-- I'm hoping that I'll at least be able

2:29:42.070 --> 2:29:44.570
to communicate something that's coherent in 10 minutes.

2:29:44.570 --> 2:29:46.530
And what I'd like to do actually is start with just

2:29:46.530 --> 2:29:52.490
by reading a quick section of the-- of Dr. Leonard's letter,

2:29:52.490 --> 2:29:57.490
this is actually the last paragraph where Whitehead says,

2:29:57.490 --> 2:30:02.050
"What I do object to is one, the reduction of all possibilities

2:30:02.050 --> 2:30:06.320
of symbolism to the scanty productions of mankind so far,

2:30:06.320 --> 2:30:11.090
and two, the notion that no pattern can be directly discerned unless it

2:30:11.090 --> 2:30:12.370
is symbolized." 

2:30:12.370 --> 2:30:15.050
>> Of course symbolism enormously facilitates the discernment

2:30:15.050 --> 2:30:17.660
of the pattern for we thereby discern the pattern

2:30:17.660 --> 2:30:19.900
in alternative exemplifications. 

2:30:19.900 --> 2:30:25.250
In fact, the curse of the history of human thought is overstatement

2:30:25.250 --> 2:30:28.620
and with respect to physics, I think what he would say

2:30:28.620 --> 2:30:31.520
about classical physics is that it's a perfect example

2:30:31.520 --> 2:30:33.190
of such an overstatement. 

2:30:33.190 --> 2:30:37.630
Because in classical physics, the idea is that you can provide

2:30:37.630 --> 2:30:41.690
through measurements ideally a complete specification of the system

2:30:41.690 --> 2:30:45.660
that you're measuring and by specification I mean a specification

2:30:45.660 --> 2:30:50.770
in terms of some patterns, some logical mathematical pattern of--

2:30:50.770 --> 2:30:53.970
that's represented symbolically, that's what science does

2:30:53.970 --> 2:30:58.360
and classical physics by its belief, its presupposition

2:30:58.360 --> 2:31:01.840
that a complete specification is possible would be an example

2:31:01.840 --> 2:31:03.660
of an overstatement in that regard. 

2:31:03.660 --> 2:31:09.210
And I would say that with respect to modern physics, quantum theory,

2:31:09.210 --> 2:31:12.920
the brute fact is that a complete specification

2:31:12.920 --> 2:31:16.730
in that sense it's impossible and the reason it's impossible is

2:31:16.730 --> 2:31:20.480
because in quantum theory, a measurement interaction

2:31:20.480 --> 2:31:25.070
for the most part is, I think, most fundamentally expressible

2:31:25.070 --> 2:31:30.730
as a schematization or a system of relations

2:31:30.730 --> 2:31:35.680
between the detector system and the object system

2:31:35.680 --> 2:31:39.260
and it's an integration of those relations and so

2:31:39.260 --> 2:31:43.630
by bringing the subject system the detector in connection

2:31:43.630 --> 2:31:46.720
with the system that's being measured, it's difficult--

2:31:46.720 --> 2:31:50.220
I mean it's difficult to maintain the definition of objectivity

2:31:50.220 --> 2:31:55.790
in that sense and, you know, Bohr was famous for admonishing us

2:31:55.790 --> 2:31:59.240
that there is-- there is no sharp separation

2:31:59.240 --> 2:32:03.720
between the divisors you're using to measure a system and the system

2:32:03.720 --> 2:32:06.000
that you're measuring, the impossibility

2:32:06.000 --> 2:32:08.050
of sharp separation is what he says. 

2:32:08.050 --> 2:32:13.780
So that's-- that's a difficulty, that means that-- well, to--

2:32:13.780 --> 2:32:17.760
to bring this back to your discussion of the Principia,

2:32:17.760 --> 2:32:21.010
in essence this means that any measurement of a system,

2:32:21.010 --> 2:32:23.160
any predication of the system, 

2:32:23.160 --> 2:32:26.850
because you can't divorce the subject from the object,

2:32:26.850 --> 2:32:30.240
any measurement is essentially self-predicative,

2:32:30.240 --> 2:32:33.390
it's a self-predication which produces all kinds of paradoxes

2:32:33.390 --> 2:32:35.190
if you believe that that type 

2:32:35.190 --> 2:32:39.110
of predication gives you a complete picture so that's one problem.

2:32:39.110 --> 2:32:44.270
The other problem is the fact that if you universalize quantum theory,

2:32:44.270 --> 2:32:46.680
if you look at it as an ontological significant way

2:32:46.680 --> 2:32:47.930
of looking at nature. 

2:32:47.930 --> 2:32:52.920
It's not only impossible to separate the object system

2:32:52.920 --> 2:32:56.550
from the subject apparatus, the device, it's also impossible

2:32:56.550 --> 2:32:58.650
to separate the rest of the universe 

2:32:58.650 --> 2:33:01.490
from the system and the device together.

2:33:01.490 --> 2:33:03.320
The entanglement isn't just between the--

2:33:03.320 --> 2:33:07.090
the measuring apparatus and the system but the entanglement is

2:33:07.090 --> 2:33:10.450
between all of that and the rest of the world

2:33:10.450 --> 2:33:13.360
and this can be physically expressed in the sense

2:33:13.360 --> 2:33:17.900
of environmental relations between facts of the world that are

2:33:17.900 --> 2:33:20.790
in thermodynamic contact let's say with the system in the apparatus

2:33:20.790 --> 2:33:23.930
and no matter how much you try to isolate the system,

2:33:23.930 --> 2:33:26.800
you're never gonna be able to completely isolate the system.

2:33:26.800 --> 2:33:31.610
So that means that's-- that it's not just the self-predicative

2:33:31.610 --> 2:33:33.280
measurement that happens in quantum theory

2:33:33.280 --> 2:33:35.160
where you can't get rid of the subject.

2:33:35.160 --> 2:33:37.980
You also can't get rid of the rest of the world either.

2:33:37.980 --> 2:33:40.670
And in that sense, that's the only problem in the Principia,

2:33:40.670 --> 2:33:43.460
you don't just run into trouble when you do self-predication,

2:33:43.460 --> 2:33:47.110
you run into trouble whenever you try to predicate a totality,

2:33:47.110 --> 2:33:48.750
you run into all kinds of problems. 

2:33:48.750 --> 2:33:54.900
So the-- the key in quantum theory is to answer the question,

2:33:54.900 --> 2:34:01.140
how do I isolate or how do I refine my scheme,

2:34:01.140 --> 2:34:05.510
the pattern that I'm trying to depict when I make a measurement,

2:34:05.510 --> 2:34:10.110
how do I-- how do I isolate that pattern from the rest of the world.

2:34:10.110 --> 2:34:13.660
How do I-- how do I focus on just the relations between the system

2:34:13.660 --> 2:34:18.700
and the detector and in abstraction from all of the other relations

2:34:18.700 --> 2:34:20.330
between the system and the environment the--

2:34:20.330 --> 2:34:23.410
the detector and the environment, how do I do that?

2:34:23.410 --> 2:34:25.710
Because-- well you have to do it just--

2:34:25.710 --> 2:34:28.750
in order to do the calculations I mean there's no possible way

2:34:28.750 --> 2:34:31.260
to follow all these relations together.

2:34:31.260 --> 2:34:34.080
The other problem is that and those of you who are familiar

2:34:34.080 --> 2:34:37.640
with the Schrodinger's cat, it's not really a paradox but it's a--

2:34:37.640 --> 2:34:40.210
it's an interesting thought experiment

2:34:40.210 --> 2:34:45.850
where you have the sum total of all these relations being something akin

2:34:45.850 --> 2:34:51.460
to saying at the same time the cat is alive and the cat is dead.

2:34:51.460 --> 2:34:54.090
When you try to integrate relations quantum mechanically

2:34:54.090 --> 2:34:56.460
that way you're left with these types of statements

2:34:56.460 --> 2:35:01.470
which defy the logical principle of non-contradiction

2:35:01.470 --> 2:35:06.110
in that sense cannot really be said to be logically coherent

2:35:06.110 --> 2:35:09.090
because that principle of non-contradiction is violated

2:35:09.090 --> 2:35:11.950
so you don't want a statement, "the cat is alive

2:35:11.950 --> 2:35:12.940
and dead" at the same time. 

2:35:12.940 --> 2:35:18.590
So how do you refine those relations that are the result

2:35:18.590 --> 2:35:19.820
of a quantum mechanical measurement? 

2:35:19.820 --> 2:35:24.450
How do you refine them so that they yield logically coherent statement

2:35:24.450 --> 2:35:28.230
such as, "the cat is alive or dead", which is what you want

2:35:28.230 --> 2:35:30.330
and which luckily that's what you get at the end

2:35:30.330 --> 2:35:31.500
of quantum mechanical measurement. 

2:35:31.500 --> 2:35:36.630
Well how? I think that Whitehead was on to something with respect to--

2:35:36.630 --> 2:35:42.680
with respect to the idea that there are aspects

2:35:42.680 --> 2:35:46.090
of a symbolic representation of a system

2:35:46.090 --> 2:35:48.680
that are ignored for a reason. 

2:35:48.680 --> 2:35:52.720
You actually get mileage out of the fact that there are unknowns

2:35:52.720 --> 2:35:56.040
and that both known unknowns and unknown unknowns sorry

2:35:56.040 --> 2:36:00.090
to evoke Donald Rumsfeld here but, you know, I--

2:36:00.090 --> 2:36:03.040
I get what he was saying, the fact that if you incorporate

2:36:03.040 --> 2:36:05.710
that into you symbolic representation

2:36:05.710 --> 2:36:06.790
of the physical system, you're-- 

2:36:06.790 --> 2:36:12.010
you will wind up with a logically coherent set of probability outcomes

2:36:12.010 --> 2:36:14.740
that work and-- and so I've-- before I get into how that works

2:36:14.740 --> 2:36:18.460
in physics, I wanna read another quick section from this letter.

2:36:18.460 --> 2:36:24.030
This is actually from the first page, the last paragraph there.

2:36:24.030 --> 2:36:27.430
In here he's commenting on Dr. Leonard's take and he's agreeing

2:36:27.430 --> 2:36:30.900
with him in the sense, he says, you take the line in effect that

2:36:30.900 --> 2:36:33.910
"order" means a pattern of qualities 

2:36:33.910 --> 2:36:38.420
with accumulative effect namely the one composite satisfaction derived

2:36:38.420 --> 2:36:42.830
from those, "things" in that pattern, underline that,

2:36:42.830 --> 2:36:45.820
and also the rationalization means the discernment of the pattern

2:36:45.820 --> 2:36:50.070
which dominates the effect, so those things in that pattern

2:36:50.070 --> 2:36:52.480
and in quantum physics what we're doing there is saying I want

2:36:52.480 --> 2:36:55.510
to specify the state of these particular things,

2:36:55.510 --> 2:36:59.760
the system I'm measuring and I'm going to predicate that by--

2:36:59.760 --> 2:37:03.480
by referring to those things in terms of a particular pattern

2:37:03.480 --> 2:37:06.090
in divorce from all the rest. 

2:37:06.090 --> 2:37:09.140
Well, in-- in quantum theory to-- to make a long story short,

2:37:09.140 --> 2:37:15.340
no one really knows how it is that this crazy integration

2:37:15.340 --> 2:37:19.080
of mostly illogical relations between the system

2:37:19.080 --> 2:37:22.180
and an environment and a detector gets distilled

2:37:22.180 --> 2:37:27.510
into very logical matrix of probable outcomes that make sense.

2:37:27.510 --> 2:37:31.540
We don't know how that works or that it actually works,

2:37:31.540 --> 2:37:33.800
we just know that which you end up with when you do a measurement.

2:37:33.800 --> 2:37:38.810
In the past couple of decades, there has been a--

2:37:38.810 --> 2:37:43.810
an attempt to answer that question by saying that when you bring

2:37:43.810 --> 2:37:47.730
into the formalism, all of those relations

2:37:47.730 --> 2:37:49.780
that you previously thought were unimportant all

2:37:49.780 --> 2:37:52.570
of those environmental relations, when you integrate them

2:37:52.570 --> 2:37:57.050
into the scheme without specifying them, you're not following them,

2:37:57.050 --> 2:38:00.500
you're just integrating their existence into this scheme,

2:38:00.500 --> 2:38:04.970
what you end up with mathematically is a nice reduction

2:38:04.970 --> 2:38:08.610
of this crazy integration of probable outcomes

2:38:08.610 --> 2:38:12.610
to a nice coherent logical collection, a menu,

2:38:12.610 --> 2:38:14.890
a matrix of probable outcomes 

2:38:14.890 --> 2:38:18.020
that do satisfy the principle of non-contradiction.

2:38:18.020 --> 2:38:20.920
They also satisfy the principle of the excluded middle which means one

2:38:20.920 --> 2:38:24.200
of them will happen which is also a benefit

2:38:24.200 --> 2:38:26.250
because it's the other problem quantum theory can't account

2:38:26.250 --> 2:38:29.540
for why there's a fact at the end of a measurement.

2:38:29.540 --> 2:38:33.090
And what Whitehead I think would say is well, it's presupposed

2:38:33.090 --> 2:38:38.850
because you're dealing with a collection of possible outcomes.

2:38:38.850 --> 2:38:41.090
Each has a probability valuation meaning all

2:38:41.090 --> 2:38:42.470
of them together must sum to unity 

2:38:42.470 --> 2:38:44.530
which you could interpret philosophically is mean--

2:38:44.530 --> 2:38:46.450
meaning that well one of them will happen

2:38:46.450 --> 2:38:48.800
and they're mutually exclusive so they don't interfere.

2:38:48.800 --> 2:38:51.560
There are no live or dead cat superpositions,

2:38:51.560 --> 2:38:54.700
there's simply the probability of a live cat and the probability

2:38:54.700 --> 2:38:59.250
of a dead cat and so, we call this decoherence, this is what happens

2:38:59.250 --> 2:39:06.960
when a coherent superposition of potentia are integrated

2:39:06.960 --> 2:39:10.270
into a logically coherent-- 

2:39:10.270 --> 2:39:11.900
I shouldn't say coherent here because it sort

2:39:11.900 --> 2:39:13.050
of defeats the purpose I'm using 

2:39:13.050 --> 2:39:16.800
in 2 different ways let's say a logically consistent matrix

2:39:16.800 --> 2:39:18.140
of probable outcomes, we-- 

2:39:18.140 --> 2:39:21.650
that's referred to as a decoherence, what drives decoherence?

2:39:21.650 --> 2:39:24.560
There's different theories about it but one type of decoherence,

2:39:24.560 --> 2:39:27.200
environmental decoherence is driven 

2:39:27.200 --> 2:39:29.340
by just what I've been talking about.

2:39:29.340 --> 2:39:35.420
Bringing in these relationships between the system, the detector

2:39:35.420 --> 2:39:41.060
and environment, bringing them into the specification, into the scheme

2:39:41.060 --> 2:39:47.510
without specifying them so I-- I suppose I can close by simply saying

2:39:47.510 --> 2:39:51.060
that in a nutshell what this means is that though in classical physics

2:39:51.060 --> 2:39:53.760
and probably early quantum physics where all

2:39:53.760 --> 2:39:57.830
of those extraneous relations were thought to be unimportant.

2:39:57.830 --> 2:39:59.980
We just simply ignore them, they're not important

2:39:59.980 --> 2:40:02.690
to the particular thing I'm measuring right now.

2:40:02.690 --> 2:40:08.180
>> A Whiteheadian sort of outlook on that would--

2:40:08.180 --> 2:40:12.690
would repudiate that belief, I think Whitehead would say, well,

2:40:12.690 --> 2:40:16.040
they may be unimportant to that particular scheme

2:40:16.040 --> 2:40:17.790
that you're developing, they may be unimportant

2:40:17.790 --> 2:40:21.440
to that particular measurement that you're trying to develop

2:40:21.440 --> 2:40:24.820
but they're not unimportant to the formation of that measurement,

2:40:24.820 --> 2:40:26.900
the formation of that scheme, 

2:40:26.900 --> 2:40:32.070
the formation of that scheme depends upon all of those,

2:40:32.070 --> 2:40:35.710
well what Whitehead would call them diversities of detail.

2:40:35.710 --> 2:40:39.220
And yes, you negatively select those because they're unimportant

2:40:39.220 --> 2:40:42.210
to the particular measurement that you're making

2:40:42.210 --> 2:40:45.860
but he's point would be that you can't have a logically coherent

2:40:45.860 --> 2:40:50.840
measurement in the first place without integrating those,

2:40:50.840 --> 2:40:54.140
without specifying them but without integrating those--

2:40:54.140 --> 2:40:58.910
those extraneous relations so the unknown whether it's a known unknown

2:40:58.910 --> 2:41:05.080
or an unknown unknown, it's important to physics and its--

2:41:05.080 --> 2:41:07.730
it's a-- I think it captures the essence of what he was saying

2:41:07.730 --> 2:41:12.670
with respect to where positivism would lead us ultimately would lead

2:41:12.670 --> 2:41:13.940
us to a dead end. 

2:41:13.940 --> 2:41:18.410
It's important, these things that we don't follow because everything

2:41:18.410 --> 2:41:19.710
in quantum mechanics, I mean, 

2:41:19.710 --> 2:41:21.480
essentially any particular measurement

2:41:21.480 --> 2:41:23.680
if you universalize quantum theory, any measurement

2:41:23.680 --> 2:41:27.520
of a particular system is a measurement of the universe itself

2:41:27.520 --> 2:41:30.790
and this-- both of the known features of the universe

2:41:30.790 --> 2:41:34.340
and the unknown features and I think that captures the essence

2:41:34.340 --> 2:41:37.170
of what Whitehead had in mind probably if--

2:41:37.170 --> 2:41:41.040
if you'd thought about his cosmology,

2:41:41.040 --> 2:41:44.690
actually informing physics as it progressed.

2:41:44.690 --> 2:41:48.590
I think he would have something like that in mind, very basically anyway,

2:41:48.590 --> 2:41:50.400
so thank you very much, appreciate it.

2:41:50.400 --> 2:41:50.800
[ Laughter ]   >> Thanks a lot.

2:41:50.800 --> 2:41:52.510
 

2:41:52.510 --> 2:41:58.010
[Applause]   [ Pause ]

2:41:58.010 --> 2:42:05.140
 

2:42:05.140 --> 2:42:10.900
>> I'm currently a physicist, a space scientist working

2:42:10.900 --> 2:42:16.000
at NASA Goddard and when I first got into my current career,

2:42:16.000 --> 2:42:18.830
I was thinking about going into philosophy

2:42:18.830 --> 2:42:22.220
and my philosophy teacher Herbert Feigl who was one of the members

2:42:22.220 --> 2:42:25.050
of the Vienna Circle Logical Positivism,

2:42:25.050 --> 2:42:28.030
very good lecturer and teacher.   He advised me if I really want

2:42:28.030 --> 2:42:29.290
 

2:42:29.290 --> 2:42:33.500
to do philosophy I should first complete my physics degree

2:42:33.500 --> 2:42:37.210
and then do that and then come back to philosophy.

2:42:37.210 --> 2:42:40.560
Well, I never got back to philosophy but I enjoy sort

2:42:40.560 --> 2:42:46.680
of doing some philosophy so to speak on the side which led in one case

2:42:46.680 --> 2:42:51.050
to this edited volume on physics on Whitehead that I worked on

2:42:51.050 --> 2:42:54.950
and this came up from SUNY Press in 2004 and also context

2:42:54.950 --> 2:42:59.990
with all the wonderful presenters that have been here and this--

2:42:59.990 --> 2:43:03.490
and hearing the various presentations

2:43:03.490 --> 2:43:06.400
of this symposium makes me recall the time

2:43:06.400 --> 2:43:13.300
when I had just finished my quantum physics courses and electromagnetism

2:43:13.300 --> 2:43:18.170
and relativity and right after my undergraduate degree

2:43:18.170 --> 2:43:24.290
and having initial exposure to these concepts, after having been growing

2:43:24.290 --> 2:43:28.070
up on the farm but here is all these various esoteric kinds of things,

2:43:28.070 --> 2:43:31.780
having a lot of struggles with what this field really mean.

2:43:31.780 --> 2:43:35.040
These abstract concepts about electromagnetism and so forth,

2:43:35.040 --> 2:43:36.490
what do-- what do they mean? 

2:43:36.490 --> 2:43:40.860
Well, my professor said well, one way to approach this is learn, obey,

2:43:40.860 --> 2:43:42.750
compute, you know, that's often-- 

2:43:42.750 --> 2:43:44.930
for those in the quantum physics course

2:43:44.930 --> 2:43:49.110
when you don't know what does it really mean and so I was learning

2:43:49.110 --> 2:43:53.720
and obeying and computing but not yet understanding and so then

2:43:53.720 --> 2:44:01.610
that summer after that-- after the spring semester I read-- I got a--

2:44:01.610 --> 2:44:05.800
obtained a copy of Process and Reality by Whitehead

2:44:05.800 --> 2:44:10.980
and for whatever reason I just got-- I just got--

2:44:10.980 --> 2:44:15.230
just buried into it and sort of into that mode of thinking

2:44:15.230 --> 2:44:18.520
and I had been living in this world of perceptional objects.

2:44:18.520 --> 2:44:23.090
This ordinary world and thinking of that and just not being able

2:44:23.090 --> 2:44:25.970
to integrate this notion about what field theory

2:44:25.970 --> 2:44:29.010
and these new physical concepts are, I was reading the Process

2:44:29.010 --> 2:44:33.570
and Reality and then getting myself immersed in Whitehead's discussion

2:44:33.570 --> 2:44:38.100
and then I just had a high experience,

2:44:38.100 --> 2:44:41.070
it just all came together for me.   And it was emotional, you know?

2:44:41.070 --> 2:44:45.600
 

2:44:45.600 --> 2:44:48.450
So-- and then I began to see ways 

2:44:48.450 --> 2:44:52.240
in which these different ideas are almost like a generator of ideas.

2:44:52.240 --> 2:44:57.110
It wasn't just a particular conceptual system,

2:44:57.110 --> 2:45:00.090
it was here with a particular methodology, a way of thinking

2:45:00.090 --> 2:45:03.610
about the very way of being in the world and asking questions

2:45:03.610 --> 2:45:10.760
and so it-- it just sort in a way transformed how I thought

2:45:10.760 --> 2:45:14.130
about who I was and the nature of the world and so if not--

2:45:14.130 --> 2:45:19.250
and so then I just launched into so to speak my own particular adventure

2:45:19.250 --> 2:45:24.630
of ideas however limited it was and--

2:45:24.630 --> 2:45:34.730
and so that so to speak led to me thinking about my own specialty

2:45:34.730 --> 2:45:40.950
of space plasma physics in different ways of how electromagnetism

2:45:40.950 --> 2:45:45.490
and plasmas are an integral part of the whole astrophysical systems

2:45:45.490 --> 2:45:49.860
and so you have not just gravity being significant

2:45:49.860 --> 2:45:53.570
in contemporary studies of astrophysical systems,

2:45:53.570 --> 2:45:56.660
it's a combination of gravity and electromagnetism

2:45:56.660 --> 2:45:59.720
and this combination leads to a whole bunch of processes

2:45:59.720 --> 2:46:04.370
that we're just really beginning to understand by decisive observations

2:46:04.370 --> 2:46:07.700
that my fellow scientists at NASA Goddard are really involved

2:46:07.700 --> 2:46:13.060
in a great, you know, new discoveries and explorations

2:46:13.060 --> 2:46:16.970
that you read about but I would say that they are not tied

2:46:16.970 --> 2:46:22.320
up in the kind of abstractions and being constrained and confined

2:46:22.320 --> 2:46:25.100
by that they are right now in this kind of motive--

2:46:25.100 --> 2:46:29.180
no great discovery period and-- and they're just not--

2:46:29.180 --> 2:46:34.530
they're too busy in that to be caught up in so to speak the logical

2:46:34.530 --> 2:46:40.240
or other kinds of straightjackets that Whitehead spoke out against

2:46:40.240 --> 2:46:44.860
in this 1936 letter that Whitehead called attention to whether be

2:46:44.860 --> 2:46:47.200
in philosophical thought or scientific thought we need

2:46:47.200 --> 2:46:51.550
to constantly be bring-- breaking out of whatever bounds we create

2:46:51.550 --> 2:46:59.090
for ourselves or others appear to create for us to have confidence

2:46:59.090 --> 2:47:03.720
in your own immediate experience in the world as an individual.

2:47:03.720 --> 2:47:08.270
Have confidence in your encounter with others and-- and from that--

2:47:08.270 --> 2:47:12.630
that experience to identify possible abstractions

2:47:12.630 --> 2:47:16.760
and relevant say formalisms even mathematical ones

2:47:16.760 --> 2:47:20.790
that can give suggestions, insights to hypotheses

2:47:20.790 --> 2:47:22.960
that then can help order that experience,

2:47:22.960 --> 2:47:28.500
so that one can then find new ways of finding order amidst the disorder

2:47:28.500 --> 2:47:32.380
of applying so to speak the scientific kind of methodology

2:47:32.380 --> 2:47:37.800
of hypothesis and testing and falsification and identifying,

2:47:37.800 --> 2:47:40.540
you know, new understanding but then going on to the next step

2:47:40.540 --> 2:47:44.090
but doing this in philosophy and doing that kind

2:47:44.090 --> 2:47:48.550
of methodology in one's daily life. 

2:47:48.550 --> 2:47:57.570
And so, let me just briefly indicate a little bit of history of Whitehead

2:47:57.570 --> 2:48:03.360
that got him potentially into his notion apprehension

2:48:03.360 --> 2:48:06.580
and applying some of that con-- 

2:48:06.580 --> 2:48:11.390
those concepts in his work in the 1920's and some of that backdrop

2:48:11.390 --> 2:48:13.970
because I think it's an important backdrop.

2:48:13.970 --> 2:48:17.710
Now, Whitehead himself was a mathematical physicist,

2:48:17.710 --> 2:48:23.020
he's sometimes described as a well, logician, mathematician, philosopher

2:48:23.020 --> 2:48:25.040
but in our current parlance at least 

2:48:25.040 --> 2:48:29.510
in part he was a mathematical physicist and of course he was

2:48:29.510 --> 2:48:32.960
at that time same time was as well these other things.

2:48:32.960 --> 2:48:36.510
And in the traditions of mathematical physics

2:48:36.510 --> 2:48:40.020
from the 19th century there was just a tremendous sequence

2:48:40.020 --> 2:48:43.590
of breakthroughs of Faraday and Maxwell with respect

2:48:43.590 --> 2:48:46.520
to electromagnetism and the insipient development

2:48:46.520 --> 2:48:50.090
of field theory then and Whitehead was greatly impressed by the success

2:48:50.090 --> 2:48:53.910
of Faraday and Maxwell's models of electric and magnetic phenomena

2:48:53.910 --> 2:48:57.740
in particular as stated by Professor Ronny Desmet of the Free University

2:48:57.740 --> 2:49:00.840
of Brussels, Whitehead was especially struck by the fact

2:49:00.840 --> 2:49:04.090
that Hamilton's formal generalization of complex numbers

2:49:04.090 --> 2:49:08.110
into quaternions ultimately gave rise to a vector calculus

2:49:08.110 --> 2:49:11.860
that lead Maxwell and his followers to the descriptive unification

2:49:11.860 --> 2:49:13.930
of electricity and magnetism. 

2:49:13.930 --> 2:49:17.340
In turn the foundation of modern field theories cornerstones

2:49:17.340 --> 2:49:22.140
of modern physics is described by Professor Finkelstein.

2:49:22.140 --> 2:49:23.830
These successes encouraged Whitehead 

2:49:23.830 --> 2:49:26.540
in his successive involvements quoting Desmet,

2:49:26.540 --> 2:49:30.260
with "Grossman's algebra of extensions in universal algebra,

2:49:30.260 --> 2:49:33.410
that's his great work of the 1890s, his involvement

2:49:33.410 --> 2:49:34.830
with Russell's logical relations 

2:49:34.830 --> 2:49:39.330
and Principia Mathematica now the 100th anniversary of that great work

2:49:39.330 --> 2:49:42.190
and his involvement with Einstein's Theory of Relativity

2:49:42.190 --> 2:49:46.560
and the Principles of Relativity 1922 as successive expressions

2:49:46.560 --> 2:49:50.460
of his urge to unify all branches of mathematics and physics

2:49:50.460 --> 2:49:52.920
in a way his own struggle was trying to get

2:49:52.920 --> 2:49:56.840
at a unified theory of all of these. 

2:49:56.840 --> 2:49:59.500
His generalizations of patterns of relation,

2:49:59.500 --> 2:50:01.040
you might say that is what mathematics is about.

2:50:01.040 --> 2:50:08.120
>> Going that even on a generalized mathematics led him further

2:50:08.120 --> 2:50:12.600
to discover "abstract" according to Desmond, "abstract patterns in terms

2:50:12.600 --> 2:50:16.450
of which all concrete elements of our experience can be unified going

2:50:16.450 --> 2:50:18.050
from even the abstract mathematics right

2:50:18.050 --> 2:50:20.620
to the mediacy of human experience." 

2:50:20.620 --> 2:50:24.840
What, structurally, commonalities could be evolved at a procedure

2:50:24.840 --> 2:50:28.370
of the core of Whitehead methodology of speculative philosophy?

2:50:28.370 --> 2:50:30.970
Indeed, philosopher James Bradley of the University

2:50:30.970 --> 2:50:34.450
of Newfoundland argues that "in processing reality

2:50:34.450 --> 2:50:38.620
in subsequent writings, Whitehead builds on the brilliant success

2:50:38.620 --> 2:50:42.470
of the Frege-Russell generalization of the mathematical function

2:50:42.470 --> 2:50:46.130
and develops his philosophy on that basis so there's a way

2:50:46.130 --> 2:50:49.670
in which he then methodologically is utilizing in particular way

2:50:49.670 --> 2:50:52.880
of thinking about the mathematical function and the mapping activity,

2:50:52.880 --> 2:50:55.620
mapping procedure done in mathematics

2:50:55.620 --> 2:50:59.040
at a very fundamental level to a way of thinking about how

2:50:59.040 --> 2:51:05.250
to generate new hypothesis and new conceptual notions

2:51:05.250 --> 2:51:09.050
that then ultimately can help us with understanding questions,

2:51:09.050 --> 2:51:12.600
very philosophical questions about human experience and other things,

2:51:12.600 --> 2:51:15.840
not just abstract mathematical objects.

2:51:15.840 --> 2:51:17.230
 

2:51:17.230 --> 2:51:19.310
And a prime example of this methodology

2:51:19.310 --> 2:51:23.340
of speculative philosophy with its unique roots in the new field theory

2:51:23.340 --> 2:51:25.390
and at generalized mathematics is the concept

2:51:25.390 --> 2:51:29.200
of prehension previously mentioned which is developed in part

2:51:29.200 --> 2:51:31.130
as a philosophical generalization 

2:51:31.130 --> 2:51:34.990
of physical interactions and field theory.

2:51:34.990 --> 2:51:40.820
Now, this all seem-- may seem rather abstract but then it came back to me

2:51:40.820 --> 2:51:44.980
in a new way just reading this past week a most interesting book

2:51:44.980 --> 2:51:47.400
by Brian Henning, it was mentioned 

2:51:47.400 --> 2:51:52.070
by George Lucas whose new book Ethics of Creativity lays

2:51:52.070 --> 2:51:56.930
out a whole new way of approaching questions of ethics.

2:51:56.930 --> 2:52:03.380
A really fundamental new approach to ethics that's just not virtue ethics

2:52:03.380 --> 2:52:08.690
or deontological ethics or utilitarian but incorporates

2:52:08.690 --> 2:52:15.370
within it an approach that utilizes the notion of creativity

2:52:15.370 --> 2:52:26.430
that was elaborated by our main presentor, Professor Faber

2:52:26.430 --> 2:52:29.670
and also Frederick Ferre has been working with this on his book Being

2:52:29.670 --> 2:52:33.070
and Value but this connects to-- 

2:52:33.070 --> 2:52:37.120
he discusses how this connects to Leopold's Land Ethic

2:52:37.120 --> 2:52:42.710
and to new works by Wes Jackson who does work in agriculture

2:52:42.710 --> 2:52:48.620
and this comes back for myself to new ways of connecting my background

2:52:48.620 --> 2:52:52.560
of growing up on a farm connecting to these abstract notions

2:52:52.560 --> 2:52:58.050
in mathematical physics and physics and my own experience when working

2:52:58.050 --> 2:53:06.250
with physical systems in space science to a new approach to ethics

2:53:06.250 --> 2:53:09.470
and this seem like unexpected connections and

2:53:09.470 --> 2:53:14.870
yet this is the very nature of Whitehead and what's been generated

2:53:14.870 --> 2:53:17.910
by his work and the International Process Network

2:53:17.910 --> 2:53:19.950
and the Center for Process Studies. 

2:53:19.950 --> 2:53:22.820
Indeed this is reflected in a recent book,

2:53:22.820 --> 2:53:25.210
the handbook of Whiteheadian process thought.

2:53:25.210 --> 2:53:34.760
There's 2 volumes edited by Weber and Henning, 1400 pages,

2:53:34.760 --> 2:53:39.760
17 major areas, 64 essays by leading process thinkers worldwide

2:53:39.760 --> 2:53:44.330
and it's just covered every area you can imagine of people

2:53:44.330 --> 2:53:46.430
who have been similarly inspired 

2:53:46.430 --> 2:53:51.460
to connect these otherwise dispirit areas in new interesting ways

2:53:51.460 --> 2:53:55.970
in an adventure of ideas, adventure of discovery to which,

2:53:55.970 --> 2:54:01.720
I wish to thank, so much to thank Whitehead for

2:54:01.720 --> 2:54:06.830
but of course my colleagues here that I am in constant dialogue with.

2:54:06.830 --> 2:54:08.510
Thank you very much.   [ Applause ]

2:54:08.510 --> 2:54:17.040
 

2:54:17.040 --> 2:54:19.840
>> I didn't really think it was possible to keep

2:54:19.840 --> 2:54:25.340
so many brilliant minds and energetic thinkers roped into close

2:54:25.340 --> 2:54:28.330
to 10 minutes each, but we have succeeded

2:54:28.330 --> 2:54:33.800
and that means we do have time for questions and discussion so,

2:54:33.800 --> 2:54:39.960
and this will include both people on the dais but also those of you

2:54:39.960 --> 2:54:42.510
in the audience, et cetera, so the floor is open.

2:54:42.510 --> 2:54:50.390
[ Silence ]   >> Yeah, please do.

2:54:50.390 --> 2:54:51.510
 

2:54:51.510 --> 2:54:58.060
[ Silence ] 

2:54:58.060 --> 2:55:02.460
>> Question for Dr. Finklestein, in discussing--

2:55:02.460 --> 2:55:09.740
your discussion of principia, you mentioned the iota positive only

2:55:09.740 --> 2:55:13.960
but not the symmetric negative on it.

2:55:13.960 --> 2:55:18.260
You also talked about category theory for a while.

2:55:18.260 --> 2:55:22.130
In category theory, and I'm wondering whether

2:55:22.130 --> 2:55:25.140
or not there's a relationship between these 2.

2:55:25.140 --> 2:55:32.490
You have a zero element, an initial element and a terminal element,

2:55:32.490 --> 2:55:39.230
and any category also gives rise to the construction

2:55:39.230 --> 2:55:46.410
of a symmetric algebraic system, one of the constructions.

2:55:46.410 --> 2:55:54.350
My question is whether or not the elements - zero, initial, terminal

2:55:54.350 --> 2:55:59.000
and symmetry is brought about by limits and co-limits, whether

2:55:59.000 --> 2:56:02.070
or not those would give you a hint 

2:56:02.070 --> 2:56:08.280
that category theory might be suitable as a basis for mathematics.

2:56:08.280 --> 2:56:10.760
>> First of all, I'm really not a mathematician.

2:56:10.760 --> 2:56:11.710
>> Well, but you-- 

2:56:11.710 --> 2:56:16.600
>> So, and I respect mathematicians greatly.

2:56:16.600 --> 2:56:17.030
>> Sure. 

2:56:17.030 --> 2:56:20.970
>> And many great ones think their category algebra is a reasonable way

2:56:20.970 --> 2:56:25.380
to express the ontology of mathematics,

2:56:25.380 --> 2:56:30.380
the nature mathematical being and they're doing it, it seems to work.

2:56:30.380 --> 2:56:33.460
 

2:56:33.460 --> 2:56:38.200
 

2:56:38.200 --> 2:56:39.540
 

2:56:39.540 --> 2:56:40.890
>> Can I just add? 

2:56:40.890 --> 2:56:43.190
>> -- original discoverers of the concept

2:56:43.190 --> 2:56:47.900
of category algebra in connection, okay.

2:56:47.900 --> 2:56:51.730
>> Just an answer to your question too.

2:56:51.730 --> 2:56:54.860
With respect to the application of category theory to Whitehead

2:56:54.860 --> 2:56:58.810
in particularly his method of extensive abstraction,

2:56:58.810 --> 2:57:03.380
Tim and I are actually involved in a research group where we're doing

2:57:03.380 --> 2:57:05.990
that very thing, there's a theorist at the University

2:57:05.990 --> 2:57:09.980
of Athens named Elias Zafiris who is applying category theory

2:57:09.980 --> 2:57:13.790
and [inaudible] theory to Whiteheadian metaphysics

2:57:13.790 --> 2:57:17.830
and its application to physics and so that's something

2:57:17.830 --> 2:57:20.890
that we're actively working on right now.

2:57:20.890 --> 2:57:23.010
 

2:57:23.010 --> 2:57:25.200
>> Right. A lot of formulated questions--

2:57:25.200 --> 2:57:27.870
>> You can go, actually, we have the Center for Philosophy

2:57:27.870 --> 2:57:31.140
and the Natural Sciences, it's at Cal State University,

2:57:31.140 --> 2:57:32.230
Sacramento where I teach. 

2:57:32.230 --> 2:57:40.950
It's-- if you just go to www.csus.edu and then slash CPNS,

2:57:40.950 --> 2:57:45.170
you can see basically a white paper that we have posted up there

2:57:45.170 --> 2:57:47.510
that addresses the question you asked.

2:57:47.510 --> 2:57:48.160
Sure.   >> Could I just add one thing?

2:57:48.160 --> 2:57:49.510
 

2:57:49.510 --> 2:57:52.220
Then the category algebra is designed

2:57:52.220 --> 2:57:56.240
to study classical objects so, for example, there's a category

2:57:56.240 --> 2:57:59.940
of quantum theories which are classical objects but if you look

2:57:59.940 --> 2:58:03.780
at a quantum system, its algebra is not a category algebra,

2:58:03.780 --> 2:58:07.130
it violates the axiom of enough identities.

2:58:07.130 --> 2:58:12.540
In a quantum system there's only one identity and it ain't enough.

2:58:12.540 --> 2:58:13.410
>> Thanks a lot. 

2:58:13.410 --> 2:58:16.970
>> And that's very basic fact of quantum theory.

2:58:16.970 --> 2:58:18.410
 

2:58:18.410 --> 2:58:20.330
 

2:58:20.330 --> 2:58:24.010
>> Okay, any questions?   >> How's that?

2:58:24.010 --> 2:58:26.470
 

2:58:26.470 --> 2:58:26.870
[ Inaudible Discussions ]   [ Laughter ]

2:58:26.870 --> 2:58:27.270
 

2:58:27.270 --> 2:58:28.650
>> Thank you. 

2:58:28.650 --> 2:58:34.300
>> I wanted to thank all the speakers for accumulating so much

2:58:34.300 --> 2:58:39.430
for us to take in and try to integrate in a manner

2:58:39.430 --> 2:58:43.730
of a natural entity in Whitehead's system or in a manner of any

2:58:43.730 --> 2:58:47.120
of the speakers who basically done the same thing in the course

2:58:47.120 --> 2:58:55.740
of getting here to give this talk so I just wanna pick up one element

2:58:55.740 --> 2:59:02.600
in there, so many but the fact that consistency couldn't be captured

2:59:02.600 --> 2:59:07.820
in the principia mathematica as a sign of its failure

2:59:07.820 --> 2:59:12.110
to Whitehead himself, that seems to me to be a peculiar moment

2:59:12.110 --> 2:59:15.410
because in a way you could turn that around and say the fact

2:59:15.410 --> 2:59:20.660
that it proved that consistency couldn't be captured

2:59:20.660 --> 2:59:27.000
in a mathematical or a symbolic system is the sign of its sort

2:59:27.000 --> 2:59:31.450
of triumph, it really expressed that completely as Godel did too,

2:59:31.450 --> 2:59:36.640
I guess, but in a sense that's a positive sign

2:59:36.640 --> 2:59:42.530
of really knowing articulately the limits of expression,

2:59:42.530 --> 2:59:45.140
whether its mathematical or scientific.

2:59:45.140 --> 2:59:52.750
And there's something in that, I think it kinda connects

2:59:52.750 --> 2:59:57.740
with the last statement about category theory as well its failure

2:59:57.740 --> 3:00:00.210
to apply to a quantum system. 

3:00:00.210 --> 3:00:04.890
>> In a sense any system that really achieves a unification

3:00:04.890 --> 3:00:09.090
of it's environment in the manner that you just spoke

3:00:09.090 --> 3:00:17.840
and in the manner of any measurement in a quantum system is sort of a--

3:00:17.840 --> 3:00:21.210
I don't-- I don't know to finish that thought [laughter]

3:00:21.210 --> 3:00:25.860
but basically it does that, it achieves that sort

3:00:25.860 --> 3:00:31.830
of by becoming a measurement or by becoming a unified moment and the--

3:00:31.830 --> 3:00:36.380
it does that sort of by violating a number of [laughter] certainly

3:00:36.380 --> 3:00:41.080
by violating consistency, and I think that's because time moves on

3:00:41.080 --> 3:00:45.600
and every next moments sort of requires it be done again.

3:00:45.600 --> 3:00:52.830
>> I just wanna say, just to answer that, Whitehead's cosmology--

3:00:52.830 --> 3:00:56.910
there is consistency, and you only get into trouble when you're talking

3:00:56.910 --> 3:01:00.070
about the totality or the universe. 

3:01:00.070 --> 3:01:04.370
If you look at the universe as a process, where you're not dealing

3:01:04.370 --> 3:01:08.620
with the totality but a totality that's internally related

3:01:08.620 --> 3:01:10.540
to an antecedent totally put 

3:01:10.540 --> 3:01:14.460
in another way every new fact incorporates a new universe.

3:01:14.460 --> 3:01:16.470
With every new fact, with every novel fact,

3:01:16.470 --> 3:01:19.840
novel universe then you can recapture consistency.

3:01:19.840 --> 3:01:22.810
So it's only when you're dealing with a fina--

3:01:22.810 --> 3:01:25.700
not, sorry, when you're dealing with sort of a block universe totality

3:01:25.700 --> 3:01:29.020
that you run into trouble and that was one of the wonderful things

3:01:29.020 --> 3:01:31.330
if you read the Principia and then you read Process and Reality,

3:01:31.330 --> 3:01:35.420
you see an evolution of thought I-- I think in that regard.

3:01:35.420 --> 3:01:39.360
>> Another way to express that way of avoiding the trouble

3:01:39.360 --> 3:01:42.420
as often happen in conventional thinking is to not--

3:01:42.420 --> 3:01:46.460
and for Whitehead and then in this approach you--

3:01:46.460 --> 3:01:49.820
one distinguishes 2 aspects of the real--

3:01:49.820 --> 3:01:55.420
a possibility and actuality as Jeff Bub described it in one of his works

3:01:55.420 --> 3:01:59.510
in quantum physics and interpretation,

3:01:59.510 --> 3:02:02.070
a distinction between possibility space which may be

3:02:02.070 --> 3:02:06.420
like your logical order, you've introduced an actuality space

3:02:06.420 --> 3:02:09.780
which associates with the causal order by making these distinctions

3:02:09.780 --> 3:02:14.390
and not simply conflating all of the real and actualized and so

3:02:14.390 --> 3:02:17.110
to speak then forcing yourself into a block universe by virtue

3:02:17.110 --> 3:02:19.640
of your philosophical presupposition 

3:02:19.640 --> 3:02:23.220
which thus then basically is embedded in claims

3:02:23.220 --> 3:02:26.850
by say certain physicist that it's an absolutely deterministic

3:02:26.850 --> 3:02:29.080
universe, those claims have a-- 

3:02:29.080 --> 3:02:33.400
implicit mathematical proposition in it that is unstated.

3:02:33.400 --> 3:02:37.280
So by simply making this distinction which is clear in Whitehead this is,

3:02:37.280 --> 3:02:40.590
I think, very helpful in-- 

3:02:40.590 --> 3:02:47.390
>> I just wanted to say, I mean, this-- this issue of totality as a--

3:02:47.390 --> 3:02:51.320
then a significant one in process I think it's--

3:02:51.320 --> 3:02:53.170
it's one of the reasons for the split

3:02:53.170 --> 3:02:55.290
between Hartshorne and Whitehead. 

3:02:55.290 --> 3:02:58.800
It certainly is something that Whitehead has been criticized

3:02:58.800 --> 3:03:03.520
in terms of implying a notion of a totality,

3:03:03.520 --> 3:03:06.490
systematic notion of a totality. 

3:03:06.490 --> 3:03:11.190
I'm-- have a-- an article coming out a correspondence

3:03:11.190 --> 3:03:15.040
at the APA few years ago between another process thinker George Hilde

3:03:15.040 --> 3:03:16.810
and I is leading to a focus section 

3:03:16.810 --> 3:03:19.940
and process studies it should be coming out soon if you're interested

3:03:19.940 --> 3:03:23.610
in this and we get into this issue a bit and I'm no mathematician

3:03:23.610 --> 3:03:28.120
but if I can hopefully not too violently reduce this issue

3:03:28.120 --> 3:03:30.050
in terms of the way it works. 

3:03:30.050 --> 3:03:33.570
There's a-- sometimes this is termed the problem of big omega,

3:03:33.570 --> 3:03:38.530
right and the idea is as Tim put it that each--

3:03:38.530 --> 3:03:44.460
if there is a totality that is the sort

3:03:44.460 --> 3:03:47.200
of uber set right then its relation 

3:03:47.200 --> 3:03:51.160
to its contents becomes another set add infinitum, there's a sort

3:03:51.160 --> 3:03:53.040
of infinite regress problem.   I'm more and more convinced

3:03:53.040 --> 3:03:54.860
 

3:03:54.860 --> 3:03:57.820
and I think this would not be a distinction in the logic

3:03:57.820 --> 3:03:59.370
between sets and categories.   I think this would work with either,

3:03:59.370 --> 3:04:01.840
 

3:04:01.840 --> 3:04:05.780
that this problem is not really a problem that it's the result

3:04:05.780 --> 3:04:09.870
of a mistake in application of the concept of a set or a category.

3:04:09.870 --> 3:04:13.100
A set or a category is something that distinguishes one thing

3:04:13.100 --> 3:04:16.170
from another groups and therefore excludes

3:04:16.170 --> 3:04:19.780
but if totality has no exclusion, and totality if there is one

3:04:19.780 --> 3:04:22.790
and I think like Whitehead that the proper understanding

3:04:22.790 --> 3:04:29.760
of totality is the holistic conception of God the primordial

3:04:29.760 --> 3:04:32.890
and the consequent nature of God together including

3:04:32.890 --> 3:04:36.430
in my mind the full range of eternal objects

3:04:36.430 --> 3:04:40.020
as robustly platonically formulated by Whitehead

3:04:40.020 --> 3:04:43.130
that represents an ontological hole 

3:04:43.130 --> 3:04:46.110
that cannot be distinguished from anything.

3:04:46.110 --> 3:04:51.940
It's not a set and so it seems to me that Whitehead liked

3:04:51.940 --> 3:04:54.810
to say right that, well actually I should say Hartshorne said

3:04:54.810 --> 3:04:56.700
of Whitehead that he may have been led astray

3:04:56.700 --> 3:05:00.290
by his mathematical thinking right in terms of developing this notion

3:05:00.290 --> 3:05:03.080
of the eternal object, he quite felt contrary Whitehead may have

3:05:03.080 --> 3:05:06.000
perceived underneath the mathematical theory,

3:05:06.000 --> 3:05:09.750
a conceptual distinction that was not being made explicit elsewhere

3:05:09.750 --> 3:05:14.280
that between sets or categories and the totalities

3:05:14.280 --> 3:05:18.820
so I think we're moving towards a solution of that problem implicitly,

3:05:18.820 --> 3:05:20.510
as Whitehead had in theory.   [ Pause ]

3:05:20.510 --> 3:05:31.800
 

3:05:31.800 --> 3:05:38.690
>> This is a question for Professor Lucas, you made a passing reference

3:05:38.690 --> 3:05:44.570
to William James and I want some elaboration on the relationship

3:05:44.570 --> 3:05:48.550
of Whitehead and James' thought 

3:05:48.550 --> 3:05:56.520
because I think this might have some potential for overcoming the lament,

3:05:56.520 --> 3:06:04.530
if this can be recovered in contemporary times,

3:06:04.530 --> 3:06:07.980
I think there's some richness there, 

3:06:07.980 --> 3:06:10.160
I'd just like to have you say something more

3:06:10.160 --> 3:06:14.720
about that relationship with William James' thought.

3:06:14.720 --> 3:06:17.830
>> There are a number of ways of-- 

3:06:17.830 --> 3:06:22.120
okay, there are number of ways of going about that

3:06:22.120 --> 3:06:24.560
and I'm probably not the best person to take it

3:06:24.560 --> 3:06:29.260
on since I'm not really a James' scholar.

3:06:29.260 --> 3:06:33.640
One is-- to what extent Whitehead himself paid any attention

3:06:33.640 --> 3:06:36.470
to William James, was influenced by him, he acknowledges him

3:06:36.470 --> 3:06:42.690
with great respect and politeness in several of his works but doesn't

3:06:42.690 --> 3:06:43.710
to my knowledge appeared 

3:06:43.710 --> 3:06:46.300
to have made any great study of James thought.

3:06:46.300 --> 3:06:49.580
Though those who have made studies of both see a great deal

3:06:49.580 --> 3:06:53.740
of similarity between their conceptions of--

3:06:53.740 --> 3:07:00.660
especially ontological conceptions of the world that what I referred

3:07:00.660 --> 3:07:05.120
to in passing Russell's critic of James and later appropriation

3:07:05.120 --> 3:07:11.370
of James' neutral monism can be interpreted in a way James

3:07:11.370 --> 3:07:13.440
and scholars well its-- it looks very much

3:07:13.440 --> 3:07:16.290
like the ontology of actual occasions.

3:07:16.290 --> 3:07:20.650
So that's one way of going about it. 

3:07:20.650 --> 3:07:27.630
A second way would be in terms of the comments I made about the sort

3:07:27.630 --> 3:07:30.850
of decline or marginalization of Whitehead's influence.

3:07:30.850 --> 3:07:36.490
James by contrast has not been entirely given up on in a sense

3:07:36.490 --> 3:07:41.530
that there are departments of philosophy in this country

3:07:41.530 --> 3:07:46.650
with really imminent scholars on a number of parts of the nation

3:07:46.650 --> 3:07:48.270
who continue to study James. 

3:07:48.270 --> 3:07:52.750
There is a collected James edition of works preserved for posterity.

3:07:52.750 --> 3:07:55.920
I myself had some-- some role over-- 

3:07:55.920 --> 3:08:02.750
a modest role in helping to fund those projects, the editions--

3:08:02.750 --> 3:08:04.680
the James edition when I was 

3:08:04.680 --> 3:08:10.300
at the National Endowment of the Humanities.

3:08:10.300 --> 3:08:14.740
The-- I-- how would one put this 

3:08:14.740 --> 3:08:18.210
that in those departments were a student interested

3:08:18.210 --> 3:08:20.750
in exploring the affinities of Whitehead

3:08:20.750 --> 3:08:25.590
and James they would find a sympathetic audience.

3:08:25.590 --> 3:08:35.270
If they wanted to argue that the Whitehead from1923, '24 on,

3:08:35.270 --> 3:08:39.230
the work of the American period belonged in the American Canon

3:08:39.230 --> 3:08:42.220
in the same way that the works of James Dewey belong

3:08:42.220 --> 3:08:47.170
in the American Canon I think it's actually the case that Roland,

3:08:47.170 --> 3:08:50.770
myself and others are trying to make with regard to Whitehead now

3:08:50.770 --> 3:08:54.160
that if we did an addition of James' works,

3:08:54.160 --> 3:08:56.150
why are we not doing one of Whitehead's?

3:08:56.150 --> 3:08:58.660
If we did an addition of Dewey's works

3:08:58.660 --> 3:09:03.320
and are now contemplating an addition of Josiah Royce's works

3:09:03.320 --> 3:09:07.140
and of CS Peirce's works, why are we not doing one of Whitehead,

3:09:07.140 --> 3:09:11.970
so it's a-- in a sense a matter of cultural patrimony and fairness

3:09:11.970 --> 3:09:14.600
so that's an entirely different approach of--

3:09:14.600 --> 3:09:19.020
sort of cultural approach to the resurrection if you will

3:09:19.020 --> 3:09:22.220
of Whitehead, not only through his intellectual affinities with

3:09:22.220 --> 3:09:27.080
and his historical influence and respect for James but also as part

3:09:27.080 --> 3:09:30.990
of that American conversation which is I suspect what you're referring

3:09:30.990 --> 3:09:36.100
to that that would provide a more hospitable context and has actually

3:09:36.100 --> 3:09:41.220
in the society for SAP, the Society for Advancement

3:09:41.220 --> 3:09:45.080
of American Philosophy has always been very open to Whitehead,

3:09:45.080 --> 3:09:47.100
its just that there haven't that many Whiteheadians

3:09:47.100 --> 3:09:48.240
that are part of that society. 

3:09:48.240 --> 3:09:52.690
So there's a place there-- my suspicion is--

3:09:52.690 --> 3:09:55.830
this answer is going on too long but the problem is that a person

3:09:55.830 --> 3:09:59.710
who is caught between 2 cultures is in danger

3:09:59.710 --> 3:10:01.250
of being appropriated by neither. 

3:10:01.250 --> 3:10:05.960
>> So this-- this was Wittgenstein's problem as well of course

3:10:05.960 --> 3:10:08.070
and it didn't happen to him, he was an Austrian,

3:10:08.070 --> 3:10:10.310
and an engineer, and a mathematician.

3:10:10.310 --> 3:10:12.060
On the other hand, he was a philosopher

3:10:12.060 --> 3:10:16.050
and his English language avatar incarnation

3:10:16.050 --> 3:10:20.210
and both Wittgenstein's are deeply appreciated by both cultures.

3:10:20.210 --> 3:10:22.130
Why can't the same be true of Whitehead?

3:10:22.130 --> 3:10:29.600
But it is the case that right now not only is that not happening

3:10:29.600 --> 3:10:33.740
but it's not clear which culture the British or the American ought

3:10:33.740 --> 3:10:36.510
to step forward and put the money out to--

3:10:36.510 --> 3:10:38.710
to do the work, to fund the departments,

3:10:38.710 --> 3:10:40.720
to fund the additions, to fund the scholarship.

3:10:40.720 --> 3:10:44.860
Each looks to the other and says, "Well, here's your guy," you know.

3:10:44.860 --> 3:10:47.140
If the British aren't interested, why should we be,

3:10:47.140 --> 3:10:48.070
well, the funders will say. 

3:10:48.070 --> 3:10:50.110
We'll probably hear something like that in--

3:10:50.110 --> 3:10:52.900
in response to our grant proposal for the addition.

3:10:52.900 --> 3:10:56.220
Well, he's really not our guy, why should we pay for this, I mean, it--

3:10:56.220 --> 3:10:57.730
it gets down to something like that. 

3:10:57.730 --> 3:11:04.300
So there's-- there are avenues, intellectual, historical, cultural,

3:11:04.300 --> 3:11:07.840
archival, in which this could be done but they are all fraught

3:11:07.840 --> 3:11:10.190
 

3:11:10.190 --> 3:11:13.510
 

3:11:13.510 --> 3:11:16.530
 

3:11:16.530 --> 3:11:19.860
 

3:11:19.860 --> 3:11:20.630
>> Thank you. 

3:11:20.630 --> 3:11:26.070
I like to make a few comments about the questions of ontology and logic.

3:11:26.070 --> 3:11:31.610
Professor Leonard always emphasized that Whitehead's philosophy

3:11:31.610 --> 3:11:36.370
to be true to itself, must be in continuous process

3:11:36.370 --> 3:11:41.220
of creative development, creative application

3:11:41.220 --> 3:11:46.210
and creative modification, and the development also is

3:11:46.210 --> 3:11:50.890
because it's an axiomatic system processed in reality

3:11:50.890 --> 3:11:57.000
so the implications are infinite and Whitehead understood that.

3:11:57.000 --> 3:11:59.580
What is not recognized as--   as clearly as it should be is

3:11:59.580 --> 3:12:01.810
 

3:12:01.810 --> 3:12:07.090
that Whitehead's philosophy itself evolved.

3:12:07.090 --> 3:12:12.120
The ontology of Principia Mathematica looked upon mathematical

3:12:12.120 --> 3:12:15.650
entities as classes of classes. 

3:12:15.650 --> 3:12:20.300
By the time Process and Reality was created, there was a subtle

3:12:20.300 --> 3:12:26.440
but real shift in Whitehead's thought where rather than classes

3:12:26.440 --> 3:12:31.300
of classes, its attributes were eternal objects and attributes

3:12:31.300 --> 3:12:36.610
of attributes, and relations of relationships that became important

3:12:36.610 --> 3:12:39.730
and that distinction is not clearly understood.

3:12:39.730 --> 3:12:47.250
Even his treatment of geometry, I contend became more rooted in--

3:12:47.250 --> 3:12:52.430
in eternal objects that is space wasn't created--

3:12:52.430 --> 3:12:57.050
space is a totality, a spatial magnitude,

3:12:57.050 --> 3:12:59.660
and spatial relationships. 

3:12:59.660 --> 3:13:04.700
Change doesn't create space but change pre--

3:13:04.700 --> 3:13:10.600
presupposes space so Whitehead's treatment of space took

3:13:10.600 --> 3:13:15.110
on a very different ontology in Process and Reality

3:13:15.110 --> 3:13:20.790
and that ontology, that contrast with Einstein's general theory

3:13:20.790 --> 3:13:26.780
of relativity and also the work of string theorists like Brian Greene

3:13:26.780 --> 3:13:32.110
and [inaudible] speak about space that's being created [inaudible],

3:13:32.110 --> 3:13:33.690
bending, et cetera. 

3:13:33.690 --> 3:13:39.560
It's groups of entities that that change can try, not--

3:13:39.560 --> 3:13:44.580
not space as a totality of potential relations.

3:13:44.580 --> 3:13:47.800
The other thing in terms of the ontology,

3:13:47.800 --> 3:13:53.110
the logic of Principia Mathematica is a propositional truth

3:13:53.110 --> 3:13:57.370
functional logic. 

3:13:57.370 --> 3:14:03.420
The logic as I try to argue a little bit in-- in my talk and in my paper,

3:14:03.420 --> 3:14:08.220
Process and Reality is much more a modal logic.

3:14:08.220 --> 3:14:14.260
Possibilities as pure possibilities represent not truth

3:14:14.260 --> 3:14:16.910
but possible modes of being. 

3:14:16.910 --> 3:14:23.080
In contrast, potentialities are actual facts that if the events have

3:14:23.080 --> 3:14:28.830
within them multiple causal potentialities which are realized

3:14:28.830 --> 3:14:32.160
and which are frustrated in the function of environment

3:14:32.160 --> 3:14:37.620
and as Mike said, that environment extends beyond and beyond

3:14:37.620 --> 3:14:43.410
and changed in the [inaudible] way that Carolyn references is always

3:14:43.410 --> 3:14:47.810
in interaction of internal reality with external reality.

3:14:47.810 --> 3:14:51.100
That's very profoundly Whiteheadian. 

3:14:51.100 --> 3:14:57.540
So the logic in Process and Reality is really a modal logic.

3:14:57.540 --> 3:15:02.010
And Professor Leonard was blessed to be a student

3:15:02.010 --> 3:15:06.820
of the greatest propositional logician, Whitehead,

3:15:06.820 --> 3:15:11.000
and Whitehead is the-- is the one who did most of the deductions

3:15:11.000 --> 3:15:13.590
of Principia Mathematica, not Russell.

3:15:13.590 --> 3:15:17.680
And also the great modal logician C.I.

3:15:17.680 --> 3:15:21.600
Lewis though there is in process reality--

3:15:21.600 --> 3:15:25.300
in Process and Reality a shift in the development,

3:15:25.300 --> 3:15:30.110
a creative development of the underlying logic.

3:15:30.110 --> 3:15:34.680
Unfortunately, Whitehead never articulated that logic,

3:15:34.680 --> 3:15:38.920
he utilized the logic of potentiality

3:15:38.920 --> 3:15:44.330
and potentiality became a part of actuality.

3:15:44.330 --> 3:15:50.090
They didn't exist in a platonic realm of pure abstract possibility.

3:15:50.090 --> 3:15:54.420
They are part of the living soul of the actual world,

3:15:54.420 --> 3:15:57.350
of the events as they evolved and developed.

3:15:57.350 --> 3:16:01.760
So, I think we had to look at Whitehead's own work

3:16:01.760 --> 3:16:07.430
as not only calling for its development, its application,

3:16:07.430 --> 3:16:14.490
its exploration of its implication, an adventure but we have to see it

3:16:14.490 --> 3:16:21.270
as manifesting and an evolution in Whitehead's own ontological concept

3:16:21.270 --> 3:16:25.240
and I will make, you know, available for those who are interested,

3:16:25.240 --> 3:16:32.690
Professor Leonard's White Language W which is very magnificent work.

3:16:32.690 --> 3:16:35.420
It's his magnus opus. 

3:16:35.420 --> 3:16:41.490
But it's very important that we have a synthesis of propositional

3:16:41.490 --> 3:16:48.110
and model logic because Process and Reality cannot be understood.

3:16:48.110 --> 3:16:53.690
And cosmology and ontology cannot be understood if Whitehead is correct

3:16:53.690 --> 3:17:00.820
without underlying logic that goes beyond the logic and in--

3:17:00.820 --> 3:17:03.130
and its ontology of principia. 

3:17:03.130 --> 3:17:11.300
>> I think Ron has had the last word; we are 5 minutes over time

3:17:11.300 --> 3:17:14.500
which to my mind is just on time. 

3:17:14.500 --> 3:17:19.210
I wanna thank all of our many speakers this morning

3:17:19.210 --> 3:17:24.840
for the magnificent job of clear articulation of something that is

3:17:24.840 --> 3:17:29.970
so complex, for coming and spending the time with us.

3:17:29.970 --> 3:17:33.950
I also wanna thank all of the audience who were here,

3:17:33.950 --> 3:17:38.400
all of the library specialists who made it possible

3:17:38.400 --> 3:17:44.850
to come together and-- and pull this off and thank you.

3:17:44.850 --> 3:17:47.510
May the conversation continue informally.

3:17:47.510 --> 3:17:53.420
[ Applause ] 

3:17:53.420 --> 3:17:57.130
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.

3:17:57.130 --> 3:17:59.500
 

3:17:59.500 --> 3:18:04.500