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Principles of Natural Knowledge and The Concept of Nature
Whitehead's philosophy of science started with his first two books that were not mathematically related. He argued that a person's whole perception, senses and intuition, must be used in order to find a true answer to a scientific question. He felt that primary and secondary qualities went hand in hand. (Desmet) Whitehead stated, "...the red glow of sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon..." (Desmet) -
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Alfred North Whitehead's Shift to Philosophy
In 1919, Whitehead published An Enquiry Considering the Principles of Natural Knowledge. In 1920 he published The Concept of Nature and in 1922 he published The Principle's of Relativity with Applications of Natural Science. Those books are when Whitehead started becoming philisophical as opposed to writing about mathematics. He then continued to write philisophically about scientific theories. -
The Principles of Relativity with Applications to Natural Science
In his third philosophy book, Whitehead challenged Einstein's Theory of Relativity. In his book, Whitehead points out that one must know the geometry of space in order to measure the cosmos. According to Herstein, "...Whitehead argued we are left in the position of first having to know everything before we can know anything." He didn't believe the geometry of space could be measure by just using physics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSeWfXIV0vA -
Process and Reality
In his fourth philosophical book, Process and Reality, Whitehead argues his point on continuity. For most scientists, a lot of experiments rely on continuity. Whitehead argued that is ridiculous to assume anything will have continuity. His theory is that continuity comes from something coming after being effected by what came before. -
The Function of Reason and Modes of Thought
The last two philosophical books written by Whitehead were THe Function of Reason and Modes of Thought. Overall, Whitehead looked at science different than others before he did. He felt as though there were many aspects that went into science and that scientists needed to see the whole picture as opposed to looking at a hypothesis from one side. To Whitehead, the point of philosophy, "...is to maintain an active novelty of fundamental ideas..." (Herstein) -
Works Cited
Works Cited
Alfred North Whitehead on Relativity Theory. Perf. 0ThouArtThat0. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSeWfXIV0vA.
Desmet, Andrew Irvine and Ronal. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy. 04 September 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/#PhilScie. 18 November 2018.
Herstein, Gary L. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. n.d. https://www.iep.utm.edu/whitehed/. 18 November 2018.
