![]() He himself explained this in graphic terms: if we see an aeroplane fly out of sight, and in a few minutes the same plane reappears within our field of vision, can we affirm that the plane was flying during the time it was not visible? The answer he gives us is that empirically, no speculatively, yes. It was under this pretext that Whitehead put together the theory of what he described as ‘speculative knowledge’. It seemed that reality always contained an element of uncertainty, something that was unmanageable for modern science. For Whitehead, relationships precede the very condition of being, as explained in more detail below.įor the purposes of contextualising this work, a relevant fact is that the English philosopher closely and enthusiastically followed the discussion that played out during the mid-1920s between Niels Bohr, a physicist of the Copenhagen school, and the Austrian physicist Albert Einstein, on the principles of the quantum event. Roughly speaking, the main thesis put forward in Process and Reality that is instrumentalised and discussed by this series of intellectuals deals with the relational character intrinsic to all beings, human and non-human, organic and inorganic. The most popular of these include Steven Shaviro, Bruno Latour, Graham Harman and, more prominently, Isabelle Stengers, one of the most influential thinkers of the 21st century. Within the context of the anthropocenic theoretical and practical shift, as well as the drive among some epistemic circles towards blurring the boundaries between the natural and social sciences, numerous contemporary authors have referenced Whitehead in their recent work. As such, we go on a personal journey of exploration that takes in the previous work of others on the magnum opus of this thinker: Process and Reality, a compilation of lectures published in 1929. As with all great thinkers, the English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) can be approached from a wide range of angles and sensibilities.
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