Below is a draft of my chapter to be published as part of an anthology coming out of the Teilhard and Whitehead conference hosted by the Center for Christogenesis at Villanova University a few weeks ago.
Process Theology and the Modern World: Science, Religion, and Christology After Teilhard and Whitehead
Posted
in
Albert Einstein, Alfred North Whitehead, Ancient Philosophy, Aristotle, Brian Swimme, Daniel Dennett, Darwin, Descartes, Goethe, Hegel, Henri Bergson, Hume, Kant, Modern Philosophy, Owen Barfield, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, poetry, race, Religion, Romantic Philosophy, Rudolf Steiner, Schelling, Spinoza, Thomas Berry, Ursula King, William James
by
Tags:
Comments
2 responses to “Process Theology and the Modern World: Science, Religion, and Christology After Teilhard and Whitehead”
-
I was pleased with your description of Whitehead’s philosophy of the natural sciences, and intrigued (but I guess not surprised) to see that as a point of tension between Whitehead and Teilhard. You leave open that natural science isn’t necessarily the only science for Whitehead, and that there could be “qualitative science” akin to Goethe. A more precise outline of what such a science’s metaphysical presuppositions would entail in contrast to the physical sciences (with reference to Whitehead’s theory of induction ) seems to me like one of the most useful things in Whitehead studies to be explored now. I say this especially because of the discussion of evolution: what does it mean for biology to go from a paradigm of purposeless algorithmic process to purposive agency? This could be given a very precise meaning in terms of Whitehead’s system, but then I’m not sure if some of the cybernetics-influenced theories of contemporary biologists you want to appeal to for this paradigm-shift utilize a meaning that is consistent with Whitehead’s and doesn’t contradict him. I’m curious to get down to more of the basics and clarify what data is being discussed and how it was observed and reported (i.e., purely third-person measurable data, introspection, sign-interpretation?), what forms of inference from the data (statistical vs. non-statistical inductions), and thus what resultant theories. In all of this it seems to me Whitehead has more concepts to refer to these things than are often clearly brought up.
-
Thanks for these reflections! I think you’ve read my article on Goethe and Whitehead? Hopefully it’s a productive start to a much larger comparative project that I hope to undertake if I receive a Humboldt fellowship.
-
Footnotes2Plato 
Leave a reply to Matthew David Segall Cancel reply