Science and the Modern World

I cannot make a good summary of this book, for I do not know it well enough. I do have a sense of its great depth and beauty. Whitehead seems to me not only a profound thinker but a humble person who stands in certain awe before the Universe. He opens by describing the way a few people in a small part of Europe caused a great revolution in human thinking. He argues that this Scientific Revolution will amount to the triumph of Reason in the world. His chapters are on, The Origins of Modern Science, Mathematics as Element in the History of Thought, The Century ofGenius, The Eighteenth Century, The Romantic Reaction, The Nineteenth Century, Relativity, The Quantum Theory ,Science and Philosophy, Abstraction, God, Religion and Science, Requisites for Social Progress. I was moved by the concluding words of his book . " I have endeavoured in these lectures to give a record of a great adventure in the region of thought. It was shared in by all the races of Western Europe .It developed with the slowness of a mass movement. Half a century is its unit of time. The tale is the epic of an episode in the manifestation of reason. It tells how a particular direction of reason emerges in a race by the long preparation of antecedent epochs, how after its birth its subject- matter gradually unfolds itself, howit attains its triumphs, how its influence moulds the very springs of action of mankind ,and finally how at its moment of supreme success its limitations disclose themselves and call for a renewed exercise of the creative imagination. The moral of the tale is the power of reason ,its decisive influence on the life of humanity. The great conquerors from Caesar to Napoleon, influenced profoundly the lives of subsequent generations. But the total effect of this influence shrinks to insignificance, if compared to the entire transformation of human habits and human mentality produced by the long line of men of thought from Thales to the present day, men individually powerless, but ultimately the rulers of the world. p. 186

Whitehead is widely regarded as a humane philosopher in the best sense of that word--a philosopher able to get across very difficult ideas with a wink and a smile. Also, he has always been commended for his prose style in his more intimate writings, at least in his books based on lectures (the best of which are Science in the Modern World and Adventures of Ideas). Process and Reality is difficult but worth the effort; one does need a glossary at times, but this isn't a review of that book. It is hard to imagine a philosophy book written with more clarity than this one. I think that the quotes given by reviewers witness that fact. The only review here, it turns out, which dilikes the book because of its "unreadability" is the one riddled with spelling and grammatical errors itself. Hard reading, it turns out, is even harder if one cannot spell. With that, I heartily concur.

Naturally, a book written in the midst (or even aftermath) of the relativity revolution is going to be both insightful and limited. Whitehead's book is, in this regard, a child of its age. Yet this is not the entire story, since Whitehead possessed the gift of being able to contextualize his own thought and thus leave it open-ended. The technical aspects of the book are, of course, sparse on facts. There is evidence that Whitehead (who, in 1925, had been at Harvard for only a year and was now engaged full-time with philosophy, less so with the mathematics of his earlier career) was aware of the sweeping changes in the world brought on by the quantum physics. He was certainly aware of its potential. Niels Bohr said that anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it; on this definition, Whitehead did indeed understand it, because the new physics never ceased to amaze him. He grew up, after all, and was edicated as a mathematician, in a very Newtonian world. But it is important to situate the book: the theories that shape what we today know as quantum mechanics were still being debated and worked out in the 20s. Most of the most stiking information has been theorized since that time, certainly long after Whitehead's death. Two examples are Bell's work on separated systems (60s) and Wheeler's discussion of a self-observing universe (1979!). Whitehead's book is most useful as a book on the philosophy of science, as well as a succinct and accurate appraisal of science in the modern world (modern meaning 17th-19th centuries, historically speaking). He takes a very "post" modern view of the extent of science, writing in chapter one, "if science is not to degenerate into a medly of ad hoc hypotheses, it must become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its own foundations." At the same time one can imagine his glee over such recent developments as chaos theory. Whitehead would disagree with Einstein, and side with Bohr: God does indeed play dice. If you take your science as religion, i.e. the scientific method is still your Nicene creed, you will dislike this book, and most of the recent work on the philosophy of science. However, if you are interested in a hermeneutical perspective on science's recent past, and are willing to see science as as much a faith committment as any other world view (a la Kuhn, for example), you will benfit greatly from this book. If you take Rouse's (1987, 1996) and van Huyssteen's (1998, 1999) position that even so-called "hard" science is thoroughly corrigible and foundationalist, you will enjoy this book. Whitehead's ideas are opposed to scientific materialism from the get-go, and he is absolutely against dogmatism on the part of science or philosophy. To this extent, 75 years down the road this is still a great book, worth the price of the volume simply for the essays "Origins of Modern Science," "Science and Philosophy," and "Religion and Science" alone.

I gave this five stars only so as to not effect the ratings of the previous, more knowledgeable reviewer. I am having some difficulty, however, understanding major portions of this book. It was written in 1925 and I expect that some of what was said would no longer be applicable today. Whitehead may well have changed his views regarding quantum mechanics and relativity. In fact, he continually refers to an "ether" that had already been abandoned by his time. Much of it is very accessible review of Hume, Locke and the Romantic poets. But his command of the more technical aspects of the science may no longer be useful. My question is: Does anyone out there know of a book that attempt to update his book or some guide as to how to interpret some of Whitehead's special language. I am very interested in this book and would like to understand it much better than I can at this time.

To see a reissue of one of Whitehead's classic books is very pleasing and timely. There have been very few people with his depth of understanding of science and technology. The historical and philosophical analyses of this book, written many decades ago, are still fresh and very important.