"Process and Reality" is a monumental work of speculative philosophy by Alfred North Whitehead, representing the definitive statement of his process metaphysics. In this profound "Essay in Cosmology," Whitehead seeks to construct a coherent, logical, and necessary system of general ideas that can interpret every element of our experience. He rejects traditional substance-based metaphysics in favor of an ontology centered on dynamic processes, "actual entities," and the interconnectedness of all things. The text explores ...
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"Process and Reality" is a monumental work of speculative philosophy by Alfred North Whitehead, representing the definitive statement of his process metaphysics. In this profound "Essay in Cosmology," Whitehead seeks to construct a coherent, logical, and necessary system of general ideas that can interpret every element of our experience. He rejects traditional substance-based metaphysics in favor of an ontology centered on dynamic processes, "actual entities," and the interconnectedness of all things. The text explores the categories of existence, explanation, and obligation, providing a rigorous framework for understanding the nature of being and becoming. Whitehead introduces key concepts such as "prehension," the "nexus," and the "primordial and consequent natures of God," bridging the gap between science and philosophy. This work serves as the foundation for modern process philosophy and has influenced diverse fields including physics, biology, and ecology. "Process and Reality" remains an essential read for those interested in the deep structures of reality, the relationship between the mind and the physical world, and the continuous evolution of the universe. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you may see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
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Add this copy of Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology to cart. $33.77, like new condition, Sold by GreatBookPricesUK5 rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Castle Donington, DERBYSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2026 by Tradd Street Press.
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Add this copy of Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology to cart. $34.12, new condition, Sold by GreatBookPricesUK5 rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Castle Donington, DERBYSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2026 by Tradd Street Press.
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New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 564 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
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Add this copy of Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology to cart. $44.03, new condition, Sold by GreatBookPricesUK5 rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Castle Donington, DERBYSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2026 by Tradd Street Press.
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New. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 564 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Add this copy of Process and Reality to cart. $44.04, new condition, Sold by Books2anywhere rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Fairford, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2026 by Creative Media Partners, LLC.
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
Add this copy of Process and Reality: an Essay in Cosmology to cart. $81.16, fair condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1929 by Cambridge University Press.
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First edition of Alfred North Whitehead's magnum opus. Octavo, original blue cloth. Signed by Alfred North Whitehead on the title page. From the Library of Henry David Aiken, with his signature dated 1943 on the front free endpaper. Aiken was a student of Ralph Barton Perry's at Harvard when Whitehead also was a professor there from 1924 through 1937 and was a participant at Whiteheads' famous Cambridge Sunday afternoon open houses, which ran until Whitehead's death in 1947. Aiken was a Harvard philosophy professor from 1946 through 1965 and along with W. V. Quine, his friend and colleague, and Mortin White had shepherded the transformation of the Harvard Philosophy Department with the addition of philosophers John Rawls, Hilary Putnam, and Robert Nozick, into a strong and significant presence of Analytic Philosophy in the United States. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Books signed by Alfred North Whitehead are scarce. One of the major philosophical texts of the 20th century, Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead's influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy. Whitehead's master work in philosophy, Process and Reality propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality into a consistent relation to each other. It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant.
Add this copy of Process and Reality, an Essay in Cosmology (Harper to cart. $22.46, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Austell, GA, UNITED STATES, published by Free Press.
I have wanted to read Alfred North Whitehead's "Process and Reality" since my undergraduate days as a philosophy major but have only done so recently, several years into retirement. It would have been an extraordinarily difficult book then and remains so now, with many years of living and reading in between. Still, there is some benefit to age. Whitehead (1861 -- 1947) was co-author with his student, Bertrand Russell of the famous work on logic, "Principia Mathematica" (1910 -- 1913), but he broadened his philosophical interests slowly. He became Professor of Philosophy at Harvard in 1924 at age 63 and published "Process and Reality: an Essay in Cosmology" in 1929 at the age of 68. It is a daunting work, both in the writing and in the reading.
Books find their readers, and it is unlikely that anyone without a strong interest in philosophical questions will pick up or stay with "Process and Reality". The book is slow, difficult, and convoluted, probably deliberately so, both in what it says and in the manner of presentation. The book includes passages of clear, eloquent writing. On the whole, it gives a feeling of near-impenetrability in its detail, organization, and not least, in its invention of new words. Still William James, one of the philosophical heroes of the book, said that the heart of any philosophy could be summarized on the back of a postage stamp. For Whitehead, the back of the stamp might read "Reject substance, fact-based philosophy in favor of a philosophy of breadth, continued process and change".
I am unable to summarize this book but will offer instead some of what I took from it. The basis, as stated above, is the rejection of philosophical thinking in terms of substance.
1. Whitehead practices systematic metaphysics and philosophy of the broadest generality in contrast to the focus on particular issues, often scientifically based, that prevailed during the 20th Century.
2 Whitehead stresses that philosophy is experientially based and descriptive in a broad sense. More importantly, he emphasizes the universality of feeling over reason. The book tries to show the breadth of feeling in experience without resorting to the anti-intellectualism of some of his philosophical contemporaries and successors.
3. Whitehead is more interested in how things become and change rather than in static concepts of things and of being.
4. Whitehead tries to show the interconnectedness as opposed to separateness between a. things, regardless of how disparate they might appear at first blush, b. different times and eras, and c. mind and body.
5. Whitehead calls his thinking the "philosophy of organism". The philosophy has living things as a loose model rather than static, unfeeling objects. His understanding of change in organisms makes use of what philosophers have called both efficient and final causes.
6. Whitehead emphasizes the importance of fallibility, chance, novelty, and error in trying to work to increase one's understanding.
7. Whitehead's philosophy has an inherently theistic component which does not appear to fit with traditional understandings of religion. The discussion of God that appears most fully in the final section of "Process and Reality" has inspired a theological school known as "Process Theology".
In the important "Preface" to this lengthy book, Whitehead offers his own nine-point summary of the prevalent habits of philosophical thought his work tries to displace. (p. xiii) He also teaches the "doctrine that the creative advance of the world is the becoming, the perishing, and the objective immortalities of those things which jointly constitute stubborn fact." In the opening chapter of the book, titled "Speculative Philosophy", Whitehead writes in explaining the nature both of speculative thought and of his own thinking:
"After the initial basis of a rational life, with a civilized language, has been laid, all productive thought has proceeded either by the poetic insight of artists, or by the imaginative elaboration of schemes of thought capable of utilization as logical premises. In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious."
At the outset of Part II of the book, called "Discussions and Applications", Whitehead offers his famous dictum that "the safest generalization of the European philosophical tradition is that it constitutes a series of footnotes to Plato." He proceeds to characterize his own thought as "Platonic" in a broad sense and then goes on to elaborate: "If we had to render Plato's general point of view with the least changes made necessary by the intervening two thousand years of human experience in social organization, in aesthetic attainments, in science, and in religion, we should have to set about the construction of a philosophy of organism. In such a philosophy the actualities constituting the process of the world are conceived as exemplifying the ingression (or 'participation') of other things which constitute the potentialities of definiteness for any actual existence."
The book is arranged in five large parts which begin with the nature of speculative philosophy and proceeds with a lengthy treatment of the history of philosophy and science with an emphasis on Locke and Hume. The third and fourth parts develop Whitehead's understanding of feelings and of extensions in great, difficult detail, while the final part of the book, "Final Interpretation" explores an understanding of God that has been present uneasily in everything in the book that proceeds. In this book, one part does not build on another. Rather the book has a concentric, spiral form in which the same philosophical thinking is stated and expounded from different points of entry. Occasional summaries and relatively clear expressions punctuate throughout the obscurity of the writing.
"Process and Reality" requires a great deal of patience and a willingness to spend time with material that is nothing if not frustrating. For all the fog of the book, a philosophical approach comes through which is worth knowing and thinking about. It is a book I might well have read when younger, with the broad ambitions of youth. It remains, I think, a major work of 20th Century philosophy worthy to be considered and compared with more widely-read but difficult books such as Heidegger's "Being and Time" and Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations".
Robin Friedman
kdparz
Feb 25, 2010
Not the corrected edition
Be sure to get the "corrected" edition as the edition I have has numerous editing errors.
