Concept of Nature : The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College November 1919

Whitehead, Alfred North

ISBN 10: 1482637936 / ISBN 13: 9781482637939

Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

About this Item

Unread book in perfect condition.

Seller Inventory # 21701396

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Concept of Nature : The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College November 1919
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1482637936
• ISBN 13: 9781482637939
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

This book from 1920 consists of the Tarner Lectures in the philosophy of science and features Whitehead's assessment of the impact of Einstein's theories on nature. He argues for taking events and the process of becoming as the starting points for analyzing reality. Whitehead criticizes the idea of nature as a mere aggregate of independent entities, each capable of isolation. According to this idea, by their accidental relations entities form the system of nature. In this theory space might exist without time, and time without space. The relational theory of space is an admission that space without matter or matter without space cannot exist. Our knowledge of nature is an experience of activity or passage. Events are active entities; their relations with one another differentiate into space-relations and time-relations. But this differentiation is comparatively superficial, since time and space are each partial expressions of one fundamental relation between events, which is neither spatial not temporal. Whitehead calls this relation Extension: it is the relation of including and does not require spatio-temporal differentiation. An integral addition to any New Thought library and a great insight into the theories of nature and the universe. Cover photography by Paul Spremulli.

From the Back Cover

This book is one of Alfred North Whitehead's most important contributions to natural philosophy. His first concern is with the fundamental problems of substance, space, and time; and the most interesting part of his discussion is, perhaps, his criticism of Einstein's method of interpreting results, and the alternative development of his own well-known theory of the four-dimensional 'Space-Time manifold.'