"While my book attempts to reflect the full range of scholarly debate, I have also attempted to make it useful to anyone interested in Whitehead. To this end, I have introduced the Whiteheadian terms one by one, explaining each in the light of my interpretation, and I have used examples wherever possible. I try to show that Whitehead intended his philosophy have a place in our lives by reshaping our common conceptions, and that he did not intend it to be relegated to purely abstract or esoteric application." — F. Bradford Wallack The twentieth century has seen the greatest innovations in philosophical cosmology since Newton and Descartes, and Alfred North Whitehead was the first and greatest of the philosophers to work out these innovations in systematic ways. In a book that will be controversial in the philosophical community, F. Bradford Wallack argues that interpretations widely accepted by Whiteheadians need revaluation because these interpretations are based on materialist and substantialist assumptions that Whitehead sought to replace. Specifically, she proposes a thorough revision of accepted interpretations of Whitehead's concept of the actual entity. Wallack then elucidates Whitehead's ideas in order of their increasing dependence upon other basic Whiteheadian terms to complete the study of Whiteheadian time and to clarify its purpose within the cosmology of Process and Reality. Whitehead's philosophy then emerges as more intelligible and cohesive than is generally believed.

“While my book attempts to reflect the full range of scholarly debate, I have also attempted to make it useful to anyone interested in Whitehead. To this end, I have introduced the Whiteheadian terms one by one, explaining each in the light of my interpretation, and I have used examples wherever possible. I try to show that Whitehead intended his philosophy have a place in our lives by reshaping our common conceptions, and that he did not intend it to be relegated to purely abstract or esoteric application.” — F. Bradford Wallack The twentieth century has seen the greatest innovations in philosophical cosmology since Newton and Descartes, and Alfred North Whitehead was the first and greatest of the philosophers to work out these innovations in systematic ways. In a book that will be controversial in the philosophical community, F. Bradford Wallack argues that interpretations widely accepted by Whiteheadians need revaluation because these interpretations are based on materialist and substantialist assumptions that Whitehead sought to replace. Specifically, she proposes a thorough revision of accepted interpretations of Whitehead’s concept of the actual entity. Wallack then elucidates Whitehead’s ideas in order of their increasing dependence upon other basic Whiteheadian terms to complete the study of Whiteheadian time and to clarify its purpose within the cosmology of Process and Reality. Whitehead’s philosophy then emerges as more intelligible and cohesive than is generally believed.

At the base of Whitehead's philosophy of organism is a vision of the solidarity of all final actualities. Each actuality is a discrete individual enjoying autonomous self-determination, yet each also requires all other actualities as essential components and partial determinants of its own nature. This vision of universal solidarity, Nobo demonstrates, is the fundamental metaphysical thesis whose truth the categories and principles of Whitehead's philosophy were expressly designed to elucidate. The received interpretations of Whitehead's thought, Nobo shows, have ignored the mutual relevance of the solidarity thesis and the organic categoreal scheme and, for that reason, have grossly misrepresented many of Whitehead's most important metaphysical doctrines. Contending that the difficult tasks of interpreting and developing Whitehead's metaphysics presuppose an understanding of the solidarity thesis, Nobo explores that thesis and the metaphysical categories and principles most relevant to its elucidation. In the process, he not only corrects many misinterpretations but also develops important metaphysical doctrines that Whitehead neglected to make sufficiently explicit in his published writings. It is precisely in terms of the neglected doctrine of eternal extensive continuity, Nobo demonstrates, that the more puzzling aspects of the solidarity thesis are satisfactorily explained. He then shows that the extensional solidarity of all final actualities is an essential ingredient of the generalized conception of experience on which Whitehead builds his ontology, cosmology, and epistemology.

Stephen David Ross presents an extensive, detailed, and critical interpretation of Whitehead's mature thought, emphasizing the fundamental role of perspective in Whitehead's cosmology, and tracing the conflicts and difficulties therein to tensions involving perspective in relation to other central features of Whitehead's thought. Ross isolates four principles as having a fundamental role in whitehead's metaphysics: perspective, cosmology, experience, and mechanical analysis. He argues that many of Whitehead's difficulties can be eliminated by raising the principle of perspective to prominence and by revising the other central features of Whitehead's theory accordingly. This book addresses key Whiteheadian texts and secondary interpretations of Whitehead. The discussion ranges over most of Whitehead's theory in Process and Reality, and offers a number of significant and, in some cases, novel views on different aspects of Whitehead's theory: perception, prehension, causation, objective immortality, self-causation, the extensive continuum, natural order, possiblity, concreteness, and God. Ross's concluding suggestions for modifying Whitehead's system promise to occasion much debate among process philosophers, theologians, and anyone concerned with Whitehead's thought.

That process philosophy can be the foundation of the theory and practice of educating human beings is the main argument of this book. The process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) is the particular thinking on which this book is based. Readers are shown that Whitehead's process philosophy provides a frame, a conceptual matrix, that addresses their concerns about education and offers direction for their educative acts. Whitehead theorized that all living entities are connected in some way. Relatedness, connectedness, and holism are recurring themes in this exploration of Whitehead's implied philosophy of education. Whitehead never wrote a philosophy of education, but his writings over a period of nearly thirty years reveal a persistent interest and concern with education. His work, ranging from Introduction to Mathematics (1911) to Adventures of Ideas (1938), is drawn on here to construct, not Whitehead's philosophy of education, but, a Whiteheadian philosophy of education. Whitehead and Philosophy of Education brings to scholars and students of education an understanding of Whitehead as an important figure in philosophy, particularly philosophy of education; an acquaintance with process philosophy; a brief treatment of Whitehead's life and an account of events and experiences that influenced his philosophizing; and an exploration of the educationally salient concepts found in Whitehead's formal and informal philosophy with special attention to Whitehead's ideas about creativity, process, rhythm, wisdom, and knowledge. Whitehead writes of phases of the rhythm of education - romance, precision, and generalization. The book is organized with attention to these three phases. Part One-Romance introduces readers to Whitehead the person, and the change of context for educating from a mechanistic world-view to an organismic one. Part Two-Precision examines Whitehead's writings, as they relate to process philosophy and to educating. Part Three-Generalization is an application of the explorations of Parts One and Two, yielding a construction of a Whiteheadian philosophy of education and suggestions for educational practice.