Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead
Author: George Louis Kline
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 220
Release: 1989
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780819172839

This volume's aim is to clarify, criticize and theoretically develop some of Whitehead's major philosophic ideas and insights. Eighteen distinguished contributors follow Whitehead in his unique attempt to integrate the often disparate concerns of science (including mathematics and mathematical logic), art, religion, social life and common sense. They manage to avoid the twin pitfalls of uncritical acceptance and impatient rejection of Whitehead's thought. They delineate Whitehead's indebtedness to and divergence from the philosophic traditions of Plato, Leibniz, Hume, Hegel, Bergson and others. Some of the distinguished philosophers contributing to this volume are: Charles Hartshorne, William Ernest Hocking, Richard M. Rorty, Gregory Vlastos, William A. Christian, Sr., Nathaniel Lawrence, Ivor Leclerc, Victor Lowe, Robert M. Palter, and Donald W. Sherburne. Originally published in 1963 by Prentice-Hall, this edition contains a new preface by the editor

The Gracing of Human Experience

The Gracing of Human Experience
Author: Donald L. Gelpi
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2008-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1556355939

This study ponders different ways Christian thinkers understood humanity in its relationship to divine grace. It names fallacies that have in the past skewed theological understanding of that relationship. It argues that the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce avoided those same fallacies and provides a novel frame of reference for rethinking the theology of grace. The author shows how the insights of other American philosophers flesh out undeveloped aspects of PeirceÕs thought. He formulates a metaphysics of experience derived from his philosophical analysis. Finally, he develops an understanding of supernatural grace as the transmutation and transvaluation of human experience.

The Mind of Whitehead

The Mind of Whitehead
Author: Roland Faber
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
Total Pages: 745
Release: 2024-05-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0227179986

For Alfred North Whitehead, the fundamental basis of reality is connectivity; the possibility, interdependence and actualisation that defy our human desire for structure, categorisation and division. In this spirit, Professor Roland Faber combines the disparate interests of Whitehead's study - from Mathematics to Divinity, Political Philosophy to Cosmology - to trace the thematic similarities of this work, and establish their unity in the 'mind' of Whitehead. Focussing on the experience of reading Whitehead's rich text, Faber invites the reader not to search for fixed patterns but to explore the impermanence and diversity of Whitehead's ideas. The Mind of Whitehead offers the curious reader a creative exploration of a crucial twentieth-century philosopher, speaking to global concerns from a position of possibility and complexity.

The Gracing of Human Experience

The Gracing of Human Experience
Author: Donald L. Gelpi SJ
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2008-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725220431

This study ponders different ways Christian thinkers understood humanity in its relationship to divine grace. It names fallacies that have in the past skewed theological understanding of that relationship. It argues that the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce avoided those same fallacies and provides a novel frame of reference for rethinking the theology of grace. The author shows how the insights of other American philosophers flesh out undeveloped aspects of Peirce's thought. He formulates a metaphysics of experience derived from his philosophical analysis. Finally, he develops an understanding of supernatural grace as the transmutation and transvaluation of human experience.

Physics and Whitehead

Physics and Whitehead
Author: Timothy E. Eastman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0791485994

Featuring discussions and dialogue by prominent scientists and philosophers, this book explores the rich interface of contemporary physics and Whitehead-inspired process thought. The contributors share the conviction that quantum physics not only corroborates many of Whitehead's philosophical theses, but is also illuminated by them. Thus, though differing in perspective or emphasis, the contributions by Geoffrey Chew, David Finkelstein, Henry Stapp and other scientists conceptually dovetail with those of Philip Clayton, Jorge Nobo, Yutaka Tanaka and other process philosophers.

Politics by Other Means

Politics by Other Means
Author: William Grassie
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2010-03-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1450038506

Politics by Other Means explores profound issues at the interface of contemporary religion and science from a global perspective. Brought together and thematically organized in this volume are twenty-four essays that were originally presented at conferences in China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka. Many of the essays are more journalistic in tone and content while others adopt a more academic prose style and approach. All are provocative and iconoclastic challenging scientific and religious orthodoxies, exploring the great cultural ambivalences at the intersection of the domains of science and religion, and holding out the possibility of a transformative politics for addressing the great challenges of the twenty-first century.

New Essays in Religious Naturalism

New Essays in Religious Naturalism
Author: Creighton Peden
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1993
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780865544260

"The essays in this volume were selected from those presented at a Conference on American Religious Thought sponsored by the Highlands Institute for American Religious Thought, at Highlands, North Carolina." "The Highlands Institute is a community of productive scholars with diverse theological and philosophical perspectives. The Institute contributes to the academic study of religion through interpretive, critical, and constructive reflections whose principal focus is on distinctively American religious thought. It fosters broad discussion of relevant options through its sponsorship of conferences, seminars, workshops, and publications." "The work of the Institute emphasizes (1) the interface between theology and philosophy, especially where theological efforts have utilized the American philosophical tradition; (2) the history and development of liberal religious thought in America; (3) themes pertinent to the "Chicago School" of theology, and (4) naturalism in American theology and philosophy."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Onflow

Onflow
Author: Ralph Jason Pred
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2005-02-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780262264181

Understanding consciousness by taking the stream of consciousness seriously; a general characterization of experience and a detailed description of experience from within, drawing on theories of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, John Searle, and Gerald Edelman. In Onflow, Ralph Pred supplies an account of the nature of consciousness that grapples with "the raw unverbalized stream of experience." Unlike other recent philosophical accounts of consciousness, Pred's analysis deals with the elusive and commonly neglected continuities in the stream of consciousness. Pred offers a general characterization and analysis of experience as well as a highly detailed interpretation of experience from within. Determined to make "conceptual contact" with the immediacy of actual experience, Pred carries forward the radical empiricism pioneered by William James (who coined the term "stream of consciousness") and draws on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. To help readers apprehend the formation of conscious thoughts, the intertwining of perception and action, and the working of consciousness in onflowing experience, Pred applies methods of analysis developed in John Searle's theory of intentionality to James's views, thereby showing how intentional states are embedded in the stream of consciousness. Then, calling on Whitehead's treatment of lived moments as acts of experience, Pred provides an account of consciousness that at once deals with conscious thoughts as they emerge from and function in embodied, socialized experience and illustrates how language distorts our understanding of experience and subjectivity. Finally, he details striking parallels between this account and Gerald Edelman's biological theory of consciousness, and, in contrasting the two, argues for a revitalized version of the experiental monism originally formulated by James.

The Ocean of God

The Ocean of God
Author: Roland Faber
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2019-06-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1783089865

‘The Ocean of God’conveys the proposition that the future of religions, if they will not want to contribute to the destruction of humanity, will become transreligious. Based on the assumption that the spiritual impulse of humanity cannot simply be eradicated, religiosity will persist in transreligious forms, as secularizations, naturalizations and transhumanist dreams only envision such transformations, but fall short in their ability to replace the force of spirituality to further civilized peace of human existence on Earth and its future in evolutionary, ecological and cosmological dimensions. In relating the contributions of religious pluralism to the concept of the unity of religions, which have arisen in this “new axial age” for overcoming the checkered history of religions in furthering peace, the program of a polyphilic pluralism with its transreligious discourse, based on the insight of the fundamental relativity of (religious) truth and the special contributions of process philosophy and theology as well as the Bahá'í universe of thought, analyses and projects a new religiosity or spirit enabling religions to overcome their deepest motives of strife and warfare.

God in Postliberal Perspective

God in Postliberal Perspective
Author: Mr Robert Andrew Cathey
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2013-05-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1409478165

Who is God? The variety of images of God tends to overwhelm us in the present age. Is 'God' a fiction of human construction, or a reality that makes claims upon how we practice 'faith in God'? How does this quest for an understanding of 'God' illumine who 'we' are? God in Postliberal Perspective presents an introduction to the doctrine and concept of God in contemporary philosophy and theology, exploring how some theologians and philosophers dare to speak of God as "real" in our sceptical, pluralistic, and interfaith age. Robert Cathey tours the "house of realism" as constructed by postliberal Christians (David Burrell, William Placher, Bruce Marshall), in conversation with living communities of faith and critical work in philosophy and theology, and develops a distinctive argument about the relation of realism and non-realism in constructing the doctrine of God in postliberal theology. Offering a reading of postliberal theology which is open to critical discussion with other types of theology, philosophy, and faith traditions, this book proposes a model of theological reflection that may be extended to the reality-claims of a wide range of doctrines and concepts.