| 7719 | European philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato |
| Full Idea: The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. | |
| From: Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality [1929], p.39) | |
| A reaction: Outsiders think this is a ridiculous remark, but readers of Plato can only be struck by what a wonderful tribute Whitehead has come up with. I would say that at least 80% of this database deals with problems which were discussed at length by Plato. |
| 10656 | With 'extensive connection', boundary elements are not included in domains |
| Full Idea: In Whitehead's theory of extensive connection, no boundary elements are included in the domain of quantification. ...His conception of space contains no parts of lower dimensions, such as points or boundary elements. | |
| From: report of Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality [1929]) by Achille Varzi - Mereology 3.1 | |
| A reaction: [Varzi says we should see B.L.Clarke 1981 for a rigorous formulation. Second half of the Idea is Varzi p.21] |
| 24384 | Whitehead's building blocks are unit processes, called 'actual occasions' |
| Full Idea: Whitehead envisages the building blocks of reality not as substances at all, but as 'actual occasions' - processual units rather than 'things' of some sort. | |
| From: report of Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality [1929]) by Nicholas Rescher - Process Metaphysics 01.10 | |
| A reaction: Rescher isn't a fan of this version of process philosophy, presumably because if processes are divided into units, they would be hard to distinguish from substances. Aristotle is credited with the active substance view. Do processes need building blocks? |
| 15389 | In Whitehead 'processes' consist of events beginning and ending |
| Full Idea: There are no items in Whitehead's ontology called 'processes'. Rather, the term 'process' refers to the way in which the basic things - which are still events - come into existence and cease to exist. Whitehead called this 'becoming'. | |
| From: report of Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality [1929]) by Peter Simons - Whitehead: process and cosmology 'The mature' | |
| A reaction: This comes as a surprise to anyone who assumed Whitehead is the guy who thinks reality consists of processes. (Me, for example). Can reality be basically composed of 'events'? What's an event? |
| 15247 | Whitehead held that perception was a necessary feature of all causation |
| Full Idea: On Whitehead's view, not only is a volitional sense of 'causal power' projected on to physical events, but 'perception in the causal mode' is literally ascribed to them. | |
| From: report of Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality [1929]) by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 3.II | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a close relative of Leibniz's monads. 'Perception' is a daft word for it, but in some way everything is 'responsive' to the things adjacent to it. |
| 16962 | Whitehead replaced points with extended regions |
| Full Idea: Whitehead tried to avoid points, and make do with extended regions and sets of regions. | |
| From: report of Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality [1929]) by Willard Quine - Existence and Quantification p.93 |