Whitehead's Adventure Cosmolgy

Catalog description

This course introduces students to Alfred North Whitehead's organic cosmology by exploring its relevance to contemporary natural science, including relativity, quantum, evolutionary, and complexity theories. In light of his protest against the modern bifurcation of nature into separate physical and psychical domains, the course also explores the ways Whitehead's pan-experiential and process-relational ontology allows us to understand the knowledge produced by natural science as compatible with human meaning and social relations. Whitehead's "organic realism" makes it possible to re-enchant the world without contradicting the latest scientific findings. In fact, his Philosophy of Organism provides us with one of the most promising means of integrating the increasingly fragmented natural and social sciences into a comprehensive and potentially civilization renewing vision. PRIORITY REGISTRATION TO PCC AND ESR STUDENTS