Science and the modern world

pp. 55-65

in: Wolfe Mays, Whitehead's philosophy of science and metaphysics, Berlin, Springer, 1977

Abstract

Whitehead's book Science and the Modern World (SMW),¹ which he published originally in 1925 shortly after he came to Harvard, examines in some detail the development of materialism as a scientific and philosophic doctrine from Greek times to the present day. Whitehead studies the cluster of concepts which make up the materialist doctrine not merely from an epistemo-logical point of view as was the case in PNK and CN, but he also tries to see them in their historical perspective. He proceeds to show how modern developments in physics and biology — particularly the theory of evolution — have made the materialist doctrine increasingly untenable. And against this background Whitehead sketches an alternative philosophy of organism which he hopes may come to replace materialism.