Elorm’s very useful comments on session 7.

I found many helpful comments from the video of session 7 – in particular Elorm’s general suggestion that P&R manifests Whitehead’s particular attempt to lens his ideas through the philosophical tradition. This is especially helpful anticipating this coming week eight’s reading of chapters 5 & 6 where the dance with Locke, Hume, Descartes and Kant returns.

I confess that I have found these elements of the work thus far seemingly distracting. They are also quite difficult for me since I have not read the works in question and am not trained in thinking as a philosopher.

I see that prior to P&R Whitehead had already written on education, knowledge, nature, relativity, science, religion and symbolism and causality. So much there! So with P&R his next step was into metaphysics – grounded in a seemingly deep reading of the major philosophers of the western tradition.

I would appreciate – either here or on upcoming sessions – someone, somehow (!) making an effort to capsulize the central ideas of each of these four philosophers and/or especially the elements of their thought that ANW endorsed and rejected. A tall order I know.

The other tradition within which I think Whitehead is attempting to frame his ideas is the mathematical… and I believe we will all struggle with this when we plunge into Part IV… but it is so important to a metaphysical system to grapple with some notion of “extension”.

some further thoughts:

It is interesting to reflect on how we all respond differently to “the math” and “the philosophy” in this book. It seems a common for folks to say that a section of P&R gets “math-y” and effectively use that as a reason to skip lightly through (or over) that section. Perhaps this is because of the different language forms and of the mathematical statements. As a bit of a “math-head” I tend to find these sections approachable – though very, very daunting.

On the other hand much of “the philosophy” is expressed in regular English, perhaps a little archaic, and feels more approachable than a mathematical proposition. We find ourselves forgetting it may well need as close a reading as “the math”. Furthermore I notice how much and how often we and commentators on ANW’s ideas slip on his neologisms and careen into “widening gyres” of speculative thought! I’m not sure, actually, if P&R is intended to endorse or support such thought – though the entire opus of Whitehead’s work surely does.

I appreciate any thoughts on this>
Daryl