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Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy,〔David Ray Griffin, ''Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion'' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), vii.〕 which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas. In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume ''Principia Mathematica'' (1910–13), which he co-wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. ''Principia Mathematica'' is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library.〔"The Modern Library's Top 100 Nonfiction Books of the Century", last modified April 30, 1999, ''New York Times'', accessed November 21, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/042999best-nonfiction-list.html.〕 Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to philosophy of science, and finally to metaphysics. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of western philosophy. Whitehead argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects, and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another.〔C. Robert Mesle, ''Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead'' (West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation Press, 2009), 9.〕 Today Whitehead's philosophical works – particularly ''Process and Reality'' – are regarded as the foundational texts of process philosophy. Whitehead's process philosophy argues that "there is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have consequences for the world around us."〔 For this reason, one of the most promising applications of Whitehead's thought in recent years has been in the area of ecological civilization and environmental ethics pioneered by John B. Cobb, Jr.〔Philip Rose, ''On Whitehead'' (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2002), preface.〕 ==Life== Alfred North Whitehead was born in Ramsgate, Kent, England, in 1861.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 2.〕 His father, Alfred Whitehead, was a minister and schoolmaster of Chatham House Academy, a successful school for boys established by Thomas Whitehead, Alfred North's grandfather.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 13.〕 Whitehead himself recalled both of them as being very successful schoolmasters, but that his grandfather was the more extraordinary man.〔 Whitehead's mother was Maria Sarah Whitehead, formerly Maria Sarah Buckmaster. Whitehead was apparently not particularly close with his mother, as he never mentioned her in any of his writings, and there is evidence that Whitehead's wife, Evelyn, had a low opinion of her.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 27.〕 Whitehead was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, then considered one of the best public schools in the country.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 44.〕 His childhood was described as over-protected,〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 32–33.〕 but when at school he excelled in sports and mathematics〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 54–60.〕 and was head prefect of his class.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 63.〕 In 1880, Whitehead began attending Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied mathematics.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 72.〕 He earned his BA from Trinity in 1884, and graduated as fourth wrangler.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 103.〕 Elected a fellow of Trinity in 1884, Whitehead would teach and write on mathematics and physics at the college until 1910, spending the 1890s writing his ''Treatise on Universal Algebra'' (1898), and the 1900s collaborating with his former pupil, Bertrand Russell, on the first edition of ''Principia Mathematica''.〔On Whitehead the mathematician and logician, see Ivor Grattan-Guinness, ''The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940: Logics, Set Theories, and the Foundations of Mathematics from Cantor through Russell to Gödel'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), and Quine's chapter in Paul Schilpp, ''The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead'' (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1941), 125–163.〕 He was a Cambridge Apostle.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 112.〕 In 1890, Whitehead married Evelyn Wade, an Irish woman raised in France; they had a daughter, Jessie Whitehead, and two sons, Thomas North Whitehead and Eric Whitehead.〔 Eric Whitehead died in action while serving in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I at the age of 19.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 34.〕 In 1910, Whitehead resigned his Senior Lectureship in Mathematics at Trinity and moved to London without first lining up another job.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 2.〕 After being unemployed for a year, Whitehead accepted a position as Lecturer in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics at University College London, but was passed over a year later for the Goldsmid Chair of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, a position for which he had hoped to be seriously considered.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 6-8.〕 In 1914 Whitehead accepted a position as Professor of Applied Mathematics at the newly chartered Imperial College London, where his old friend Andrew Forsyth had recently been appointed Chief Professor of Mathematics.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 26-27.〕 In 1918 Whitehead's academic responsibilities began to seriously expand as he accepted a number of high administrative positions within the University of London system, of which Imperial College London was a member at the time. He was elected Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of London in late 1918 (a post he held for four years), a member of the University of London's Senate in 1919, and chairman of the Senate's Academic (leadership) Council in 1920, a post which he held until he departed for America in 1924.〔 Whitehead was able to exert his newfound influence to successfully lobby for a new history of science department, help establish a Bachelor of Science degree (previously only Bachelor of Arts degrees had been offered), and make the school more accessible to less wealthy students.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 72-74.〕 Toward the end of his time in England, Whitehead turned his attention to philosophy. Though he had no advanced training in philosophy, his philosophical work soon became highly regarded. After publishing ''The Concept of Nature'' in 1920, he served as president of the Aristotelian Society from 1922 to 1923.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 127.〕 In 1924, Henry Osborn Taylor invited the 63-year-old Whitehead to join the faculty at Harvard University as a professor of philosophy.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 132.〕 During his time at Harvard, Whitehead produced his most important philosophical contributions. In 1925, he wrote ''Science and the Modern World'', which was immediately hailed as an alternative to the Cartesian dualism that plagued popular science.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 3–4.〕 A few years later, he published his seminal work ''Process and Reality'', which has been compared (both in importance and difficulty) to Kant's ''Critique of Pure Reason''.〔 The Whiteheads spent the rest of their lives in the United States. Alfred North retired from Harvard in 1937 and remained in Cambridge, Massachusetts until his death on December 30, 1947.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1990), 262.〕 The two volume biography of Whitehead by Victor Lowe〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vols I & II'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985 & 1990).〕 is the most definitive presentation of the life of Whitehead. However, many details of Whitehead's life remain obscure because he left no ''Nachlass''; his family carried out his instructions that all of his papers be destroyed after his death.〔Victor Lowe, ''Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work, Vol I'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 7.〕 Additionally, Whitehead was known for his "almost fanatical belief in the right to privacy", and for writing very few personal letters of the kind that would help to gain insight on his life.〔 This led to Lowe himself remarking on the first page of Whitehead's biography, "No professional biographer in his right mind would touch him."〔 Currently, there is also no critical edition of Whitehead's writings, though the Whitehead Research Project of the Center for Process Studies is currently working on one such edition.〔"Critical Edition of Whitehead", last modified July 16, 2013, Whitehead Research Project, accessed November 21, 2013, http://whiteheadresearch.org/research/cew/press-release.shtml.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alfred North Whitehead」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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