A. N. WhiteheadIsabelle Stengers (2011) Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts, trans. Michael Chase, Cambridge and London: Harvard University PressDidier Debaise (2006) Un Empirisme spéculatif: Lecture de Procès et réalité de Whitehead, Paris: VrinA. N. Whitehead (2011) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [paperback re-issue of 1955 reprint of 1925 2nd edn]A. N. Whitehead (2011) The Principle of Relativity with Applications to Physical Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [paperback re-issue of 1922 edn]

Abstract

Two books on Whitehead, a major study by the noted philosopher of science, Isabelle Stengers, and a shorter one by Didier Debaise are reviewed, along with two earlier mathematical and scientific works by Whitehead himself, which have been re-issued. This provides the basis for a wide-ranging discussion of the relationships between Whitehead's love of poetry and Heidegger's approach to it, Whitehead's background in mathematics and theoretical physics and his attitude to empirical science and more general problems of the philosophy of the event, in particular how radical change can come about.