Alfred North Whitehead: An Introduction

This is a very clear short explanation of Whitehead– I loved the various references to Plato and the tie to Deleuze. Really good work.

Overdue with all the Whitehead talk proceeding this, but I've long thought that an introduction to who he was or why I should care about Whitehead (or any big new subject) would be desirable. I realize much of your videos are kind of spun off of what you are teaching, but an occasional introduction or summary, or an explanation simplified a bit for your YouTube audience would be helpful.

Whitehead was a redhead before he was bald.

Thanks for this introduction, Matt. Really appreciate it.

Had it been a dog whistle, it would have gotten lost in the summer heatwave. But "hey lookee", my acolyte TheSubdivineMiracle asked me, "this mo'fucka talkin 2 u or what ?" He's a donkey with PTSD, and we often talk at night. You see, he was born pink, and therefore his mother wanted him dead. Countless times, she would let the farmer's dobermans have their way with him, smiling at a distance, while his father, eager to forget, was drinking himself to death. Some family, I tell you. In his late teens, he joined our secretive society, of which he later became the Custodian of the Magic Stick.

Anyway, "look at that ὕβρις @ the end, nigga", he added, "my world and shiiiiit"… "You speak Greek now ?" I asked him. I took a look, and had to think of Strange Angel's photographer, who'd have a field trip with this one, for sure. Just imagine : Aleister's late disciples infiltrating Esalen… I'm sure John Cleese could write a sketch about it, with his big furry hat on. But, after all, isn't hell paved with good intentions ?

There's also the high castle : whom or what does it harbor ? A force of light ? A dark one ? I thought : if one day the 0.1 % finally leave the rest of humanity behind, that, an island or a satellite city in the sky will definitely be their kind of HQ. I had another flash : the cover of How To Destroy Angels' first album. Then I remembered I've never heard any music of any kind on any of your e-cribs. How come ? I for one have always preferred flat spaces : they don't block the horizon. But ones with round characters, so as to make elevation possible, thereby transcending the apparent opposition depicted in The School of Athens.

But now, for something completely different : 17:03 seems to be the reason why a fruitful dialogue between a believer (of any kind) and a non-believer (which, of course, is not the same as a believer in nothingness) will always result in leaving them both 'untransformed', for one cannot ask of a rational mind (again, of any kind, whether Cartesian or more flexible) to just acknowledge a proposition formulated along the lines of : "this is the truth, there is absolutely no way to demonstrate it, but kneel nonetheless (or don't, as long as you're allowed not to)".

A lot can be (and has been) said about Descartes' essentially mechanistic view of nature and his de facto distinction between nature and man, but reducing his work to those aspects only is a little simplistic. Descartes was a contemporary of Galileo, with whom, as attested by his (initially unpublished) Treatise on The Light and based on his own observations, he shared an heliocentric conception of what was not yet known as our solar system. Without people like them, we would perhaps still be governed by Flat-Earth-Society types, whose then-declension, to impose geocentrism as a God-given truth, required no scientific demonstration either. Yet, Descartes was a believer in that he attempted to rationalize the existence of God. Did he, as you claim, glorify the ego ? The assertion is misleading : if considering man as superior to nature is tantamount to that, he did indeed, but, despite his solid preconceptions about nature (among which other lifeforms), what he glorified most was methodical doubt : "cogito, ergo sum", and in order to 'cogitare', one needs to question popular beliefs, dominant schemes, projections, etc., and thus even to think against oneself. Now, doesn't (self-)doubt, in theory, reflect humility (rather than ego glorification) ? And isn't it a prerequisite to critical thinking ?

To cut a long story short, the Cartesian model, or what we now understand as such, has clearly shown its limits. Lack of transdisciplinarity, status of the rationalist/scientist, who should at all times remain a cold external observer (even when, as in a psychedelic experience, his involvement is needed for him to fully grasp the nature and potential implications of it), factitious experimental environments, which, as much as unstandardized ones, may cause biases : those are but some of the issues 'hard science' needs to address. But the validation process of an hypothesis (or "intuitions", to quote "Al") and the necessary repeatibility of the results of any particular scientific experiment remain the only factual grounds on which to base the concrete organization of human societies.

According to multiple sources I've consulted, Whitehead's philosophy is particularly difficult to apprehend. Apparently, even specialized scholars are still arguing about the exact meaning of some of his writings. I don't know in how far the excerpt you've chosen is indeed illustrative of his core beliefs, but, if said excerpt were his only remaining philosophical legacy, I don't think it would be presumptuous for me to say a sentence like : "insofar as we trust the objectivity of the religious intuitions [Did he ?], to that extent we must also hold that the metaphysical doctrines are well-founded" is highly problematic, to say the least…

What, in your opinion, would be the best book to read by Whitehead having not read anything by him?

What did your reply to Dawkins the day before yesterday teach me about you (with varying certainty) ?

1/ You have a 'dad issue'.
2/ You're definitely functioning and thinking according to a clan mentality.
3/ You project preconceived ideas onto people based on the closed categories you put them in.
4/ You're not interested in views that differ too much from your own : they make you feel insecure.
5/ Your profile picture (not this one) says it all : you're looking away, unable to face reality/your contradictor.
6/ Your ego is enormous, but you conceal it behind a fantasy you categorically refuse to question, because doing so would force you to confront it.
7/ You're not listening to what people are saying, and not trying to understand the perspective from which they speak, namely in this case that of a resolute anti-Brexiter pointing out that there has been, in philosophy as much as in the other areas he's mentioning, constant mutual influence between 'the continent' and 'the island', in other words 'process philosophy'.

Somebody who believes in astrology linked me this. This was great and I'm going to check out Whitehead since I'm a big McKenna fan. My question is, can anyone direct me in the right direction for astrology? I don't believe that the alignment of the stars play a role in your personality depending on the day you were born.