UNLIMITED Audiobooks and eBooks

Over 40,000 books & works on all major devices

Get ALL YOU CAN for FREE for 30 days!

The Concept of Nature

Alfred North Whitehead

Book Overview: 

In The Concept of Nature, Alfred North Whitehead discusses the interrelatedness of time, space, and human perception.
The idea of objects as ‘occasions of experience’, arguments against body-mind duality and the search for an all-encompassing ‘philosophy of nature’ are examined, with specific reference to contemporary (Einstein, with whose theory of relativity he has some complaints) and ancient (Plato, Aristotle) approaches.

How does All You Can Books work?

All You Can Books gives you UNLIMITED access to over 40,000 Audiobooks, eBooks, and Foreign Language courses. Download as many audiobooks, ebooks, language audio courses, and language e-workbooks as you want during the FREE trial and it's all yours to keep even if you cancel during the FREE trial. The service works on any major device including computers, smartphones, music players, e-readers, and tablets. You can try the service for FREE for 30 days then it's just $19.99 per month after that. So for the price everyone else charges for just 1 book, we offer you UNLIMITED audio books, e-books and language courses to download and enjoy as you please. No restrictions.

Book Excerpt: 
. . .sure that we understand each  other—agree to differ. Accordingly the first duty of an expositor in stating a theory in which he disbelieves is to exhibit it as logical. It is not there where his trouble lies.

Let me summarise the previously stated objections to this theory of nature. In the first place it seeks for the cause of the knowledge of the thing known instead of seeking for the character of the thing known: secondly it assumes a knowledge of time in itself apart from events related in time: thirdly it assumes a knowledge of space in itself apart from events related in space. There are in addition to these objections other flaws in the theory.

Some light is thrown on the artificial status of causal nature in this theory by asking, why causal nature is presumed to occupy time and space. This really raises the fundamental question as to what characteristics causal nature should have in common with apparent nature. Why—on this theo. . . Read More

Community Reviews

As dry as a bone. No profound metaphysical dopamine to be found here

Whitehead is well over my head.

Sabía que Whitehead era matemático, pero no esperaba un libro así. El concepto de Naturaleza, conjunto de conferencias que tuvieron lugar en GB-1919 (guiño espacio-tiempo), es un monumento derrumbándose. Los primeros dos capítulos son espectaculares en su labor explicativa de la naturaleza fenoménic

Highly interesting conception of nature. Mostly made me want to engage with Whitehead's actual work. Will be doing that. Great read, albeit difficult.

li o segundo capitulo, pro curso de whitehead da apph.

''Nature is a process.''

We are in 1920, Whitehead tries to tell apart what is nature and what is just mental excitements of ours. This is very entertaining and enlightening. We are seeking simplicity in abstractions of nature that just exist in our minds, also called models. Progress, however, demands distrust in such simp

Interesting exposition but could be more plainly written

Whiteheads thesis in this book is outlines a structure for understanding nature in a novel way that, once you penetrate the writing has coherence. It won't give you a modern view but would make interesting reading for anyone interested in metap

Anybody expecting to read this book for some kind of metaphysical buzz will be disappointed. Whitehead's approach is highly technical involving four dimensional geometry, event particles, "sigma primes" and a host of other self defined technical terms. Among these terms (ie a "duration") just when I

View More Reviews