Adventures of Ideas ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD THE FREE PRESS New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore TO JULlA ISHAM TAYLOR AND HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR Tv whose friendship lowe fi So many happy hours THEFREE PRESS 1230Avenue of the Americas New York,NY 10020 Copyright © 1933by Simon & Schuster Inc. Copyright renewed 1961by Evelyn Whitehead First Free Press Paperback Edition 1967 All rights reserved, inclUding the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. !HE FREE PREss and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America 20 ISBN O-OZ-935170-7 I- """'- ~~---=---_.. a .S Preface I' The title of this book, Adventures of Ideas. bears two meanings, 1 both applicable to the subject-matter. One meaning is the effect of certain ideas in promoting the slow drift of mankind towards civil­ ization. This is the Adventure of Ideas in the history of mankind. The other meaning is the author's adventure in framing a specula­ \ tive scheme of ideas which shall be explanatory of the historical I adventure. The book is in fact a study of the concept of civilization, and an endeavour to understand how it is that civilized beings arise. One point, emphasized throughout, is the importance of Adventure for the promotion and preservation of civilization. The three books-Science and The Modern World. Process and Reality. Adventures of Ideas-are an endeavour to express a way of understanding the nature of things. and to point out how that way of understanding is illustrated by a survey of the mutations of human experience. Each book can be read separately; but they sup­ plement each other's omissions or compressions. The books that have chiefly influenced my general way of looking at this historical topic are Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Cardinal Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent. Henry Osborn Taylor's The Medieval Mind. Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. and various well-known collections of letters. While on the subject of literature, I venture to commend to the notice of those interested in an earlier development of English Thought, and also in good literature, the sermons of the Elizabethan and Jacobean divines. Also H. O. Taylor's Thought and Expression in the Six­ teenth Century presents the currents and cross-currents of thought in those times. The twentieth century, so far as it has yet advanced, vii viii ADVENTURES OF IDEAS bears some analogy to that predecessor in European history, both in clash of thought and in clash of political interest. In Part II, dealing with Cosmology, I have made constant use of two books published by the Oxford University Press in 1928, namely, A Commentary Oil Plato's Timieus, by Professor A. E. Taylor of the University of Edinburgh, and The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, by Dr. Cyril Bailey, Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. Contents Use has already been made of some parts of the book in response to invitations which I had the honour to receive. The main substance of Chapters I, II, III, VII, VIII was delivered as the four Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn Mawr College, during the session 1929­ 30: they have not been hitherto published. Also Chapter IX, PAGE Science and Philosophy-not previously published-was delivered PREFACE vii as the Davies Lecture in Philosophy, at the Institute of Arts and PART I Sciences, Columbia University, March, 1932. Chapter VI, Foresight, SOCIOLOGICAL was delivered as a lecture at the Harvard Business School, and by CHAPTER the request of Dean W. B. Donham was published as a preface to 1. INTRODUCTION 3 his book, Business Adrift. McGraw-Hili Book Company, Inc., New II. THE HUMAN SOUL 10 York, 1931. Also Chapter XVI, Objects and Subjects. was delivered liT. THE HUMANITARIAN ID!:.AL 26 as the presidential address to the eastern division of the American IV. ASPECTS Of- FREEDOM 43 Philosophical Association, at New Haven, December, 1931; and has V. FROM FORCE TO PERSUASION 69 since been published in The Philosophical Review, Vol. XU, 1932, VI. FORESIGHT 87 Longmans, Green, and Company, New York. EPILOGUE 100 Some unpublished lectures, delivered at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, in 1926, embodied a preliminary sketch of the topic of PART II this book. They were concerned with the two levels of ideas which COSMOLOGICAL are required for successful civilization, namely, particularized ideas 103 of low generality, and philosophic ideas of high generality. The VII. LAWS OF NATURE 119 former set are required to reap the fruit of the type of civilization VlIl. COSMOLOGIES IX. SCIENC!:. AND PHILOSOPHY 140 immediately attained; the latter set are required to guide the adven­ X. THE NEW REFORMATION 160 ture toward novelty, and to secure the immediate realization of the worth of such ideal aim. PART III I am indehted to my wife for many ideas fundamental to the dis­ cussion; and also for the great labour of revision of the successive PHILOSOPHICAL drafts of the various chapters. XI OBJfCTS AND SUBJECTS 175 ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD XII. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE 191 Harvard University XIII. THE GROUPING OF OCCASIONS 201 September, 1932 XIV. ApPEARANCE AND REALITY 209 XV. PHILOSOPHIC MFTHOD 220 ix x ADVENTURES OF IDEAS PART IV CIVILlZATION PAGE CHAPTER XVI. TRUTH 241 XVII. BEAUTY 252 XVIII. TRUTH AND BEAUTY 265 XIX. ADVENTURE 273 XX. PEACE 284 INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 299 INDEX OF TERMS 302 PAR TI Sociological , !' I " j. ..~~-- _ _n L CHAPTER I Introduction SECTION 1. In its widest possible extension the title of this book -Adventures of Ideas-might be taken as a synonym for The His­ tory of The Human Race, in respect to its wide variety of mental experiences. In this sense of the title, the Human Race must experi­ ence its own history. It cannot be written in its total variety. Throughout this book I propose to consider critically the sort of history which ideas can have in the life of humanity, and to illustrate my thesis by an appeal to some well-known examples. The par­ ticular topics chosen for illustration will be dictated by the arbitrary limitations of my own knowledge, and by the consideration of their general interest and importance in our modern life. Also for our purpose in the book the notion of History includes the present and the future together with the past, affording a mutual elucidation and wrapped in common interest. For the facts in detail we shall be dependent upon that'great band of critical scholars whose labours today, and for the past three centuries. lay upon mankind the obliga­ tion to deepest reverence. Theories are built upon facts; and conversely the reports upon facts are shot through and through with theoretical interpretation. Direct visual observation is concerned with the vision of coloured shapes in motion-'questionable shapes'. Direct aural observation is concerned with auditions of sounds. But some contemporary ob­ server of such shapes and noises, for example. some envoy resident at a foreign Court, interpreting the so-called 'bare' facts. states that 'he interviewed the minister of state, who manifested considerable 3 4 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS INTRODUCTION 5 emotion and explained with great clearness the measures with which and of stage of civilization. The higher generalities rarely receive any he would meet the impending crisis'. In such ways contemporary accurate verbal expression. They are hinted at through their special evidence is contemporary interpretation, including the assumption forms appropriate to the age in question. Also the emotional accom­ of data other than these bare sensa. paniments are partly due to the vague feeling of importance derived In some subsequent age the critical scholar in accordance with his from the superior generality. and partly due to the special interest of own theoretical judgments selects from bygone contemporary special forms in which generalities make their appearance. Some observations: he criticizes the contemporary observers, and gives people are stirred by a flag. a national anthem; others by the vague his own interpretations of the contemporary evidence. We thus feeling of the form of civilization which their country stands for. In arrive at 'pure history'. according to the faith of the school of history most people the two origins of emotion are fused together. prevalent in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This notion of Gibbon's history demonstrates a twofold tale. It tells of the De­ historians. of history devoid of eesthetic prejudice. of history devoid cline and Fall of the Roman Empire through a thousand years. We see the greatness of that Empire at its height. its military organiza­ of any reliance on metaphysical principles and cosmological general­ tion. its provincial administration, its welter of races. the rise and izations, is a figment of the imagination. The belief in it can only clash of two religions, the passage of Greek philosophy into Chris­ occur to minds steeped in provinciality.-the provinciality of an tian theology. Gibbon displays before us the greatness and the little­ epoch; of a race. of a school of learning. of a trend of interest-. ness of soldiers and of statesmen. of philosophers and of priests. the minds unable to divine their own unspoken limitations. pathos. the heroism, the grossness of the general multitude of The historian in his description of the past depends on his own humanity. He shows us the happiness of mankind and the horrors judgment as to what constitutes the importance of human life. Even which it has endured. when he has rigorously confined himself to one selected aspect. poli­ But throughout this history. it is Gibbon who speaks.