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Home , Charles Sanders Peirce

Process

An Introduction to Process

Nicholas Rescher

State University of New York Press Contents

Preface ix Introduction 1 1. Historical Background 7 1. Prospect 7 2. Heraclitus (6th Century B.C.) 9 3. and 10 4. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1717) 12 5. Georg Wllhelm Friedrlch Hegel (1770-1831) 13 6. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) 14 7. (1842-1910) 14 8. (1859-1941) 16 9. (1859-1952) 18 10. Alfiral North Whitehead (1861-1947) 20 11. Wilmon H. Sheldon (1875-1981) 23 12. Retrospect 24

2. Basic 27 1. The Process Approach and Its Alternatives 27 2. Key and 34 3. What Is a Process? 38 4. Modes of Process 41 5. The Priority of Process: Against the Process Reducibility Thesis 42 6. Processes and Dispositions 46

3. Process and Particulars 51 1. Particulars 51 2. Complexiflcation 54 3. Ongoing as a of Ongoing Reidentiflability: An Idealistic Perspective 56 vl Contents

4. Against Strawson's Critique of Processism 60 5. Difficulties of Substanttalism 64 6. The Origination of Particulars 65

4. Process and Universals 69 1. Process and "The " 69 2. Novelty, Innovation, Creativity 74 3. Taxonomic Complexification 78

5. of 83 1. Basic Ideas of a Process Philosophy of Nature 84 2. Process and 86 3. Process and the Laws of Nature 91 4. Space- 94 5. The Quantum Aspect 97 6. Process Philosophy and Evolutionary Optimism 99 7. Validation 103

6. Process and Persons 105 1. Difficulties of the Self and the Process Approach to Persons 105 2. and Matter in Processual Perspective 112 3. Human Life as a Process: The General of a Life Cycle 116 4. Historical Process 118 5. Transiency and 120

7. Process and 123 1. and Knowledge: The Processual Perspective 123 2. Aristotle and Truth-Value Indeterminacy 126 3. The Processual Nature of Knowledge and the Congnitive Inexhaustibility of Things 129 4. Process and 132 5. Process and 134 Contents vli

8. A Processual View of Scientific 139 1. Inquiry as a Productive Process: The Example of 139 2. Difficulties in Predicting Future Science: In Natural Science, the Present Cannot Speak for the Future 142 3. Scientific Progress Is Driven by Technological Escalation 145

9. Process Theology 153 1. God: Substance or Process? 153 2. The Process View of God 154 3. God in Time and Eternity: The Problem of 158 4. God in and for Nature 160

10. Process In Philosophy 165 1. Philosophy in Process 165 2. Is Process Philosophy Coherent? 166 3. The State of Process Philosophy 168 4. Process and Metaphilosophy 170 5. The Bottom Line 172

Appendix: Process Semantics 175

Notes 183

Bibliography 201

Name Index 211