See also: Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947), Philosopher, logician and British Mathematician .

Whitehead followed part of its studies to the Université of Cambridge, where it belonged to socié of the Cambridge Apostles, just like Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Its first great work relates to the Mathématiques, has Treatise Universal Algebra off (1898) and proposes to find a unit in the Algèbre just like one sought a unit in different the not-Euclidean geometries (Hilbert, bases of the geometry ). It approaches Russell which was its pupil and both publish the Principia Mathematica . But little by little it moves away from the Logicisme and directs towards the Philosophie nature ( An Inquiry concerning the Principles off Natural Knowledge (1919), The Concept off Natural (1920)). In The Principles off Relativity (1922) he discusses, critical the Einsteinian theory of the gravitation and extends it to the whole of the process of reality. Its thought, part of mathematics, are directed towards a Métaphysique in which the idea of process, Process and Reality (1929), holds a dominating place. But it is not a question simply of an event-driven flow because the world implies as permanence as one finds in the objects, whether they are sensitive or eternal. It includes the multiplicity of the entities which are brought up to date by seeking their own satisfaction.

Whitehead finds the spirit of philosophies as those of Spinoza (caused sui) or of Leibniz (to become to it autonomous monades). God acts in the world in a manner immanente since it is the efficient cause of the actualization of the entities but also in a transcendent way because it also acts by the way of the finality. The originality of the thought of Whitehead comes from what it takes as a starting point the various sciences like mathematics (the algebraic idea of vector and multiplicity), of physics, the ethical , of theology and the idea of the philosophy divided into specialities, logic exceeds, epistemology, moral philosophy, political philosophy, etc Its metaphysical thought joined on many points that of great philosophies of the 17th century and also joins again with old philosophy, that of Plato and Aristote but also that of the Stoïciens of which it finds the inspiration which links logic with physics and ethics.

One regards it as the founder of the Théologie of the Process (or theology of the creative dynamism of God ) with John B. Cobb, Charles Hartshorne, and Paul Tillich. It is one of the large initiators of the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1925, the Royal Society decrees the Médaille Sylvester to him.

June 11th 1903 -->