THE ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

A Term Paper
Submitted to
Rev. Fr. Danielito C. Santos, Ph.D.
Immaculate Conception Major Seminary
Tabe, Guiguinto, Bulacan

In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirement in the Course
History of Contemporary Philosophy
Philosophy 302a

by

Kenneth Caridad Talondata

9 January 2020
I. Introduction:

During the modern period, there was a prevailing debate regarding the attainment of knowledge.

There were two dominant movements disputing about it, namely the rationalist and the empiricist.

In the rationalist view, for them, knowledge was a priori, already innate in our minds or has been

already within the structure of the mind.1 On the other hand, empiricists viewed that knowledge

was a posteriori, through an experience we can able to know something.2 This dispute lasted when

the German philosopher Immanuel Kant reconcile these views in his notion of transcendental

idealism.3 After this Kantian period, and then the Hegelian notion of Idealism, in the latter part of

the 19th century, this notion was bridging into a new philosophical movement that brings

Philosophy as an ancilla on the clarification and verifying scientific claims. It was, then, flourished

in the United Kingdom and America and, thus, it was named Analytic Philosophy.

One of the well-known philosophers of this movement was Alfred North Whitehead. He was

born in Kent, England on February 15, 1861. He was educated first at the Sherburne School at

Dorsetshire and then at Trinity College in Cambridge wherein he attained Bachelor of Arts in

Mathematics. In 1885, at the age of 24, he became a fellow of Trinity College and remained there

in a teaching role until 1910. Whitehead published his first major work on mathematics, namely A

Treatise on Universal Algebra with Application, published in 1898, which brought him to be

elected as Fellow of Royal Society.4 During his professorship at Trinity College, Bertrand Russell

1
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed., s.v. “Rationalism.”
2
Ibid., s.v. “Empiricism.”
3
Rev. Fr. Ronaldo Tuazon, Ph.L., “Series of Lectures in History of Modern Philosophy, First Semester AY 2019-
2020,” (lecture, Immaculate Conception Major Seminary, Guiguinto, Bulacan, September 2019). Transcendental
Idealism was Kant’s doctrine that emphasizes the possibility of knowing objects as itself empirically and rationally.

Granville C. Henry, Jr., “Whitehead’s Philosophical Response to the New Mathematics,” in Explorations in
4

Whitehead’s Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Ford and George L. Kline (New York: Fordham University Press, 1983), 15.
entered the college as a student in Mathematics. Russell became the student of Whitehead and

eventually, they collaborate for a book in the field of mathematics and logic, the Principia

Mathematica, which considered as the most significant book in the early 20th century. In 1910, he

resigned from Trinity College in Cambridge and moved to London. After being unemployed for a

year, he then accepted the position as lecturer at University College London. Afterward, he also

accepted the position as professor of applied mathematics at the Imperial College London. In 1918

Whitehead's academic responsibilities began to seriously expand as he accepted a number of high

administrative positions within the University of London system, of which Imperial College

London was a member at the time. He was elected dean of the Faculty of Science at the University

of London in late 1918, a member of the University of London's Senate in 1919, and chairman of

the Senate's Academic Council in 1920. Also, he was involved in practical issues affecting the

character of working-class education. Intellectually, he became interested in the issues concerning

the philosophy of science. In 1924, at the age of sixty-three, Whitehead agreed to become a

professor of philosophy at Harvard University, a position he held until retirement in 1937. It was

there in the same university where he wrote and published his famous work of metaphysics, the

Process and Reality. He died on December 30, 1947, and per the explicit instructions in his will,

Evelyn Whitehead burned all of his unpublished papers.

His engagement with the movement of analytic philosophy was brought about by his earlier

career as a professor of mathematics and logic. Upon his venture to the academic parlance, having

specialization in mathematics and logic, there are people who influenced him which inspired and

moved him to publish important books, to postulate significant theories, and to introduce new

formulas as a contribution to the analytic movement. When he was an undergraduate student, he

was fascinated to the lecture of J.J. Thompson entitled The Poynting Flux of Energy in
Electrodynamics. The lecture described as “the transmission of energy with quantitative flow and

definite direction.”5 Hence, this idea of the flux of energy led him to view nature “as routes of

events or occasions inheriting from each other.”6 Even though this notion was visible in his later

works, subsequently, it became a driving force, an inspiration, for him to his early works. German

mathematician and logician Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege influenced Whitehead with his work

on Logicism that which holds that “mathematics itself is just an extension of logic, and therefore

that some or all mathematics is reducible to logic.” 7 Immanuel Kant influenced him when he

formulated and introduced the concept of Symbolic Logic in Principia Mathematica. His work on

logic was influence by Aristotle since they made the traditional logic, as can be seen in Organon,

in a broader scope, dealing with symbolic relationships.

His works were divided into three periods which roughly pertains to the schools wherein he

taught and served. The first period pertains to his education and professorship at Trinity College,

Cambridge from 1884 to 1910 which primarily focused on his position in mathematics and logic.8

During this period, he published numerous books about mathematics and logic, A Treatise on

Universal Algebra with Application, Principia Mathematica, The Concept of Nature, to name a

few. The second period denotes his professorship at the University of London wherein, as

mentioned above, he was concerned for the education system given to the working-class and was

started to write some philosophical writings on the philosophy of science. The third period was his

journey to America and taught at Harvard University from 1924 to 1937. In Harvard, he became a

5
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 8, s.v. “Alfred North Whitehead.”
6
Ibid.
7
L. Marin, “Logicism,” The Basics of Philosophy, http://www.philosophybascis.com/branch_logicism.html
(accessed December 18, 2019).

Dr. Edgar S. Yanga, Ph.D., “Whitehead’s Concept of Reality,” Vita: A Journal of Philosophy and Arts 1, no. 1
8

(2010): 57.
rigorous and voracious writer of philosophy, hence, he was able to publish important books on the

philosophy of education, The Aims of Educations and Other Essays, and his magnum opus in

metaphysics, i.e. Process and Reality.

II. Alfred North Whitehead’s Analytic Philosophy:

It is notable that the serious philosophical writings of Whitehead started in Cambridge and he

was the professor in mathematics for a long period of time. Hence, his analytic thought was

primarily shaped by his inquisitiveness and passion to have progress in mathematical parlance.

Even though, at the latter of his life, he shifted out his attention mathematics and logic “after he

was convinced that problems in the foundations of mathematics could not be solved

mathematically,”9 still his notions and contributions made a mark to this movement. Moreover, his

analytic notions became a foundation to his other contributions on philosophy of science and

metaphysics, visibly seen in his books Science and the Modern World (1925), The Concept of

Nature (1910), and, to his famous opus, Process and Reality (1929).

Analytic philosophy started “when the logical analysis of mathematical concepts became a

paradigm for conceptual clarification in philosophy.”10 The kind of logic that prevailed during the

establishment of the analytical movement was the Aristotelian logic, came from Aristotle’s book

The Organon. Thereafter, there are analytic philosophers who debunked or improved the classical

logic, one of which is Gottlob Frege and his notion on logicism wherein emphasizing mathematics

as part of logic. With this, Frege’s notion was later on enriched by Whitehead, having a

collaboration with Bertrand Russell, in the book Principia Mathematica. However, before he

joined Russell, he have his own line of thinking regarding mathematics and logic.

Mathematics, for Whitehead, was “concerned with the investigation of patterns of

connectedness, in abstraction from the particular relata and the particular modes of connection.”11

9
Henry, Jr., “Whitehead’s Philosophical Response to the New Mathematics,” 14.

Ronny Desmet, “Was Whitehead an Analytical Philosopher?,” in Whitehead: The Algebra of Metaphysics, ed.
10

Ronny Desmet and Michel Weber (Belgium: Les Editions Chromatika, 2010), 211.
11
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1967), 153
This was his primary concern in mathematics, “a search for the true meaning of mathematical

existence.” 12 He insisted that there is a unifying concept, like an umbrella, to all aspects of

mathematics. Henceforth, it is the idea he developed on his first book, A Treatise on Universal

Algebra with Applications (1898). Accordingly, The Treatise was a development made by

Whitehead to Hermann Grassmann’s Ausdehnungslehre, the theory of extension, “attempting to

give a general formal description of addition and multiplication which would hold for all

algebras.”13 Thus, he called this unifying notion in algebra as “universal algebra.” In the preface

of The Treatise on Universal Algebra with Applications, he wrote about the universal algebra:

Universal Algebra has been looked on with some suspicion by many mathematicians, as
being without intrinsic mathematical interest and as being comparatively useless as an engine
of investigation. Indeed in this respect Symbolic Logic has been peculiarly unfortunate; for
it has been disowned by many logicians on the plea that its interest is mathematical, and by
many mathematicians on the plea that its interest is logical. [...] I think, that Universal
Algebra has the same claim to be serious subject of mathematical study as any other branch
of mathematics.14

Whitehead was aware that his formulation of this new algebra would certainly provide a break

from the old mathematics. In order to counter-argue the claims and suspicions by other

mathematicians, that which of his claim that his universal algebra was a union factor to all

mathematical concepts, he provide a definition on the nature of mathematics as “the development

of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.”15 In this regard, Granville Henry, Jr. wrote

in his article that “this definition shows his feeling for and continuity with the English Formalist

12
Henry, Jr., “Whitehead’s Philosophical Response to the New Mathematics,” 14.
13
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 8, s.v. “Alfred North Whitehead.”
14
Alfred North Whitehead, A Treatise on Universal Algebra with Applications (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1898), v.

15
Whitehead, A Treatise on Universal Algebra with Applications, iv.
school, which attempted to free mathematical formulation from necessary intuitive content.”16 As

being capable of producing formal contents in mathematics, his goal in A Treatise on Universal

Algebra with Applications, focusing only to the concern for the foundations of mathematics, “was

to find a ground of unity for the multiple systems in some common interpretation.”17

After the Treatise of Universal Algebra, Whitehead published another book entitled On

Mathematical Concepts of Material World (1906). In this book, “he put forth an interpretation of

concepts formalized in a logico-mathematical scheme as basic notions describing the material

world.”18 Comparing it to the Treatise of Universal Algebra, “there is a shift from mathematical

spaces to the generality of logic.”19 Furthermore, in the Treatise of Universal Algebra, logic was

not used in a comprehensive way as a formal tool in mathematics. On the other hand, in the book

On Mathematical Concepts, logic was used as the means to present the multiplicity of essential

relations, or general spaces.20 There was no strange use of logic as presented in this book, yet it

more emphasize the fact that it is the essential subject of mathematics rather than a device of

mathematics. Henceforth, the former became the main position of Whitehead in writing Principia

Mathematica.

The main thesis of Principia Mathematica was “that mathematics is derivable from certain

formal logical relationship.”21 As mentioned earlier, it was originated from the notion of logicism

16
Henry, Jr., “Whitehead’s Philosophical Response to the New Mathematics,” 15.

17
Ibid., 15–16.

18
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 8, s.v. “Alfred North Whitehead.”

19
Henry, Jr., “Whitehead’s Philosophical Response to the New Mathematics,” 18.
20
”General spaces in “On Mathematical Concepts...” were understood in terms of logic and the intuitions relevant
to it and vice versa, that is, logic understood in terms of general spaces, as was done in Universal Algebra.” Ibid.,
19.

21
The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, s.v. “Alfred North Whitehead.”
by Frege. However, it come up to their attention when they heard the presentation of Giuseppe

Peano concerning the recent discoveries on logic. Actually, it was Bertrand Russell who became

most aquainted to the works of Peano on logic. Russell found Peano’s concept of symbolic logic

as a hope for “pure mathematics could be treated without Kantian intuitions or transcendental

arguments.”22 However, later on, Peano’s concept was just like the classical conception of logic –

a devise to mathematics.

As presented in the article written by Granville Henry, Jr., he indicate the task of Principia

Mathematica:

...”the mathematical treatment of principles of mathematics,” was accomplished by a

“backward extension into provinces hitherto abandoned philosophy” (PM I, v.), i.e., into
logic, which had traditionally been a part of philosophy.23

It is good to point out that there was a transition in Whitehead’s thought, “from trying to ground

mathematics in a generalized mathematical space to the clothing of spaces (or essential relations)

in logical termimologies.”24 As what Elizabeth Ramsden Eames wrote, “In all of Whitehead’s

work from beginning to end there is a concern with generalized logical method...”25

Having these notions of Alfred North Whitehead in analytic philosophy, there are some

criticisms and contention from his contemporaries.

Under the universal algebra, there is great conviction of Whitehead concerning the intuitive

content of mathematics. Whitehead was certain that “there is always some ontological content

corresponding to mathematical reality allowed him the freedom to create apparently “fanciful”

22
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed., s.v. “Bertrand Russell.”
23
Henry, Jr., “Whitehead’s Philosophical Response to the New Mathematics,” 20.
24
Ibid.

Elizabeth Ramsden Eames, Bertrand Russell’s Dialogue with His Contemporaries (New York: W.W. Norton &
25

Company, 1989), 134.

formalistic constructions with safety.”26 This was doubted by the Berlin school, such as Leopold

Kronecker, Richard Dedekind and K. Weierstrass, because for them “there was the ever present

possibility that a mathematical system that was rigorous in all respects might still be no more than

“formalistic nonsense.” ”27

Another criticism occurred in the Principia Mathematica. As it was mentioned earlier, the main

argument of the book was the mathematics was derivable from formal logic, “by which the logical

system created from these axioms is sufficient to deduce the ordinary propositions of arithmethic,

algebra, geometry, analysis, etc., from the original primitive ideas. 28 It was proved then to be

impossible by the Austrian Logician Kurt Gödel through his Incompleteness Theorem. In this

theorem, it discredit the thesis presented on the Principia Mathematica and concluded that its

program “to reduce mathematics from a simple set of logical axioms...”29 was impossible.

26
Henry, Jr., “Whitehead’s Philosophical Response to the New Mathematics,” 16.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., 20.

29
Ibid., 21.
III. Conclusion:

Before he became a Catholic in his later years, during his childhood years, he had experienced

“the companionship with strong characters in a close-knit community.” 30 This wonderful

experience resonated on his intellectual journey and how he see things around him. From his book

A Treatise on Universal Algebra with Applications up to Principia Mathematica, Whitehead

always emphasize that there must be unifying concept or an interrelatedness of mathematics and

logic.

In the book A Treatise on Universal Algebra with Applications, Whitehead sought for the

unifying concept of mathematics which later on he called as universal algebra. It was also seen in

his book On Mathematical Concepts of Material World in which he emphasize the unifying

relationship between mathematics and logic, that logic is the essential subject in mathematics

rather than a tool. Moreover, in his book Principia Mathematica, with his agreement to Russell,

he sought to unify mathematical concepts by reducing it simple logical axioms. If it can simply

put in an ordinary language, Whitehead actually seeks a single answer to many problems, unlike

dealing with those problem one time after another.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 8, s.v. “Alfred North Whitehead.”

30
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books:

Primary Sources:

Whitehead, Alfred North. A Treatise on Universal Algebra with Applications. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1898.

____________________. Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Free Press, 1967.

Secondary Sources:

Desmet, Ronny. “Was Whitehead an Analytical Philosopher?.” In Whitehead: The Algebra of

Metaphysics, edited by Ronny Desmet and Michel Weber, 211-248. Belgium: Les Editions
Chromatika, 2010.

Eames, Elizabeth Ramsden. Bertrand Russell’s Dialogue with His Contemporaries. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.

Henry, Jr., Granville C. “Whitehead’s Philosophical Response to the New Mathematics.” In

Explorations in Whitehead’s Philosophy. edited by Lewis S. Ford and George L. Kline,
14-28. New York: Fordham University Press, 1983.

Journal Article:

Yanga, Ph.D., Dr. Edgar S. “Whitehead’s Concept of Reality.” Vita: A Journal of Philosophy
and Arts 1. no. 1 (2010): 57-62.

Lectures:

Tuazon, Ph.L., Rev. Fr. Ronaldo. “Series of Lectures in History of Modern Philosophy, First
Semester AY 2019-2020.” Lecture: Immaculate Conception Major Seminary,
Guiguinto, Bulacan.

Websites:

Marin, L. “Logicism.” The Basics of Philosophy, http://www.philosophybascis.com/branch_

logicism.html (accessed December 18, 2019).