Description

Science and the Modern World refashions Whitehead's 1925 Lowell Lectures into a synoptic history and critique of modern science from the medieval synthesis through Galileo and Newton to Einstein. Against reductive materialism, it exposes the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and advances a philosophy of organism in which nature is a nexus of events and values. Historical narrative and speculative argument interweave, seeking categories that make sense of physics, biology, aesthetics, and religion. Composed amid relativity and early quantum theory, its poised prose widens science's cultural horizon. A mathematician turned philosopher, Whitehead coauthored Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell and taught applied mathematics in London before joining Harvard. Intimate with dynamics and gravitational theory, and chastened by postwar disillusion with nineteenth-century mechanism, he sought concepts adequate to process, novelty, and value. The American pragmatist milieu and the public stage of the Lowell Lectures spurred his attempt to reconcile scientific practice with a non-reductive cosmology. This classic rewards scientists attuned to conceptual foundations, philosophers and historians of science, and humanists probing modernity. Read it for a rigorous, humane vision that restores depth to inquiry without sacrificing empirical exactitude.

Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable—distilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Author Biography · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.