Video: ‘No Thinker Thinks Twice’: On the Attempt to Catch Whitehead in the Act of Philosophizing

My talk at the Whitehead centennial conference in Emerson Hall at Harvard University.

Transcript:

My remarks today are titled “No Thinker Thinks Twice: On the Attempt to Catch Whitehead in the Act of Philosophizing.” The phrase "no thinker thinks twice" comes from Process and Reality, where Whitehead adds that "no subject experiences twice." I think this captures well what's going on in his lectures. As Dr. Joe Petek mentioned earlier, even though Whitehead taught the same courses semester after semester, he never thought twice. He was continually developing his thoughts.

I should also mention that the reason I'm giving these remarks is because Judith Jones was unable to be present today. I wanted to acknowledge her and her wonderful book, Intensity, which looks at Whitehead's account of atomism and its contrast with continuity. The book was published in 1998, and I highly recommend it, not just for its philosophical insights but also for its literary quality.

In a letter from November 23, 1924, Whitehead wrote to his son, North:

“I am gradually feeling my way into a metaphysical position which I feel sure is the right way of looking at things.”

The word feeling is very important for Whitehead. Though he was a logician, he emphasized aesthetics, even making aesthetics the very basis of his philosophy. So, the fact that such a rigorous, mathematical thinker was feeling his way into a metaphysical position is something worth remembering.

The Whitehead Research Project has given us access to lecture notes that provide what Whitehead scholar Gary Herstein describes as a "guided tour" into Whitehead’s ideas. George Lucas referred to this very hall (Emerson Hall) as Whitehead's laboratory. He worked out his ideas while delivering them to his students.

Whitehead said in his 1922 book, Principles of Relativity, that “it is certainly a nuisance for philosophers to be worried with applied mathematics and for mathematicians to be saddled with philosophy.” He delivered some very difficult scientific and mathematical ideas to his philosophical students here in Emerson Hall because he believed that an interdisciplinary bridge was necessary. I think one of the reasons why the 20th century was not yet a Whiteheadian century is because this type of interdisciplinary work is so difficult. Whitehead was an early pioneer in that effort.

On September 30, 1924, Whitehead told his students that he was going to try to get science into a form that philosophers could understand. But he wasn't just being hard on philosophers—he also said that scientists should be reading poetry, metaphysics, and novels in order to stay imaginative and flexible in their thought, to avoid getting stuck in a rut.

What we see happening in Whitehead’s lectures is what he later called his method of assemblage. He wanted to get all the ideas on the table without rushing to impose a system on our experience. System might be an ideal to strive for, but Whitehead wanted to be careful not to leave anything out by starting with a rigid set of axioms and principles.

In his lectures and in his process of philosophizing here at Harvard, we see this method of assemblage moving toward Process and Reality, which is his most systematic statement of the philosophy of organism. By the time we get to Modes of Thought, though, his desire for a systematic approach had already waned. He was still working with the same ideas, but he became more cautious and humble about whether his philosophy of organism had captured everything.

As Ronnie Desmet notes in Whitehead at Harvard, Whitehead did not simply abandon his preliminary designs when new insights came along. Instead, he carefully reconceptualized them to account for what he had newly discovered without losing what had already proven adequate. This mirrors Whitehead’s description of how an actual occasion inherits its past while creatively advancing into the future.

Even though "no thinker thinks twice," maintaining conceptual coherence and experiential adequacy requires us to find a way to maintain continuity with our past thoughts. As Josiah Royce might say, we’re always interpreting our past self to our present self. Whitehead wouldn’t want to jettison earlier ideas; instead, he tests new ideas against what he’s already thought, adjusting as needed, and continuing to build in a creative advance.

Whitehead emphasized early on that process realizes values through transition. But beyond mere change, there must be the retention and recurrence of value. In Process and Reality, he says time is not only irreversible but cumulative. This reflects his philosophical method: philosophy, for Whitehead, is an organic process of growth, where earlier stages can be reinterpreted but never discarded. They remain "objectively immortal." This approach is evident not only in the development of his own ideas but also in his generous treatment of the history of philosophy.

Whitehead was always emphasizing the importance of contrast. On September 27, 1924, he said the true contrast is between atomicity and continuity. In Process and Reality, he gives the eighth category of existence to contrasts, referring to them as modes of synthesis, and he leaves his categorial scheme open to future redesign.

Now, let’s briefly focus on the question of atomicity and continuity. Already on September 25, 1924, Whitehead remarks, according to Bell, that metaphysics "has to deal with the individual in its complete concretion." This focus on the individual amidst the continuum was there from the beginning and might challenge Lewis Ford's thesis of a sudden discovery of temporal atomism. It may not have been a sudden discovery in March or April of 1925, as Ford suggests, but more of a gradual development.

In The Concept of Nature (1920), Whitehead says “there is no atomic structure of durations.” But by 1925, in Science and the Modern World, he says that the process of becoming is “a sheer succession of epochal durations.” There’s clearly been a change in his thinking about the atomicity of becoming, though this is a distinct issue from the continuity of space-time. He’s not saying space-time is discontinuous, but rather that there is a becoming of continuity, not a continuity of becoming.

But why is this important? If becoming were purely continuous, it would be difficult to understand how individual freedom or decisions play a role in shaping the future, both at the human and quantum levels. For Whitehead, the present is "holy ground." Decisions made in the present become objectively immortal, laying the foundation for the future.

I’ll stop there and open it up to questions and comments.

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Question from Randy Auxier:

“Matthew, I didn’t disagree with anything you said, but I wanted to point out that the word atom in Greek means “undivided.” The individual, in fact, is indivisible, while the atom is divisible. I think Ford misuses the term atom because the individual exists in continuity with not only their past but also their contribution to the future. One other thing—Royce said that the present self interprets the past self to…”

Matt: “…the future self.”

Randy: “Yeah, you corrected yourself.”

….

You can read my expansion of the brief reflections shared in this presentation here: