Download Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues by Nicholas Rescher PDF

By Nicholas Rescher

Process Philosophy surveys the fundamental concerns and controversies surrounding the philosophical technique often called “process philosophy.” strategy philosophy perspectives temporality, task, and alter because the cardinal components for our figuring out of the real—process has precedence over product, either ontologically and epistemically. Rescher examines the movement’s historic origins, reflecting a big line of concept within the paintings of such philosophers as Heracleitus, Leibniz, Bergson, Peirce, William James, and particularly A. N. Whitehead.

Reacting opposed to the tendency to affiliate approach philosophy too heavily with this last-named philosopher, Rescher writes, “Indeed, one cardinal activity for the partisans of technique at this actual juncture of philosophical heritage is to avoid the belief of ‘process philosophy’ from being marginalized via a problem of its bearing to the paintings and impact of anyone unmarried person or group.”

This booklet will attract either scholars and professors of philosophy. these academics who've no longer been proficient in procedure philosophy will welcome this new textual content through one one in every of North America’s top-rated philosophers as a perspicuous and informative introduction.

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Extra resources for Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues

Sample text

A process is an actual or possible occurrence that consists of an integrated series of connected developments unfolding in programmatic coordination: an orchestrated series of occurrences that are systematically linked to one another either causally or functionally. Such a process need not necessarily be a change in an individual thing or object but can simply relate to sorne aspect of the general Hcondition of things"for example, a change in the temperature or in the purchasing power of money.

What Is a Process? A process is an actual or possible occurrence that consists of an integrated series of connected developments unfolding in programmatic coordination: an orchestrated series of occurrences that are systematically linked to one another either causally or functionally. Such a process need not necessarily be a change in an individual thing or object but can simply relate to sorne aspect of the general Hcondition of things"for example, a change in the temperature or in the purchasing power of money.

Nature's processes stand connected with one another as integrated wholes-it is we who, for our own convenience, separate them into physical, chernical, biological, and psychological aspects. 2 And just as the static complexity of a set of (filmstrip-like) photographs of a flying arrow does not adequately capture the arrow's dynamic motion, so the conjunctive complexity of a process's description does not adequately capture its transtemporal dynamics. Accordingly, the successive stages of a natural process are not a mere juxtaposition of arbitrary, unconnected factors (like passengers assembled by mere chance on a ship or plane).

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