Vol 2 – Harvard Lectures
General Metaphysical Problems of Science


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The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1925–1927: General Metaphysical Problems of Science

(The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead, Vol. 2)

Edited by Brian G. Henning, Joseph Petek, and George R. Lucas, Jr.
Publication Date: January 2021

For the first time, Whitehead’s readers will be able to see the development of his philosophy during the crucial period between the publication of Science and the Modern World and his delivery of the Gifford lectures that would become Process and Reality as he tests his theories in a classroom setting. The more than 170 lectures delivered by Whitehead during his 2nd and 3rd years at Harvard provide the long-missing window into critical developments in Whitehead’s thinking during this time. They challenge longstanding speculations about when exactly Whitehead developed some of his most famous metaphysical concepts, and how those concepts are to be properly interpreted against the wider backdrop of his life and thought.

Also included is a transcript of the only known lecture Whitehead delivered on the topic of ethics, two mid-year exams given to his students, and nearly 2,000 footnotes that provide additional context for the lectures and alternative student accounts of key passages.

Reviews of HL2

As with the previous one, this is a beautifully crafted book, … destined to be an invaluable tool, not just for the exponents of the process-philosophical tradition, but also for students of the history of philosophy. It provides not just answers to some vexing interpretative issues, but something more important: questions that can cast you on the open-ended journey that Whitehead was most fond of: his beloved “adventures of ideas”.
– Rosen Lutskanov, Bulgarian Academy of Science, Balkan Journal of Philosophy 14(1) (Full review link)

This volume is undoubtedly a valuable resource for any serious student or scholar of Whitehead, and a must for any library collection devoted to philosophy and science. In sum, one cannot overstate the significant contribution of Edinburgh University Press in undertaking this substantial Whitehead project; for it is creating a critical mass and synergy among Whitehead’s works that will, one hopes, generate an abundant flowering of Whitehead scholarship in the twenty-first century—a century desperately in need of intellectual moorings amidst vast change, disruption, and turbulence.
– William J. Meyer, Maryville College, American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 46(1) (Full review link)