阿弗烈·诺夫·怀海德

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阿弗烈·诺夫·怀海德（Alfred North Whitehead）

　　阿弗烈·诺夫·怀海德（Alfred North Whitehead，1861年2月15日－1947年12月30日）英国数学家、哲学家和教育理论家。他出生于英国的肯特郡，在美国麻萨诸塞州剑桥逝世。1885-1911年任教于剑桥大学，1924-1937年任教于哈佛大学。他与伯特兰·罗素（Bertrand Russell)合著的《数学原理》标志着人类逻辑思维的巨大进步，是永久性的伟大学术著作之一。同时也创立了20世纪最庞大的形而上学体系。“过程哲学”的创始人。

　　他于1861年2月15日出生于英国东南部的拉姆斯盖特。他的祖父是当地一位有名望的教育家，曾任当地一所私立学校的校长。他的父亲先后从事教育、宗教工作，十分关心教育事业。受家庭的影响，怀特海对教育也很感兴趣。

　　怀特海童年时期是在家乡接受教育的。1875年，他来到多塞特郡的谢伯恩学校就学。主要学习拉丁语、希腊语、数学和历史。1880年，他考入剑桥大学三一学院，主攻数学。课余，他经常阅读和讨论文学、哲学、政治、宗教等著作。1885年，怀特海大学毕业，留在母校任数学和力学教师。1887年和1905 年，他分别获得硕士和博士学位。他在母校任教25年，主要从事教学、著述和一些政治活动。

　　1910年，怀特海迁居伦敦。1911—914年，他在伦敦大学担任许多职务。 1914—924年，在肯欣顿皇家科技学院担任应用数学教授。这段时期，他受柏格森、爱因斯但思想的影响，把兴趣转向科学哲学问题的研究。 1924?937年，他应聘到美国哈佛大学担任哲学教授。退休后，担任哈佛大学名誉教授，居住在坎布里奇市。1947年12月30日，怀特海去世，终年 86岁。

　　怀海德的过程哲学可以说是起因于牛顿物理学的崩解；这是他所亲自见证的，使他大为震撼。他的形而上学见解出现于他的《自然之概念》（The Concept of Nature, 1920年）。而在他的《科学与现代世界》（Science and the Modern World, 1925年）的论文中他的形而上学就已架构完成了；这本书也是对思想史，对科学和数学在西方文明兴盛过程中的角色之重要研究。怀海德的形而上学受到柏格森变的哲学之影响，但他也是一个柏拉图主义者，认为“诸事件（events）之特征源于超时间单体（entities）对之契入（ingression）”。

　　1927年，怀海德受邀在爱丁堡大学的季福讲座演说。1929年讲稿出版为《历程与实在》（Process and Reality）一书，为历程哲学奠基，是对西方学的重大贡献。除了英国外，历程哲学在世界各处都引人跟随，较著名的有哈特雄（Charles Hartshorne），还有历程神学家约翰‧科布（John Cobb, Jr.）。

　　《历程与实在》一书因其护卫有神论而著名，不过怀海德的上帝和亚伯拉罕的启示性上帝是根本不同的。怀海德的机体哲学(philosophy of organism）带起了历程神学，在这方面有贡献的除了哈特雄及科布外，还有格里芬（David Ray Griffin）。有些基督徒和犹太人认为历程神学对认识上帝和宇宙是很有效果的进路。就如整个宇宙是一直在流转改变，做为宇宙起源的上帝也被视为是在成长与改变的。

　　1933年出版的《观念之历险》（The Adventure of Ideas）对怀海德形而上学的主要见解作了摘要，是他最后也最可读的一本着作。此书中也对美、真理、艺术、冒险与和平作了定义。他认为“没有全部的真理；所有真理都是一半的真理。想把他们当作全部的真理就是在扮演魔鬼。”

　　Mathematician, philosopher, and metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead is chiefly remembered for his three volume Principia Mathematica (co-authored with Bertrand Russell), and for his development of process philosophy Process philosophy essentially states that: "Mathematical physics presumes in the first place an electromagnetic field of activity pervading space and time. The laws which condition this field are nothing else than the conditions observed by the general activity of the flux of the world, as it individualises itself in the events." Thus "nature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the process." Or to put it another way: process, rather than substance, should be taken as the fundamental metaphysical constituent of the world.

　　Born in Ramsgate, England in 1861, the youngest of four children, Alfred Whitehead was homeschooled by his father (an Anglican minister) until he was 14 years old. In 1875 he left home to attend Sherbourne Independent School where he showed a talent for mathematics. And in 1880 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1880 on a mathematics scholarship. Five years later he was a teacher at Trinity College and five years later still Bertrand Russell arrived as a student. Russell, who later asserted that "Whitehead was extraordinarily perfect as a teacher" adopted Whitehead as his mentor. Although the two had each already churned out their own separate and significant work (Whitehead was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1903 as for his work on universal algebra), they were together drawn by their overlapping areas of interest and research to jointly produce the groundbreaking work on the foundations of mathematics the now famous Principia Mathematica.

　　In 1910 the two published the first volume of the Principia. Whitehead moved to University College London, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Science and held several other senior administrative posts. And in 1914 he and Russell completed their work on the final volume of Principia (the nearly decade long project was originally to have taken only a year to complete), Whitehead was appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, and for reasons not wholly clear, the two began to go drift in different directions.

　　Then, in 1924, Whitehead was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University and moved to the U.S. It was here that he began work on the metaphysical ideas that would give rise to process philosophy -- first expressed in Science and the Modern World (1925). Finally, in Process and Reality (1929, in which he presented an alternative to Einstein's views), he presented a more fully articulated philosophy, one that proclaimed that process, rather than substance, was the fundamental metaphysical constituent of the world.

　　Whitehead taught at Harvard until his retirement in 1937 and died in 1947. In the course of his lifetime Whitehead published roughly two dozen books including those mentioned above as well as The Principle of Relativity (1922), and The Function of Reason (1929). Honors accorded him include his election to the Royal Society in 1903, the James Scott Prize in 1922, the Royal Society's Sylvester Medal (1925), election as Fellow of the British Academy in 1931, and the Order of Merit, awarded him in 1945. His process philosophy was later developed into process theology by Charles Hartshorne et al. Whitehead was married once, to Evelyn Wade in 1891. They had three children, two sons and a daughter

　　As an interesting side note, although raised an Anglican, Whitehead considered for a time (in the 1880s) converting to the Roman Catholic religion. But ultimately he became an agnostic in response to new developments in science and his growing certainty that Newtonian physics was incorrect.

• Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898)

• Mathematical Concepts of the Material World (1905)

• An Introduction to Mathematics (1911)

• Principia Mathematica (1913, with Bertrand Russell)

• Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919)

• Concept of Nature (1920)

• Science and the Modern World (1925)

• Religion in the Making (1926)

• Process and Reality (1929)