WHITEHEAD AND RUSSELL ON THE ANALYSIS OF MATTER

[...]Russell and Whitehead were part of the movement to overthrow Hegelianism; both saw that the armchair speculation of the Hegelians was a sort of misguided megalomania compared with the stunning successes of the sciences, especially physics.6 When James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein reset the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Review of metaphysics 2017-12, Vol.71 (2), p.321-342
Main Author: McHENRY, LEEMON B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Criticism and interpretation
Function words
Linguistics
Logic
Materialism
Mathematics
Matter
Metaphysics
Monism
Mysticism
Ontology
Philosophers
Philosophy
Russell, Bertrand
Russell, Bertrand Arthur William (1872-1970)
Space
Whitehead, Alfred North
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947)
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Summary:[...]Russell and Whitehead were part of the movement to overthrow Hegelianism; both saw that the armchair speculation of the Hegelians was a sort of misguided megalomania compared with the stunning successes of the sciences, especially physics.6 When James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein reset the agenda for physics, Russell's work on the foundation of physics gained a strong footing.[...]the very concept of an energy field, beginning with Faraday's experiments with electricity and magnetism and ending with Maxwell's mathematical equations expressing the unification in electromagnetism, was the most revolutionary idea that began the breakdown! of the classical notion of atoms and the void.Quantum theory, at least on certain ontological interpretations, leads to the conclusion that nature appears to be dematerialized at the most fundamental level.Because of the extremely short life span of subatomic particles in modern physics, there is very little that remains of the classical concept of atoms as the constant and indestructible building blocks of matter.[...]if the event ontology is dependent on the developments of modern physics, a paradigm change occasioned by a future scientific revolution could result in a decisive refutation of the event theory.
ISSN:0034-6632
2154-1302