Reading Group: 11 October 2011

Whitehead conceives of three formative elements:

1. Eternal object is always a potentiality for actual entities; but in itself, as conceptually felt, it is neutral as to the fact of its physical ingression in any particular actual entity in the temporal world. 
2. God is the organ of novelty, aiming at intensification. He is the lure for feeling, the eternal urge of desire. The primary element in the 'lure for feeling' is the subject's prehension of the primordial nature of God. 
3. Creativity is the principle of novelty. An actual occasion is a novel entity diverse from any entity in the 'many' which it unifies. Thus 'creativity' introduces novelty into the content of the many, which are the universe disjunctively. 

Next week, we read Chapter 2: The Formative Elements (pp. 20-35) from A Key to Process and Reality.

Date: 11 October 2011 (Tuesday)


Time: 2.30 pm


Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Reading Group: 20 September 2011

Next week we read Chapter 1: The Actual Entity from A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality.
Date: 20 September, 2011 (Tuesday) 
Time: 2.00 pm 
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi


'Actual entities', also termed 'actual occasions', are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real. (A. N. Whitehead. 1978. Process and Reality. New York: Free Press. p. 18)

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. But they answered: Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat? My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My drawing number two looked like this.

[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince]

Reading Group: 13 September 2011

The proposed reading for next week's discussion is Chapter 13: Requisites for Social Change (pp. 192-208) from A. N. Whitehead's Science and the Modern World.

Date: 13 September, 2011 (Tuesday) 

Time: 2.30 pm 

Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

2001: A Space Odyssey and Samsung-Apple patent war!
What seems like a technological fiction at one moment in history, transforms into the actual, concrete and ‘real’ in no time. Now we talk of space elevators and Domino's Pizza on moon.

Reading Group: 6 September 2011

This is to unveil the Philosophy Reading Group, New Delhi. This week we discuss Chapter 7: Relativity (pp. 115-130) from A. N. Whitehead's Science and the Modern World.

Date: 6 September, 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 2.00 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

All are invited.

The rabbit, at rest. Or is it?