ABSTRACT
Whitehead is difficult to read, and there can be little doubt that the challenge of his language is partly responsible for limiting his influence. The difficulty, however, is not just mastering a new vocabulary. To begin the daunting task of "reading Whitehead", it is a good idea to start with a discussion of terminology and how it is deployed in service of systematic inquiry. Whitehead is always careful in his introductions to supply a clear indication of where his present inquiry fits in the general effort of human thought. To use Whitehead's results from one inquiry in another context requires the results to be correspondingly modified for the new purpose. The analogies from one of Whitehead's inquiries to another are rich and tempting. The most general or abstract level of description in Process and Reality is the "theory of cosmic epochs", featuring an account of how "the extensive continuum" is divided in our own cosmic epoch.
