ABSTRACT
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), British mathematician, logician and philosopher, collaborated with Bertrand Russell in authoring the landmark threevolume Principia Mathematica and thus contributed significantly to twentieth century logic and metaphysics. Whitehead’s and Russell’s efforts were inspired by the idea that mathematical truths may be transformed into, and represented by, logical truths. Principles from their work in mathematics were carried on in Whitehead’s philosophical work, in which he rejected the idea that an object can have a simple, spatial or temporal location. Objects, he argued, are abstractions from process. We may treat them as concrete things, but their metaphysical status is that of abstractions. They may nevertheless be necessary for making sense of a fluid world, chiefly because objectification is an essential ingredient of human sensemaking. Abstractions are useful, but also potentially deceitful for our understanding of the world. They are useful because they enable us to make progress in our understanding of our experiences, which are the primary source of knowing. However, abstractions may also become dangerous because we tend to forget that they are abstractions, and not the things in themselves (Hosinski, 1993). The danger, Whitehead wrote, is that we then become victims of ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness’. According to Whitehead, it is therefore essential to recognize that, because objects are abstractions, they are never present in a final state but rather are perpetually in the process of becoming. Nothing can ever be as we perceive it, nor can it become as we want it to be. Everything is in the process of becoming, perpetually.
