I read the Corrected Edition (with 24 pp of Editors Notes) of Alfred North Whitehead's world-famous book from the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh during 1927-28 because the editors are well-known Whitehead scholars whose comments are a great aid. For his books I've read, click on his name.

Seven books by Whitehead and several dozens of books about him and his “Process” philosophy and theology – or, as Whitehead liked to call it, a “philosophy of organism” are listed by Amazon. Because it is well recognized that one needs preparation before tackling book 194, it would be wise to first consider other books that concern his ground-breaking work and extensions of it by other philosophers/theologians. (Those I've read are books 39, 40, 78, 87, 92, and 158.) Even with such prior reading, I still found “Process and Reality” very difficult to understand – in part because Whitehead coined many new words (or used words in an “uncommon” fashion) to explain his comprehensive philosophical organic worldview.

The 15-pp Table of Contents gives one an idea of the completeness of this worldview. Much of this completeness is due to his careful comparisons and critiques of the major philosophers who preceded him – from ancient Greeks to his immediate contemporaries. He thoroughly, consistently, and critically builds up his reasons for a “philosophy of organism” in the four main parts: The Speculative Scheme, Discussions and Applications, The Theory of Prehensions, and The Theory of Extension. He first introduces nine “Categorical Obligations.” (If it were math, these would be axioms.) As one would expect from the weekly lecture nature of this book, there is much redundancy – but I often found it useful and sometimes very necessary in order to digest is meaning.

Whitehead's organic philosophy is subject-based rather than object-based. He accepted neither the idea of Platonic forms nor the idea of material substances – everything existent is a combination of both. The process of forming an “actual occasion” (an event) is a complicated process that results in a “concrescence” – a completed process with both “objective immortality” (a past event always remains an actual event) but it could serve as the “superject” (super subject) of another event that retained some of the nature of the previous immortal object.

Inputs to the process always included the “aim of God” so God was ever present in the subjectivity of organic philosophy, even when a particular event could not use of the aim of God – as with non-sentient subjects. (In this regard, both Alfred North Whitehead and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin both presumed that God was always present, even if only as a potential input, but Teilhard restricted his ideas to pre-humans and humans.) Whitehead’s concept of “prehensions” is difficult to grasp – in some ways they are like intuitions or a priori knowledge whose source is unknown, but this is an oversimplification. Part 5 – Final Interpretation – is where Whitehead talks mostly about God. One can read Part 5 without a full understanding of his nomenclature, so I recommend one first read Part 5, then Part I before reading the rest. However, it would be best for one to first read my reviews and/or the books (especially book 40 of the list above). It is hard to rate “Process and Reality” for its difficulty to follow suggests a low rating but the highest rating is deserved for the seminal nature of his philosophy for many dozens of philosophers who have (and still are) working to further develop his concepts. But my high rating is in recognition of the important role Process and Reality has played in the world of philosophy and theology since it was published in 1933.