Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an internationally renowned philosopher, mathematician, and physicist. Dozens of books have been written about him and his “Process” philosophy and theology. His most famous treatise was Process and Reality (book 195). For his books I've read, click on his name.

From his Preface: “The title of this book, Adventures of Ideas, bears two meanings, both applicable to the subject-matter. One meaning is the effect of certain ideas in promoting the slow drift of mankind towards civilization. This is the Adventure of Ideas in the history of mankind. The other meaning is the author’s adventure in framing a speculative scheme of ideas which shall be explanatory of the historical adventure. The book is in fact a study of the concept of civilization, and an endeavor to understand how it is that civilized beings arise. One point, emphasized throughout, is the importance of Adventure for the promotion and preservation of civilization.

“The three books – Science and the Modern World, Process and Reality, and Adventures of Ideas – are an endeavor to express a way of understanding the nature of things, and to point out how that way of understanding is illustrated by a survey of the mutations of human experience. Each book can be read separately; but they supplement each other’s omissions or compressions.” The three books named above were first published in 1925, 1929, and 1933, respectively.

I was advised by philosopher and scientist friends to skip as dated Science and the Modern World, so I decided to read first his most famous book, P&R (Process and Reality), but only after reading books introductory to P&R (books 39, 40, 78, 87, 92, and 158) that were written by current students, admirers, and extenders of Whitehead’s concepts, for they would help me better comprehend his meanings in P&R. These books certainly helped me, but I still found that to digest Whitehead’s ideas in P&R was harder than the great effort it took me to understand (and to do well in) three semesters of advanced QM (Quantum Mechanics) in graduate school – a major reason is that Whitehead demands great clarity in the meanings of words, both new words he invented and old words whose meaning he sharply limited, in order to present in full detail the philosophy he called an ‘organic philosophy’ but became known to the world as ‘process philosophy’ and ‘process theology’ due to his emphasis on process (movements, as in organic entities) rather than as fixed (non-moving or static entities). For me, this experience was like learning a new language, but one that often ‘redefines’ familiar words – I found his language to be a major difficulty in comprehending P&R. But after having done so upon finally confronting P&R, I felt I was ready to read Adventures of Ideas, which focuses mostly on the communal-world of people and communities, whereas P&R focuses mostly on the individual-world of a person and the processes by which a person moves from the past to the future. Unlike P&R, the Adventures of Ideas makes little reference to God, but for those who may not know Whitehead’s Process Theology, he includes as a key part to the formation of any ‘actual occasion’ (an event that actually occurs), he firmly states that “the aim of God” is an essential input to each actual occasion. So anyone who states that Whitehead was an atheist or an agnostic is just showing his/her ignorance of Whitehead’s worldview. (However, since understanding his ‘organic or process’ philosophy is quite a formidable task, even for student of philosophy, such ignorance is understandable.)

Adventures of Ideas has four parts. To see the details he discusses, I list each part with its title and its chapter titles. PART I: SOCIOLOGICAL (Introduction; The Human Soul; The Human Ideal; Aspects of Freedom; From Force to Persuasion; Foresight; Epilogue). PART II: COSMOLOGICAL (Laws of Nature, Cosmologies, Science and Philosophy; The New Reformation). PART III: PHILOSOPHICAL (Objects and Subjects; Past, Present, Future; The Grouping of Occasions; Appearance and Reality; Philosophical Method). PART IV: CIVILIZATION (Truth; Beauty; Truth and Beauty; Adventure; Peace). There is an index for Proper Names and one for Terms. PARTS II and III primarily discuss the concepts and their relationships that he had explained more fully in P&R, so I will not attempt to review these two Parts here. Others may not agree with me, but I feel one can get most of Whitehead’s aim, as stated in the quotes I gave above from his Preface, by skipping PARTS II and III, as interesting as they are, or skimming those chapters therein whose titles most appeal to one. PARTS I and IV are the crucial parts of his Adventures of Ideas.

All human history discussed in the 100-pp PART I is well summarized in its half-page Epilogue: “At this stage we conclude the consideration of that group of ideas that most directly contributed to the civilization of the behavior-systems of human beings in their intercourse with each other. This improvement depended on the slow growth of mutual respect, sympathy, and general kindliness. All these feelings can exist with the minimum of intellectuality. Their basis is emotional, and humanity acquired these emotions by reason of unthinking activities amid the course of nature.

“But mentality as it emerges into coordinated activity has a tremendous effect in selecting, emphasizing, and disintegrating. We have been considering the emergence of ideas from activities, and the effect of ideas in modifying the activities from which they emerge. Ideas arise as explanatory of customs and they end by founding novel methods and novel institutions. In the preceding chapters we have watched instances of their transition from one to other of these two modes of functioning.”

As for Part IV, each of its five chapters are especially insightful and show the depth and breadth of Alfred North Whitehead’s brilliance. This makes them very hard to summarize, but I give a minimum here as food for thought. “Truth is the conformation of Appearance to Reality.” …”Beauty is the mutual adaptation of the several factors in its occasion of experience. … the perfection of Beauty is defined as being the perfection of Harmony.” …”Science and Art are the consciously determined pursuit of Truth and Beauty. In them the finite consciousness of mankind is appropriating as its own the infinite fecundity of nature.” …”The foundation of all understanding of sociological theory – that is to say, of all understanding of human life – is that no static maintenance of perfection is possible. This axiom is rooted in the nature of things. Advance or Decadence are the only choices offered to mankind. The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.” His lengthy justification of the last sentences quoted concludes with his firm belief in the necessity of Adventure as the means by which progress of civilizations depends upon the exploration of new ideas. His justification convinced me!

Whitehead summarizes his thoughts by stating: “I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.” Even though I found Adventures of Ideas to be a difficult read, I give this book my highest recommendation.