Examines the significance of The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924–1925
- Responds to the question of whether the Harvard Lectures and The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead project change our understanding of the meaning or development of Whitehead’s thought
- Written by international experts on Whitehead – including Maria-Teresa Teixeira, Gary Herstein and Jude Jones – who address a range of different aspects of the scholarly implications of the Lectures
- The first monograph responding to the Critical Edition: has the potential to establish the tone and influence the direction of subsequent work
- Includes the text of Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, recently gifted to the Critical Edition
- Contributes towards setting scholarly conventions for how to cite and reference the volumes of the Critical Edition
In these newly commissioned essays, leading Whitehead scholars ask a range of important questions about Whitehead’s first year of philosophy lectures. Do these lectures challenge or confirm previous understandings of Whitehead’s published works? What is revealed about the development of Whitehead’s thought in the crucial period after London but before the publication of Science and the Modern World? What should we make of concepts and terms that were introduced in these lectures but were never incorporated into subsequent publications?
Also included in this volume is the text of Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, recently gifted to the Critical Edition of Whitehead, allowing for a clearer understanding of Whitehead’s plans and goals for his first course of lectures in philosophy than has previously been possible.