No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Individuals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
The problem of ‘individuals’ is an age-old philosophical concern, but from time to time in the history of thought it is a problem which becomes acute. In our day the far-reaching advances in science—in physics and chemistry, in biology and bio-chemistry, in neurology and psychology—have made the philosophical attention to the problem of ‘individuals’ a matter of urgency. Yet, with some notableexceptions, philosophers have so far been displaying singularly little interest in the problem.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1963
References
page 20 note 1 This is a slightly revised version of a paper read at a meeting of the Scots Philosophical Club in Glasgow on 16 January, 1960.
page 20 note 2 London: Methuen, 1959.Google Scholar
page 20 note 3 Op. cit., p. 10.
page 20 note 4 Ibid., p. 10.
page 20 note 5 Ibid., p. 246.
page 21 note 1 Ibid., p. 247.
page 30 note 1 Descartes' Philosophical Writings, selected and translated by Smith, N. Kemp (1952), pp. 274–5.Google Scholar
page 31 note 1 Letter V, G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, Ed. Loemker, L. E., Chicago, 1956, p. 858.Google Scholar
page 31 note 2 Letter I, op. cit., p. 838.
page 31 note 3 ‘Critical Thoughts on the General Part of the Principles of Descartes’, op. cit., p. 642.Google Scholar
page 32 note 1 Process and Reality, Cambridge University Press, 1929, p. 84,; The Macmillan Company, New York, 1929, p. 95. My italics.Google Scholar
page 32 note 2 Letter X, op. cit., p. 879.
page 32 note 3 ‘Reply to the Thoughts on the System of Pre-established Harmony’, op. cit., p. 949.Google Scholar
page 33 note 1 In Leibniz's view there is a control of that activity by the dominant monad in each body. TTus is, however, no necessary implication of the theory. It is required only in the case of ‘persons’; see below, p. 38.
page 34 note 1 Cf. Monadology, §4.
page 35 note 1 Cf. Science and the Modem World, Cambridge University Press, 1926, pp. 189–90:Google Scholar ‘It is equally possible to arrive at this organic conception of the world if we start from the fundamental notions of modern physics, instead of, as above, from psychology and physiology. In fact by reason of my own studies in mathematics and mathematical physics, I did in fact arrive at my convictions in this way. Mathematical physics assumes in the first place an electromagnetic field of activity pervading space and time. The laws which condition this field are nothing else than the conditions observed by the general activity of the flux of the world, as it individualizes itself in the events.' For Whitehead on Leibniz, see op. cit., pp. 193-4.Google Scholar
page 35 note 2 Op cit., p. 169.
page 35 note 3 Cf. ‘Time’ in Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, 1926; Science and the Modem World, pp. 157-160; Process and Reality, Part II, Chapter II, especially §1.
page 35 note 4 Some Problems of Philosophy, Longmans, Green & Co., 1911, pp. 154–5.Google Scholar
page 36 note 1 ‘Actual occasion’ is one of Whitehead's frequently used terms for the ultimate individual.
page 36 note 2 Cf. ‘The Compound Individual’, by Charles, Hartshorne in Philosophical Essays for Alfred North Whitehead, Ed. Lee, Otis H., Longmans, Green & Co., 1936, pp. 193–220.Google Scholar
page 37 note 1 Science and the Modern World, p. 184.Google Scholar