The Emergence of Whitehead's Metaphysics. 1925-1929 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 4~5 bers of different species by their sharing of the same archetype. Then, later, we get detailed discussion of the ideas of Robert Forbes (a native of the Isle of Man). Much attention is given to Forbes's idea of "polarity"--the notion that primitve forms of organisms are often closely similar, but that, as one encounters more complex forms, differences muhiply. "Thus, instead of finding, as we might expected a pr/or/, the most perfectly developed vegetable bearing the closest resemblance to the lowest animal form (as required by the eighteenth-century chain of being concept), we find, on the contrary, that it is at the lowest points of both systems (the sponges, &c, in the one, and the marine fuci in the other) that the closest resemblance exists" (72, quoting Forbes "On some important analogies between the animal and vegetable kingdons," Athenalum []845], 199). Rehbock points out, I am sure correctly, that Platonism was the key influence here, as Forbes tried to understand the organic world in terms of underlying Baupliine or Forms. With hindsight, we can see the fascinating interplay of ideas, knowing (as we do) that Darwin was already (privately) hypothesizing that the ethereal Platonic archetype was the much more earthy, common ancestor. I have long felt that one of the greatest weaknesses of historians of science is their inability to grasp the importance of philosophical ideas in the development of science. Rehbock shows me that this is no longer true. Now, if only we can get philosophers of science to appreciate the importance of history! I think it is fair to say that this book is more for the specialist than the general reader. But philosophers interested in the first half of the nineteenth century in Britain could certainly read The Philosophical Naturalists with interest and profit. My main regret is that Rehbock does not have more to say on that amazing KantiardPlatonist]Poo-Bah of the natural sciences, sometimes professor of mineralogy and moral philosophy at the University of Cambridge, William WheweU. Here we really had the interplay of philosophy and science. Perhaps this might be the central topic of Rehbock's next book. MICHAEL RUSE UniversiO of Guelph Lewis S. Ford. The Emergence of Whitehead's Metaphysics. 1925-1929. SUNY Series in Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, x984. Pp. xiv + 35 ]. Cloth, $39.5o. Paper, $x9.95. One of the fashion words of recent philosophy is 'hermeneutics', meaning simply the interpretation of texts, originally scriptual. The interpretation of the texts of major philosophers has always presented special difficulties. They may be dominantly systematic , assuming and looking for systematic coherence between earlier and later writings . Paul Shorey, for example, assumed the unity of Plato's thought, based upon the doctrinal standard of the Republic. Or, in the case of Whiteheadian scholarship, doctrines of Processand Reality have ofter been read back into earlier books. At least it has been thought safe to interpret Scienceand the Modern World, written originally as 4~6 .JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24:3 .JULY I986 the first series of Lowell lectures in 1925, in the light of PR, published only four years later in 1929. There is another tradition of interpretation, fostered in the so-called 'higher criticism' of biblical texts, which is genetic rather than systematic. It has the virtue of allowing the thought of a great philosopher to be developmental and dynamic, even within the confines of a relatively short period such as Whitehead between 1925 and 19~9, or of Plato in the crisis years of his late fifties and early sixties. Ford's earlier training in biblical criticism was a helpful background for his book, The Lure of God:BiblicalBackgroundfor ProcessTheology,and it has provided a scientific hermeneutical tool for the genetic analysis of Whitehead's great adventure of ideas culminating in PR, his metaphysical masterpiece. Ford's Emergence is an important study to which all future Whiteheadian scholars will be indebted. Ford has shown convincingly that the development of Whitehead's thought was not merely from book to book in the period from 1925 to 1929, but within the books themselves. This was characteristically masked from the reader's...