Wheeler and Whitehead: Process Biology and Process Philosophy in the Early Twentieth Century

The case of William Morton Wheeler and Alfred North Whitehead represents a striking example of how biologists and philosophers engaged in a common enterprise in the early twentieth century. Both challenge the notion that the living world is composed of distinct organisms. Based on his studies of the behavior of social insects, Wheeler developed a concept of superorganisms that paved the way for a theory of emergent evolution. This paper argues that Whitehead, whose relation to academic biology has been largely ignored, drew on Wheeler's findings and integrated them into a universal philosophical cosmology.