Nature and Natural Science: The Philosophy of Frederick J. E. Woodbridge (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 427 The final developments, including those metaphysical refinements which have formed parts of the standard machinery for doctrinal interpretation of the entire 1925-1929 corpus, are very late in terms of the revisions and additions after the delivery of the Gifford Lectures in 1928 and before the publication of PR in 1929. These include the divine provision of the subjective aims of individual occasions and the strangely neglected but very important theory of hybrid physical feelings, feelings of the conceptual feelings of others, unmediated by pure physical feelings. The latter become the channels of divine causality upon the world in the mode of final rather than efficient causality, and they perhaps enable Whitehead to bypass difficulties with relativity theory and its denial of causal efficacy between contemporaries. Lewis Ford's achievement in this book is remarkable. His arguments are not only supported by careful textual analyses, but are buttressed by classroom notes made by Whitehead's students and colleagues at Harvard in the crucial time frames. These are conveniently published, along With the essay on "Time" of September x926, as appendices . The task undertaken by Ford was made harder by the destruction, at Whitehead's request, of his manuscripts and papers. BUt with Ford's book and the long awaited publication of the first volume of Whitehead's biography a new era of Whiteheadian scholarship has begun. LEONARDJ. ESLICK St. Louis University William Frank Jones. Nature and Natural Science: The Philosophy of FrederickJ. E. Woodbridge. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1983. Pp. 197. $16.95 (cloth). Professor Jones has written a useful book to guide the reader through the maze of Woodbridge's thought. Although one of America's seminal thinkers, Woodbridge is better known as an influential teacher rather than through his writings. Jones is right in calling Woodbridge "a pivotal thinker," but to refer to his realism as "the clearest, most consistent and most fully developed statement and defense of traditional objectivity " is stretching the point too far. However, Woodbridge deserves recognition for his valuable insights, critical analyses of men and ideas in the history of philosophy, and probably more so for exposing the excessive claims of pragmatism. Jones's discussion adds credence to the view that Woodbridge's theses and arguments rest on a revitalized yet unorthodox Aristotelianism that sustained his thinking throughout the development of his naturalistic realism. Jones's book should be read mainly as an effort to introduce the reader to Woodbridge 's realism, his critique of modem epistemologies, his revival of metaphysics, and his effort to work out a philosophy of mind to ensure the intelligibility of human history and culture. Whether Woodbridge carried out systematically his philosophical program is an open question but not a decisive one. What Jonesconsiders important is the place Woodbridge occupies in the development of American naturalism and what he contributed to this complex movement to reconcile some of its discordant 428 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24" 3 JULY 1986 offshoots in the early decades of the twentieth century. Since most of Woodbridge's writings are rather inaccessible, the author's frequent resorting to extensive quotations is helpful but the limited use of critical commentary and the author's own obscure paraphrasing are serious hindrances if not flaws. As a result the exposition is of uneven value, particularly when the author tries to "translate" Woodbridge's thought in an idiom by presuming that the reader can readily follow. Despite this difficulty, the author succeeds in identifying three central topics that seem to have preoccupied Woodbridge throughout his career. Together and individually the seven chapters illumine different aspects of realism, criticism and naturalistic Aristotelianism . My own comments will bc limited to these pervasive themes. Woodbridge's naive realism, basically a starting position, opts for anything that is real rather than for axioms, principles and postulates. It corresponds on the face of it to Aristotle's things "prior according to nature." Since it gives primacy to subject matters, it states an anti-Kantian thesis and one closer to what Dewey would call "the primacy of experience." It blossoms as a contextual realism though Jones does not draw the parallel to Aristotle's own. This realism exhibits its fullness...