Alfred North Whitehead meets an anthropologist of science and technology.


So perhaps I will start to do some blogging on Whitehead. Here is a first try:

I know, it's something like a love story. Fifteen years ago I was hooked on Gregory Bateson. In between it was Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour and «ANT», Actor-Network theory. Some said that I did ANT too devotedly. And then, the feelings for Whitehead is much more warm blooded than it ever was for Haraway and Latour. So I am possibly even more lost now than I was then?

I don’t know, I think it I am more playful with Whitehead than I was with Latour. It is more fun with Whitehead, in it’s totally incomprehensible beauty, than it was with ANT. Perhaps we – or I – was too serious about ANT? Perhaps we made it too much into the Solution? A Serious commitment to fight the Evil of «Flat Realism» and «Social Constructivism»?

Anyway, Whitehead is no less important to the well being of the many creatures of earthly existence than ANT ever was. On the contrary. The good thing about his philosophy is that it is a sweet medicine, even if it took me half a year of hard, meticulous reading to sense its sweetness. And that was just to get through «Science and the Modern World».