Alfred North Whitehead on Learning and Education: Theory and Application

Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy is one of the most creative and promising approaches developed in the 20th century. Being a scholar who for most of his professional life worked in the fields of logic, mathematics, and physics it was one of Whitehead’s major intentions to exemplarily demonstrate the possibility of the creative interplay between metaphysics and other disciplines such as aestethics, ethics, theology and especially the single sciences. One scientific field which he never lost interest in during his whole life was education, a key domain for prospering societies. In this book a selection of 15 papers explores Whitehead’s educational ideas which are based on his radical process approach. Following the Introduction which presents Whitehead’s criticism of traditional education and the false psychology which it is based on, the book is divided into two major parts. The first part deals with Whitehead’s philosophically inspired alternative theoretical framework for learning and education. Special focus is layed on the concept of the learning process which according to Whitehead is essentially cyclic in nature. In the second part it is shown how Whitehead’s ideas can profitably be applied to different sub-domains within education: management education, college education and evalutation. The book shows that Whitehead’s process approach offers a promising alternative to traditional education.