Process and reality
an essay in cosmology
by Alfred North Whitehead · first published 1929
23% recommend69% neutral8% critical
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
Difference and Repetition
Gilles Deleuze, Paul Patton
Recommended by 4 · mentioned by 104 recommend · 10 mention4 recommend · 104 recommend
2007–2023Mathematics, form and function
Saunders Mac Lane
Recommended by 12 · mentioned by 1412 recommend · 14 mention12 recommend · 1412 recommend
Anti-Oedipus
Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari
Recommended by 4 · mentioned by 204 recommend · 20 mention4 recommend · 204 recommend
2010–2026Thinking in systems
Donella H. Meadows, Diana Wright
Recommended by 124 · mentioned by 163124 recommend · 163 mention124 recommend · 163124 recommend
Beyond good and evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
Recommended by 35 · mentioned by 8535 recommend · 85 mention35 recommend · 8535 recommend
2012–2026The Signal and the Noise
Nate Silver
Recommended by 47 · mentioned by 7947 recommend · 79 mention47 recommend · 7947 recommend
No bullshit guide to math and physics
Ivan Savov
Recommended by 21 · mentioned by 2221 recommend · 22 mention21 recommend · 2221 recommend
2007–2026How to solve it
George Pólya
Recommended by 161 · mentioned by 206161 recommend · 206 mention161 recommend · 206161 recommend
(Someone already posted How to Solve It which would be my first recommendation on this forum.) The Zhuangzi, probably at least two translations. The Elements (that is, Euclid's). Process and Reality has had the most impact on my thinking but it's one of the most unapproachable things I've ever read. Get there eventually.
on “Ask HN: Books that teach you to think” ↗…inaccessible but while we're throwing out truly nonstandard recommendations, and apropos to the connection made elsewhere in this thread between the theory of forms and object-oriented programming, Whitehead's Process and Reality is good for the same reasons OOP sucks.
on “A non-standard book list for software developers” ↗Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology by Alfred North Whitehead
on “Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?” ↗Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead
on “Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models” ↗…Engineering by C. E. Dickerson & Siyuan Ji - System Design & Management: An Introduction to Systems Engineering by Bob Parkinson On a somewhat related note I also got Difference & Repetition by Deleuze and Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead, but they're more philosophical than practical.
on “System Design Primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems” ↗…with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another. Today Whitehead's philosophical works – particularly Process and Reality – are regarded as the foundational texts of process philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead Alain Badiou also wrote some books on mathematics. He is definitely outside of the…
on “Philosophy of mathematics – a reading list (2020)” ↗…I'm five" is a popular aphorism attributed to English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Aaaaaaahhhh.... OK. The phrase was first published in 1947 in Whitehead's posthumous book Process and Reality. It is found in the following passage: We are here concerned with an idea which is not itself a monad, but which, like the monads, is in a sense a simple thing. We shall call it the "idea of simplicity",…
on “Galactica: an AI trained on humanity's scientific knowledge (by Meta)” ↗…and we assign identity to these chains of values, and perceive change where there is none. The talk itself is quite interesting and goes into detail on the relevance of Whitehead's ideas in his book Process and Reality to concurrent programming. [0] https://avout.io/ [1] https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hi... [2] https://archive.org/details/AlfredNorthWhiteheadProcessAndRe...
on “All Programming Philosophies Are About State” ↗Reading excerpts from Process and Reality and Modes of Thought, on the one hand, ignites hunger for a greater understanding, but on the other hand, highlights the lack thereof and, in today's day and age, the impossibility of a possible fruition.…
on “Alfred North Whitehead” ↗…I wouldn’t have expected that he’s actually one of the more foundational people behind continental philosophy, which has a (mis-understood) image of being illogical and vacuous! Anyways, should read Process and Reality someday, since my interest in panpsychism is growing… (And which might be more useful than reading Deleuze/Guattari since they’re just too cryptic)
on “Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]” ↗For the uninformed: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 39 [Free Press, 1979]; <https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.h...> (There's a fair bit of truth to this.)
on “The most cited authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” ↗…prevent that. Regardless, there's a reason all of our analog tools have stuck around for art making in spite of the existence of their highly efficient digital counterparts. And I think the author of Process and Reality might agree with me.
on “GenAI Art Is the Least Imaginative Use of AI Imaginable” ↗I know Process and Reality is exceedingly popular among certain circles but I really struggled to make it through the book and I'm not sure I enough out of it to justify the effort trying to parse the text. I see another comment…
on “Process and Reality” ↗he said somewhere that he was inspired by Whiteheas's book "Process and Reality"
on “Why I ever wrote Clojure” ↗