Whitehead's Study Of Nature

"Learning from history, we can see the rise and fall", when theresearch from traditional nature view is into the bottleneck stage, from which we can might obtain some new enlightenment. So the author chooses Alfred North Whitehead, one of the most important contemporary Western philosophers as the research object, exploreshis nature view, and findsthe enlightenment. Before studying natural philosophy, Whitehead has been dedicated to research mathematics and mathematical logic, until 1914, he began to study natural philosophy, natural science as well as the concept of nature. As themid-term development outcome of his thoughts, natural philosophy is not only the foundation for him to construct the post-metaphysical systems, but also is a model for the nature view of the late 19th-century to be formed and developed. In the early and mid-Whitehead philosophy development, he mainly researched epistemology; however, while in metaphysics, although discussed the nature in the background of ontological, he did not study the nature from the perspective of cosmology and axiology.This article will describe the background Whitehead's view of natureformed in the first chapter. Whitehead's view of nature formed its particular historical era and social background are inseparable.In addition, the ideasource of Whitehead's view nature is various, and he has absorbed the thoughts from mathematics, biology, physics, literature, theater and poetry, so the nature theoretical basis of his is broad and profound.The second chapter discusses the main contents of Whitehead's view of nature. The first section discusses thedisastrous consequences caused by substance mechanical view of modern scientific materialism,especiallynature, science and philosophy was abruptly divided into two parts, of which Whitehead was strongly critical, based on it, he put forward his own solutions. The second section discusses Whitehead's natural ontology. Firstly, there discusses the relationship between nature and soul in this section, and Whitehead used the ontological concept----"natural and mind are separated" to explain the relationship between nature and soul. Secondly, the core of Whitehead's view of nature is based on"event theory" and "theory of objects".using the concept of "event" instead of "substance" concept of scientific materialism, Whitehead resumed that nature consists of constantly happening "events", from which time and space extract. The "Object Theory" precisely answer how to face the changing world, how can nature explain? Because the "event" as the end point of perception, is gone forever. Lastly, he also thought people should not discuss the laws of nature from one point in nature whereas the laws of nature should be manifested by the laws of society, which also avoidedjust studying the laws of nature, the human and social factors andgap between man and nature. Moreover, He interpreted four popular natural law views popular with at that era one by one.The third chapter describes the final point of view of nature Whitehead. his final point of view of nature man this side of the world.In order to the better lives of people, he stressed there is harmonious between human and nature and people should promote civil society to develop. Actually, here Whitehead reconciled anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric. Anthropocentrism regards the man as subject and put it on high place;rather than the subject of anthropocentrism is nature,which weakens people's participation. Whitehead proposed that man and nature are equal, harmonious and unity.