The Unifying Moment

Craig Eisendrath reinterprets and unifies the writings of the late-nineteenth-century psychologist William James and the twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. James's psychology achieves greater depth by its grounding in philosophic doctrine, and Whitehead's abstract and frequently abstruse philosophy gains greater specificity through the concrete illustrations provided by a wealth of psychological evidence. The result is an extension of James and an exegesis of Whitehead. The merging of James's theory of will and Whitehead's theory of concrescence and organism is the central pivot of the book. Eisendrath discusses as well the philosophical traditions behind both men and analyzes their theories on perception, time, space, causality, the nature and role of ideas, the laws of nature, God and civilization.