Process thought is an important component of contemporary philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead’s organic philosophy has a special place in the landscape of process thinking, being detailed, precise and well-thought, and at the same time extremely visionary and far-reaching. The global community of process thinkers includes physicists, biologists, doctors, political scientists, educators, activists, philosophers, theologians and other people devoted to rethinking their disciplines in the light of process philosophy. This volume presents the cutting edge in the creation of a process worldview. Leading scholars from all over the world gathered to discuss how process thinking can inspire us to rethink our lives. Precise philosophical language and a unifying vision are applied to core issues, such as politics, society, education and religion. The book represents a bold move from academic philosophy into the realm of actual human lives.

How do we make ourselves a Whiteheadian proposition? This question exposes the multivalent connections between postmodern thought and Whitehead’s philosophy, with particular attention to his understanding of propositions. Edited by Roland Faber, Michael Halewood, and Andrew M. Davis, Propositions in the Making articulates the newest reaches of Whiteheadian propositions for a postmodern world. It does so by activating interdisciplinary lures of feeling, living, and co-creating the world anew. Rather than a “logical assertion,” Whitehead described a proposition as a “lure for feeling” for a collectivity to come. It cannot be reduced to the verbal content of logical justifications, but rather the feeling content of aesthetic valuations. In creatively expressing these propositions in wide relevance to existential, ethical, educational, theological, aesthetic, technological, and societal concerns, the contributors to this volume enact nothing short of “a Whiteheadian Laboratory.”

Are we more than stardust? Is the appearance of the fragile Earth in the vast universe more than an accident? Are we not children of a Spirit that pervades the dust, rejuvenates life, and embraces the ever-evolving universe? Is there a cosmic Spirit that wants us to awaken to a consciousness of universal meaning, sacred purpose, and mutual friendship with all beings? This book answers these questions with a spirituality of the numinous in our relation to the elements of the Earth in the matrix of the multiverse by taking you on a journey through nine paths and nineteen meditations of awakening. Not bound by any religion, but in deep appreciation of the religious and spiritual heritage of human encounters with the divine depth of existence in our selves and in nature, they invite you to become sojourners by engaging the most profound embodiments of the intangible Spirit by which it facilitates its own materialization in the cosmos and our spiritualization of the cosmos. Use--says this Spirit--the stardust that you are to become a spirit-faring species in an eternal journey of the cosmos to realize its ultimate motive of existence--the attraction of love!

This volume answers the question: Why do we believe what we believe? It examines current research on the concept of beliefs, and the development in our understanding of the process of believing. It takes into account empirical findings in the field of neuroscience regarding the processes that underlie beliefs, and discusses the notion that beyond the interactive exploratory analysis of sensory information from the complex outside world, humans engage in an evaluative analysis by which they attribute personal meaning and relevance to the probabilistic representations of objects and events. Beliefs exert a strong influence on behaviour, decision-making, and identifying and solving problems. Despite their importance, beliefs have until recently not been at the centre of scientific interest. In fact, “belief” is an ill-defined phenomenon. From a transdisciplinary perspective the actual approaches to understanding belief seem incompatible as they attempt to highlight such different topics as “belief – religion”, “belief – spirituality”, “belief – faith”, “belief – knowledge”, “belief – attitude”, “belief – disbelief”, “belief – illusion”, and “believing – brain function”. This situation contradicts the idea that belief is close to pathological phenomena and that it should be eliminated from scientific discussions. Rather, believing is fundamental for understanding the many problems of every-day life. In fact, the book shows that beliefs are relevant for politics, international affairs, economy, law, or religions also in modern societies. This book presents the increasing scientific interest in beliefs and believing, and reflects the change in focus from the content aspect of belief towards the fluid nature of believing.

Greening Philosophy of Religion: Process, Ecology, and Ethics develops fruitful avenues for the theory and practice of greening philosophy of religion. Collected with a pluralistic conception of both philosophy and religion, the chapters in this volume address pressing and timely issues that involve imagining ecological democracy as an ideal horizon for facing climate catastrophe, with a radical hope and sober vision for realizing a more sustainable planetary economy that places a high value on food sovereignty, an ethic of trust, and inter-religious conversations. Edited by Jea Sophia Oh and John Quiring, this book offers a vital contribution to the fields of philosophy of religion, environmental ethics, religion and ecology, comparative philosophy, and ecotheology—all tuned to the note of process thinking and a deep ecological sensibility.

‘The Ocean of God’conveys the proposition that the future of religions, if they will not want to contribute to the destruction of humanity, will become transreligious. Based on the assumption that the spiritual impulse of humanity cannot simply be eradicated, religiosity will persist in transreligious forms, as secularizations, naturalizations and transhumanist dreams only envision such transformations, but fall short in their ability to replace the force of spirituality to further civilized peace of human existence on Earth and its future in evolutionary, ecological and cosmological dimensions. In relating the contributions of religious pluralism to the concept of the unity of religions, which have arisen in this “new axial age” for overcoming the checkered history of religions in furthering peace, the program of a polyphilic pluralism with its transreligious discourse, based on the insight of the fundamental relativity of (religious) truth and the special contributions of process philosophy and theology as well as the Bahá'í universe of thought, analyses and projects a new religiosity or spirit enabling religions to overcome their deepest motives of strife and warfare.

This volume pays homage to Alfred North Whitehead’s (1861-1947) profound lecture and essay entitled “Nature Alive,” which was one of his most mature expressions of his process-relational metaphysics – a holistic conceptual framework that renders vivid the dynamic character of the natural world and the intrinsic purposiveness, selective agency, and creativity of living organisms. Inspired by, but not beholden to, Whitehead’s process metaphysical “lens,” the contributors to this volume bring a multiplicity of philosophical orientations to the table in challenging the mechanistic and reductionistic neo-Darwinian paradigm that is still dominant today in the life sciences. Mechanistic neo-Darwinism views nature and living organisms as “machines,” namely, as networks of externally related and linear causal “switches,” “dials,” “levers,” “pulleys,” and “gears,” that are “at the ready” for technological and biotechnological manipulation. Seeking a conceptual framework and a language that are more adequate to the study of the natural world and of living creatures than the mechanistic orientation, the contributors to this volume explore several of the “New Frontiers of Biology,” which are areas of biology whose findings to some extent go beyond the explanatory confines of the Modern Synthesis of natural selection and genetics. Most notably, emergence theory, the theory of organic selection, epigenetics, homeostasis, chronobiology, and autopoiesis research can provide us with key insights that can assist us in explaining how living agents emerged, including the evolutionary origins of mentality, consciousness, and mind. Moreover, attention to the “New Frontiers of Biology” can serve to “re-enchant” our understanding of the natural world and to prevent ecological devastation, through a restoration to objectivity of notions such as “intrinsic purposiveness,” “selective agency,” “creativity,” and “intrinsic value.”

Chinese Environmental Humanities showcases contemporary ecocritical approaches to Chinese culture and aesthetic production as practiced in China itself and beyond. As the first collaborative environmental humanities project of this kind, this book brings together sixteen scholars from a diverse range of disciplines, including literary and cultural studies, philosophy, ecocinema and ecomedia studies, religious studies, minority studies, and animal or multispecies studies. The fourteen chapters are conceptually framed through the lens of the Chinese term huanjing (environment or “encircling the surroundings”), a critical device for imagining the aesthetics and politics of place-making, or “the practice of environing at the margin.” The discourse of environing at the margins facilitates consideration of the modes, aesthetics, ethics, and politics of environmental inclusion and exclusion, providing a lens into the environmental thinking and practices of the world’s most populous society.

Film Figures develops a figural account of the memory structure of films. Employing theoretical concepts drawn from a range of sources, including French post-humanist philosophy and German Idealism, the book undertakes an organology of film guided by the work of Bernard Stiegler whose philosophy of mnemotechnesis provides the framework of analysis. Situating films in the quantum field of spacetime relativity as a field of cosmic views, inquiry into film figures begins with disturbances in the experience of films themselves, posing questions of the relation between the dead past and the living future in film story-telling. By breaking the façade of the continuing present through self-questioning, we open films to their figural dimensions in the counter-movement of drive as negentropic resistance. Following the back-movement of drive switches our perception to the figural register in which characters become figures probing blindly for what the film will have been in another time – a time yet to be lived. By following the anterior possibilities of this other time, we open films to the archival future in which a new future comes forth. This book provides theoretical and analytical concepts as well as strategies for taking a step into this future, guided by questions of the right path to take given the relativity of views in which the film can be experienced. Films analysed include Murnau's The Last Laugh, Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, Hitchcock's Rear Window, Welles's The Lady from Shanghai, Fellini's Intervista, Antonioni's L'Eclisse, Bresson's Une Femme Douce, and Zeller's The Father.