European Society for Process Thought The Work-In-Process seminar series aims to provide a space for regular exchange between researchers working on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. As a hybrid between a seminar and a community event for all those working in process thought, researchers will be given the informal opportunity to present and discuss their work in progress, to receive input and use this space to build collaborations.
The Work-In-Process series is hosted by the European Society for Process Thought and will take place online every two weeks, alternating between Mondays and Fridays. For an updated full schedule see below.
The seminar is completely free and we welcome everyone regardless of their academic position. If you want to present your own work or simply attend the seminar, please get in touch with espt@milanstuermer.com to register.
Schedule
You can also access and subscribe to our schedule on Google Calendar or import the .ics/iCal.
Friday, Jan 19, 15:00 – 16:00 CET
Veronika Krajíčková: Reading modernism differently via Whitehead’s metaphysics of experience, feeling and value
In her talk, Veronika Krajíčková is going to discuss her project focussing on reading (literary) modernism via the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, which presents this movement in different, and hopefully more bright and constructive light. Analysing modernist texts with the aid of Whitehead’s concepts of experience, feeling, value and concern uproots the “detached”, individualist and reality-disconnected vibe that is traditionally associated with high modernism. Moreover, Whitehead’s theory of prehension applied to the process of reading permits more emotionally responsive and situated engagement with a text, which anticipates the affective turn in literary criticism long dominated by disinterested close reading and “hermeneutics of suspicion” (Rita Felski).
Monday, Jan 29, 18:00 – 19:00 CET
Andreas Wiechers: On the possibility of rhythm between God and the temporal world
Andreas Wiechers is exploring the concept of rhythm in A.N. Whitehead’s Process and Reality. His research is looking at the passages where rhythm is explicitly mentioned for their explanatory value in analyzing the concept and its status within Whitehead’s metaphysical framework. In this talk, he will focus on a specific passage that, due to its parallel structure with a core quotation on rhythm, suggests that rhythm occupies a significant systematic position in the interplay between the single actual entity named God and the actual world of actual occasions. Starting from this passage, Andreas will embark on a search for further clues and possibilities in Process and Reality for a systematic understanding of the rhythmicality between God and the world.
Friday, Feb 16, 15:00 – 16:00 CET
Svenja Schmitz: New ways of thinking about matter with Alfred N. Whitehead and Ernst Bloch
In her talk, Svenja Schmitz will present the topic of her doctoral thesis, in which she tries to find new ways of thinking about matter based on the thinking of Whitehead and Ernst Bloch. Although the two thinkers seem to have nothing in common, Svenja shows that the thinking of both can be understood as a reaction to what they see as an unsatisfactory thinking about the actual world, namely to one that results from a mechanistic view of matter.
In her reading of Whitehead, she is going to focus on a particular passage in Modes of Thought in which Whitehead emphasizes the transcendent function of existence, which is also the theme around which Bloch’s thinking revolves. In trying to understand this transcendent function, both develop a new idea of matter. In her project, Svenja discusses three theses that she believes apply to this new concept of matter:
1. matter can be understood as having a speculative surplus,
2. enduring objects can be understood as a moments of holding: to Bloch as experimental figures (,Versuchsgestalten‘) and to Whitehead as societies,
3. both concepts of matter share a utopian potential.
Monday, Feb 26, 18:00 – 19:00 CET
Alexandra Kimbo: Sociality as “feeling-for”: Thinking through interspecies relations with Whitehead
Friday, Mar 15, 15:00 – 16:00 CET
Martin Kaplický: Significant Form Revisited: Whiteheadian Perspective
The talk will concentrate on the key notion of modernist art and aesthetics – significant form, which was coined by Clive Bell and helped him to show the relevance and importance of modernist post-impressionist art. The concept later underwent much criticism and was considered as a radical and untenable form of formalism. Although much of the criticism is reasonable, I believe that the concept of significant form can still show important features of works of art and especially the inseparability of the objective and subjective poles of aesthetic experience. For proving this potential, I will read Bell’s formalist theory through the lens of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophical system.
Monday, Mar 25, 18:00 – 19:00 CET
EASTER BREAK – We’ll be back after the Easter Break with a brand new program every other Monday, 18:00 – 19:00 and Friday, 15:00 – 16:00. If you want to contribute, please get in touch with espt@milanstuermer.com
Friday, Apr 12, 15:00 – 16:00 CET
Denys Zhadiaiev: Where Language is not Enough: Concrescence, Cadences, Microgenesis
Based on the last chapter of the Modes of Though (The Aims of Philosophy), Process and Reality and Dialogues… (Price, L.), we will try to develop the idea of why Whitehead warned us to be careful with the belief in sufficiency of words and sentences. The talk aims to demonstrate the opposition between “atomic” concepts (meanings of words) and wave-like reality (perception). It poses a new question on why discrete meanings (values, ideas, concepts) do not fully match continuous reality (feelings, emotions, perceptual data) unless we take it as so-called “bits (or droplets) of experience”.
The importance of this topic is in the problem for scientific discourse in its attempt to express quantum phenomena. Process philosophy foresaw this issue with propositions and mentioned that some of the contradictions in science and philosophy are seemed to be solved by the “sleight of hands” but not fully solved indeed.
Not pretending to provide solution, we aim, at least, to outline the metaphysical barrier where discourse may stumble upon and we, unintentionally find ourselves committing “good-old” error – an ignoratio elenchi (fallacy of proof).
Monday, Apr 22, 18:00 – 19:00 CET
Gerard Jagers op Akkerhuis: The Operator Theory, a new Framework for Analysing Organization in Nature
An open discussion on the intersections between Whitehead’s thinking and contemporary biology, particularly the hierarchical organization of nature.
Friday, May 10, 15:00 – 16:00 CET
Daniel Bella: Cartesian Recurrences – On Whitehead and the History of Philosophy