OLYMPIC

CENTER FOR

PHILOSOPHY

AND

CULTURE

WHITEHEADS CONCEPTS OF NUMBER AND HARMONY

THEIR BACKGROUND, TRANSFORMATION AND USE

By
Leonidas Bargeliotes*
ABSTRACT. A careful

analysis of Alfred North Whiteheads philosophy of number and

harmony points to Pythagoras who saw the cosmos in terms of number and
mathematical rations or harmonies. Number, according to his conception, underlies all
physical reality and is the beginning, the source and principle of all existents.
The function of number is so important to later Pythagoreans such as Philolaus as to consider
it as guide and muster of human thought, while Archytas extends the exact mathematical
relationships to beautiful composition. As Aristotle has put it, they (the Pythagoreans)
construct the whole universe out of numbers. No wonder why Whitehead has stated that this
bold generalization by the Pythagoreans is the starting point from which our modern
mathematization of physical phenomena among others-developed.
Whiteheads metaphysical, self-contained and all-inclusive system, an organismic
universe, as he calls it, though in process and relative, essentially involves its own
connections in the sense that each entity is connected with the universe of other things. In this
connection there are perspectives of the universe not only for the number three, but also for
the colour bleu, and of any other definite occasion of realized fact. The connection is better
expressed by the society of an organism in which its entities feel each other, grasp each other
and are interwoven in patterned contrasts. Number and spaces, the mathematical entities, are
the ultimate stuff out of which the real entities of our perceptual experience are constructed.
Further on, Whitehead recognizes the importance of the Pythagorean concepts of number and
harmony as they have been expressed mainly by Platos dialectic of opposites and by the
musical scale and harmony, which clearly indicate the applicability of mathematics to
physical phenomena and human experience, to the dialogue of cultures and mutual
understanding.
Key Words: number, harmony, feeling, human experience, aesthetic values, eros, psyche,
peace

Introduction
One of the main interests of Whiteheads philosophy of organism is to provide
a ground for unification of the various dualisms or bifurcations of the nature of
things. He is the first scientist and philosopher in modern times who felt the need for a
unification of the blind emotions of human experience with the advanced scientific
concepts, the fusion of the sentimentality of art with the rules of succession of science
and the analytic discrimination, the red glow of the sunset with the molecules and
electronic waves,1 in short, the unification of mathematical concepts with the
immediate sense qualities. Hence Whiteheads endeavour to construct a coherent,
logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of
experience can be interpreted,2 that is, a system of ideas which brings the aesthetic,
moral and religious interests into relation with those concepts of the world which have
their origin in the natural science.3 This is Whiteheads adequate concrete
metaphysical principle, applicable to everything of which we are conscious, as
enjoyed, perceived, willed or thought, and outlined in his principle of connectedness,
the iron necessity of the universe upon which lies the harmony of logic and
metaphysics.4
This is better expressed in his philosophy of organism the outcome of our coordinated knowledge according to which, you cannot confine any important
reorganization to one sphere of thought alone. You cannot shelter theology from
science, or science from theology; nor you can shelter either of them from
metaphysics, or metaphysics from either of them. There is no short cut to truth.5
There is no better description of this interdependence than the one stated by the
philosopher of organism:
The body pollutes the mind, the mind pollutes the body. Physical energy
sublimates itself into zeal; conversely, zeal stimulates the body. The biological ends
pass into ideals of standards, and the formation of standards affects the biological
facts. The individual is formative of the society, the society is formative of the
individual. Particular evils infect the whole world, particular goods point the way of
escape (RM 85).

Facts themselves, which are the searching field of a particular science,

presuppose a metaphysics in regard to the world as a whole. The world, thus
disclosed, is through and through, interdependent.6
The significance of this ambitious program could be realized only by the two
basic concepts of the philosophy of organism, namely, number and harmony, in terms
of which one can achieve the correlation of the mathematical with the immediate
sense qualities of our experience, the dialogical interrelation of the various contrasts
and conflicting views, the unification of the aesthetic feeling in its various levels, and
a harmonious world, all of which can be traced back to Pythagoras and to Plato,
among others, and supported by arguments drawn from the philosophy of organism
itself.
II
The Historical Background
A. Pythagoras (born 580 B. C.) rather than the so-called Pythagoreans- is
known, not only as the most famous figure of philosophy and as a great seeker of
truth and wisdom, but also for his conceptions of cosmos , number and harmony, the
music of the spheres, and of the organized life, whether these conceptions involve
mystical visions or intuitional observations. In either case they foreshadow the
empirical and scientific flowering of Neoplatonic Studies (Iamblichus, Proclus,
Plethon) and of Renaissance thought down to the Modern World-the philosophy of
organism included.
Thus, when Pythagoras in his cosmogony divides the cosmic creation into the
three levels of being, the Monad, the principle of all things, the indeterminate Dyad
which derives from the Monad and serves as a passive material to it, and the Numbers
which arise from both the Monad (Unity/ God), and the indeterminate Dyad,7
he is referring to Mythical and Mystical traditions alike.
The main target of the Pythagorean philosophy was, however, to divinise the
cosmos through Number or Arithmos , that is, the conscious proportion or the
harmony of phenomena which the Divine Mind (Nous) instilled into created things,8
thus producing the ensouled (empsychos), intelligent (noeros) aesthetically perfect
and spherical cosmos, which was carried down through the Neoplatonic cosmology,
mainly by means of Platos Timaeus, to the modern era. The mathematical and
physical discoveries of the Pythagoreans which give account of the Unity and the
Diversity of Cosmos, for the particular and of the whole as well as for their
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interrelations, were of particular importance for Platos interplay of opposites as well

as Whiteheads philosophy of organism , the interweaving of qualitative fact with
quantitative composition. The combination of limit-odd with the unlimited- even, for
example, resulted from the imposition of the limit principle on the unlimited,
produced the organic unity of cosmos whether this unity is the source of the many or
is derived from the combination of the two principles. Thus number became the
source of both the unlimited and the limit, which fitted both the universe as a whole
and everything in it.9
Pythagoras is also known as a founder of the organized life, within the rules of
a particular society, in which the ethical concept of life mediates between the whole of
the polis and of the individual persons just as the Pythagorean mathematics mediate
between the dialectic of philosophy and the irrational nature of the immediate
experience. There are no better exponents of the philosophy of the ancient
Pythagoreans on both Number (Arithmos) and Harmony (Armonia) than the teachings
of Philolaus10 and of Archytas.11 Arithmos, then, is that divine, cosmic harmony, which
creates and arranges all things in a beautiful, aesthetic order or form or harmony. For
the Pythagoreans, number had a mystical significance and independent reality.12
The function of Numbers not only explained the physical world, but also

symbolized or stood for moral qualities and other abstractions. They could express the
love for the agreement of all things, and become the reconciling principle of the
limiting form and the unlimited stuff, of the all-embracing Eleatic Being and the
Herakleitean flux, better, the reconciling force of the things of sense-perception
and the ordered soul, of the divine nature and the human art, especially music.
Numbers are intimately connected with harmonia, meant primarily the joining or
fitting things together which the Pythagoreans equated with number and associated
with music. The generalization of the number could apply to the whole heaven and
become the harmony of the shperes, (De Caelo, 290b 12), while the numerical ratios,
which determines the concordant intervals of the scale, (Polit., 531a) and
constitutes the sacred art, could be connected with moral ideal of measure and balance
and included in the studies of higher or liberal education. Plato has understood the
wise men dialectically, in the sense that the geometrical order of the world
established as a cosmos, and that communion and friendship and orderliness and
measure and justice bind together heavens and earth, the gods and men.13

The contribution of Pythagoras to mathematical sciences and orderliness of cosmos is

as much evident in Platos dialectical philosophy as the latter is evident in
Whiteheads philosophy of organism.
B. Platos view of the cosmos, on the other hand, is the divinised view of the
Pythagoreans transformed in and adjusted to his own cosmic scheme. According to
this scheme the metaphysical properties of nature should produce a harmonious and
well-ordered cosmos and preserve, at the same time, its wonder, that is, the mark of
Philosopher and the origin (<>) of philosophy. This means that the
genealogical tree is extended to the mythical and cosmic traditions in the sense that
Plato had absorbed and transformed them in order to adjust them to his own structure
of cosmos.14 His procedure seems to be the following:
(i) Plato is acting under the role of a physicist who starts from the knowledge
of the metaphysical properties of nature, that is, how nature should be arranged, to
produce a harmonious, well-ordered cosmos, rather than as an astronomer who uses
his knowledge of the mathematical and geometrical properties of the heavenly bodies
to determine their attributes.15 Thus, in his Timeaus the Creator (Demiurge) constructs
the cosmos in harmonious proportions while the World -Soul is composed of the
Sameness, the Difference, and of the Being; and Being is a mean proportion between
the other two. From these were created the three types of being: 1) spirit
(unchanging), 2) astral (intermediate), and 3) physical (changing).16
The Demiurge then distributes the whole into a set of geometrical proportions which
form two series of numbers: first the powers of two (1, 2, 4, 8) and secondly, the
power of three (1, 3, 9, 27).17 Between each two successive numbers, Plato sets two
mean proportions: the harmonic mean and the arithmetic mean.18 This whole series
represents the notes of musical scale, extending to four octaves and a major sixth. It
is, actually, an effort of Plato 1) to represent the whole Pythagorean structure of
cosmos based on mathematical/musical harmony, and 2) to apply the above
mentioned series into a scheme of the heavenly spheres in correlation to human soul.
It is apparent so far that Platos Demiurge forms the planetary spheres and their
sizes which correspond to the two series of number, by following the Pythagorean
intuitive line of thought and policy and by using the Pythagorean divinized
harmonious proportions of cosmos, of number and of harmonia. He expresses in
words the vision of a beloved world.19 As a matter of fact, Eros, the love of the
artist, is known to be the oldest divine artist, transforming chaos into cosmos. The
5

blessed and happy cosmos is, therefore, the telos of love, the outcome of love for a
balanced and harmonious achievement.
ii) It is the mathematical good, the mathematical knowledge, as has been
presented by the Pythagorean Plato that fascinated the philosopher of organism. For
Plato, in contrast with Aristotle, and in agreement with Whitehead, the acquisition of
mathematical knowledge partakes more of the character of religious initiation than of
mere instruction or research. For Plato, Arithmetic draws the souls upwardsnever
allowing anyone to offer it for discussion mere collections of visible or tangible
bodies (Polit., 525d). Similarly, the objects of geometrical knowledge are eternal,
not subject to decay, and they tend to draw the soul towards truth and to produce a
philosophic intelligence for the directing upwards of faculties which we wrongly turn
earthwards (Polit., 527b). Astronomy, too, as a pure mathematical science, must turn
the souls gaze upwards, not literally to the sky, but to the realm of real being and the
invisible (Polit., 529a- d). The invisible harmony-which- is better than the visible
(Her., Fr. B 54), can only be found by the soul animated by an anticipating urge in the
right direction. 20 Thus, man will find the truth of the human affairs when he opens his
psyche to the truth of God, which means a conversion, the turning-around from the
untruth of human affairs to the truth of the Idea. (Polit.,518de).
iii) Of equal importance for Whitehead is the Platonic synthesis of the arts.
The invisible harmony, already defined, can be found in the aesthetic synthesis of the
arts and the ways of life inspired by the divine Muses, which constitute the religiousmystical background, unquestionably accepted and revered. The human soul, inspired
by the Muse with divine madness (), creates music (), the highest
blessing s of human existence - without which life would not be worth living
(Phaidros, 244b, 245bc).21
From this point of view the artist becomes a universal mirror reflecting the
whole scale of physical and human existence, whose symbols he presents to our
apprehension. The fact that aesthetic nature is included in the significant human art is
important in that it shows the existing analogies between aesthetic nature and human
expression. It shows that our environment is very essential element in any aesthetic
education, and that an aesthetic education has to harmonize the bodily natural forces
with the cultural aspirations of man. Both, aesthetic unity of soul and man, and
symbolic fusion of body and soul, constitute the foundation of the true community
and of our national culture. It celebrates itself in the great national festivals and
6

becomes aware of itself in the artistic glorification of its historical past. Hence, the
true Muse is the companion of reason and philosophy, (Polit., 548b-c), for the aim of
the philosopher is to discern the nature of soul, divine and human, its experiences, and
its activities. Eros as aesthetic love, in respond to the call of the Muse, transfigures the
given stuff into an expressive image of life (Cf. Symp., 196e), motivates the true artist
and distinguishes him from the (amusson). Only the philosopher poet can
unify these two conditions (Cf. Laws, IV 719 cd, VII, 801 bc), and kindle the divine
love, the poetic fire, in the souls of others.22
As a good dialectician Plato understands the aesthetic life as a blessed union
with the appearance of Beauty, (Cf. Polit., 403c). This shows the inadequacy and
helplessness of a purely aesthetic culture. Mans soul is open to the transcendent
Whole and is opposed to the charms of beautiful appearance. There is a need for it to
go beyond beauty and art in order to evaluate beauty and aesthetic life with reference
to the whole of reality. The ideal whole of reality without any visible embodiment, is
beyond (any given) being in power and dignity (Polit., 509b).
Its is easy from the above to gather that Platos contemplation of beauty
transcends the beauties of the earth , of the bodies, of practices and of sciences until
one arrives at the knowledge of beauty itself and the essence of beauty, the divine
beauty, the pure and clear and unalloyedthe divine beauty in its uniqueness
Symp., 211a -b). Beauty then is the whole of all those levels and the opposites
contained in them, while art imitates Beauty. Only by active participation and
imitation of beauty may any sensible appearance be judged to be beautiful (Hipp.
Ma., 287c). But every work of art is a concrete whole of opposites, made visible to
imagination and philosophical self-comprehension, while beauty in and for herself,
which man enjoys, is the only home he has in this world. For when man has brought
forth and reared this perfect beauty, he shall be called the friend of god, and if ever it
is given to man to put in immortality, it shall be given to him (Symp., 212a).
The same is true for Whiteheads footnote as outlined in his notions of Truth,
Beauty, Peace and Harmony and traced in our exposition of Pythagoras and of the
Pythagorean Plato. Whitehead is indebted to all these notions, particularly that of
Beauty. What is left for us to consider is his famous footnote of the Platonic
philosophy which the philosopher of Organism has doubtfully restricted to Western
philosophy. But it is an important footnote worth to be presented in the following.

III
Whiteheads Metaphysical Scheme and the Levels of the Ladder
Whitehead has transformed Plato to the degree that Plato had transformed
Pythagoras. Thus Plato can be called the measure and the mediator of transformations.
Whitehead has transformed and adjusted Pythagoras through Plato to his own scheme
of thought and philosophy of organism. Like the Pythagorean number which could
construct the whole universe, his system of ideas could interpret every element of
human experience and also bring together the aesthetic, moral and religious interests
into relation with those concepts of the world which have their origin in the natural
science. The ideas, as he puts it, can bring together, the dangers or desires, the
triumphs and delights, the hopes and fears with the process of abstraction, of
simplification and of generalization of science; the red glow of the sunset with the
molecules and electronic waves.23 This is mainly expressed by the principle of
connectedness of things in which the emphasis is given to the emotion of human
experience, interpreted, integrated, and transformed into higher and more complex
categories of feelings.24
Though the system of the Organic philosophy is in process and the language is
that of relativity the ladder of ascent is similar to that of Pythagorean Plato. There are
four such levels that we can easily identify in what follows, namely, that of the
mathematical and the mathematical physics, of the kinship and prehension, of the
aesthetic values of nature and of art, and of the intensities of higher aesthetic
contrasts.
(i) The first level of the ladder, basic for our inquiry, is the Doctrine of Pythagoras,
expressed in interwoven patterned contrasts such as actual entities and eternal
objects. Like the bold generalization of the power of the Pythagorean number,
Whitehead explicitly recognizes the fact that mathematical entities are the ultimate
stuff out of which the real entities of our perceptual experience are constructed, their
involvement covers all the branches of knowledge and grasps the full law of the
interweaving of qualitative fact with geometrical and quantitative composition
(SMW, 23). Hence Whiteheads statement that we have in the end come to a version
of the doctrine of Pythagoras, from whom mathematics and mathematical physics,
took the rise (SMW 36). His advice to the mathematicians and the scientists was to
give a coordinated type of knowledge which takes account of the full range and depth

of the connectedness of things in order to provide an adequate analysis of the

relationship between the mathematical and the physical.25
Whitehead indebtedness to the Pythagorean Platonic doctrine of number and
harmony is basic because of its profound insight into the nature of things which
affected the mathematization of things, although he transforms it towards the creation
of a more complex speculative philosophy and philosophy of science. Like the
Pythagorean construction of the whole universe out of numbers his speculative
philosophy is a construction aiming at its ground of its application. As he put it, both
science and metaphysics start from the same given ground work of immediate
experience, and in the main proceed in opposite directions on their diverse tasks.26
In following the Pythagorean Plato and, in some cases, Aristotles biological
teleology, Whitehead believed in the ultimate rationality of the universe, that
philosophy is to seek the forms in the facts and that these forms are systematically
interconnected. Since he also believed that the pattern thus displayed has affinities
with the pattern found in mathematics, it is important to understand how he connected
this pattern with his philosophy of organism.
In the first place, a comparison between the general conditions of the logical
reason with the discovery of mathematics concerned with the totality of these general
abstract conditions clearly shows their applicability to the relationships among the
entities of any one concrete occasion, and that they themselves are inter-connected in
the manner of the pattern - to use the terminology of the organismic philosophy
(SMW 29-41). No wonder then why this reasonable harmony of being, which is the
requirement for the unity of complex occasion, together with the completeness of
realization of all that is involved in its logical harmony, Whitehead calls the primary
article of metaphysical doctrine. This means that from the reasonable togetherness
and the ability of thought to penetrate into every occasion of fact we come to an
insight into real connections, and can proceed to the knowledge exemplified in that
same occasion (SMW 41), and, consequently, to the philosophy of organism whose
task is to bring together into an organic unity the three distinct factor: (1) the
movement of thought, (2) the eternal objects thought about, whose real connections
are revealed when we think truly, and (3) the possible exemplification of these
connections in the physical world.
It is evident, so far, that the philosopher of organism, guided by the
Pythagorean Platonic account of mathematics, and by avoiding the misreading of the
9

traditional rationalism, the traditional empiricism and Descartes dualism, sought

for a mathematical reasoning as an objectively real pattern rather than as a subjective
order, as self-evident axioms or even as premises of a deductive system of thought,
which, in his view, are under suspicion (PR 12). This, again, can be avoided by the
task of the philosophy of organism, which provides the scheme of explication of the
process of togetherness and separation to all factors of fact and to all sciences
themselves and their transformations. Both sides are required for the true method of
discovery used by natural science.
In the second place Whiteheads advice to physical science concerns the
reconsidering of its foundations towards a more concreter view of the character of real
things, and of conceiving of its fundamental notions as abstractions from direct
intuitions (SMW 135). Physical science, like mathematics, must avoid the unfortunate
bifurcation of the strange world of molecular interaction on the one hand, and of our
perception on the other. It is the function of physical science to include our sensory
experience within nature, to consider our perception as being themselves natural
events and to exhibit the interconnectedness of spatio-temporal relations upon which
is based our knowledge by relatedness.27
The new categoreal scheme for physical science (SMW 226), then, concerns the
concept of event introduced as the ultimate of natural occurrence, a thing grasped
into a realized unity in order to replace the old scheme of simple location, that is, the
notion of a thing existing at a particular here and enduring through a succession of
instantaneous nows. It is reminded that, according to the concepts of simple location,
the minds that observe nature are supposed to be different sorts of things from the
nature they observe. That is, the ordinary objects of sense perception (the castle seen
at a distance, the planet in the sky) are unreal. They are actually only material
particles that cause changes in the observer via his sense organs.
The consequences of such conception, though stated in modern terms, are so
destructive for our culture as they were in Pythagoras and Platos time. For physicists
and philosophers, to give an example, who affirm the truth of the dominant
categoreal scheme, nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the
hurrying of material endlessly, meaninglessly. But from this point of view, it is we,
not the rose, who should get the credit for the scent; we, not the nightingale, the credit
for its song. The poets, then, are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics
to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulations on the
10

excellency of the human mind (SMW 80). But the poets are right in refusing to
believe the scientific dogma about the unreality of secondary qualities and by insisting
on the endurance and interpenetration of things and bear witness that nature cannot
be divorced from the aesthetic valuesarising from the cumulation of the brooding
presence of the whole on to its various parts (SMW 127). The explanations based
upon the developments in physics in the twentieth century (such as discoveries about
properties of electrons) have made the interpretation in terms of simple location,
otherwise called dominant scheme and the ideal science, that is, the mechanical
explanation of all natural phenomena, hopelessly complex and contradictory. The
problem of disconnected entities is one of them. Disconnected entities make
inference, causal action, and change impossible and problematic. It is impossible, for
instance, to define velocity without some reference to the past and the future. This
means that the introduction of a durationless present instance would be destructive for
science and its assumption.28
The new philosophy of organism provides also the explanation of the ambiguity of
the continuous or discontinuous existence of an electron when it traverses its path in
space. This is of utmost importance not only for the quantum physics but also for
philosophy and multicultural understanding. The ambiguity arises if we consent to
apply to the apparently undifferentiated endurance of matter as those now accepted
for sound and light, that is, when we conceive each primordial element as a vibratory
ebb and flow of an underlying energy, or activity. In accordance with the organismic
conception of event as prehensive unity of all manifold aspects of nature, the system
forming the primordial element, is nothing at any instant. It requires its whole period
in which to manifest itself (SMW 55). The difference between the two
conceptions is crucial: if material is taken as fundamental, the property of endurance
is an arbitrary fact at the base of the order of nature; but if organism is taken
fundamental, the property is the result of evolution.
It is evident so far that the manifold aspects of nature prehended into an event has
led (a) to a replacement in physics of the old notion that nature can be explained in
terms of locomotion material with the notion of the vibratory locomotion of a given
pattern as a whole, on the one hand, and the vibratory change of pattern on the
other hand, and (b) to a new aspect of science, which is neither purely physical, nor
purely biological. Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the
study of smaller organisms (SMW 191, 150). Hence there is no fundamental
11

difference between physics and biology. The same is true between the relatively
simple organisms studied in physics and biology and those much larger and richer
organisms called men.29
The importance of this reconsideration for our education, culture and behaviour is
evident. We are now able to distinguish between abstraction and immediacy. Instants
and particles should be considered not as high abstractions but as stuff of immediate
perception. Instants are derived from durationparticles from events.30 Quantum
phenomena are thus translated into a pervasive characteristic of nature through the
concept of rhythm which Whitehead identifies with life, and then the rhythm itself
with the aesthetic contrast. The essence of this natural rhythm is the fusion of
sameness and novelty, a rhythm, that is, conceived as a process whereby creation
produces natural pulsation which forms a unity of historic fact.31
That was the most important interest in nature that had been left out by the
science to which Whitehead opposes a nature conceived not only as a unity but also as
a living organism. Thus, the concepts of an old epoch have been transformed into the
terms of a new epoch. The terms of kinship and of prehension, constitute the second
level of ladder..
(ii)

The terms kinship and prehension are used to express a society of entities in an

organism feeling each other, compounded of each others feelings, in a way that their
unity constitutes a process of appropriation of a particular element achieved by the
prehension which grasps together and by which the organism appropriates what it
needs from the characteristics of the environment. The interconnected whole,
therefore, must include the elements of danger and desire, triumph and delight,
hope and fear. This is the principle of interconnectedness of nature which can be
discerned in the life that lies below the grade of mentality and its quality, in what
Whitehead calls the theater for interrelations of activities (MT 140). The
interrelations within bodies tend to embrace that which is agreeable , and to exclude
or expel that which is ingrate. (SMW68). In this un cognitive process of appropriation
of a particular element the organism prehends, grasps together into unity what it
needs from the characteristics of the environment. Every prehension consists not only
of the subject which prehends the datum and the subjective form which is how
that subject prehends that datum, but also of emotions and valuations.
Whitehead has realized that the dichotomies, the bifurcations as he calls
them, made the world the victim of the principle of division, of the ideal opposites
12

and of the paradoxes which they manifest.32 The interconnections of the philosophy
of organism have been used for a criticism and therapy of the various dichotomies and
bifurcations, particularly those in the Arts. On account of this, neither physical nature
nor life can be understood unless we fuse together as essential factors in the
composition of really real things whose interconnections and individual characters
constitute the universe (MT 150). The key to this metaphysical synthesis of
existence is the values of nature,33 a synthesis which entails the rejection of the
postulation of boundaries between physical fact on the one hand and value as well as
mental intervention on the other. These three factors, the physical, the mental and the
axiological, are essentially related. This is made clear by the third level of the
aesthetic values.
(iii) Since science has neglected connectedness in favour of the abstract, to redress the
balance, Whitehead turns to English poetic literature, particularly to Wordsworth, for
whom nature cannot be divorced from the aesthetic values. Thus, we gain,
Whitehead points out, from the poets the doctrine that a philosophy of nature must
concern itself at least with six notions: change, value, eternal objects, endurance,
organism, interfusion.34
What Wordsworth, however, has found was the whole of nature as involved in
the particular instances: the aesthetic intuitions of mankind which the mechanism of
science had left out; the element of value permeating through and through the poetic
view of nature which must not be omitted in any account of an event as the most
concrete actual something (SMW 93). In this multi termed process of prehension
value is included as the intrinsic reality of an event.35 The aesthetic unity in this
unifying process brings and binds together the contrasts involved in the artistic
creation. This tension holds good more or less for all arts: if contrasts are built into
them they struggle for unity; if they have unity, they struggle for contrasts.
It is possible, however, this kind of prehension to be intensified in the harmonies
of enduring shapes of values, which merge into higher intensities of feelings and
aesthetic attainment. In so far as there is a disposition of emphasis to maximize the
intensities of feeling through the massiveness and depth of contrasts there is an order
in the universe. In Whiteheads own words, the intense experience is an aesthetic fact
and the order of conformal feelings is an aesthetic principle (PR 427).

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IV
Culmination and Application of the Scheme
The culmination of the organismic scheme can be seen in the fourth level, notably, in
the Notions of Eros, Psyche and Peace, and their application to our experience and
dialogue of cultures.
Whitehead uses the terms Eros and Psyche to introduce measure and balance and
coordination of higher aesthetic contrasts leading up to the Notion of Peace or
Harmony of Harmonies. The first of these aesthetic contrasts is appearance and
reality.
(1) The familiar contrast of appearance and reality of Plato is significant for the
philosophy of organism. From the functional point of view, appearance is the
perception of the individuals in their final elimination, while reality is that from which
the new occasion springs. Appearance preserves the intensities that properly derive
from reality and the massive feeling transferred to it either of harmony either of
discords. Appearance is then the basis for the experience of harmony with a
foreground of enduring individual carrying with them a force of subjective tone, and
with a background providing the requisite connection. It is, in other words, the
transformed reality after synthesis with the conceptual valuations. The great
harmony, as Whitehead puts it, is the harmony of enduring individualities,
connected in the unity of a background (AI 281).
(2) Whiteheads second contrast of truth and beauty is also important. He defines
truth as the conformation of appearance to reality, and beauty as a mutual adaptation
of the several factors in an occasion of experience. In contrast with the Platonic
tradition, beauty is wider and more fundamental notion than truth, because its
relevance is both to the intrinsic constitution of nature and to the products of the manmade society. As Whitehead points out, the teleology of the Universe is directed to
the production of Beauty (AI 265). The perfection of Beauty is the outcome of the
subjective forms of prehensions which are jointly interwoven in patterned contrasts.
This intermingling does not exclude discordant feelings, the aesthetic distraction. In
Whiteheads own terms, some admixture of Discord is a necessary factor in the
transition from mode to mode (AI 266). That is, the intermingling of Beauty and
Discord lies in the nature of things. Progress itself is founded upon the experience of
discordant feelings. Beauty, also, requires the contrast with the discord which is
14

fundamental in the creation of new intensities of feelings. Beauty demands order, but
cannot exist without disorder which discord introduces; and the image of God uses
what is in the temporary world , namely, its shipwreck for the introduction of needed
contrasts, such as: joy and sorrow, freedom and necessity, good and evil. Philosophy
once again returns to its dialectical opposites. Whitehead thus recognizes the value of
discordance. The value of Discord is a tribute to the merits of imperfection.
The general character of Truth, on the other hand, can be traced in a widespread
instinctive conviction about the existence of an Order of Things. But truth has also a
narrower meaning since it is the conformation of Appearance to Reality. His Platonic
interplay of opposites is evident. If beauty is related to Appearance alone does not
necessarily involve the attainment of truth. In the absence of truth, beauty is in a
lower level, with a defect of massiveness. In the absence of beauty, truth sinks into
triviality. In organismic terms, Truth matters because of Beauty (AI 267). Thus, the
function of truth is to serve beauty and to promote beauty of feeling. Truth then is a
requirement for the attainment of supreme Beauty. The Truth of supreme Beauty,
Whitehead writes, lies beyond he dictionary meaning of words (AI 267). There is,
therefore, a gradation of beauty because its relation to truth. The truthful beauty,
however, is the harmony resulting form a conformation, a syngretism, of appearance
and reality, of clear patterns of conscious experience and the dim, massive patterns
manifested through the microcosmic real.
(3)The philosopher of organism ends with the notion of Peace or Harmony of
Harmonies, which completes the panorama of a civilized life, the perfect attainment
of coexistence and of a peaceful way of life. He distinguishes this general quality of
Peace as Harmony of Harmonies, from love and tenderness , and of
impersonality and egotism, since it calms destructive turbulence and completes
civilization. (AI, 285). In his efforts to define peace Whitehead reminds us of the
mystic and intuitional language of Pythagoras and of Plato when they had to reveal a
broad and secret doctrine. His description as a broadening of feeling due to the
emergence of some deep metaphysical insight, unverbalized and yet momentous in its
coordination of values, point to that direction. Its two effects seem to confirm it: the
removal of the stress from the souls preoccupation with itself and the surpassing of
personality. Therefore, Peace is primarily a trust in the efficacy of Beauty (AI 285),
but Peace itself is in need of Truth since its attainment of the latter belongs to the
essence of Peace, in the sense that its realization has as its objective that Harmony
15

whose interconnections involve Truth. Nevertheless, these Platonic interrelated

general notions are not inherently sufficient to develop a complete concept of
civilization, because no logical argument can demonstrate this gap; similarly, the
feeling of incompleteness relates to the notion of transcendence, which, in turn, is
essential for Peace- among others. Platos footnote is again, and finally, inevitable.
The secret of the union of opposites is that suffering incompleteness attains its end in
a Harmony of Harmonies (AI 296). Old wine in a new skinbag. A dangerous but
inevitable and realistic conclusion.

16

. Whitehead (1955: 29).

Whitehead (1929: 5).
3
See Whitehead (1929: vi).
4
Whitehead (1958: 27).
5
Whitehead (1960: 77).
6
There is no better description of this interdependence than the one stated by Whitehead: The body pollutes the mind , the
mind pollutes the body. Physical energy sublimates itself into zeal; conversely, zeal stimulate the body. The biological ends
pass into ideals of standards, and the formation of standards affects the biological facts. The individual is formative of the
society, the society is formative of the individual. Particular evils infect the whole world, particular goods point the way of
escape. See Whitehead (1960: 85).
7
Cf. Diogenes Laertius (1958: 323-5); cf. Plutarch, 9-10, I myself believe that when these people-the Egyptians (who
name the supreme god, whom they believe to be one with the universe) call the monad Apollo, the dyad Artemis, the
hebdomad Athena, and the first cube Poseidon, it is like what is established and assuredly enacted and written in sacred
rites. (hieroglyphics). Cf. Evangeliou (2006: 32).
8
Cf. Navon (1991: 40).
9
Whitehead (1967: 148).
10
Philolaus says that the power, efficacy and essence of number is seen in the decad; it is great, it realizes all its purposes,
it is the cause of all effects; the power of the decad is the principle and guide of all life, divine, celestial, or humanIndeed,
it is the nature of number which teaches us comprehension, which serves us as guide, which teaches us all things, which
would remain impenetrable and unknown for every manBy means of sensation, number instills a certain proportion, and
thereby establishes among all things harmonic relations, analogous to the nature of the geometrical figure called the
gnomon; it incorporates intelligible reasons of things, separates them, individualizes them both in finite and infinite
thingsit is in all its works, in all human thoughts, everywhere indeed, and even in the production of music Truth is the
proper, innate character of number. See Philolaus (133-4).
11
Archytas extends the exact mathematical relationships, as they exist in geometry and numerical proportions of
measurements, to beautiful composition, and to give account for the particular and of the whole. For the mathematical
studies appear to be related. For they are concerned with things that are related, namely the two primary forms of Being.
See Archytas, Fragm. D47 (35) B1.
12
See Guthrie (1971: 213): Number was responsible for <harmony>, the divine principle that governed the structure of the
whole world. Aristotle had already stated that they construct the whole universe out of numbers, that they supposed the
elements of numbers to be the elements of things and that they saw cosmos in terms of number and mathematical ratios or
harmonies (Aristotle, Metaph.,A5, 985b 23-26, and M6, 1080b 16-21).
13
Plato, Gorgias, 507-508.
14
Cf. Theaet. , 155c -156a, Phaedrus, 274c-d.
15
Cf. .Geminus, Fragment quoted by Simplicius in Phys.,II,2; Heath (124-5); Navon (1991:73).
16
Cf. Tim., 35a .
17
Tim.,35b.
18
Cf. Tim., 35c-36a.
19
Mueller (1965:143).
20
Cf. Voegelin (1952: p. 68).
21
Cf. Mueller (1965:149).
22
Cf. Symp.,196e: we are everyone of us a poet when we are in love.
23
Whitehead, (1955: 29).Cf. note 1.
24
There are four phases of feeling: Conformal feelings, conceptual feelings, simple comparative feelings and complex
comparative feelings or intellectual feelings. Cf. Whitehead (1929: 287, 290), and Bargeliotes (1984: 75, 110).
25
Leclerc (350).
26
Whitehead (1917: 113-114).
27
Whitehead (1922: Ch. IV). Whitehead distinguishes two types of perception: cognizance by adjective and cognizance
by relatedness. The former is the perception of sensory quality: the patch of redness, or the thunderous sound; the latter is
based on the knowledge that nature is an interconnectedness of spatio-temporal relation, a closed system of related things.
28
This is mainly made clear in the biological organism. Whitehead is eloquent on this: a biological organism is a unity
with the spatio-temporal extension which is the essence of its being. This biological conception is obviously incompatible
with the traditional ideasthe concept of unities, functioning and with spatio-temporal extensions, cannot be extruded from
physical concepts. See Whitehead, (1919: 3).
29
Jones (1969:323).
2

30

Whitehead (1956:159).
Whitehead (1955: 197-8), cf. (1958: 37).
32
Levi (1959:530).
33
Whitehead (1955:28).
34
Whitehead (1958:127).
35
Whitehead (1929:427).
31

References
Archytas. Fragm. D47 (35) B1.
Aristotle. (1992). Metaphysics In Aristotelis, Metaphysica, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bargeliotes L. (1984). The Reformed Subjectivism of A. N. Whitehead, Athens.
Diogenes Laertius. (1958). Vol. VIII. Cambridge: Loeb Library.
Evangeliou Christos. (2006). Hellenic Philosophy, Origin and Character. Ashgate.
Geminus, Fragment quoted by Simplicius in Phys.
Guthrie W. K. C. (1971). A History of Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heath Thomas, Greek Astronomy, New York: Dutton.
Mueller G. (1965).Plato the Founder of Philosophy as Dialectic, New York: The Philosophical Library.
Jones W. T. (1969). A History of Western Philosophy, Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre. Harcourt, Brace & World.
Leclerc I.. (1972). The Nature of Physical Existence. New York: Humanities Press.
Levi A. W. (1959). Philosophy and the Modern World. Indiana University Press.
Navon R. (1991). The Harmony of the Spheres. El Paso TX Selene Books.
Philolaus. (1990). Fragment, in The Pythagorean Writings. Trans. Kenneth Guthrie. Kew Gardens: N. Y. Selene Books.
Plato.(1988). Platonis Opera, ed. Ioannes Burnet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. This multivolume edition includes
Gorgias (vol. III), Theaetetus (vol. I), Phaedrus (vol. II), Timaeus (vol. IV) ,and Symposium (vol. II) among other Platos
works.
Whitehead A. N.( 1917). The Organization of Thought. London: Williams and Norgate (OT).
-------. (1919). An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(ECPNK).
-------. (1922). The Principle of Relativity, with Application to Physical Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(PReal).
-------. (1929). Process and Reality. New York: The Macmillan Company (PR).
-------. (1955)A. The Concept of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (KN).
--------. (1955)B .An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge. London: Cambridge University Press.
-------. (1958). Science and the Modern World. New York: The Macmillan Company (SMW).
-------. (1956).The Aims of Education, New York: Mentor (AE).
-------. ( 1960). Religion in the Making. New York: The World Publishing Co. (Lowll Lectures, 1926)
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*Born in Olympia of Peloponnese Dr. L. Bargeliotes attended the Theology and Philosophy Schools at
the University of Athens from which he received the corresponding diplomas. Further on, he attended
the Universities of Norma and Emory (USA) from which he received the degrees of Master of Arts and
of Ph. D. respectively. Since 1975 he has been teaching philosophy at the Philosophy Department at the
University of Athens. He is the author, among others, of Plethos Criticism of Aristotle, of Philosophy
and Scientific Research and of Philosophy of Science. He is also the President of the Olympic Center
for Philosophy and Culture and co-Editor of the Journals Skepsis and Celestia. Now he is Emeritus
Professor of the University of Athens