Alfred North Whitehead is acknowledged as one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century. A Cambridge University-trained mathematician, he collaborated with Bertrand Russell on the epoch-making Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), gaining a prominent place in the history of logic. His critical evaluation of Albert Einstein and his attempt to advance his own form of relativity theory earned him a high reputation in the philosophy of physics. Finally, after becoming a professor of philosophy at Harvard University, Whitehead produced one of the most original and powerful systems of metaphysics since that of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early nineteenth century. His biographer, Victor Lowe, says that Whitehead was a man of kindness, wisdom, and perfectly disciplined vigor. Russell reports that undergraduates affectionately nicknamed him "the Cherub" at Cambridge; at Harvard he was known as a benign sage who had great personal influence on his students.

Against the dominant...