by Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead is best know for his collaborative work with Bertrand Russell. He is also perhaps one of the greatest modern metaphysicians in the English language. His book Process and Reality is a groundbreaking tome, that seeks to reorient the entire view of the Western world and Christendom towards a model based on change, variety and creation.
In this short book, Whitehead describes his views on education, and the importance of recentering education on the self-development of the learner, against the model of student as receptacle for data. Here's a quote from the preface:
"One main idea runs through the various chapters, and is illustrated in them from many points of view. It can be stated briefly thus: The students are alive, and the purpose of education is to stimulate and guide their self-development. It follows as a corollary from this premiss[sic], that the teachers also should be alive with living thoughts. The whole book is a protest against dead knowledge, that is to say, against inert ideas."
Our current copy, used, $8
{Local note: Charles Hartshorne was one of the principal students and popularizers of Whitehead's work, and he ended up teaching here in Austin at the UT Department of Philosophy until the end of his life. He even attended the Unitarian church on Grover, just down the road from Monkeywrench. Strange synchronicity I think...]