The Place of Nature in Whitehead's Metaphysics

Abstract This article examines the definition of “nature” in Whitehead's earlier philosophical works, his natural philosophy's resultant limitations in scope, and how this limited scope can be understood as fitting into the more all-encompassing system of his later metaphysics. This includes discussion of Whitehead's critique of the bifurcation of nature, the limits of his theory of extension, and his theory of statistical induction. I thereby show how Whitehead's earlier focus on nature, thought of as closed to mind, can be justified and explained in his later metaphysics where subjective feeling and mentality are present everywhere.