Whitehead’s Universe · Introduction & Chapter 1: It’s never too late to begin a new life

Some ideas you study. Others you end up living inside.

Alfred North Whitehead’s vision of reality has been that second kind for me. Not a system to master, but a way of seeing: a world that is not a finished object but a living event, still becoming, and we are part of its becoming.

So my friend Andrew Davis and I sat down to walk slowly through his new book, Whitehead’s Universe: A Prismatic Introduction, chapter by chapter. Today, the first two episodes are out as a video and a podcast.

Episode 1 · Introduction & Chapter 1: It’s never too late to begin a new life
At 63, a mathematician who had never taught a course in philosophy received a letter from Harvard. His reply: “I’d rather do that than anything in the world.” We tell the story of a man so far ahead of his time that his ideas are only now getting the attention they deserve. Then we take on the “M” word, metaphysics: not an escape from life, but the attempt to make sense of every part of our experience.

Episode 2 · Chapter 2: Ancient Intuitions of Flux and Permanence
Is reality a river or a mountain? Change or permanence? From Lao Tzu and Confucius to the Buddha, Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, we trace an ancient intuition that all things flow. Whitehead finds the whole problem in two lines of a hymn: “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.”

Listen to Episode 2: Episode 2

You can listen wherever you already do: on Substack, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. If you’d rather watch, both conversations are on YouTube: Episode 1 · Episode 2. A new chapter arrives every Tuesday.

One small ask. Listen to the first episode, and if something in it stays with you, send it to one person who would love it. That is how conversations like this find their people. And if you listen on Apple or Spotify, a quick rating helps more than you would think.

This is not philosophy as certainty. It is philosophy as belonging to a universe that is creative, relational, and unfinished.

With love,
André

P.S. If you’re reading this as a forward, you can subscribe here so the next chapter comes straight to you: andrerabe.substack.com/subscribe