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I was never a member of the so-called process school of philosophy, but nonetheless Alfred North Whitehead, the mathematician and logician who inspired that approach, is one of my favorite thinkers. The scholasticism of process philosophy put me off, and, to be honest, I find metaphysics—“cosmology” to the Whiteheadeans—too speculative for my practical turn of mind. I drew insight from books in which Whitehead anticipated or distilled his vision, like This article appears in November 19 2007.

Drew Christiansen, S.J., served as the editor in chief of America from 2005 to 2012. He was a Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Human Development at Georgetown University and a senior fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. He was co-editor with Carole Sargent of A World Free from Nuclear Weapons: The Vatican Conference on Disarmament (Georgetown, 2020).