Adventures of Ideas ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD‘THe FREE PRESS Di nse Aneas opi © 183 Sinan Scan (Sopa rcewed 86 by Boys Wend Aligned inating te ig of podcton In erp nyo Simon asScmerng emote ssaoansnsin7 JULIA ISHAM TAYLOR HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR To whose friendship Towe So many happy hoursPreface The tle of this book, Adventures of leat, bears two meanings, both applicable 10 the subjecé-mater. One meaning is the effect of ‘etn ideas in promoting the slow ditt of mankind towards cv lation. This isthe Adventure of Kas in the history of mankind The other meaning isthe author's adventure ia framing a specla tive scheme of ideas which shall be explanatory of the historical venture “The book isin facta study ofthe concept of civilization, and an endeavour to understand how iis that gvized beings arise. One ‘Poin, emphasized throughout, is the importance of Adventure for the promotion and preservation of cvilation “The theee books—Seience and The Modern World, Process and Realty, Adventurer of Ideos—are an endeavout 10 express & stay of understanding the natoreof thing, and to pint out how that vray of understanding is illustrated hy a survey ofthe mutations of aman experience, Bach book ean be ead sepatly: Bu they sup plement eich oter’s omissions or compressions “The books that have che ialvenced my general way of looking at this historial topic are Gibton's Decline and Fall, Caeinal Newman's Essay om the Development uf Christian Docrine, Pal Sutp's History ofthe Counel of Trem, Henry Osborn Taylor's The Medieval Mind, Les Stephens English Thought in the Eightcerth Century and vious well-Koowa collections of lees. While on the subject of hiterature, I venture to commend to the notice of those interested in an earlier development of English Though, ad aso ia ‘ood literature, the sermons of the Elizabethan and Jacobean fivines Also H. O. Taylor's Though and Expresion tn the Six- ‘eenth Century presents the curtens and cros-currentsof thought in those times, The twentieth century, so far asi has yet advanced,