Life

Edited by
Marlies Kronegger, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

pp. 3-8

in: Wolfe Mays, Whitehead's philosophy of science and metaphysics, Berlin, Springer, 1977

Abstract

In his "Autobiographical Notes,"¹ Whitehead tells us that he was born on February 15th 1861 at Ramsgate in the Isle of Thanet, Kent. His father was at first a schoolmaster, but later became an Anglican clergyman and Vicar of St. Peter's Parish near Ramsgate. It was through Whitehead's father that Bertrand Russell first made his contact with Whitehead. Russell relates that as a boy he had been told that the earth was round — which he did not believe. His people thereupon called the Vicar of the Parish, who happened to be Whitehead's father, to persuade him otherwise. "Under clerical guidance," he says, "I adopted the orthodox view and began to dig a hole to the Antipodes."²