Cosmos, Chaos, and Process in Western Thought

"Cosmos, Chaos, and Process" is a comprehensive history and normative analysis of the tension between the ideas of order and disorder in Western thought, as this has taken shape in philosophy, religion, and science. Chapters with titles like "Cosmos as True Myth," "God and the Speed of Light," and "2+2 Is Not Four" offer a survey of process philosophy (and anti-process philosophy) in all its various forms, from the pre-Socratics to Superstring Theory. In doing so, the author seeks to formulate an existential and humanistic social ethic in the tradition of Albert Camus and Karl Jaspers. Other thinkers examined in depth include Aristotle, Henri Bergson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Einstein, Euripides, Søren Kierkegaard, Isaac Newton, Reinhold Niebuhr, Blaise Pascal, Plato, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Sophocles, Max Stirner, Miguel de Unamuno, Alfred North Whitehead, and many more.