Death, Entropy, Creativity and Perpetual Perishing: Some Thoughts from Whitehead and Stengers

Social Sciences

Michael Halewood¹  Steve Fuller¹ 

[1] Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK; E-Mail

关键词: entropy;    creativity;    Whitehead;    Stengers;    inevitability;    death;   

DOI  :  10.3390/socsci4030655

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

In this paper, I argue that we need to rethink how we conceive of death as “inevitable”. There are two main strands to my analysis. First, I use the work of Stengers to trace the complex and, occasionally, contradictory ways in which the concept of entropy was developed within physics in the 19th and 20th century. I argue that this has led to a general but ill-conceived notion of the universe as wasting away, as dying. This is a form of inevitability which has infected our understanding of what constitutes the death of individual humans. I then turn to the contrast that Whitehead draws between creativity and “perpetual perishing”. I suggest that this contrast might help us to develop a wider, more coherent, approach to thinking about the status of death, and its supposed inevitability. In the final section, I reflect upon my father’s death in 2013 in light of some of the concepts and problems raised throughout the paper.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.