In a peculiar final chapter of Science and the Modern World (1925), A.N. Whitehead—after tracing the historical development of the modern scientific worldview, discussing key advancements in natural science up to relativity and quantum physics, and integrating ideas from his own process metaphysics—arrives at a predominantly pedagogical conclusion in discussing the ‘prerequisites for social progress,’ said chapter’s title. While Whitehead is relatively known for his contributions to educational thought (mainly collected in: The Aims of Education and Other Essays, 1967), this text stands out for two reasons: first, its distinctive tone and emphasis on aesthetics, and second, its supposed connection to the preceding 250 pages, which primarily reconstruct and critique the rise of scientific materialism and the mechanistic worldview.

As a theoretical physicist, Whitehead acknowledges the extraordinary success of the scientific method in explaining the natural world. However, he critiques the application and reification of scientific abstractions beyond their valid contexts (Whitehead, 1959). This concern applies not only to non-classical physics but also to human perception and experience. His philosophy of the organism emerges as a response to the lack of philosophical grounding in modern scientific thought and its failure to account for the richness of lived experience. Whitehead primarily resists—and seeks to transcend—the denial of the intrinsic relationship between an organism and its environment and the negation of the environment’s inherent value in shaping any consideration of final ends. He seems to conclude that education is the key to fostering such experiences.

This presentation will draw on Whitehead’s process philosophy, along with interpretations by Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour, and Gilles Deleuze, to elucidate the nature of this fallacy (linked to the bifurcation of nature), his proposal for an aesthetic education, and the pedagogical consequences of his ideas. We will present his reference to education in this text, clarify its meaning through his metaphysics, and provide an educational interpretation. We will conclude by considering contemporary STEAM practices as a way to actualize Whitehead’s vision.

One key educational conclusion in the chapter is Whitehead’s critique of modern education’s increasing orientation toward professional training and specialization. He argues that serious thought has become confined to narrow abstractions within specialized fields, neglecting broader, integrative perspectives. As Isabelle Stengers (2002) remarks, Whitehead anticipates how the scientific method has been co-opted by industrial interests, diverting research from a profound vision of knowledge. In an era dominated by the knowledge economy, education serves economic imperatives rather than fostering intellectual and experiential engagement with the world (Whitehead, 1967 [1929]). While this critique may seem familiar today, the specific nature of Whitehead’s concerns and his envisioned alternative warrant closer examination.

Whitehead argues that specialist education should not simply be balanced by a general component but should ‘cultivate an appreciation of the interplay of emergent values.’ What is needed is ‘an appreciation of the infinite variety of values achieved by an organism in its environment’. He proposes then ‘an aesthetic education as the development of habits of aesthetic apprehension that deepen individuality’. But what does he mean by this?

To begin, we must recognize what is at stake for Whitehead. He protests against the modern bifurcation of nature into two distinct realms: the material, spatio-temporal world and the subjective, psychological domain, seen as a byproduct of the mind (Whitehead, 1971[1919]). This dualism, of which Cartesian dualism is one manifestation, underlies our concept of nature and scientific activity. The bifurcation is not merely an ontological position but a set of operations that divide nature into these domains (Debaise, 2017 [2015]). This operation de-animates nature, rendering it inherently ‘unexpressive’  and in turn preventing us to give an account of 

the full agency of the natural world (Latour, 2008; 2017).Against this, Whitehead proposes a dynamic, processual account of reality that overcomes the bifurcation. He invites us to think from concrete experience, referring to a speculative empiricist method that elucidates immediate experience through a relational vision of the universe (Debaise, 2017). In concrete experience, subjective components belong as much to reality as the abstract spatio-temporal substrate onto which they are projected. Recognizing the full concreteness of experience and locating it within reality itself allows us to locally overcome bifurcation. It is in this light that we should understand the meaning of aesthetic experience. But what does Whitehead mean when he says such experiences should 1) increase the depth of individuality and 2) be cultivated? This brings us to the full pedagogical relevance of Whitehead’s ideas. First, his metaphysics implies a notion of subjectivity that emerges dynamically. Given the processual nature of reality, the subject does not exist as a pre-given, substantial entity confronting the world from outside. Rather, it emerges through concretization and individuation in experience. Existence is inseparable from the operations by which it emerges, and this emergence implies a constant activity of self-maintenance. Rather than being a ‘subjectum’ (a ground for experience), the subject is a ‘superject’—an effect of experience. Objective experience contains the conditions for subjectivity -subjectivity as an tendency of feeling-, allowing a subject to become an object for itself, which it then prehends further (Debaise, 2009; Shaviro, 2009). This process is thus aesthetic: the integration of experiences into each other constitutes a subject as a historical trajectory that propels past experiences into the future (Whitehead, 1927). The outside world, in this sense, ‘fills’ the subject. This explains how individuality deepens through experience. As Deleuze interprets Whitehead, self-enjoyment—the subject feeling itself as a datum in experience—attains a richer private life through accumulated experiences (Deleuze, 1988). In each aesthetic experience, the plurality that constitutes our existence contracts into a singular event within the world. Educationally, this implies that students engage with the world in an empirical and material sense. From their perspective, the educational event is their prehension of data-for-experience integrating them into their individual reality. This is the core of Whiteheadian process metaphysics applied to education: students interact dynamically with a world that is not bifurcated into separate material and affective/psychic aspects but is instead an integrated process.

Yet, what does this mean practically? Whitehead suggests that more is at stake than metaphysical speculation—there are ethical and sociological consequences. Bruno Latour has discussed the destructive effects of the bifurcated view of nature on environmental and political thought. If we want to address contemporary ecological challenges educationally, we must reconsider how nature is conceptualized and operationalized in education. Whitehead’s emphasis on the relatedness of all things highlights the importance of environmental awareness. Education, in his view, is not merely individualistic. By emphasizing the interconnectedness of individuals and their environment, he sees education as a civilizing force. It should enable us to live in harmony with nature and ensure that ‘the good,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘the beautiful’ remain common goods. His emphasis on aesthetic education, therefore, is not about isolating the individual but about maintaining and advancing society (Evans, 1998). This presentation will explore how we might reimagine education in response to Whitehead’s call, which seems even more urgent today. By looking at STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) practices as a vehicle for Whiteheadian philosophy, we aim to envision what aesthetic (and science) education could look like. In considering the potential radicality of such STEAM practices and taking Whitehead’s metaphysics seriously, we hope to outline what has been called an ‘education of the senses’ (Koopal & Vlieghe, 2022; Vlieghe, 2024).

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