Abstract

It is toward this task that Mr. Nathaniel Lawrence has directed his effort in the work under review. "The present essay," he writes, "has a single goal: to provide a foundation from which Whitehead's Process and Reality can be profitably studied and sympathetically approached." The question of the correct or most fruitful approach to Process and Reality, Mr. Lawrence clearly appreciates, is a crucial one. This approach must be dependent upon what are the basic and essential problems and issues with which the work is concerned. There are a number of rival views concerning this, none of which has yet been satisfactorily established. Mr. Lawrence's book is a detailed and scholarly exploration of the most plausible of these alternatives. The result--and this is one aspect of the considerable value of his work--is that we are now able to assess, far more effectively than formerly, the tenability of this particular view.