Whitehead’s Theory of Perception

My aim here is narrower and more technical. I will explore how Alfred North Whitehead’s theory of perception—especially his critique of modern philosophy’s tendency to treat presentational immediacy as our only (or at least our primary) access to the world—provides a contemporary philosophical justification for Steiner’s spiritual scientific participatory onto-epistemology. Whitehead elucidates what Steiner means when he asks us to cultivate a different relation to thinking itself, such that thinking can become an “organ of touch for the soul” rather than a mere fabricator of mental representations.