Diagrams and Myths

In this chapter, George Allan attempts to clarify Whitehead’s statement in the Harvard lectures that metaphysical philosophy is ‘not the mere handmaiden of Science’, but rather ‘stands as near to Poetry as to Science, and needs them both’. Both poetry and science are crucial to metaphysics because they offer methods to help grasp the ungraspable. With this understood, the chapter examines the use of diagrams and myths as abstract surrogates in Whitehead’s lectures, and particularly the metaphor the ‘shadow of truth’ as giving us crucial insight into Whitehead’s metaphysics.