Category: Prefaces to Hartshorne’s Books

Preface to Born to SingCharles Hartshorne The primary aim of this book is to advance what P. Szöke has well called biomusicology, the study of music not just in man but in musical or singing animals generally. Szöke reasonably holds that to work in this field one should be expert both in musicology and in… Continue reading Preface to Born to Sing

Charles Hartshorne Although the treatment of topics is roughly chronological, this book is not, in any usual sense, a history of philosophy, whether designed to introduce beginners to the subject or to give advanced students a detailed and rounded exposition of what great philosophers were trying to do in and for their own age, and… Continue reading Preface to Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers

Preface to Creativity in American PhilosophyCharles Hartshorne This is the second of two volumes dealing with the history of philosophy, especially of metaphysics. The first, Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, discusses some thirty European philosophers, from Democritus to Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty. In both volumes I try to learn and teach truth about reality by… Continue reading Preface to Creativity in American Philosophy

Charles Hartshorne The occasion which led to the writing of this book was somewhat sudden and quite concrete. It was the near co­incidence of two conversations, each with an intelligent, educated lady, different in the two cases, who was troubled by what she felt were absurdities in the idea of God with which she was… Continue reading Preface to Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes

Charles Hartshorne Some years ago the idea expressed in the title of this book occurred to me, and much of Chapters One, Two, and Four were written then. More recently, when asked by the Lowell Foundation to give three lectures in Cambridge, Mass., I reworked Chapters One and Two and wrote Chapter Three to make… Continue reading Preface to Wisdom as Moderation

Preface to The Zero FallacyCharles Hartshorne The idea of this book arose, according to my memory, exactly as Dr. Valady says it did. Our luncheon meetings were also his idea, and I recall no hesita­tion in agreeing. Long ago I learned that friendship is not a matter of being of the same country, or same… Continue reading Preface to The Zero Fallacy