Alfred North Whitehead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead) was one of the most brilliant minds of his age. In Adventures of Ideas (1933) he offers the most accessible statement of his conception of ‘process philosophy’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy).
In a nutshell this challenges over 2000 years of popular philosophical assumptions. Namely, he rejects those philosophies that value static notions of being over dynamic notions of becoming, that emphasize independence over relatedness, and “things” over events in process. Process philosophy argues that “there is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have consequences for the world around us.” For this reason, one of the most promising applications of Whitehead’s thought in recent years has been in the area of ecological civilization and environmental ethics. I read this in 1981 and it electrified me then. It is a classic that should not be missed.
320 pages in Free Press paperback edition.
ISBN 978-0029351703