Abstract

Most scholars of A.N. Whitehead tend to provide a “continuistµ interpretation of his work, with the stated intention of drawing a file rouge between his mathematical (late 1800s, early 1900s) and philosophical (1920s and 1930s) productions. It is an approach that, in Italy and abroad, has prevented a proper reconstruction of the period of his Cambridge education (Trinity College). To interpret the early Whiteheadian works in the light of process philosophy, which matured many years later, is a hermeneutical flaw of no small consequence. Before devoting himself to metaphysics and cosmology, Whitehead studied and taught applied mathematics for about thirty years; and his conception of the discipline, well before being an anticipation of future speculative philosophy, is an original continuation of what he learned in his formative years at Cambridge. Whitehead felt himself to be entirely heir to the great English intellectuals who, in the Victorian era, founded symbolic logic or mathematical logic: Boole, Grassmann, De Morgan, Jevons, Hamilton. This article therefore aims to bring attention to the early works of the English mathematician and philosopher, demonstrating their distance and difference from future philosophical stances