Adventures of Ideas by Alfred North Whitehead is a dense yet engaging book that takes the reader on a journey through man's psychology concerning the societies humanity went through.

My first takeaway focused on our conduct with each other. Whitehead lays out a path humanity traversed, starting with the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy of man's sense of freedom. In ancient Greece and Rome, freedom was something to be earned, but today, individuals are born free. This transition of thought took over 2,000 years to develop and was both assisted and suppressed by theology and religious institutionalization. These forces played a role in bringing civility into lives by shifting power from that of force to one of persuasion.

Whitehead also takes time to critique the scientific process. He again points back to Platonic philosophy. Plato considered the whole rather than subjects divided and suspended into studies divorced from context – a phenomenon we still observe today within academic institutions and specialist jobs. Consider that Whitehead also authored a book on Process Philosophy, a mode of thought that locates truth in the entirety of consciousness rather than in results based on objectivism. Western philosophy often places value on the present moment. In contrast, Process Philosophy, similar to certain Eastern religious thinking, suggests that the journey itself is the point.

The book concludes with the relationship between truth and beauty. The appearance of beauty alone is not true, nor is truth beautiful without its manifestation.

As I said, it's not an easy read, but like many other books on philosophy, it's a great source of food for thought.