CCRU E A RAZÃO ESPECULATIVA WHITEHEADIANA

Abstract

Alfred North Whitehead, in order to investigate the function of Reason, presents the “speculative reason” and the “practical reason”, the later as a motivated method that guides the practice through a purpose, and the former as a process of abstraction and imaginative novelty, in spite of their differences these reasons are both important as method and functions (practical and speculative) to the Reason itself. Whitehead defends the “speculative reason” realized as “seeking a complete understanding”, and using symbolism shows their importance and differences, affirming that the “practical function” is like the voyage of Ulysses (Homer’s Iliad), where the purpose and the methodological pragmatism is a way to seek “an immediate method of action”, while the “speculative reason” is like a voyage to abstraction by Plato, guided by the curiosity and the Reason serving only itself. The abstraction to Whitehead means a voyage to the concrete and seeks the function of Reason, that is the ‘promotion of the art of life’, collaborating to a turn on epistemology. With the “speculative reason” in mind and the role of the “mental experience” to Whitehead, it is possible to think about the activity involving the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (or CCRU), at Warwick University/UK, during the period 1995-2003, considering its important analyses to the social studies field and pioneering on the emergence of the cybernetic culture and the investigations on technological revolutions impacts on day life and to the configuration of the ccru philosophy.