THE PROBLEM OF NOVELTY ACCORDING TO C.S. PEIRCE AND A.N. WHITEHEAD

The present dissertation investigates the problem of novelty according to Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead. Through the comparison of their thoughts, it aims to illustrate how Peirce and Whitehead contribute to clarifying the concept of novelty. To reach this goal, the dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part introduces the problem of novelty from a philosophical point of view, with special reference to the philosophy of the 20th century. Besides, it analyzes the historical, as well as the theoretical, connections between Peirce and Whitehead. In this way, the first part provides both the introduction to the issue at stake (novelty), and the ground for the comparison of Peirce’s and Whitehead’s thoughts. The second part examines Peirce’s thought of novelty, while the third part Whitehead’s one. In both cases, their views of novelty are analyzed according to three different, but connected, perspectives: phenomenological, gnoseological, and cosmological. To each of them corresponds a chapter. In the conclusion, the analyses on Peirce’s and Whitehead’s accounts of novelty, carried out in the second and the third part, are respectively summarized, and then compared to one another. Finally, it is delineated Peirce’s and Whitehead’s common contribution to the problem of novelty.