Hartshorne, Charles, 1897-2000

Cobb, John B. Jr. "Charles Hartshorne: A Bibliographical Essay." http://www.ctr4process.org/process/CPSHartshorne.htm (accessed September 15, 2005). Additional biographical information derived from the collection.

American poet Jeremy Ingalls was born April 2, 1911, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and died March 16, 2000, in Tucson, Arizona. She received an A.M. from Tufts in 1933 and began writing full-time in 1960 after retiring as the chair of the English Department at Rockford College in Illinois where she had been teaching since 1941. Ingalls published several collections of poetry, including The Metaphysical Sword (1941), Tahl (1945), The Woman from the Island (1958), These Islands Also (1959), and The Stubborn Quantum (1983).

She also published essay collections, composed musical pieces, and translated several Japanese and Chinese literary and historical works, including a modern Japanese novel, Ten no Yugao (A Moonflower in Heaven) by Yoichi Nakagawa. Ingalls was deeply interested in exploring the origins and traditions of various cultures, especially those of Asian countries. In 1956, she visited Japan, China, Thailand, Cambodia, India, and Pakistan. Her lifelong study of human culture fueled her artistic interest in the ways that people establish and develop relationships with each other through sound, rhythm, linguistics, and symbolism.

Charles and Dorothy Hartshorne were longtime friends and correspondents of American poet Jeremy Ingalls. Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard and had an extensive academic career of more than 70 years. He taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School and in the philosophy department (1928–1955), at Emory University (1955–1962), and finally at the University of Texas at Austin (1962–2000). In addition, he traveled extensively, and lectured and taught in Germany, France, Australia, Belgium, Canada, India, and Japan. Hartshorne was the twentieth century’s leading proponent of process theism and much of his scholarship defends his belief that God presides over an everlasting universe as its creative power and is completely open to creaturely influence. Hartshorne’s philosophy was categorized as neither traditional theism, nor aesthetic humanism, but rather situated somewhere in between, in what is referred to as neoclassical theism. Hartshorne published hundreds of articles and reviews, as well as twenty books, including Man’s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941), The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (1948), Anselm’s Discovery (1965), Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (1983), and Wisdom as Moderation: A Philosophy of the Middle Way (1987). In addition, Hartshorne maintained a lifelong interest in birds and during his travels recorded numerous birdsongs. His extensive data and research was published in 1973 in a book entitled Born to Sing: an Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song . His autobiography, The Darkness and the Light: a Philosopher Reflects Upon His Fortunate Career and Those Who Made It Possible, was published in 1990.

Hartshorne was married to Dorothy Eleanor Cooper (1904–1995), who played an important role in Charles’s career, acting as editor and bibliographer of his works. They had one daughter, Emily, who was born in 1940.

From the guide to the Charles and Dorothy Hartshorne collection of Jeremy Ingalls papers, 1960–1986, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)