Whitehead was among the first initiates into the new cosmological story, but grasping the novelty of his vision also requires remembering the insights of the ancients, even if in a modern context. This book therefore situates Whitehead's animate cosmology in the context of the larger historical arc of Western natural philosophy dating back to Plato. It also bring's Whitehead's philosophy of organism into conversation with several components of contemporary scientific cosmologyincluding relativistic, quantum, evolutionary, and complexity theoriesin order to both exemplify the inadequacy of traditional materialisticmechanistic metaphysics, and to display the relevance of Whitehead's cosmological scheme to the transdisciplinary project of integrating these theories and their data with the presuppositions of civilized society.