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Alfred North Whitehead, "Process and Reality (Corrected Edition)"

Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh during the session 1927-28.

Corrected Edition edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.

1.`Actual entity' is the central concept in Whitehead's system. This system is atomistic- i.e., like Democritus, Whitehead conceives of the world as composed of a vast number of microcosmic entities. But while Democritus is a materialist and views atoms as bits of stuff, Whitehead presents an organic philosophy- each of his atoms, termed `actual entities' or `actual occasions', is an organism that grows, matures and perishes. The whole of Process and Reality is concerned with the characteristics of, and the inter-relationships between, actual entities- their being and becoming. They are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find something more real. They differ among themselves - God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial staff of existence ie far-off empty space. In the philosophy of organism, as developed by Whitehead, God's existence is not generically different of other actual entities, except that he is `primordial.'

2. `Concrescence' is the name for the process in which the universe of many things acquires an individual unity. An actual .occasion is nothing but the unity to be ascribed to a particular instance of concrescence. This concrescence is thus nothing else than the `real internal constitution of the actual occasion in question'. The process itself is the constitution of the actual entity. This is a theory of monads; but it differs from Leibnitz's in that Whitehead's monads change. In the organic theory they merely become. Each monadic creature is a mode of the process of `feeling' the world, of housing the world in one unit of complex `feeling', in every way determinate. Such a unit is an `actual occasion'; it is the ultimate creature derivative from the creative process. Each actual entity is conceived as an act of experience arising out of data. The objectification of other actual occasions form the given data from which an actual occasion originates. Each actual entity is a throb of experience including the actual world within its scope. It is a process of `feeling' the many data, so as to absorb them into the unity of one individual satisfaction.

3. `Feeling' is a mere technical term, but it has been chosen to suggest that functioning through which concrescent actuality appropriates the datum as to make it its own. A feeling appropriates elements of the universe, which in themselves are other than the subject, and absorbs these elements into the real internal constitution of its subject by synthesising them in the unity of an emotional pattern expressive of its own subjectivity. Feelings are `vectors', for they feel what is there and transform it into what is here. We could say that an actual occasion is a concrescence effected by a process of feeling.

4.'Prehension' The philosophy of organism is a cell- theory of actuality. The cell is exhibited as appropriating, for the foundation of its own existence, the various elements of the universe out of which it arises. Each process of appropriation of a particular element is termed a `prehension'. Whitehead adopted the term prehension to express the activity whereby an actual entity effects its own concretion of other things. There are two species of prehensions, the positive species and the negative species. A `feeling' belongs to the positive species of prehensions A negative prehension is the definite exclusion of an item from positive contribution to the subjects internal constitution. A positive prehension is the definite inclusion of an item into positive contribution to the subject's own real internal constitution. This positive inclusion is called its `feeling' of that item. All actual entities in the actual world relative to a given actual entity as `subject' are necessarily `felt' by that subject. A `feeling' cannot be abstracted from the actual entity entertaining it. This actual entity is termed the `subject' of the feeling.

5. `The Ontological Principle' The importance of the concept of an actual entity is emphasised by what Whitehead terms the ontological principal. Every condition to which the process of becoming conforms in any particular instance, has its reason either in the character of some actual entity in the actual world of that concrescence, or in the character of the subject which is in the process of

concrescence. This is the ontological principle. This ontological principle means that actual entities are the only reasons; so that the search for a reason is to search for one or more actual entities.

6. The Fallacy of Mis-placed Concreteness. It is possible to see two sides throughout all Whitehead's work: an interest in formal schemes of logical relations, built on the scheme of mathematical postulates, and an interest in the concrete many sidedness of experience. The second, made him a critic of the `Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness', of the tendency to reify any scheme of abstract relations as it could replace the richness and variety of the concrete flow of experience. But what is the place of the formal scheme?

Formal schemes. If Whitehead's interest into the many sidedness of experience of actual experience- what he calls its unfathomable complexity- made him attack `The Fallacy of Mis- placed Concreteness', his interest in the formal schemes made him hold to the belief that such schemes had more than a pragmatic significance (i.e. that they organise data), and that in the end it should be possible to show not only that certain types of event can be related under certain types of abstraction, but also that there can be a general scheme of formal relationships defining the logical structure of all that exists. In other words, that there should be not only formal patterns relevant to particular types of experience, but that there should be a general formal pattern, defining the logical structure of all possible experience and all possible worlds. This is one side of his view of `uniform relatedness', which is part of his `justification of induction' and it is linked with what he holds to be a persistent religious intuition of `permanence amid change.'

Primordial Entity. The general scheme describes the logic of a primordial entity- God- which unites it with an aim towards the intensification of experience in the general conditions which the logical framework allows. The process of the world is then described as the supplying of empirical values to the general scheme. In Process and Reality, God makes the realm of possibility coherent with that of actuality, and therefore is the reason as to why certain things exist rather than others. Whitehead endeavours to assimilate the formal characterisation of God with every other actual entity and calls God `non-temporal' in contrast to the temporal world.

Values are then empirically discoverable fillings supplied to the variables of the scheme in the actual process of events (on analogy with the supplying of values to a propositional function). Value, according to Whitehead, is the word I use for the intrinsic reality of an event. On the other hand, there is ambiguity here, since there is the suggestion that the process itself should aim at `Value', in the sense

of working toward some intensification of the `importance of experience'. Perhaps the latter is Value with capital V..

Objective immortality. Whitehead says that he's got the notion of `objective immortality' from the physical notions of the transference of energy with its vector property. The quantum of energy is transferred from one process to another. Then, since he holds that energy is the name for the physical manifestation, of what known from the inside- in organic life - as emotional intensity, he is able to say that what is transferred from one actuality to another is a `throb of emotion' -with a certain qualitative tone. This means that energy to Whitehead is a real constituent of nature, rather then a term meaning work done. It is dependent of his attempt to bring man, life and nature, by making psycho-physiological concepts universal. But, however much he is telling us not to read `consciousness' into such `feelings', is it possible to think of sentient experience purely divorced from consciousness? In other words, does the arising of sentient experience in nature make more of a break- a bifurcation- then Whitehead allows? Whitehead was led to his view of objective immortality by three genuine considerations: First, the denial of `simple location'- the view that nature is made up of entities each of which has the whole of nature as its field. He is then interested in the structures formed by the overlapping of these fields. Whitehead is trying to express a view of nature in which we are all ubiquitous, and all on top of each other, but we create focal regions of disturbance which where generally speaking we are held to be. But the boundaries of these regions are never fixed. He then goes to describe the superposition of these fields in terms of his theory of prehensions- the patterning of one thing in others. Owing to the way he tries to find unifying experiences by using terms from physiology and from psychological experience, this supperposition of fields becomes the `mutual immanence' whereby the feelings of one thing are re-enacted in others. Second, his interest in history, and the way in which the past is said to be inherited in the present. In this he holds a similar view with Croce: "all history is contemporary history". Third, the desire to find some basis for a theory of laws of nature and for inductive inquiry. He describes the laws of nature as statistical generalisations from dominant large scale characteristic of events in a wide enough epoch or region. The characteristics which describe laws of nature are then relatively dominant and permanent ones for that epoch. There is here, the suggestion of the rise of different cosmic epochs, described in terms of different dominant characteristics, and so of different laws of nature. According to Whitehead "A system of `laws' determining reproduction in some portion of the universe gradually rises to dominance, it has its stage

of endurance, and passes out of existence with the decay of the society from which it emanates. Maxwell's equations of the electro-magnetic field hold sway by reason of throngs of electrons and protons. Also each electron is a society of electronic occasions, and each proton is a society of protonic occasions. These occasions are the reasons for the electromagnetic laws, but their capacity for reproduction, whereby each electron and each proton has a long life, and thereby new electrons and new protons come into being, is itself due to the same laws. But there is disorder in the sense that the laws are not perfectly obeyed, and that the reproduction is mingled with instances of failure. There is accordingly a transition to new types of order." From this passage one sees that Whitehead regards the fundamental laws of physics as a product of evolution, but it is an evolution that takes place in an infinitely vast theatre of potentiality, a theatre governed by general principles which are applicable without exception. The proto- mentality of all actual entities, their prehension of predecessors, their innovations, the integration of innumerable ingredients of their experience, their `objective immortality' as ingredients in the experience of subsequent entities- such principles are general but are not the results of evolution. The suggestion of the possibility of evolution of cosmological systems and the evolution of the laws of nature, which was not in the mainstream at the time, held more promise than the quest for a uniform logical framework. The concept of evolution of natural laws, and therefore the concept of an arena where this evolution could take place is being taken on board by some cosmologists today.

Aesthetics. One important consideration in Process and Reality is Whitehead's view of aesthetic experience according to which appreciation of formal pattern can be a vehicle of emotion.

The transition from dynamics to life sciences may be characterised as the transition from Space and Matter as fundamental notions to Process conceived as a complex of activity with internal relations between its various factors. This involves a transition from the concepts of Form and Matter to those of Organisation and Energy. The older point of view abstracted from any long continuing change and conceived of the full reality of nature at a single instant. It characterised the interrelations of nature solely by the distribution of matter in space. "At an instant there is nothing. Each instant is only a way of grouping matters of fact- there is no Nature at an instant. Thus all the inter relations of matters must involve transition in their essence. All realisation involve implication in the creative advance."

Evolution and creativeness. All evolution is the evolution of organisms of ever increasing organisation. Organisms are to a limited extent able to create their own environment-this is the other side of evolutionary process which Whitehead terms as `creativeness'. This requires cooperation. Those organisms are successful which modify their environments so to assist each other. In the history of the world, the prize has not gone to those species which specialised in methods of violence. This is because the use of force defeats its own object. Progress requires cooperation."

Political ideology. The fallacy suggested by the phrase `survival of the fittest' in human affairs, is the belief that fitness for survival is identical with the best exemplification of the Art of Life.. This conception gives no guarantee of progress in any sense which is of interest to man. The `worship of force' by the Social Darwinists was identified by Whitehead as a main obstacle to progress. He observed that the application of the Malthusian doctrine and of biological science in human society posed a challenge to the whole humanitarian movement. We should be clear, however, that Whitehead did not reject the theories of Malthus and Darwin. To a large extent, although not entirely, the environment is fixed. "The massive habits of physical nature, its iron laws, determine the scene for the sufferings of men". The struggle for existence is real and should not be ignored. Equally real is the fact that in this struggle the fittest to survive eliminate the less fit. Yet while Social Darwinists treated natural selection as the sole agency of social progress, Whitehead held that it was one agency among others. The truth that it contains is that the environment places restrictions upon organisms to which they must adapt or perish. This is one side of `the machinery involved in the development of nature'. The other side is `creativeness', the upward trend of evolution by which higher animals undertake to adapt the environment to themselves, and this once again requires cooperation.

Pathetic fallacy, that is reading our feelings back into nature. Can we say, that is, really believe, that the energetic activity considered in physics is the emotional intensity entertained in life?, that everything that exists, even the most trivial electro- magnetic event in the remote interstellar space is a `feeler of feelings', reacting emotionally to its world, and fusing its emotions into an aesthetic harmony which will constitute the `satisfaction' of its own nature? The difficulty of swallowing Whitehead's language of Process and Reality and what seems the `pathetic fallacy', has discouraged readers from going into this book, and as a result missing the many seminal ideas that it suggests

In Process and Reality, the first three chapters analyse actual entities in detail. This analysis of the building blocks of the universe is brought out of the realm of the microcosmic to the macrocosmic experience in chapters 4 to 7- i.e. they take the

categories systematically presented in the first three chapters and put them in juxtaposition with ordinary experience, traditional philosophical problems, modern science, and religious institutions. Chapters 1 to 3 focus upon the nature of individual entity which is a microcosmic entity. Chapters 4-7 shift to the level of the macrocosmic, to an analysis of aggregates of actual entities, termed `nexus' and `societies', that are subjects of ordinary experience. The speaker found that first chapter to be a profound, and perhaps the most important statement made in the 20th century about speculative philosophy, its purpose and its mode of operation - a philosophy that, as we have seen came under considerable attack by Whitehead's contemporaries.

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