Applied Process Thought II: Following a Trail Ablaze 9783110328103, 9783110327878

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Mark Dibben and Rebecca Newton (Eds.) Applied Process Thought II Following a Trail Ablaze

PROCESS THOUGHT Edited by Nicholas Rescher • Johanna Seibt • Michel Weber Advisory Board Mark Bickhard • Jaime Nubiola • Roberto Poli Volume 21

Mark Dibben and Rebecca Newton (Eds.)

Applied Process Thought II Following a Trail Ablaze

Bibliographic information published by Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nastionalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de

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For Thomas A. F. Kelly: Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam…

Memories of Forgotten Times Thomas A. F. Kelly

Contents Memories of Forgotten Times Thomas A. F. Kelly ..................................................................................... 4
 Contributors ................................................................................................. 7
 Foreword James Walsh ............................................................................................. 13
 Passing Marian O’Donnell .................................................................................... 18
 Preface Pete A. Y. Gunter ...................................................................................... 21
 Fundamental Cosmological Dualities Ronald P. Phipps ...................................................................................... 39
 Introduction: Following a Trail Ablaze Mark R. Dibben & Rebecca Newton ........................................................ 41
 I. The Urizen of Whiteheadian Process Thought Michel Weber............................................................................................ 61
 II. Mementos of a Timequake: Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism Randall E. Auxier ..................................................................................... 75
 III. Systems Thinking and Emergence Joseph Bracken....................................................................................... 101
 IV. A Study in the Process Philosophy of Science Ross L. Stein ........................................................................................... 111
 V. Containment and Reciprocity in Biological Systems Jonathan Delafield-Butt ......................................................................... 133
 VI. The Philosophy of an Infinite, Open and Integrated Universe Ronald Preston Phipps ........................................................................... 149
 VII. The Religious Importance of Metaphysics John B. Cobb, Jr..................................................................................... 205


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Contents

VIII. The Earth, Life and Process Thinking Jan B.F.N. Engberts ............................................................................... 221
 IX. Empire, Relational Power, and a Multi-Polar World Leslie A. Muray....................................................................................... 239
 X. Religion and Politics in Contemporary Democracy André Cloots ........................................................................................... 247
 XI. Propositions in Corporations Duston Moore ......................................................................................... 263
 XII. The Curious Case of Routines Elias L. Khalil......................................................................................... 277
 XIII. Sociology, Societies and Sociality Michael Halewood.................................................................................. 293
 XIV. Towards A Process Oriented Sociological Imagination Michael S. Carolan................................................................................. 319
 XV. Education in a Decadent Age Arran Gare ............................................................................................. 341
 XVI. How Can A Process Ontology Aid Philosophical Theology? Thomas A. F. Kelly ................................................................................. 361
 XVII. The Role of Philosophy in the University Thomas A. F. Kelly ................................................................................. 377
 Appendix: What is Applied Process Thought? Mark R. Dibben and Thomas A. F. Kelly ............................................... 393
 Postcript: Professor Thomas A. F. Kelly Peter Denman ......................................................................................... 409
 Abbreviations............................................................................................ 413
 Table of Contents...................................................................................... 415
 Process Thought ....................................................................................... 421


Contributors Randall E. Auxier is professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the Editor of the Library of Living Philosophers, and of the scholarly journal, The Pluralist. His published works include many articles and Time, Will and Purpose: Living Ideas from the Philosophy of Josiah Royce (Open Court, 2009), and with Mark Y. A. Davies, God, Process and Persons: The Philosophical Correspondence of Charles Hartshorne and Edgar Sheffield Brightman (Vanderbilt University Press, 2001). Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Emeritus Professor of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, received his Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg in Germany in 1968 and taught at Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois (1968-1974), and at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1974-1982) before becoming Chairman of the Theology Department at Xavier in 1982. He has published 10 books and roughly 90 articles in academic journals in the general area of philosophical theology/philosophy of religion. Recent books include God: Three Who Are One published by Liturgical Press in 2008, and Subjectivity, Objectivity and Intersubjectivity: A New Paradigm for Religion and Science to be published by Templeton Foundation Press in 2009. Michael S. Carolan is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University. His areas of specialization included environmental sociology, sociology of science, technology and knowledge, and the sociology of food systems and agriculture. Some of his recent writings explore 1) the links between global capital, patent law, and biotechnology, 2) the political economy of biofuels, and 3) the place of embodied knowledge in understandings of nature. Professor Carolan has recently published a piece on Whitehead in the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology. André Cloots is professor of philosophy at the K.U.Leuven, where he teaches metaphysics and contemporary philosophy. He earned his Ph.D from Leuven in 1978, with a dissertation on the problem of the Ultimate in the philosophies of Whitehead and Hartshorne. During one year he stayed at the Center for Process Studies. His recent research is besides Whitehead,

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mainly concerned with contemporary French philosophy, particularly the philosophy of Marcel Gauchet. John B. Cobb Jr. has held many positions including Ingraham Professor of Theology at the Claremont School of Theology, Avery Professor at the Claremont Graduate School, Fulbright Professor at the University of Mainz, Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt, Harvard, and Chicago Divinity Schools. His writings include: Christ in a Pluralistic Age; God and the World; and co-author with Herman Daly of For the Common Good, which was co-winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Jonathan T. Delafield-Butt took his Ph.D. at The University of Edinburgh in developmental neurobiology. He then moved to movement science in Psychology, researching first the perceptuomotor properties of autonomous protozoan cells, then extending his reach to examine properties of perceptuomotor control in newborn human infants. He is presently training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Scottish Institute for Human Relations, and continues his research in the natural science of movement, studying both cell systems and the human parent-infant system using computational and observational approaches at the multidisciplinary Perception Movement Action Research Centre. Peter Denman is Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. His research interests are mainly in twentiethcentury and contemporary poetry; formal and prosodic aspects of poetry; Irish poets; writing in Ireland since the nineteenth-century; Samuel Ferguson. He has also worked on supernatural and apparition fiction of the nineteenth century. Publications include Samuel Ferguson: The Literary Achievement (as author), Poetry Ireland Review 34-37 (as editor) and Sean O Tuama Death in the Land of Youth: Collected Poems (as translator). Mark R. Dibben is Associate Professor in the School of Business and Economics at Monash University and a visiting professor at the Heilbronn Business School, Germany. He is Executive Director-elect of the International Process Network (IPN), the international body charged by its member organizations with enabling process research across the globe. He serves on the editorial boards of numerous academic journals, including Process Studies, Philosophy of Management, and Cosmos and History. He Founded and co-Directed (with the late Thomas Kelly) the Chapter for Applied Process Thought, the UK and Eire node of the IPN. His research in process thought focuses on the nature of life experience and, within that, on trust; he has published on this topic in a variety of disciplines, including information systems, management, medicine and philosophy.

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Jan B.F.N. Engberts (1939–) studied chemistry in Groningen, The Netherlands, where he obtained his undergraduate (1965) and Ph.D degree (1967), both with honours. He was appointed Associate Professor (1969) in Groningen and then Professor of General Chemistry (1978). He became a Professor of Physical Organic Chemistry in 1991. Besides research in process philosophy and classical Chinese philosophy, his research focuses on Organic Chemistry in Water: Reactivity, Catalysis, Molecular Assembly and Molecular Recognition, and during his career has supervised 50 graduate students, 99 undergraduates and 22 post-docs; the group has so far published 470 papers in international research journals. He has served on the editorial boards of 5 international journals and is a member of the Academy of Creative Endeavors, Moscow. His e-mail is: [email protected]. Arran Gare is Associate Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry, Swinburne University and founder of the Joseph Needham Centre for Complex Process Research. The focus of his research is on transforming culture to create an environmentally sustainable global civilisation. He has published widely on the history of ideas, process metaphysics, the metaphysical foundations of the sciences, complexity theory, human ecology, the emergent theory of mind, social and cultural theory and political philosophy. He is the author of a number of books, including Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London: Routledge, 1995) and Nihilism Inc.: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability (Sydney: Eco-Logical Press, 1996). In 2005 he founded Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, of which he is an editor. Michael Halewood is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Essex, UK, where he is a member of the Centre for Theoretical Studies. His main areas of interest are the work of A. N. Whitehead, philosophy and social theory, the materiality of subjectivity. His recent publications include: (2005) ‘A.N. Whitehead, Information and Social Theory’, Theory, Culture and Society 22 (6); (2007) ‘On Whitehead and Deleuze—The Process of Materiality’, Configurations (Johns Hopkins University Press) 13:1; (2008) with Michael, M. ‘Being a Sociologist and Becoming a Whiteheadian: Concrescing Methodological Tactics’, Theory, Culture and Society Volume 25:4. He has also edited a collection of papers on A. N. Whitehead for Theory, Culture and Society (Volume 25: 4). E-mail: [email protected].

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Thomas A. F. Kelly (1956–2008) was, at the time of his death, Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. A native of Dublin, he was educated at University College Dublin from which he gained a First Class Honours M.A., and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, from which he gained a Doctorate summa cum laude. Amongst other publications, he is the author of Language, World and God: An Essay in Ontology, Dublin: Columba, 1996 and Language and Transcendence: A Study in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Karl Otto Apel, Bern: Lang, 1994. He also edited Between System and Poetics: William Desmond and Philosophy After Dialectic, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006 and co-edited Applied Process Thought I: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2008. Elias Khalil is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Monash University, Clayton, Australia. His research focuses on creativity, the nature of beliefs, theory of the firm, and the interconnection between rationality, emotions, and morality. His papers appeared in Kyklos, Theory and Decision, Economics and Philosophy, Biology and Philosophy, Journal of Economic Psychology, and Economic Inquiry. E-mail: [email protected]. Duston Moore is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University—Purdue University Fort Wayne. He joined the department in 2002 after having completed his doctorate at K.U.Leuven. He has published articles on Plato, Whitehead, and Marcuse. Leslie A. Muray is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Curry, College, Milton, MA and an Episcopal priest. A native of Hungary, his family left the country following the suppression of the Revolution of 1956 and has lived in the U.S. since 1959. He is the author of Liberal Protestantism and Science and An Introduction to the Process Understanding of Science, Society and the Self and numerous articles on process thought, with an interest in developing the idea of an ecological democratic faith. Muray has written extensively on the interplay of religion, culture, and politics in his native Hungary and Russia. Rebecca Newton completed her doctoral research at the School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research examined the efficacy of the anti-terrorism legislation in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada in countering the threat from radical Islamist terrorist movements. Prior to this, she served as a police officer in the United Kingdom. During her service she briefed the U.K. Prime Minister and the Home Secretary on crime reduction and community safety strategies, and has given similar presentations to the Australian Federal Police in Canberra.

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Ronald Preston Phipps was the personal research assistant for 7 years to University Professor Henry S. Leonard, former President of the American Philosophy Association. Leonard served as Alfred North Whitehead’s personal assistant at Harvard during the period when Whitehead wrote Process and Reality and other major philosophic works and later as colleague to Kurt Gödel at the Princeton institute of Advanced Studies. Phipps taught Whitehead’s metaphysics and mathematical logic. He was recipient of a National Science Foundation fellowship in the philosophy of theoretical physics. He is a founding member and former Chairman of the US/China Friendship Association and Advisor of the China Project of the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, California. He is co-director of the International Center for Process Philosophy, Science and Education. Ross L. Stein is Associate Professor, Neurology Department, Harvard Medical School and Director of Harvard’s Laboratory for Drug Discovery. Over the past thirty years, Dr. Stein’s scientific interests have focused on understanding enzyme catalysis and its bearing on the design of human therapeutics, among them the cancer drug VELCADETM, for which Dr. Stein is co-inventor. Over the past decade his scholarly interests have broadened to include philosophy and theology, and particularly process thought. James Walsh is Professor of Geography and Deputy President and Vice President for Innovation at NUI Maynooth. A founding member of the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) and the International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD) he has published extensively on a wide variety of topics related to regional and rural development and spatial planning. He has also coordinated a number of census based mapping projects. He has been a member of several national fora including the National Economic and Social Council, and the Expert Advisory Group for the National Spatial Strategy. His research interests include Agriculture and Population Geography, Local and Regional Development and Western Europe Development Studies. Michel Weber obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). He is the director of the Centre for philosophical practice “Chromatiques whiteheadiennes” (Brussels); . In 2008–2009, he is visiting Professor at the New Bulgarian University (Sofia), Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology & Department of Philosophy and Sociology. He has published, e.g., La dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead (Ontos Verlag, 2005), Whitehead’s Pancreativism (Ontos Verlag, 2006), L’épreuve de la philosophie (Éditions Chromatika, 2008) and Éduquer (à) l’anarchie (Éditions Chromatika, 2008).

Foreword James Walsh It is a great personal pleasure to have been invited by Marian and the editors to write, on behalf of the University community, a Foreword for this book on Applied Process Thought which is a very fitting and lasting tribute to the late Professor Thomas A. F. Kelly. I warmly congratulate editors Mark Dibben and Rebecca Newton and all the contributors on ensuring this book has been produced within such a short time span. It is a true measure of the esteem in which they hold Professor Kelly. Tom, as he was affectionately known by all in Maynooth, joined the staff of the NUI Maynooth Philosophy department in 1999, having previously been employed as a Lecturer in Philosophy in the seminarist St Patrick’s College Maynooth. Building on the reputation he had gained from his first two books on Language and Transcendence (1994) and Language, World and God (1996) there followed a stream of additional publications. Thus it was no surprise that he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2003 and ultimately to the position of Chair of Philosophy and Head of Department in 2007. To say he was overjoyed at his appointment as Professor is an understatement. I recall the glint in his eyes and the broad childlike smile beneath the neatly curled canopy from brow to shoulders as I congratulated him in Pugin Hall. As the news was still ‘unofficial’ he struggled to contain his delight as he fumbled with the characteristic wide brimmed hat in one hand and the sheaf of apparently unstructured lecture notes in the other. Within a few days his personal joy and pride were shared with everybody, and his appointment was greeted with universal acclaim throughout the University community for he was a most colourful, exuberant, engaging, irrepressible, challenging and intellectually passionate colleague known to almost everyone on campus. At a personal level he was a good friend with whom I discussed all sorts of matters and especially his plans and ambitions for the Philosophy department. Indeed our final meeting was in my office on his last morning in the University during which he outlined his plans for new courses, attracting students from North America,

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arranging staff and student exchanges, and of course his commitments around conferences and forthcoming publications. He had an unbounded energy, enthusiasm and love for his subject, the philosophy students, the department and the University that he was so proud of. Alas, twenty-four hours later I was summoned from another meeting to be told the fateful news of his tragic death. Tom thrived in the intellectual environment of Maynooth Campus where he moved easily between both university communities. He had an infectious commitment to intellectual inquiry and to the idea of a University as a place of culture where open debate and contributions to society at large are encouraged and guided by coherent, nuanced and convincing justification of values. He was an inspirational and gifted lecturer as well as a highly original and internationally respected academic. Tom was equally at home in the lecture theatre with large first year classes, engaging with specialists at international conferences, planning new programmes for return to education mature students at the NUIM out-reach campus in Kilkenny, and holding court over lunch in Pugin Hall on almost a daily basis. The ‘Kelly table’ in the college dining hall, while never a designated fixture, always seemed to be close to the centre of that hallowed space where over a glass of fine red wine he regaled, cajoled and entertained colleagues that from day to day included archaeologists, historians, earth scientists, linguists, literary specialists, astrophysicists, mathematicians, electricians, boilermen, mapmakers, occasionally other philosophers and at times even some lapsed academics seeking solace as they grappled with managing the University. Tom was a truly larger than life character representative of a genre of academics that are now rarely encountered in our universities, but he was also very much in tune with the roles and responsibilities expected today of a senior academic in a largely state-funded centre of higher education. His unique skills and passion for his subject were legendary. He really enjoyed the challenge and privilege of teaching - especially undergraduates. In this he was guided by a vision of the university as a place to serve society by enabling its students to think critically and responsibly for themselves and to respectfully acknowledge the wisdom of others including those with whom they disagreed, rather than succumb to the contemporary pressures of teaching students to think only about the lecturer’s selective extracts from the thoughts of others. His interest in the personal well-being of students at all levels and his approachability were exceptional – a walk across the campus frequently resulted in casual encounters with students that at times ended up with an impromptu visit to the coffee shop to tease out some academic or personal issue that a student was grappling with.

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Others, including the contributors to this and the previous companion volume, are in a much better position than I to appreciate the intellectual legacy of Professor Kelly. As stated by the editors of this remarkable volume he was already a leading figure in Irish Philosophy and was widely regarded for his studies of the philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology, theology and metaphysics. His peers have commented on the breadth and depth of his philosophical knowledge and on his ability to be equally at home in the ‘analytical’, ‘continental’ and ‘historical’ approaches, a truly rare quality in these days of specialisation. His comfort with these contrasting philosophical paradigms is exemplified in his early books in 1994 and 1996 as well as in his many edited volumes including Between System and Poetics (2007). Prior to his untimely death he was working on three further books as well as many articles – clearly there was much more to come. In addition to his scholarly writings Professor Kelly supported the tradition of philosophical enquiry in Ireland in many other ways including holding the post of President of the Irish Philosophical Society between 1997-2003 during which he founded the Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society, editing many volumes of the Maynooth Philosophical Papers which he had also founded to nurture and stimulate research publications among more junior colleagues, representing Ireland in international networks and supporting academic research endeavour through refereeing of papers, and supervision and examination of postgraduate theses. He had a very deep commitment to the University as evidenced in a variety of ways. At department level he sought to promote a culture of collegiality and innovation, he was Dean of the former Faculty of Philosophy, and after the merger into a larger Faculty unit he worked hard to protect the particular needs of Philosophy while also availing of every opportunity to make his subject more widely available to students. As a member of the University Academic Council he took a constructive position that was frequently nuanced by his own ideas on the purpose of the university as an endurable institution with a weighty public responsibility. To that end in 2006 he edited a very timely and challenging collection of essays entitled What Price the University? that includes contributions from colleagues across many disciplines in NUI Maynooth. This highly praised collection came at a critical juncture for universities in Ireland and is a salutary reminder of the need to balance the traditional scholarly role of universities with the short term more utilitarian perspectives articulated by some. For this and so many other contributions we are indebted to Tom Kelly.

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Our late colleague was a colourful figure in so many respects. He loved to dress up and wear his academic gown and cap, especially on occasions such as graduation ceremonies. For a person with a great respect for traditional rites and a devout Catholic it was fitting that his funeral service was conducted in Latin in the church he regularly attended in Dublin. Afterwards the President of the University and this writer were proud to be invited to be among the pall bearers. In accordance with his wishes his body was taken back to Maynooth for burial in the small cemetery in the grounds of Maynooth campus. On that wet and windswept day in February the university paused by suspending all lectures, and his colleagues turned out in their academic gowns to process with him for the final time in the accompaniment of his family and his students. Following the graveside prayers a gathering of more than 500 family members, friends and colleagues returned to a respectfully silent Pugin Hall to listen to the eulogy delivered by his Faculty Dean Professor Peter Denman (repeated in this volume) and the loving and heartfelt words of his heartbroken wife Marian. In reflection we all stood silently mourning the untimely loss of a great friend and colleague, a true scholar and an inspiring teacher for generations of young minds. While his loss is great, the esteem in which he was and will continue to be held by his colleagues across the philosophical world as exemplified by this volume is a fitting tribute to one who gave so much, and a source of comfort for Marian, his mother Mary, other family members and friends. Requiescat in pace, Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dhílis, May the earth rest lightly on him.

Professor Jim Walsh, Deputy President, NUI Maynooth. December, 2008.

Passing Marian O’Donnell

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This is the path I’ll tread, Here I’ll forge ahead Out of life’s maze. May those after me As they follow see Some trail ablaze. Donal McMahon, Saint Patrick’s College Maynooth. Sculpture Title: Passing Artist: Marian O’Donnell Medium: Cyclamen Flower Planting Dimensions: Trail 52 m long Each footprint: 200 x 1,000 x 2,000 mm Sculpture in Context Exhibition 2008 National Botanical Gardens, Dublin This installation was created in memory of Thomas, by his wife Marian.

Preface Pete A. Y. Gunter 1. Process Philosophy Western philosophy has divided its emphasis between being and becoming. The Greeks, beginning with Parmenides (504–456 B.C.E.) traditionally emphasized being, accepting only as much of Heraclitus’ (540–480 B.C.E.) universe of unceasing becoming as seemed necessary to “save the appearances”. Thus Plato (427–347 B.C.E.), Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), and Plotinus (205–270) all agree against Parmenides that motion and change are possible. But all insist that becoming is less real than and subordinate to timeless “form”. Among the moderns the tendency to stress becoming has gradually increased, often in tandem with ideas of progress and evolution. This article will chronicle the rise of becoming and the subsequent emergence of process philosophy in modern thought. The aim will be not to examine all relevant thinkers but to touch on major thinkers and dominant trends.

2. Modernity Many factors can be seen to have led to the development of process philosophy. Some involved changes in astronomy, mathematics, physics and, of course biology. Others involved exploration, industrialism, social change, and the emergence of the idea of progress. Copernicus heliocentric astronomy had far-reaching consequences. The earth had traditionally been conceived as motionless; now it had to be understood in perpetual motion. It was soon realized that the sun, being a star, was in motion too. A similar conceptual reversal occurred in physics. Aristotle had argued that physical motion requires forces keeping a body in motion. In response René Descartes initiated a new outlook by asserting that a body in motion

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in a straight line continued in motion until slowed or deflected by external forces. Motion could now be taken as fundamental in nature and as needing no explanation.1 This new viewpoint, however, required extension. Forces now needed to be introduced to explain changes in uniform motion. These were supplied by Galileo and Kepler. In his study of bodies sliding down inclined planes Galileo, for the first time in human history, stumbled across the concept of acceleration. The same discovery came to Kepler through the working out of the laws of planetary motion. Acceleration (speeding-up, slowing down, turning aside) in turn required explanation via forces. Hence Newton’s F = ma, which introduced inertia and force, inertia resisting change, force overcoming it. Finally, both Newton and Leibniz (presumably independently) developed a new kind of mathematics, the infinitesimal calculus, capable of following acceleration as such, of describing the motions of mass particles without “freezing” them. The mathematics of the moderns thus could be said to embrace mobility and turn away from the static geometry of the Greeks.2 Two other factors should be mentioned in tracking the physical sciences from their original moorings in stability towards their gradual embrace of becoming: the nebular hypothesis and thermodynamics. The nebular hypothesis presumes that the universe has been produced by condensation from an original homogeneously distributed matter (“primal nebula”). This broadly evolutionary physical cosmology was stated in the seventeenth century by Descartes,3 in the eighteenth century by Immanuel Kant,4 and, most impressively, in the early nineteenth century by Pierre Simon Laplace.5 If the nebular hypothesis depicts a universe constantly achieving form, thermodynamics describes a world constantly losing it. According to thermodynamics’ second law, energy becomes increasingly unavailable to perform work. This innocent-sounding expression, though it describes a world constant process, portrays a world exhausting its energies, tending towards formless homogeneity. From its formulation in the early nineteenth century by Sadi Carnot to its powerful reformulation in the twentieth century by Ilya Prigogine, thermodynamics has been taken as establishing that time has au “arrow” (pointed towards the future), but an arrow vectored towards a gradual loss of structure in the physical world.6 In retrospect, the next step towards the insertion of becoming into the natural world seems already half-formed by the early nineteenth century. By 1859, when Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species finally raised the question of biological evolution inescapably, the Western mind had already become accustomed to viewing motion, transformation, and development

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as fundamental to the world. It is no surprise then, that the idea of evolution offered itself as a possibility to many educated and alert minds as early as the eighteenth century. When evolutionary theory became widely accepted, it became impossible to see the world as limited, or fundamentally unchanging.7 Scientific conceptions of the world doubtless have an influence on the prevailing climate of opinion. In the present instance, other, more concrete, factors were to be equally—perhaps more—important. Among these are exploration, the rise of modern industrial economies, the general acceptance of the idea of progress and—in a very different vein—the influence of German “romantic idealism.” It is hard to imagine either the Greek or the Medieval mind seriously entertaining the idea of universal progress. By the early decades of the nineteenth century, however, it had become a staple of European thought: almost a secular religion. Progress could be understood in contrasting ways, as moral and spiritual in nature or as social and economic. The economic version of progress found its support in writings of economic and political thinkers. It was countered by the ethical and aesthetic emphasis of German post-Kantian idealism. The proponents of economic progress were buoyed by the success of world exploration (and its counterpart, exploitation) and by the immense productivity developed in the Industrial Revolution. Partly in reaction to the revolution in industry and its effects, British romantic poets, the American Transcendentalists, and the philosophical idealism associated with the name G.W.F. Hegel, proposed a moral and spiritual ideal according to which history is not a progressive piling-up of wealth but an exercise in consciousness raising.8 The widely adopted concept of progress became embedded in Europe well before the popular recognition of evolution. Paradoxically, before the rise of evolutionary theory, purely economic and idealist ideologues of progress were both compelled to argue that while humanity could develop radically, nature (all species of living things except man) remained essentially unchanged.9 Thus by the middle of the nineteenth century, whether one looked at the prevailing human experience or at nature itself, change was an inescapable reality. The emerge of evolutionary theory both reinforced prevailing tendencies and, in the process, located humanity in nature. It should not be surprising if, in this context, a group of philosophers should arise to argue that process is real and fundamental, and to attempt to conceptualize process on its own terms.

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3. The Rise of Process Philosophy It is one thing to observe change. It is another to critique prior assumptions and to explore change or process in itself. This was to be the task of those who would come to be called process philosophers. They were to find that Eleatic (Parmenidean) assumptions die hard, and that to challenge them is often to swim against the steam. The link between prior philosophy and process thought is provided by a group of thinkers termed evolutionary philosophers. Among these are Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Ernest Haeckel (1834–1913) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903).10 These, later process philosophers would argue, approximated to process philosophy through their emphasis on evolution, but either did not sufficiently examine the notion of process or, in the end demoted it to a secondary status. Herbert Spencer will be examined below not only because of his worldwide status and influence, but because of his attempt to extend evolution to all aspects of nature. Nietzsche, who in a longer essay would merit close attention, is excluded because of his almost total absorption in man to the exclusion of nature and because of his final recourse to cyclic and repetitive time. Though Spencer extended the concept of evolution to all of nature, living and nonliving, and had done so prior to Darwin, his philosophy exhibits a surprising epistemological dualism analogous to Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena. That is, he distinguished the knowable from the “unknowable.” The unknowable might or might not have an evolutionary character. About the character of the known, however, Spencer had no doubts. It consisted of an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity.11

Though evolution is omnipresent in nature (including man) at some time in the future it will reach an equilibrium point, after which it will devolve towards disintegration and, finally, indefinite incoherent homogeneity again. Then the pendulum would repeat itself with evolution again followed by devolution, ad indefinitum. In the world of the knowable, in the last analysis repetition reigns, In Samuel Alexander’s opinion, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was the first philosopher “to take time seriously”.12 Beginning as a follower of Spencer, the young philosopher tried to systematize Spencer’s First Principles in terms of the latest ideas in physics. Here a surprise awaited him. Spencer

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used the work “time”; but in doing so he had unwittingly used spatial concepts. Each span of Spencer’s time geometry is homogeneous, both in itself and in relation to all others. By contrast, the moments of time as actually experienced, are heterogeneous, teeming with vivid qualitative data. The problem was not just Spencer, however; traditional western thought had always first analyzed space and then wrongly transferred its characteristics to time. Bergson termed real, experienced time “duration.” Bergson was to broaden and deepen his notion of duration. In broadening the concept he applies it successively to brain physiology, physical matter, biological evolution, cosmology, and human moral and social development. The concept of duration is “deepened” to include modes of discontinuity (Matter and Memory, 1896), hierarchical ordering (Introduction to Metaphysics, 1903), and creative emergence (Creative Evolution, 1907). In An Introduction to Metaphysics, “intuition” is defined as capable of grasping duration without spatializing it and “analysis” is portrayed as a way of apprehending what is repetitive, predictable and mechanical in the world.13 In the standpoint worked out in An Introduction to Metaphysics applied to the problems of biological evolution. The result is the extension of duration both to the evolution of life and to the cosmos: The universe endures. The more we study the nature of time, the more we shall comprehend that duration means invention, the creation of forms, the continual elaboration of the absolutely new. The systems marked of by science endure only because they are bond up inseparably with the rest of the universe.14

Within this world, matter descends in the direction of constantly increasing entropy and decreasing formal structure, while life ascends towards the creation of increasingly vital organisms, producing the rich diversity of animal and plant life, each with its own duration. This process triumphs by giving rise to creatures capable of free reflection and hence capable of raising questions about life. Bergson speculates on the possibility of “some new sort of analysis” which could resolve the problems of evolution without mechanistic and deterministic consequences. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion moves towards an enlarged understanding of human moral and spiritual evolution.15 Bergson had earlier stressed the tension between the upward vector of evolution and the downward drift of entropy. Now a similar opposition occurs for him in human history: the struggle between the closed and the open society, a distinction he had outlined well before Karl Popper gave it currency in The Open Society and its Enemies.

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The closed society speaks of justice. But its justice is intended for a particular society, and functions to strengthen a particular society against others. It is thus armored towards war. The open society rests, by contrast, not on social pressure but on an appeal. Its locus is not a particular society but all humankind. Rather than enforcing closure, it moves towards an opening-out. In writing his last major work Bergson kept a photograph of William James (1842–1910) on his portmanteau. Allies in a common philosophical cause, the two were able to learn from each other without rancor. James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience provided, Bergson believed, the basis for his broadly empirical approach to human religion and morality. James was a psychologist who came to philosophy late. But his monumental Principles of Psychology (1890) already contained the germs of the philosophy he was later to develop. William J. Earle insists: If experience had not the ramifications and possibilities so lovingly and exuberantly detailed by James in his ‘psychological’ writings, it could never have become, as it did for James the central image of complete reality.16

James’ psychology has two sides: a stress on and exploration of interiority, and an insistence on the selective and structuring role of perception and thought. James’ account of interiority is rooted in his “The Stream of Consciousness.” Against psychologies derived from David Hume, James insists that the self is not a succession of units of perception. Neither, he insisted, is it a substance persisting changelessly. Our acts of attention persist through a concrete period of time and “perish” before starting again. We act, perceive, and think as a whole. James’ insistence on the irreducible fluidity of consciousness, so similar to Bergson’s defense of “inner duration,”17 is coupled with an insistence that our knowledge is coupled to our needs: Millions’ of items of the outward order are present in my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.18

What is true of attention is true of our thinking generally. In conceptualizing the world our efforts are selective and hypothetical. They are practical because we expect them to help us deal with the world. James’ earlier work contains a dualism which separates the knower from the known. In Essays in Radical Empiricism he introduces two concepts which he believes could undercut dualism: “radical empiricism” and “pure

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experience.”19 Radical empiricism is both an insistence on the primacy of experience and a critique of previous empiricisms. Traditional empiricists had paid attention only to the parts of experience which are clear and distinct. They had thus left out perfectly good data and in the same move failed to see that the relations between the parts of experience are themselves experiencible. These ideas are worked out by him in Pragmatism (1907), A Pluralistic Universe (1909) and elsewhere.20 James’ investigations into the justification of religious belief were intended as immediate and helpful to the man in the street. In “The Will to Believe” (1896) James reformulates Pascal’s wager in terms of his own pragmatism.21 Three factors are necessary, he argues, in any act of faith. Our act must be a “live option.” It must be a “forced option,” which must be answered and cannot be escaped. And it must be a “momentous option,” one which makes a profound difference. If the options are equally balanced—equally likely—we have a right to believe. The son of an eminent Harvard mathematician, Charles Sanders Peirce was to be a physicist, mathematician, and logician: a far remove from the beginnings of James’ thought. This difference is reflected in all of Peirce’s writings. And yet not only were James and Peirce lifelong friends: their views are significantly similar. Peirce states his pragmatic notion of proof in two early essays, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear (1878)”. His “pragmatic maxim” shifts the focus of epistemological interest from what is known to how knowledge is acquired: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we consider the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.22

James, in appropriating Peirce’s maxim, transformed it, not only by applying it (as Peirce rarely did) to the effects on ideas on the psychology of the believer but by depriving it of its general and objective reference. Peirce rejected the pragmatism of James and rechristened his philosophy pragmaticism, which he describe as “ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers.”23 Typically, Peirce constructed his philosophy in terms of scientific laboratory procedures. But he understood these in a broad way, admitting the presence of feeling and imagination. His later semiotics (theory of signs) can be seen as a development of his pragmatic maxim.

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Two other factors in Peirce distinguish his philosophy form James: his “scholastic” realism and his commitment to philosophical system. If most pragmatists (and most empiricists) have been nominalists, so have both tended to regard the search for philosophical system as misguided or even pathological. Not so Peirce. As Murray C. Murphy points out, one finds four successive systems in Peirce’s writings.24 In his final system (worked out in the years 1885–1914) Peirce develops his universal Categories, the most fundamental of which are firstness, secondness, and thirdness. Firstness provides the “suchness” of an object (its raw” impression), secondness is understood as haecceitus (“thisness”, felt as shock or brute resistance), thirdness is “mediation” or combination achieved by cognition. Through these triadic relations Peirce believed that both human knowledge and the cosmos evolve. One has only to read Peirce’s Harvard lectures of 1903 to realize the complex subtlety of his categories,25 which rival those of Alfred North Whitehead’s later “Categoreal Scheme.”26 Peirce finds the origin of the universe in an undifferentiated continuum of pure feeling (chance). The gradual build-up of habits (hence laws) through a primitive triadic creativity in nature leads to the existence of physical and then biological order, followed by the emergence of human knowledge. Peirce insists that “chance” is an undeniably real factor in this evolutionary process, which always exhibits a fundamental “continuity.” (Hence his two doctrines, “tychism” and “synechism,” respectively.) For Peirce knowledge converges towards an ultimate comprehensive stability, a shared completeness. At any time in its development, however, human thought remains in part uncertain. Hence Peirce proposes a third doctrine, “fallibilism,” to indicate that dogmatism regarding our knowledge is never justified. A system similar in some respects to Peirce’s was to be developed by Samuel Alexander (1859–1938). It was to be termed, along with the ideas of Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936), “emergent evolutionism.” Peirce (though most of his interpreters stress the difficulty of dealing with God via his pragmatic method) included a transcendent God in his philosophy. Alexander refers to God as either the “nisus” embodied in the evolutionary advance or as a level of existence yet to be achieved. In Space, Time and Deity, Alexander presupposes the existence of spacetime, a primitive complex of relations.27 This complex gives rise to successive levels of existence, each consisting of ordered structures. It is not clear whether the lower levels of this reality are mental or whether mind is a latecomer. Arguably, “body” is an external view of nature as

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unified in some perspective while mind is the idea of the internal quality of that perspective. This view appears similar to that of Spinoza. Pragmatism in the twentieth century was to be dominated by John Dewey (1859–1952). Dewey, who began as a student of German romantic idealism came to stress empirical inquiry rather than truth or knowledge, as the essence of logic. Though admitting a debt to William James,28 he was to term his own standpoint not pragmatism but “instrumentalism.” Like James, Dewey defined “experience” as the general field within which life goes on. The supposed dualism of mind and matter is unwarranted. The most pressing human problem is not that of finding certainty; it is the problem of living together and is an unending process. Best known for his ideas on education, Dewey insisted that learning be informed by scientific methods and directed towards a resolution of broad social problems. Democracy and Education (1916) and elsewhere, he insists on the importance of education in the survival of democracy and, conversely, in the importance of democratic thought and action in the improvement of education.29 Dewey’s “naturalistic” philosophy has very little to say about nature itself. Though wholeheartedly accepting Darwinism,30 he nowhere adopts a position on its deterministic assumptions or its tendencies towards reductionism. Nature, for Dewey, never quite goes beyond the human experience of nature. In A Common Faith (1934) he defines the religious mind as one which thinks seriously about human problems in the long run.31 The names of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) have been closely linked. Like Dewey, Mead expressed a distaste for metaphysics. Like Dewey also he was interested in ideas for their consequences. Unlike Dewey, however, Mead was a close student of the natural sciences, interested, for example, in the implications of biological theories for human cognition and in the nature of natural processes.. Had the trajectory of his thought not been cut off by his unexpected death, it is possible that Mead might in the end have sided with the “emergent evolutionists.”32 In The Philosophy of the Act (1938) Mead argues that all reality is an active process, in which the past is constantly growing and the present is precarious. Mead follows Wilhelm Wundt in his theory of the inherently social character of thought and conceives the mind in terms of social acts.33 The self develops by way of social language. A social behaviorist, Mead does not attempt to reduce thought to the brain or, simply, to behavior. He is equally cautious not to reduce the individual to the social totality.

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was a member of the Jesuit Order and a paleoanthropologist. Most of his writings were completed in the 1920’s and 30’s, but because the Roman Catholic Church forbade their publication, these began to appear only in 1959 with the publication of The Phenomenon of Man.34 Apart from a reading of Bergson, Teilhard was uninfluenced by other process philosophies. His thought forms an sort of island, essentially unconnected with the mainland of process thought. Hoping to show that biological evolution does not contradict Christian faith, Teilhard develops an overwhelmingly teleological view of the evolutionary process. For Teilhard human existence on this planet is vectored towards a historical “Omega Point.” Human populations have converted the globe, creating modes of communication that knit the world together, creating a noosphere: a planetary mind. The noosphere points towards a coming crisis in human affairs, one which augurs for a spiritual rebirth of humanity. This would be a kind of second coming, in which the Christ is made concrete and actual. Catholic theologians were quick to point out that this Christ was certainly a cosmic Christ, not Jesus of Nazareth. In decades increasingly dominated by Darwinism, Teilhard continued to lean toward Lamarckian explanations.35 But neither Lamarckianism nor Darwinism can be taken to support his overwhelmingly teleological assumptions. Teilhard did add to science. Beyond being a discoverer of Piltdown Man, his understanding of the profound changes in the situation of humankind led him to the one of the first planetary sociologists.36

4. Enter Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) began developing his philosophy in the 1920’s. This starting point enabled him to read the work of the philosophers sketched above (Teilhard excepted) and appropriate their insights. He has thus been viewed as the summation of process philosophy. Whitehead’s views broadened into a metaphysical system, worked out in Process and Reality (1929).37 The Categoreal Scheme of this work spells out forty-five metaphysical categories, beginning with the category of the Ultimate (creativity, many, and one) and proceeding through the categories of Existence, Explanation, and Categoreal Obligation. These take on their full meaning only when applied to particular cases and problems. In agreement with quantum physics Whitehead characterizes the fundamental entities in nature as “events” or “actual occasions.” These

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occasions interact with each other and are changed by their relations. Relativity physics provides the schema for these relationships. Active perceptions by these events he terms “prehensions.” The manner in which they events appropriate aspects of other events he terms “concrescence.” Nature, he insists, is alive, perpetually transforming itself.38 The explanation Whitehead proposes for the existence and order of nature is both metaphysical and theological. Whitehead’s God, like the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus, is perpetually involved in the creation of nature. By making “eternal objects” accessible to the world God thus urges nature towards higher degrees of harmony. Where Plato sees the world of changing things as participating in the eternal forms, Whitehead teaches that the eternal objects “ingress” into the world. Apart from their embodiment in the stream of events eternal objects are only potentials; only in the world are they fully actual. One aspect of Whitehead’s God is timeless: God’s “primordial nature”, which has a vision of all eternal objects. God’s “consequent nature,” however, changes as God prehends a changing world. The temporal side of God is enriched, even surprised, by the thrust of history. Whitehead was to continue to develop his thought, notably in The Aims of Education (1929), Adventures of Ideas (1933), and Modes of Thought (1938).39 While each of these bears the imprint of Process and Reality, Whitehead makes no attempt to correlate his later writing in detail with this major work. Adventures of Ideas works out the basic outlines of a Whiteheadian aesthetics. The Aims of Education developes a tough-mined approach to education.

5. After Whitehead Whitehead did have notable followers, especially Paul Weiss and Charles Hartshorne. Hartshorne’s concentration on theological issues has been so marked that for a time process philosophy came to be identified with “process theology.” Whitehead’s concept of God, as developed in Process and Reality is not fully worked out. Hartshorne’s thought consists in the analysis and formulation of concepts which Whitehead left vague. Hartshorne distinguishes two aspects of God: existence (an abstract truth and range of possibilities) and actuality (God’s actual existence, including his awareness of and participation in the world). This distinction leads Hartshorne to “dipolar theism” which contrasts the timeless aspect of deity from its

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temporal aspect and stresses God’s temporality as a necessary function of his appropriation of a changing, creative world. Dipolar theism leads to “panentheism”, the doctrine that though nature is in God, God nonetheless transcends nature. A “middle ground” is thus available between pantheism and traditional theism.40 Hartshorne reexamines the ontological argument (according to which God’s existence is implied by his essence), using his new analysis both to critique classical theology and to sharpen the assumptions of process thought. The ontological argument has traditionally presupposed a God perfect in all respects. This argument, however, can now be seen to be valid if God is defined as “finite”. In important respects, however, God so defined remains absolute and infinite.41 As stated above, it has not been possible in this essay to deal with all involved in process philosophy. Pierre Lecomte du Noüy42 and W.H. Sheldon merit attention. Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and Karl Popper are not normally considered process philosophers. Aspects of their thought, however, do point in this direction. Nicholas Rescher describes a “revolt against process” in twentieth century philosophy, especially in the analytic tradition, which presumes the ancient subject-object and substance-attribute distinctions, with a strong preference for the timeless copula “is.” Rescher attempts to rescue philosophy from what he regards as its current cul-de-sac and to move it in the direction of process thought again. In this he has had some success, making process philosophy a subject for study and for discussion.

6. Conclusion Though often criticised in mainstream thought for the technical complexity of its ‘pure’—particularly Whiteheadian—form, and scarcely dominant in contemporary thought, process philosophy nevertheless shows no sign of fading. It offers an entirely different insight into the nature of ‘experience’, an insight which is gaining an ever wider audience. Whitehead’s works are being translated into major European and Oriental languages. Bergson’s thought is being reinvestigated through the impetus provided by the writings of Gilles Deleuze. Richard Rorty has had a similar effect on the study of John Dewey’s philosophy. Flourishing organizations, worldwide, continue to pursue and to publish studies of process philosophy, and its impact on fields as diverse as biology and physics, and management and economics has grown. This book is a

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collection of such applied work, having a particular emphasis on the insight process thought may bring to some contemporary ‘problems’ in philosophy, the sciences and social sciences; the purpose of this prefatory review has been to provide a reader who is not readily conversant with the philosophy, a means by which to make the most of what follows.

References Cormier, Harvey (2001). The Truth is What Works: William James, Pragmatism, and the Seed of Death, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Dalton, Thomas C. (2002), Becoming John Dewey: The Dilemmas of a Philosopher and Naturalist, (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press). Capek, Milic (1971), Bergson and Modern Physics, (Dordrecht Holland: D. Reidel). Detedalle, Gerard (2000), Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Dodson, Edward O. (1984), The Phenomenon of Man Revisited, (New York: Columbia University Press). Egan, Kieran (2002), Getting it Wrong From the Beginning: Our Progressivist Inheritance From Herbert Spencer, John Dewey and Jean Piaget, (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press). Gilson, Etienne (1938) Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, (New York: C. Scribuer’s Sons). Heer, Friedrick (1963), The Medieval World, (New York: Mentor Book). Hartshorne, Charles (1983), Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, (Albany: State University of New York Press). Horn, Jason Gary (1996) Mark Twain and William James: Crafting a Free Self, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press). Lowe, Victor (1985, 1990), Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work. 2 Vols. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Mullarkey, John (2000), Bergson and Philosophy, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). Nobo, Jorge Louis (1986) Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity, (Albany: State University of New York Press). Pearson, Keith Ansell (2002), Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life, (London: Routledge).

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Reese W.L, and Freeman, E. eds (1964), Process and Divinity: The Hartshorne Festshrift, (Lasalle, IL: Open Court). Reck, Adrew (1972), Speculative Philosophy. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press). Reynolds, Andre (2002), Peirce’s Scientific Metaphysics, (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press). Rorty, Richard (1989) Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Weber, Michel, ed (2004), After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag). Wolf-Gazo, Ernest, ed (1988), Process in Context: Essay in PostWhiteheadian Perspectives, (Bern: Peter Lang).

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Notes 1

Boyer, Carl B. (1959), The History of the Calculus, (New York: Dover), pp. 72-74; Burtt, Edwin Arthur (1924), The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, (London: Routledge) pp. 82-84, 259-261. 2

Boyer, Carl B. Ibid., pp. 79, 189-192, 195; Kasner, Edward and Newman, James (1940), Mathematics and the Imagination, (New York: Simon and Schuster), pp. 299-343. 3

Descartes, René [1644] (1983), Principles of Philosophy, ed. and trans. V.R. Miller and R.F. Miller (Boston, D. Reidel). 4

Kant, Immanuel [1775], (1969), Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). 5

Laplace, Pierre Simon de [1799-1826] (1966-9), Celestial Mechanics, 3 Vols, (Bronx, New York: Chelsea Publishing Company). 6

Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle (1988) Order Out of Chaos, (New York: Bantam), pp. 131-178. 7

Eisely, Loren (1961), Darwin’s Century, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday). 8

Copleston, Frederick (1965), A History of Philosophy, (Garden City, New York: Image Books), Vol. 7, 291-294; Taylor, Charles (1974), Hegel and Modern Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Kuklick, Bruce (2001), A History of Philosophy in America: 1720-2000, (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 77-82, 91-94, 111-128. 9

Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich. (1970), Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, intro J.N. Findlay (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press), pp. xv, 20-22, 284; Copleston, Frederick, Ibid., pp. 242-243 10

Spencer, Herbert (1896), First Principles, (New York: Appleton), p. 407. 11

Alexander, Samuel. (1920) Space, Time and Deity, (New York: Humanities Press) Vol. 1, p. 44. 12

Bergson, Henri. (1946), The Creative Mind, trans. M. Andison (New York: Modern Library). 13

Bergson, Henri (2005), Creative Evolution, trans. A. Mitchell. intro. Pete A.Y. Gunter (New York: Barnes and Noble).

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14

Bergson, Henri (1935), The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. R.A. Audra and C. Brereton (New York: Holt). 15

Earle, William James (1967), ‘William James’ The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 4, p. 242. 16

Capek, Milic (1950), ‘Stream of Consciousness and durée réelle,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 20:3, pp. 331-353. 17

James, William (1890), Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (New York: H. Holt and Company). 18

James, William (1912), Essays in Radical Empiricism, (New York: Longmans, Green and Co.). 19

James, William (1907), Pragmatism, (New York: Longmans, Green and Co.); (1909), A Pluralistic Universe, (New York: Longmans Green and Co.). 20

James, William (1897), The Will to Believe and Other Essays on Popular Philosophy, (New York: Longmans). 21

Peirce, Charles Sanders (8 Vols 1933–1958), The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, (eds) C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), Vol. 5.2. 22

Peirce, Charles Sanders. Ibid., Vol 5.414.

23

Murphey, Murray G. (1967) “Peirce, Charles Sanders.” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 6, pp. 70-78. 24

Peirce, Charles Sanders (1997), Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking, ed P.A. Turrisi. (Albany: State University of New York Press). 25

Alexander, Samuel, Ibid.

26

Dewey, John (1903), Studies in Logical Theory, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 27

Dewey, John (1916), Democracy and Education, (New York: Macmillan). 28

Dewey, John (1910), The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy, (New York: Holt). 29

Dewey, John (1934), A Common Faith, (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press).

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30

Gunter, Pete A.Y. ed (1990), Creativity in George Herbert Mead, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America). 31

Mead, George Herbert (1938), The Philosophy of the Act, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 32

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, (1959) The Phenomenon of Man, (New York: Harper). 33

Wolsky, Alexander. (1981), ‘Teilhard de Chardin’s Biological Ideas,’ Teilhard Studies, No. 4, pp. 1-20. 34

Gunter, Pete A.Y. (2004) ‘Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,’ in The Encyclopedia of French Thought, ed. C.J. Murray (London. Fitzroy Dearborn), pp. 617-620. 35

Whitehead, Alfred North (1978), Process and Reality: Corrected Edition, Eds. D.R. Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, (New York: Free Press). 36

Whitehead, Alfred North (1978), Modes of Thought, (New York: Macmillan), pp. 202-232). 37

Whitehead, Alfred North (1929), The Aims of Education and Other Essays, (New York: Macmillan); Whitehead, Alfred North (1933), Adventures of Ideas, (New York: Mamillan). 38

Hartshorne, Charles (1964), Man’s Vision of god and the Logic of Theism, (Hamden, CN: Archon). 39

Hartshorne, Charles (1965), Anselm’s Discovery: A Re-examination of the Ontological Argument for God’s Existence, (Lasalle, IL: Open Court). 40

Gunter, Pete A.Y. (2004) “Pierre Lecomte du Noüy.” in Encyclopedia of Modern French Thought, Ibid. pp. 409-410. 41

Rescher, Nicolas (1996), Process Metaphysics, (Albany: State University of New York Press) pp. 23-24. 42

Rescher, Nicholas (2004), Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues, (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press) pp. 33-47.

Fundamental Cosmological Dualities Ronald P. Phipps Flux prevails over endurance The infinite prevails over the finite Orderliness prevails over chaos Extension prevails over the extensionless Community of being prevails over insularity Fields prevail over particles Integration prevails over disjunction (harmony over discordance) Advance prevails over retreat (the progressive over the retrogressive) Adventure prevails over timidity Creativity prevails over vacuity Continuities prevail over dichotomies Tenderness prevails over callousness Sameness is superseded by diversity The closed by the open. June 8, 2008

Each element of each duality is manifested within the infinite and eternal flux of events that is the Universe. Correctly perceiving the relationships between each element of each duality is essential to understanding how Whitehead’s philosophy of process and organism illuminates Reality in its complexity and wholeness.

Introduction: Following a Trail Ablaze Mark R. Dibben & Rebecca Newton [T]he philosophical scheme should be coherent, logical, and, in respect to its interpretation, applicable and adequate. Here ‘applicable’ means that some items of experience are thus interpretable, and ‘adequate’ means that there are no items incapable of such interpretation. (A. N. Whitehead, [1929] 1978)

It will be clear already that this volume is in memory of Thomas Kelly, Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Obviously, this was never the intention. The original volume of Applied Process Thought (Dibben and Kelly, 2008) was the first in a series of volumes bearing this title agreed with Michel Weber, the Process Thought editor at Ontos Verlag. These volumes are to demonstrate how process thought, and particularly the thoroughgoing use of process metaphysics, can be used to unpack and explore contemporary scientific and social scientific phenomena, as well as philosophical matters of importance. With the immeasurable editing and formatting help of Rebecca Newton, to whom the book was dedicated in recognition, the first volume was published in February 2008 and Thomas launched it as co-editor in Maynooth. He died on his way home from the book launch. On hearing the news of his death from his secretary Ann the next day, we quickly made the decision that we should publish a second volume as soon as possible, in Thomas’ memory. The response from the process philosophical community to the suggestion of such a book was immediate and overwhelming. As the reader may be aware, often such edited volumes take some two or three years, or more, to come to fruition, from soliciting chapters to receiving them, reviewing, editing, etc. A glance at the Contents page will reveal that over a dozen key authors in the field of process philosophy committed almost instantaneously to the project, such that we were able to deliver the manuscript to the publisher, replete in most instances with entirely new and previously unpublished work, within 9 months of Thomas’ passing. Beyond the commitment and hard work of the authors, such a project requires genuine co-editorship to see it successfully

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to fruition in such a short timeframe. Suffice to say, editing within the timeframe explains the absence of our own chapter on the processual nature of terrorist movements, which we have to reserve for a later volume. More importantly, of course, that such a short timeframe was even possible is a sure sign of the affection and respect in which Thomas was held.

1. What Applied Process Thought Is Not Philosophy is at once general and concrete, critical and appreciative of direct intuition. It should not be a ferocious debate between irritable professors. It is a survey of possibilities and their comparison with actualities. (A. N. Whitehead, [1933] 1961)

In order to give the reader unacquainted with the first volume or with process thought in general the necessary foundation, we have decided to republish that volume’s Preface in its entirety. This is because it remains a most excellent summary of process philosophy by one of its leading exponents, Pete Gunter. In the first volume, the Preface was followed by an editorial Introduction that sought to extend Gunter’s summation with an account of the nature of experience as rendered from the perspective of process metaphysics. In process metaphysics, experience is rendered as a very active aspect of reality to which all reality, howsoever construed, has access in and for itself. This ‘panexperientialist thesis’ is one of the most powerful and controversial aspects of process thinking, certainly the Whiteheadian variant, since it lies at the heart of its arguments regarding the inherently creative self-determination of all things. However, this is a very different rendering to that found in ‘mainstream’ philosophy, which broadly speaking has active experience as something to which only the mind—or at the least let us say an organism possessing a sophisticated central nervous system—has access. For many process thinkers, our ‘experience’ as human beings of experience is a valid route by which to understand experience as it is felt more universally (cf. Auxier, this volume). Rather than repeat the explanation here, however, we have included the original Introduction to the first volume as an Appendix in this volume; the reader unacquainted with process thought may find it helpful to consult this presently. This has the added advantage of giving the reader of this volume a précis of the topics that were dealt with in the first volume, some of which are explicitly extended here. Thus, where the original volume presented ‘initial explorations in theory and research’ the present

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volume contains, as its original subtitle was to suggest, ‘advances in theory and research’. However, by way of contrast to the process thesis, it may be helpful here to briefly provide the opposite view of experience. In March 2008 a lecture was given at Monash University’s Philosophy Department, entitled ‘The Relational and Representational Character of Perceptual Experience’. This lecture has subsequently been published in The Journal of Philosophy (Schelenberg, 2008). The lecturer’s aim was ‘to show that in order to explain how perception can give us knowledge of objects, the way one gains knowledge through perception must be taken seriously’. From a process perspective, this sounds promising. We expect a rendering of objects as external relations, as a precursor to a discussion of the way in which an occasion makes use of the datum of an object through prehension in its own concrescence. Consequently, the discussion will focus on the primacy of the internal relation in perception. The same would be true of her previous work on ‘Action and Self-Location in Perception’ published in Mind (Schellenberg, 2007). Perhaps not. Both these articles, and indeed much of Schellenberg’s entire treatise, concerns the role of the physical location of the separate object and separate subject in terms of their intrinsic spatial properties such that the perception of an object by a subject is dependent on the separate situationdependent properties of that subject and that object. Which is to say, the external, mind-independent properties that a separate subject has and a separate object has, given the situational features of their individual locations. For Schellenberg, the argument is that ‘if one recognizes situation-dependent properties, no appeal to mind-dependent properties is necessary to explain how it can be that there is a way that objects look that is not accounted for by representing their intrinsic properties’ (2008). There is thus no need to introduce the notion of mind-dependent properties to satisfy any conditions concerning whether or not a perception is accurate, since it is possible to attribute not only the right intrinsic properties to the right object but it is also possible to attribute situational properties to that object without recourse to mind-dependency. Needless to say, process thinkers would mostly take a quite different view in focusing on the internal relation as dominant over and above the external relation in experience. For example, it would question the implicit substance thinking, the notions of ‘subject’ and ‘object’, the nature of the distinction between mind-dependency and mind-independency, and the distinction between intrinsic properties and situation-dependent properties, in fact almost every single aspect of Schellenberg’s position. This is because such a position falls foul of both the fallacy of simple location, and

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the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It would also note that her position is laden with scientific presuppositions in the separation of object from subject and the pre-determination of over-arching and supervening ‘rightness’, let alone ‘accuracy’ in perception. In short, hers is an example not of the Philosophy of Science, but of the science of philosophy. What is interesting is that such a response is almost entirely lost on the mainstream philosophy canon. A review of the contemporary philosophy literature on this topic indicates Schellenberg is at the very forefront of thinking in the area and that her position is in accordance with the leading philosophers of her specialty. One simply does not get published in Mind or the Journal of Philosophy—we might note, effectively straight out of one’s PhD—without one’s positions being subjected to rigorous test (sic!) by one’s peers. In other words, Susanna Schellenberg’s work can quite rightly and most deservedly be described as at the cutting edge. The chapters in this volume also represent the cutting edge, albeit the cutting edge of a very different perspective. That is, a perspective that recognises both the fallibility of traditional substance-oriented thinking, constrained by the ‘rather incoherent combination of dualism and materialism’ (Matthews, 1999: 132), and the potential that exists to rethink the reigning orthodoxy in the scientific and philosophical communities (Griffin, 1998a; also 1998b). As such, they demonstrate what is possible when scientifically-oriented process philosophers and philosophicallyoriented process scientists address themselves to their chosen topics of study. By way of reiteration, the term ‘process’ as used here brings with it something altogether more fundamental, and dare we say more powerful, than traditionalist understandings of process as merely the change from one stable entity to another stable entity. Although most focus on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, regardless of which process philosopher they rely upon all the chapters herein examine process from this more thoroughgoing perspective. As in the first volume, they are presented in three sections. First, applications of process thinking to topics in philosophy itself. Second, applications of process thinking to some topics in the sciences, notably biology and physics. Third, applications of process thinking to some topics in the social sciences, including sociology and education.

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2. Applied Process Thought in Philosophy What I am objecting to is the absurd trust in the adequacy of our knowledge. The self-confidence of learned people is the comic tragedy of civilization. (A. N. Whitehead, [1941] 1991)

To begin our renewed exploration, and picking up from the foregoing discussion of ‘the cutting edge’ in contemporary philosophy, Michel Weber presents a philosophical discussion of the current ways in which Whiteheadian thinking has developed and whether and to what extent it exercises sufficient influence in the Academy. Using the poet William Blake’s ‘The Book of Urizen’ as his starting point, Weber argues that process thought has yet to develop to its full potential, notwithstanding the fact that the science of the 21st Century (as opposed to the 17th Century variant) is entirely processual. He first considers Whitehead’s conceptualisation of philosophical speculation, arguing that Whitehead’s concept of necessity embodies the fundamental conjunction of the theoretical and practical and thus makes it eminently suited applications in the sciences. He argues that the relevance of Whiteheadian process thought will be seen only when it is recognised as authentic not only to specialists in process thought but also the wider philosophical canon. Weber concludes by arguing that philosophical creativity is central to the future of Whitehadian scholarship, in which visionary thinkers engage in holistic reasoning that challenges established understandings to re-liberate the field. Randall Auxier takes up this challenge by addressing head on the extent of claims to ontological knowledge that result from Whitehead’s metaphysical inquiries. In particular, Auxier argues that the temporal atomicity commonly associated with Whitehead’s term ‘actual occasion’ is less recognisable as ontological knowledge than is his concept of undivided divisibility and contingent continuity embodied in his term ‘extension’. In this regard, Auxier uses film and literature to point to the central problem of temporality in experiential terms to focus on a critique of atomicity. Auxier argues that ‘it is not possible to make phenomenological or narrative sense of radical temporal discontinuity’, that is temporal atomicity. For Auxier, continuity of becoming is necessary and, interestingly in a manner partly similar to Schellenberg, direct experience of such continuity is ‘experience form some particular perspective’. Auxier argues a more accurate focus for the study of ontological knowledge within Whitehead therefore lies in the concept of the extensive continuum, focusing on the inter-relation of the whole and its constituent parts;

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removing any part destroys the whole. Auxier suggest that Whitehead’s works are best read as ‘individual inquiries into well-circumscribed aspects of experience’ and, as such, are best seen in the radical empiricist tradition of William James. In so doing, Auxier repositions Whitehead’s work to emphasise its relational aspects as a more likely source of ontological knowledge, and thereby argues that considerable care needs to be taken in the wider application of his inquiries.

3. Applied Process Thought in the Sciences There is not a sentence which adequately states its own meaning. There is always a background of presupposition which defies analysis by reason of its infinitude. (A. N. Whitehead, [1933] 1961)

Joseph Bracken takes a more traditional approach to Whitehead’s process philosophy than that argued for by Auxier, but still critically compares it with the work of Stuart Kauffman. In so doing, he argues a mechanistic rendering of the phenomenon of change within Nature fails to adequately explain the emergence of novelty. By applying a neo-Whiteheadian understanding of societies as ‘structured fields of activity for their constituent actual occasions’, Bracken points towards a generalised conceptual framework for understanding spontaneous self-organisation that explains ‘the dynamic interplay of inanimate actual occasions’ in chemical activity. From this inter-play, Bracken argues, life naturally emerges as a self-sustaining autocatalytic network of chemical (re)actions (see also Stein, 2008). For Bracken, this is enabled by a divine lure toward a more complex existence. He argues structured societies of activity emerge where no requirement for life is given or prescribed at the start, but which can be ultimately identifiable as emergent and living chemical systems. Following from Bracken’s explication of the development of living process systems, Ross Stein extends the arguments he developed in Volume 1 by proposing answers to two fundamental questions about systems biology: What is the ontological status of a biosystem, and what types of properties are predicted to be manifested by such a system? Stein adopts the framework of Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to engage the first question. This views the actualities of our world in constant process of evolutionary becoming, whose process is driven by internal relations responding to external change. The types of properties a biosystem is predicted to possess follow from this Whitehead-inspired ontology of systems and include not only the operational properties usually ascribed to biosystems, but also properties of a ‘global’, i.e. universal and

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inherent systems integration, reflecting that system’s interiority. In the system Homo sapiens, we call this property mind. In systems of less complexity, Stein argues, while we should not expect evidence of mind we should expect evidence of systems integration. Jonathan Delafield-Butt provides evidence of such integration in his discussion of phospholipid bilayer membranes. In an extension of his study into the processual behaviour of a cell in Volume 1 (2008), he argues that the development of the structural properties of the cells of all living organisms is driven by molecular activity based on feeling. These feelings, or ‘primitive instincts’ arise during particular social contexts and generate cells, contained systems that are the most common organisations in biology. For Delafield-Butt, Whiteheadian feelings are common to all nature and are not just species specific but, rather, underpin ‘the quality of form of relating between two intimate individuals.’ To explore this understanding of feeling, he compares the psycho-biological nature of the mother-infant relationship and the development of membranes to argue that both are concerned with reciprocity and containment. In the mother-infant relationship, reciprocated actions generate strong affective feelings and a co-consciouness. As such, reciprocity is a route to satisfaction and containment, to the felt sense of the ‘interior’ through co-consciousness. Delafield-Butt argues that very similar reciprocal relations occur in all biological systems; ‘there is no biological system that is not engaged in reciprocated exchange with another’. This can be observed at the cellular level in the development and responsiveness of the cell membrane, the phospholipid bilayer, which surrounds the cell, ‘allowing life-sustaining material in and keeping lifethreatening material out.’ The molecular unit of this membrane is the lipid. Each lipid, argues Dellafield-Butt, can be shown to engage in a reciprocal and containing relationship with the millions of other lipid molecules making up the membrane and collaborates through the active arrangement of electrical charges to physically contain the entire cell through its interactions with its neighbouring lipids. This reciprocity, that is, affective feelings ‘driving engagement to form enduring relations through reciprocal and containing actions’ as embodied in the Whiteheadian notion of ‘individual-in-community’, he suggests, can be seen everywhere in nature; all biochemical organisms ‘enact themselves into satisfaction.’ Ron Phipps takes on the core process principles of ‘individual-incommunity’ and ‘inherent self creativity’ in a remarkable, wide-ranging and detailed study of physics. He uses process philosophy to examine orderliness, cosmic epochs, events and particles, relativity, quantum phenomena and the mental and material as these manifest themselves in the

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physical universe, and argues that that universe is best understood as infinite, open and integrated. Through the elucidation of numerous physical laws, Phipps argues that Einstein’s relativity theory can be shown to be inconsistent with, if not a thoroughly inadequate explication of, contemporary understanding of change in the universe. He considers the place of God in such a universe and, concludes by arguing that philosophy, properly applied, has the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the universe through its capacity to integrate theories in a range of associated disciplines, including chemistry, biology, mathematics, ethics and theology, as well as physics itself. John Cobb addresses the advances in physics discussed by Phipps in terms of their implication for our understanding of the role of God. He argues that in the light of recent advances in physics, it is impossible to maintain as the dominant worldview a materialistic understanding of the physical world. Following a discussion of materialism and the arguments of its proponents, Cobb questions materialism in terms of its ‘denial that there is any such thing as subjectivity, experience, feeling, or inwardness.’ Furthermore, the materialist connotation of matter does not allow for contemporary understanding of energy as activity and ultimately does not provide for human subjectivity as a part of nature, but rather as somehow ‘supervienient’ to it. Cobb argues that an understanding of contemporary physics in which the world is composed of energy events, in contrast, does allow for human subjective experience to be included in nature. However, this requires a Whiteheadian process metaphysics that takes account of purpose in the natural world in such a way as to consider energy events as being ‘something in themselves and in this sense as having internality’ in which radical novelty is possible. The incursion of novelty within the sphere of potentiality is best understood as an ordering affecting the constitution of events, an ordering Cobb explains as a function of God. Yet he is clear that an event retains an inherent capacity for self-determination in terms of the way in which it responds to the potentials open to it. In this way, Cobb argues that contemporary physics focusing on the primacy of energy in the form of events allows an understanding of God as a benign agency important for all nature, of which human experience is a part. Jan Engberts extends the discussion of mechanistic materialism and its impact on spirituality to consider its implications for ecological sustainability. Through a systematic comparison of process thinking in China and the West, and a review of advances in the understanding of matter, space, water, and the human brain, Engberts argues it is possible to engage in what he terms a ‘scientific process thought’ that thoroughly

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accounts for the dynamic nature of reality. He argues that what is observable throughout reality is an inherent or ‘vital’ inter-dependency between the individual and the environment. Such process thinking, incorporating not only understandings of natural phenomena that are in accordance with contemporary physics, but also incorporating an understanding of spirituality, can, Engbert suggest, fulfil human needs for well-being and satisfaction that the dominant materialistic metaphysics increasingly fails to provide. This is because it is able to account for and give due prominence to the subjectivity of human experience in nature.

4. Applied Process Thought in the Social Sciences The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalisation; and it lands again for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation. (A. N. Whitehead, [1929] 1978)

Continuing the process application of an understanding of God or spirituality discussed by Cobb and Engberts, Les Muray addresses the impact of materialistic thinking on politics and our experience of the unilateral power of Empires. Distinguishing the activities of individuals from the activities of communities in terms of the capacity for love in the former and justice in the latter, he suggests substantialist views of reality have led to the abuse of unilateral power by individuals to perpetrate injustices on communities. A route to countering this impact of unilateral power, Muray argues lies in the adoption of a worldview that recognises the fact that ‘no organism can stay alive without some exercise of some degree of power’. From this ‘active’ perspective, power is envisioned as relational; it consists in ‘not only the capacity to affect, to carry out a purpose, but also the capacity to be affected, to be acted upon.’ Muray uses a process understanding of God to exemplify this view of relational power in an active luring of nature with ideal possibilities and at the same time a receptive feeling of that nature; God acts persuasively rather than coercively. In this way, Muray argues, materialist metaphysics has mislead communities in their understanding of power as it manifests itself in an open and self-creating universe, to the detriment of humanity. Freedom, lies not in ‘imposing our way of life’ but rather in ‘respect for and encouragement of […] nations and communities to decide for themselves who they want to become.’ In this way, Muray advocates a ‘fully relational’ view of ‘soft power’ in which ‘the independence,

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freedom, and distinctiveness of each community in its fundamental interdependence with all others would be nurtured’ in a truly politically multi-polar world. Andre Cloots also adopts a processual understanding of God as not coercing but ‘proposing’ to directly address the role of religion in politics that has been raised in a variety of ways in the preceding three chapters. Again using process understandings of the nature of reality, and through a comparison writings on religion by Marcel Gauchet and Whitehead, he suggests that the political history of religion ‘turns around the dynamics of transcendence’ and argues that this led inevitably to the emergence an autonomous science, an autonomous democracy and an autonomous economy. In other words, that modernity arose from religion, not as a reaction to it. As such, religious convictions have been subsumed into individual identity such that they are no longer open to discussion or debate as convictions but, rather, are expected to be accepted by society as a closed statement of personal individuality. Cloots uses the notion of human rights to exemplify his point, suggesting they are ‘the apogee of democracy’, a de-integrative rather than a constructive force in contemporary politics. The modernist concept of an autonomous individual that lies behind this rightswithout-responsibilities trend in contemporary society can usefully be countered, Cloots suggest, by recourse to a Whiteheadian concept of the subject as essentially organic and social, oriented towards the future and integrating actuality and possibility in its very existence; the individual is not separate from the society in which he arises. As such, the role of religion as a constructive element in community is again possible, when construed as a religion of potentials in community, ‘opening up possibilities, perspectives, even ideals… to become a proposing vision’ for political and social organisation. Duston Moore also focuses on the Whiteheadian notion of propositions to explore the modern-day phenomenon of the corporation. Although process thought has risen to some prevalence in Business and Economics, the renderings of process usually encountered therein are often limited to the use of less technical process thinking coupled with Whitehead’s fallacies of simple location and misplaced concreteness to argue for a nonsubstantivist understanding of the practice of managing, organising and leading (Dibben, 2008a). In contrast, Duston Moore engages in a technical discussion of core process concepts of conscious, non-conscious and unconscious experience. Moore argues propositions are constitutive of the being-in-between that characterises the space between the repetition of pattern and the ingression of novelty, the ‘space’ between mentality and

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matter. In comparison with Dibben (2008b), who uses Bracken’s understanding of Whiteheadian societies as event fields (1989, 2002; also this volume) to argue organisations as constitutive of related personal individuals through internality, Moore thereby suggests Whitehead’s concept of propositions (see also Cloots above) allows an understanding of corporations as possessing an inherent subjectivity exhibiting intensity of appetition in and for themselves. Elias Khalil provides yet another perspective on organisational life and the repetition of patterns therein, by examining the notion of continuity through the process pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. Khalil first reviews Aristotle’s distinction among three realms of action—deliberation, routine, and instinct. This, he argues, defines deliberation as rational decision and advocates continuity among the three realms. Khalil next reviews Dewey’s theory of action and continuity. From this review, he argues that Dewey’s establishment of continuity is on the grounds that deliberation can be seen as action, and not different from routine. In contrast, Khalil proposes an opposite move, and in so doing presents a different argument for organisational behaviour. That is, the conception of human routines in organisations as rational decisions that have become entrenched as result of repetition and, likewise, instinct as routine that has become even more entrenched. Reflecting upon Duston Moore’s suggestion in the previous chapter that corporations may be argued to sustain an ‘entirely living non-social nexus independent of cognitive intentionality’, if as Kahlil suggests deliberation and not routine is ‘the entry point’ of approximation, perhaps all that remains is for us to discover what it is that is being deliberated upon and by whom. Michael Halewood also takes up the issues of repetition, routine and custom as ‘below the level of the conscious human’ (original emphasis) as part of an examination of sociology, societies and sociality from a Whiteheadian perspective. As a result of a systematic review of Whitehead’s understanding of society, Halewood makes a powerful argument that process thinking can ‘reframe the discussion and debate’ in sociology over the ‘end of the social’ through an understanding that sociality is included in all existence. He proposes a Whiteheadian sociology that breaks down established dualisms between, for example, public and private by allowing an understanding that the creation, maintenance and reproduction of the social environment in which we find ourselves and of which we are a part is continually created and recreated through the personal and private. That is, it involves ‘the inter-relation of all individuals via an on-going and thorough relativity’, a de-emphasising of the external

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relation and a re-focusing on the internal relation as constitutive of a social experience of ‘person-in-community’ (Cobb, 2007). Michael Carolan then provides empirical illustration of Halewood's arguments for the use of Whitehead in sociology. He presents a mixed methods case study of society and people in a rural county in Iowa. In so doing, Carolan illustrates a world of Becoming, process, and indeterminate bodies, selves, and matter, and argues that his case illustrates a reality reminiscent to that described by the author D.H. Lawrence in his novel The Rainbow. That is, a reality of ‘selves that are always-already becoming… “smeared” across space and time’, a human experience in process. In so doing, Carolan demonstrates how the methods of the (social) sciences can be reconciled with a process worldview to reveal a remarkable and vivid portrait of our—social—lives. Arran Gare examines a number of the themes raised in the preceding chapters concerning materialism and its implications for society, history, science and politics and considers the impact it has had on education. He argues that materialism is at the heart of what he terms a ‘Moderate or Fake Enlightenment, upholding a Newtonian cosmology and possessive individualism’ in which the Arts are no longer viewed as central to an education concerned with human flourishing but are reduced to a luxury superseded by Business Schools. Gare suggests that the countering of materialistic schools of thought in universities, as embodied in the Radical Enlightenment movement and the Humboltdtian university with its privileging of the humanities, is a central task for process philosophies of education. Process thought applied to education, he argues, strives to ‘transform science to uphold a conception of nature as creative becoming’ in which personal responsibility to the community, democracy, liberty and the environment are upheld. As such, for Gare, the challenge for philosophy in education lies in the development of ‘a post-mechanistic conception of nature, reconciling the analytic thought of European civilisation with the process thinking of the Chinese’. One way of beginning this in the university setting, he suggests, is to use bio-semiotics and systems theory to present ‘a clear alternative to reductionist materialism’ and encourage students to appreciate the world as a creative process of becoming in which they are participants. In this way, the dynamics of nature and the global ecosystem can be properly understood and appreciated, and the ethical and political ideals of the Idealists defended and developed.

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5. Conclusion Philosophy happens as conversation [… it] is always and already a conversation partner of all other disciplines, in the sense of a mutually corrective encounter which leads in the direction of truth. (T. A. F. Kelly, 2006; also this volume)

Thomas Kelly was a leading figure in Irish Philosophy, widely regarded for his studies of the philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology, theology and metaphysics. To our understanding, his interest in process thought grew from his work in the latter two, and the attempt to reconcile them in a manner that was adequate to his own Catholicism. This reconciliation was first published in the on-line process journal Concrescence (2004). We republish it here as the penultimate chapter not only for the reader’s interest, but also in the light of the consistent use of process concepts of God and spirituality by numerous authors in this collection, to explore issues in the sciences and social sciences discussed above. As such it provides a valuable exposition of process thinking as applied to theology, a discussion of which was purposefully avoided in the first volume (see the Appendix). His exposition is valuable here not least because, as a result—we surmise—of his devout faith, he expressly avoids much of the contentious arguments commonly espoused in process theology for a non-omnipotent and non-omniscient Creator (e.g. Hartshorne, 1984; 1997; also Cobb and Griffin, 1976). His ‘How Can A Process Ontology Aid Philosophical Theology?’, therefore, written by one who spent his days lecturing not only in the university but also in the Roman Catholic seminary at Maynooth, provides a learned but at the same time more limited, and thus perhaps more widely acceptable rendering of process in regards to the meaning and nature of ‘God’, as a means of setting a context for and expanding upon arguments presented in some of the foregoing chapters. To do this, he presents a vindication of the notion of God as existential and a clarification of that term’s fundamental, and perhaps only possible, meaning for philosophy. He examines, amongst others, the nature of causality in terms of Hume and Azadne and the nature of God through Anselm and Kant, and concludes by considering the polyphonic nature of the universe. By this means, he argues that the formulation of an adequate philosophical theology just is the formulation of an adequate process ontology, comprising temporality, causality and God. In so doing, he provides an explanation for why it is that

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many process philosophers and theologians, such as Bracken, Cobb and Muray in this volume, naturally speak about God to speak about the world. Thomas Kelly’s application of process thinking, however, did not lie solely in theology. Rather, he argued strongly for a process-oriented philosophy to be a part of university education. This argument was first published in a special issue of the Maynooth Philosophical Papers (2006) which as a collection (edited by Thomas himself) encapsulated a variety of perspectives on the meaning and value of higher education. We republish it here as the final chapter, again not only for the reader’s interest, but also because he sets Arran Gare’s arguments regarding the place of process philosophy in the curriculum in a wider philosophical and educative context. He presents a powerful argument for the role of philosophy in education by demonstrating that philosophy in and of itself is at its best when applied to the other academic disciplines. He also paints a wonderfully positive and enabling vision of life as an ongoing opportunity for self-creation, in which ‘the future exists in the present as a set of rays of diverse potentiality, each ray a possible world, originating at the present moment’; we were struck particularly by his treatment of death. Yet he moves beyond this to an exposition of the role of philosophy in enabling ‘the gradual realisation of the good’ (original emphasis) through the recognition that each member of society is of ‘equal value with all others’. As such, he argues, a university must be ‘a place of philosophical culture’ where a ‘coherent, nuanced and convincing justification of […] values’ encourages open debate in and contributes to society at large. For Thomas, then, applied philosophy—applied process thought—concerns ‘the appropriation by human beings of the resources with which their humanity is endowed.’ The purpose of a philosophical university, in other words any university worthy of the name, is to serve society by enabling its students how to think for themselves, and precisely not to succumb to the contemporary pressures of teaching its students simply what thoughts of others to think. Some brief editorial notes in closing. We are grateful to Peter Denman for allowing us to print the eulogy that follows Thomas’ last chapter, as a rich insight into his life, and his work at Maynooth. We wish to express our heartfelt thanks to Ann Gleeson, Thomas’ secretary, for her invaluable assistance throughout the project, including finding a copy of ‘The Role of Philosophy in the University.’ Both the journals in which this and the ‘theological philosophy’ paper of Thomas’ we have included were originally published, do not take copyright from their authors; we are grateful to Thomas’ wife Marian O’Donnell for granting us permission to re-print them. We are also deeply grateful to her for allowing us to use

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Thomas’ pen and ink drawing ‘Memories of Forgotten Times’ as the book’s frontispiece. Marian is herself a celebrated Irish artist. Her own work in Thomas’ memory is at the National Botanical Gardens, Dublin. A photograph of that installation and its associated poem make up her unique—and much valued—contribution to the book. Last but not least, we are of course grateful to the authors of the chapters themselves, for their energy, enthusiasm and commitment. With this in mind, the reader will notice that, beyond a consistent format for the body of the text, we have allowed as far as possible for authors to present their arguments, notes and citations in the style they had originally chosen. This, rather than ask authors to re-write and re-present these aspects of their work. On very rare occasion we have made slight amendment to the linguistic turn of the material (as opposed to the content), where such amendment was felt necessary from the perspective of the overall contribution of the volume to the actively process-relational ‘individual-in-community’ thesis. It remains that any errors encountered herein are the fault of none but ourselves as editors. Reviewing the chapters in this collection, and bearing in mind the somewhat contrary position in contemporary philosophy exemplified in Schellenberg’s work reviewed at the beginning, we suggest that the focus lies in the thoroughgoing study of the actively subjective nature of experiencing. It is our hope that, as with the first volume, the work of all the authors presented herein provides further impetus for future research using deeper metaphysical understandings of process to explore philosophical, scientific and social scientific issues. We suggest this will continue to yield far greater insight into the nature of reality—at whatever level of analysis—than that possible with traditionalist substance-based views. Finally, in not only containing a remarkable collection of work on Applied Process Thought that exemplifies his understanding of philosophy as ‘mutually corrective conversation’, but also in presenting around this main body a collection of artistic pieces by and about Thomas A. F. Kelly, we hope the book will stand as a fitting and lasting tribute to the man in whose memory it is published.

6. References Bracken, J. A. (1989) “Energy Events and Fields.” Process Studies 18(3): 153-165 Bracken, J. A. (2002) “Continuity Amid Discontinuity—A Neo-Whitehadian Understanding of the Self.” Process Studies 31(2): 115-124

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Cobb, J. B. and Griffin, D. R. (1976) Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press Cobb, J. B. (2007) “Person-in-Community: Whiteheadian Insights into Community and Institution.” Organization Studies 28(4): 567-588. Delafield-Butt, J. T. (2008) “Explaining the Processual Behaviour of a Cell.” In Dibben, M. and Kelly, T. (Eds) Applied Process Thought 1: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag pp. 236-260 Dibben, M. R. (2008a) “Management and Organisations.” In Weber, M. and Desmond, W. Handbook of Whiteheadian Thought, Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag pp. 91-107 Dibben, M. R. (2008b) “Understanding Organisations as Whiteheadian Societies.” In Dibben, M. and Kelly, T. (Eds) Applied Process Thought 1: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag pp. 329-347 Dibben, M. and Kelly, T. (Eds) (2008) Applied Process Thought 1: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag Griffin, D. R. (1998a) “Being Bold: Anticipating a Whiteheadian Century.” Opening Address from the Silver Anniversary Whitehead Conference, Claremont. CPS Member Papers Vol. 21 No.3 Griffin, D. R. (1998b) Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom and the Mind-Body Problem. Berkeley: University of California Press Hartshorne, C. (1984) Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hartshorne, C. (1997) The Zero Fallacy and Other Essays in Neoclassical Philosophy. (Mohammad Valady, Ed.). Chicago: Open Court Kelly, T. (2004) “How Can A Process Ontology Aid Philosophical Theology.” Concrescence 5. Kelly, T. (2006) “The Role of Philosophy in the University.” In Kelly, T. (Ed.) What Price the University? Maynooth: NUIM. Matthews, E. (1999) “Bergson’s Concept of a Person.” In Mullarkey, J. (Ed.) The New Bergson. Manchester: MUP pp. 118-143. Schellenberg, S. (2007) “Action and Self-Location in Perception.” Mind 116(463): 603632. Schellenberg, S. (2008) “The Situation-Dependency of Perception.” Journal of Philosophy 105(2): 55-84. Stein, R. (2008) “Enzymes as Ecosystems: A Panexperientialist Account of Chemical Transformations.” In Dibben, M. and Kelly, T. (Eds) Applied Process Thought 1: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag pp. 261-285.

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Whitehead, A. N. ([1929] 1978) Process and Reality, Corrected Edition. Griffin, D. and Sherburne, D. (Eds). New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, A. N. ([1933] 1961) Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, A. N. ([1941] 1991) Immortality. In Schilpp, P. A. (Ed.) The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, 2nd Edition. Illinois: Open Court pp. 682-700.

Applied Process Thought II: Following a Trail Ablaze Mark R. Dibben Ph.D. University of Stirling

and Rebecca Newton Ph.D. Victoria University of Wellington

(Eds.)

I. The Urizen of Whiteheadian Process Thought Michel Weber Eternals! I hear your call gladly. Dictate swift winged words, and fear not To unfold your dark visions of torment. (William Blake, The Book of Urizen [1794], Preludium) For a full-fledged Whiteheadian process thinker, the future status and applicability of process modes of thought is unknown in principle. And we should gladly rejoice at this state of affairs because the very meaning of our lives depends upon this existential elbow-room. We live in an open universe that only partially allows us to foresee events, all the more so if they belong to the highest level of complexity known to us: our common— intersubjective—existence. Of course, we could take advantage of our knowledge of the past history of Whiteheadian scholarship and of a sharp (and preferably dispassionate) assessment of its current state to anticipate its likely immediate outcome. However, such a speculation will not be proposed here. We would indeed need to carefully peruse the history of Whiteheadian studies and its contemporary context before being able to frame the most applicable imaginative generalization and such a study does not seem appropriate for the present context. For one thing, we would need far more space than it is allowed; for another, by doing so we would wager on the bare efficacy of the (past) actors whereas what we need is to trust their (future) creativity and, most of all, their vision. (While the efficacy of the past pushes experience in the furrow of habit, the creativity of the present, lured by some eschatological commitment, re-creates it moment by moment.)1 Alternatively, we could speculate on the rhythmic development of the world of ideas in the West. There are obviously conceptual rhythms that

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frame the history of ideas and Whitehead himself would have insisted that there always will be novel conceptual epochs to come. The well-known contrast between pluralistic empiricism and dualistic rationalism (see for instance the opening chapter of James’ Pluralistic Universe) is a bit too broad to allow the development of an applicable picture in the context of our present discussion. If we consider the last centuries of human thought, the following dialectical movement—displaying a shift of epicentre from Italy to Germany and later to the Anglo-Saxon world (the latter constituting a far more diffuse entity because of its world-wide cultural hegemony)— can be nevertheless identified. Whereas the Renaissance lauded the perfection of static proportions, Baroque art and thought, heir to the Counter-Reformation of 1630–1750, stressed movement, change and growth. The reaction of the Aufklärung was swift: secularization—with its requirements of rationality, optimism and progress—spread its dogmatic wings over the entire social landscape (remember Foucault’s grand renfermement). With Romanticism, the emphasis returned to feeling, becoming and opacity (or inexhaustibleness), sometimes even to irrationality. Then the positivism of A. Comte and later of the Wiener Kreis (soon to be exported to the USA) constituted a new Kehre, promptly counter-balanced by the first process publications of F. Nietzsche and É. Boutroux, but also of C.S. Peirce, W. James and A. N. Whitehead (not to forget their conceptual kin: H. Bergson). Our first conclusion could be: process thinkers can be optimistic because their mode of thought has not yet developed all its potentialities or become generally recognized, even though science is nowadays totally processual. But they should not be dazzled either: “in its turn every philosophy will suffer a deposition.”2 A more suitable, if not promising, analysis follows the path suggested by Process and Reality’s (1929/1978; hereafter “PR”) seminal definition of speculative philosophy. It could help to understand the next historical move and its conditions of possibility. Before following the path, we need however to trace it through the sometimes wild conceptual territory Whitehead has left us to explore. Hence the following three steps of our argument: first, a systematic account of Process and Reality’s conception of philosophical speculation; second, its application to the question of the future status and applicability of process thought; third a complementary specification with the help of Whitehead’s insistence on duty and reverence.

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1. Process and Reality’s Definition of Speculative Philosophy The marrow of Whitehead’s understanding of the meaning and significance of (speculative) philosophy is expressed in the first two pages of his magnum opus. Unfortunately, Process and Reality’s first section is not as straightforward as one could expect from such a prolegomenal statement and the basic criteria used—coherence, consistency, applicability, adequacy and necessity—seem at first reading a bit fuzzy. The reader who has taken the time to tame Whitehead’s vision can however avoid the Charybdis of relativism and the Scylla of dogmatism in his or her interpretation. The twofold leading idea is not extravagant at all: on the one hand, each criteria has a proper weight or “raison d’être” in the argument; on the other, only their togetherness makes sense. We will not go all over again the long argument required to establish this thesis since it has been unfolded elsewhere;3 only a short reminder of its conclusions will suffice here. The main concern should be not to explain away the richness of the picture proposed to us. On the one hand, we need to distinguish the rational requirements of coherence and consistency from the empirical requirements of applicability and adequacy. The requirement of “logical consistency” amounts to “the exemplification of general logical notions in specific instances, and the principles of inference” (PR 3). It obviously refers to Aristotle’s sophistication of the substantialistic logic of common-sense, stabilized so to speak by Boole’s Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854) in terms of the principle of identity, the principle of contradiction and the excluded middle. In plain language, contradiction amongst categories is to be avoided. The requirement of “coherence” seeks to establish a categoreal democracy in which each category has some genuine weight (independence) and makes sense only in its togetherness with the others (interdependence). In other words, each category has to bring something specific in the discussion without breaking its semantic ties with other categories. Each has to mirror in its own way the presence of the others. The chief culprit that Whitehead constantly denounces is Descartes and his totally incoherent substance dualism or bi-substantialism. The requirement of “applicability” corresponds to the request for some real interpretative power. There is, in other words, no need to build fully

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coherent and totally consistent systems if they have no concrete explanatory power whatsoever. The requirement of “adequacy” asks that “everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme.” (PR 3) It obviously constitutes an ideal, a focus imaginarius but it is by no means an innocuous one: radical empiricism shows through it. On the other hand, we need to articulate the four criteria. First, respectively at the rational and the empirical level; second, at their necessary conjunctive level. First, Whitehead makes clear that coherence is far more important than consistency: contradictions (unlike paradoxes) are quite easy to fix; lack of coherence, however, definitively cripples a system. “Entia non sunt diminuenda sine necessitate” as Roberto Poli claims after Hedwig Conrad Martius. For its part, applicability requires some empirical cash value, while the unreachable adequacy is the horizon towards which applicability strives. Second, one has to recognize that what matters most is the lure towards adequation,4 not the one towards full consistent coherence. As Jean Wahl (1888–1974), among others, saw clearly: the point of British neo-realism is to understand each thing, not all things; lack of consistency is preferable to lack of applicability.5 But this still does not bring together the four criteria. In Whiteheadian parlance, the unity (or the homeostasy, the fouring) of the four is necessity. In a sort of Kantian move (equally reminiscent of the Timaeus), we have to understand necessity as the seal or categoreal keystone that brings together the two rational and the two empirical criteria. It does so through a peculiar wager on the rationality of the concrete and on human beings’ capacity to reach it. There is most definitely fitness—no matchness—of our cognitive tools to reality, from the biological and the cultural standpoints alike. This animal faith of sorts furthermore binds everyone together as a human community dwelling in a welcoming cosmos. There are two levels in our claim: factual and existential. First, the fitness of our categories is the result of a threefold process of atunement: phylogenetic (Spencer: the categories that are a priori for the individual are a posteriori for the species), onto-genetic (Piaget: cognitive categories are developed through sensorimotor and preoperational stages) and koinogenetic (Bateson: the convergence of individual consciousness is achieved through learning). Human beings are embodied (mind and body cannote be

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severed), embedded in a given environment, and entangled in a given culture. Second, each and everyone of us is invited to consciously subscribe to this genetic necessity. This constitutes the philosophical commitment par excellence, but it is by no means restricted to the philosopher, professional or otherwise. To summarize: the simple singlefoldness of the four is to be found at the level of the existential commitment of the individual who ratifies through her actions the togetherness of the many and thereby goes beyond it. In ancient parlance, purged of any dualistic trend: we have to fully acknowledge both our terrestrial roots and our celestial destiny. A vision is needed. Now there is a very simple concept to name this community in the act: common sense or sensus communis, in which theory and practice, the rational and the empirical, necessarily converge. Granted, we need a refined version of common sense in order to avoid the negative connotations of the term. Arendt has provided interesting insights here around the notions of intersubjectivity and interobjectivity,6 so did Husserl with his concept of “Urdoxa”7 and Merleau-Ponty with the “perceptive faith”8 that characterizes our belonging to the world: not only are we sure that what we perceive is real, but a momentary suspension of perception does not nullify that certainty. A more recent similar attempt took actually place in Whiteheadian studies with Griffin’s hard-core common-sense notions,9 that qualify the universal and primordial beliefs that human beings do not question in practice: their fundamental freedom, the causal efficacy of their actions, the existence of a real world, of values and of a temporal drift. What is fundamentally (necessarily) reasonable is what does not endanger the Urdoxastic vital—so to speak carnal—link we maintain with the perceived world. In sum, the concept of necessity that Whitehead activates in the first Part of Process and Reality embodies the fundamental conjunction of the theoretical and the practical sides of life.

2. Developmental Typology What can we learn from this typology to provide an answer to the debated question—the future status and applicability of process modes of thought? To operationalize the interpretational grid we have just skimmed through, it seems advisable to introduce two further distinctions: between insiders and outsiders of a discipline—in our case, between Whiteheadians and nonWhiteheadians—and between conviction and persuasion. The former

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names the straightforward difference existing between Whiteheadian scholars and “specialists” who are neither familiar with the “philosophy of organism” nor likely to get acquainted with it unless some good reason is provided; the latter is the well-known by-product of centuries of rhetorical meditations. To convince someone of something, the speaker needs to talk to the intelligence of his/her audience; to persuade, she needs to mobilize their will. To be convinced is not to be persuaded: I can know for sure that smoking tobacco is lethal in the (more or less) long term but as long as I don’t act accordingly, this knowledge is useless. To be persuaded is not to be convinced either: I can refrain from smoking for reasons totally foreign to the scientific ones usually broadcasted (say to keep my soul clean and prevent unfortunate metempsychosis) or even for no reason whatsoever— simply because such decision has been spontaneously taken and that it worked so to speak ex opere operato (remember the will to believe). What does it say about the stakes of rationality? First, the bi-directionality of this argument (the fact that it works both ways, its equifinality if you like) is appropriate only if the idea of a universal reason is obliterated by a healthy relativism. There are no “right” reasons to stop smoking; everyone can have a different one, that can be convincing and perhaps even persuading to others. Of course, science is not a fairy tale and its claim to objectivity is well established by internal perfection and external confirmation as Einstein would say—but science does not address the core of our experience. This brings us to the second point: the fundamental rational— not experiential—opacity of the common world. Now that we are equipped with these complementary concepts, we can rephrase the question of this study: under what categoreal conditions will scholars be not only convinced but also persuaded of the virtues (rather than the vices) of Whiteheadian process thought? In order to keep our discussion tight, we will add an additional filter inspired by the current way debates are lead (or prevented) in the Academia. That filter is not dogmatic but heuristic; it constitutes less a bold claim than an obvious simplification that allows us to obtain promptly a provisional synthesis. Let us start with our hypothetical universal fact (or Deleuzian filter of sorts): specialists (almost) never seriously talk to scholars who do not happen to share the very same expertise—unless these fall under the category of “students” and in that case they are equally likely to talk at them. Exceptions put aside (and, it has to be said, they are all the more remarkable), debates are usually taking place among the happy few who share the same concern about one field of expertise and do not really need to expose endlessly their presuppositions and the meaning and significance

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of their concepts. In short: never is the expert knowledge put at risk by a truly open discussion. Besides the equally obvious power games that take place within a given domain, what strikes the internal observer is the emphasis on rational conviction. Rational points here at the nature of the arguments that tend to focus on issues of coherence and consistency. Empirical conviction would animate another theatre, as we will shortly see. Specialists have that faculty of enjoying only the philosophical writings of their elected single philosopher. Philosophy is clearly a very personal matter and one can see the affection that can bind, through the ages, the reader and the author. But hagiography should be avoided at all costs, for the simple reason that it is the sure sign of the imminence of inert ideas. Within the Whiteheadian field itself, the accent tends to fall more on bare conceptual matters than on empirical ones. Hence a first conclusion: what the specialist can achieve among his/her peers is to see his/her interpretation recognized as consistent and/or coherent. But such consensual discussions have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the outsiders: in the very same way that Whiteheadians are not likely to entertain the reconstruction of the late Heidegger’s puzzle with his own categories (“Raum,” “Eingeräumtes,” “Freigegebenes,” “Grenze,” “Wesen,” “Begriff”…), Heideggerians have no interest, say, in the togetherness of “Many,” “One” and “Creativity.” Nobody denies that the concept “horismos,” that is of horizon or boundary, can be activated in both cases, but such a cross-elucidatory path seems to groove a Waste Land and, if not, it would be foolhardy to proceed without first devoting some serious thoughts to the conditions of possibility of such a dialogue (something, by the way, that is precisely allowed by the intricated levels of meaning that are systematized in Whitehead’s definition of speculative philosophy). To further exemplify: this rationally convincing type of work has been done by the journal Process Studies that has no doubt firmly established excellent standards in Whitheadian scholarship and thereby created a “process community” but, like all other specialised journals, it has done so by securing the field. If we now turn our glance to the empirical side of Whitehead’s definition, the converse situation is expected. On the one hand, internal debates are often too much tangled to conceptual issues to really worry about their pragmatic cash-value, that are taken for granted. On the other hand, external debates are the place where an advantage in applicability can make all the difference. In the case of Whiteheadian scholarship, quantum physicists constitute perhaps the best example of such an interest expressed from the standpoint of the applicability of Whitehead’s categories (most

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recently: Shimony, Stapp, Malin, Hättich, Epperson…). In other words, whereas insiders are expected to be convinced mainly by rational fiddlings, outsiders are likely to be convinced only by the manifestation of a significant differential in applicability. To repeat: we do not deny that this heuristic sketch is in part an imaginative simplification—what matters are the pragmatic consequences that could be drawn from it. So far we have two general cases: insiders and outsiders are convinced by different reasons—but when are they persuaded? Quenching one’s intelligence is one thing, acting accordingly is another. What makes the difference between conviction and persuasion? When does the philosophical reflection become necessitating? When does it necessarily impact behaviour? Could it be simply when there is a total correlation between the life of the philosopher and his/her rational and empirical concerns? Here is for instance what Flanagan claims: Simply put, the attraction of James the philosopher is that he is to me the best example I know of a person doing philosophy; there is no hiding the person behind the work, no way of discussing the work without the person, no way to make believe that there is a way to do philosophy that is not personal.10

The heuristic hypothesis inspired by the reading of Whitehead’s definition of speculative philosophy is thus the following: persuasion strikes when rational and empirical conviction merge, an event that takes place under the spell so to speak of an individual who is precisely embodying that synthesis. To conclude our exercise of applied typology: we argue that insiders and outsiders are likely to be convinced of the relevance of some form of Whiteheadian process thought for different reasons. But this still does not say much about their persuasion. Living philosophy needs to be a lived discipline. Whiteheadians will not only convince their fellow philosophers and scientists but persuade them of the value of their categories when they will be themselves living philosophical—spiritual if you like—examples. Socrates would have talked about the call of authenticity, Whitehead provides two concepts to specify this in a perhaps more pedestrian manner: duty and reverence.

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3. Duty and Reverence in the Light of the Creative Advance According to Whitehead, Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.11

This claim, that occurs in the specific context of a philosophy of education lecture, has a direct relevance to our discussion. First because it points at the “religious” dimension of education that mirrors the spiritual dimension of existence. Second, because it is easy to see at work in these lines the conditions of possibility of the “creative advance” itself. To argue that the core concept of the late Whitehead is the “creative advance of nature” is an inspiring move that discloses three fundamental characteristics of all processes—creativity, efficacy and vision. All actualities (according to their grade) are creative in so far as they embody new contrasts and intensities in a new extensive region (in the technical sense of Process and Reality’s Part IV). By definition, the extensive region occupied by the new actuality was never previously occupied by any actuality and will never be occupied again by some other actuality; furthermore, the exact same contrasts were not possible before and will not be possible after the given concrescence; for its part, the intensity of its experience, in so far as it is eminently private, is sepulchral, incomparable. Actualities are efficacious through their structural (objective and superjective) world-loyalty. Every actuality springs from the efficacy of its past (or prehended “actual world”) and, in its turn, occasions a certain type of future. The comparison of embodied intensities is only possible in this structural context, i.e., ex post. Actualities are visionary through the instantiation of a trend towards higher intensities of experience. The sole interplay of creativity and efficacy does not guarantee any creative advance at all, only the ruthlessness of existence. Creativity is indeed totally wild while efficacy imposes a blind necessity upon the creative outbursts. It has been often remarked that Whitehead was a Victorian gentleman whose supreme

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optimism had been directly inspired by the techno-scientific utopia of his peers (cf. Francis Bacon and Thomas Henry Huxley, perhaps tamed by Samuel Butler), which is itself inseparable from his Zeitgeist, made of nineteenth Century Romanticism, of Darwinian evolutionism, and of a blind faith in the accelerating industrial revolution and in the civilizing importance of British colonialism. In sum, from the perspective of human beings, creativity is indeed the crux of the creative advance, but it is by no means the entire story: efficacy involves duty and vision involves reverence. Ignoring duty and reverence would be equivalent to act as if we were stuck at Piaget’s preoperational stage (roughly ages 2-7, when motor skills are coordinated but without any significant mental actions on objects)—or even perhaps at the sensorimotor stage (roughly ages 0-2). The thirst for creativity would be unquenchable and its likely outcome probably full of sound and fury.

4. Conclusion—Creativity and Philosophical Commitment The strong processual context advocated by Whitehead asks us to become worthy of the creative advance, which involves preciously cultivating duty and reverence. The individual who achieves this worthiness will be persuasive. The future of Whiteheadian scholarship depends indeed upon creative individuals who are able to take upon themselves the living ideal of philosophy and to be thus a vibrant example for their community and beyond. But isolated individuals, whatever their creativity, cannot achieve much without institutional support (and when they almost unexpectedly do, this gives only a meagre idea of what they could have done with proper support). Last but not least, without vision, the creative individual can benefit from whatever structural support his/her output will only be the result of chance backed by necessity. A (replicable?) Whiteheadian scholarly tri-une archetype comes to mind: John Cobb, Claremont’s Center for Process Studies and a certain Christian vision for the common good. In Whitehead’s words: Morality of outlook is inseparably conjoined with generality of outlook. The antithesis between the general good and the individual interest can be abolished only when the individual is such that its interest is the general good, thus exemplifying the loss of the minor

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intensities in order to find them again with finer composition in a wider sweep of interest.12

Right wing philosophy, that roots itself in a standpoint that seeks to promote only the interests of half percent of the population, is a tragic oxymoron—full stop. Now, neither creativity nor vision can be taught. Vision can be shared or suggested by interplay of scholarship and commitment—not learned. Creativity is a universal gift that has to be activated by the individual who decidedly takes the risk of adventure. When Whitehead speaks of adventure he obviously thinks more of a successful Victorian exploration than to the tragedy of the elusive authenticity of existence and it is thus advisable to temper his fundamental optimism with the help of William James, who has indeed shown unambiguously that the philosophical quest is intrinsically risky (remember Plato's “beautiful risk”). Efficacy is the easiest bit in so far as it involves only (!) material and intellectual resources that can be pragmatically made use of. Who else than a prophetic process poet could provide the right banner for our speculations? In Blake’s œuvre, Urizen refers both to the horizon of our civilization and to your reason as it shapes our common destiny.13 When reason is bifurcative, reductive, when it most desires “joy without pain” and a “solid without fluctuation” (The Book of Urizen, 1794, Chapter 2), it is a closed horizon that is in the making and a doomed future that torments if not threatens all forms of life. Persuasion is in vain. When reason is holistic, the open horizon of the creative advance can again animate our very existences and, through duty and reverence, announce liberation. This must be the reason why education—the art of the utilisation of knowledge—has to be, in Whitehead’s lexicon, religious. According to process philosophers, “[t]he problem with the man is less what act he shall now choose to do, than what being he shall now resolve to become.”14 The same holds for schools of thought.

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Notes 1

This article was originally written for the first issue of the Balkan Journal of Philosophy, edited by Vesselin Petrov. On the heuristics of the creative advance, see the third section of this study and Whitehead’s Pancreativism. The Basics. Foreword by Nicholas Rescher, Frankfurt / Paris, ontos verlag, 2006. 2

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, and New York, Macmillan, 1929. Reprint: New York, Macmillan Free Press, 1969. Corrected edition: Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, New York and London, The Free Press. A division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. and Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1978, p. 7. 3 M. Weber, Whitehead’s Pancreativism, op. cit. 4

Whitehead does not speak of greater adequacy, only of adequation— hence the focus imaginarius effect involved in his use of the criterion. 5

“L’Anglais veut comprendre chaque chose et non toutes choses; il préfère la contradiction dans l’ensemble de la théorie à la méconnaissance d’un caractère de fait particulier.” (Jean Wahl, Les Philosophies pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amérique [Thèse principale], Paris, Librairie Félix Alcan, Bibliothèque de Philosophie Contemporaine, 1920, p. 87.) See for instance what Whitehead says of religion and dogma in Religion in the Making (1926), chapter II. 6

“A three-fold commonness” (Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind. Onevolume edition, San Diego, New York, London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978, p. 50). 7

The Urdoxastic theme is present throughout Husserl’s thinking, from the published work to the Nachlaß: in §104 of the first volume of the Ideen (1913), in his “pre-Copernician” essay (“Die Urarche Erde bewegt sich nicht” [1934], in Philosophical Essays in Memory of E. Husserl, New York, Greenwood Press, 1988, pp. 307-325), and in the Introduction of Erfahrung und Urteil (1939/1954). 8

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'Invisible. Suivi de Notes de travail. Texte établi par Claude Lefort, accompagné d'un avertissement et d'une postface, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, Bibliothèque des Idées, 1964, pp. 17 sq.

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9

David Ray Griffin and Huston Smith, Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1989, esp. pp. 90-91. 10

Owen Flanagan, “Consciousness as a Pragmatist Views It,” in Putnam, Ruth Anna, ed. The Cambridge Companion to William James, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 47. 11

Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, New York and London, The MacMillan Company and Williams and Norgate, 1929. Reprint: New York, The Free Press, 1967, p. 17. 12

Process and Reality, p. 15.

13

Cf. Peter Ackroyd, Blake: A Biography, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. 14

William James, Principles of Psychology [1890]. Authorized Edition in two volumes. Volume Two, New York / London, Henry Holt & Co. / The MacMillan Company, 1890, Vol. I, p. 288, debating Schopenhauer.

II. Mementos of a Timequake: Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism Randall E. Auxier In order to discover some of the major categories under which we can classify the infinitely various components of experience, we must appeal to evidence relating to every variety of occasion. Nothing can be omitted, experience drunk and experience sober, experience sleeping and experience waking, experience drowsy and experience wide awake, experience self-conscious and experience self-forgetful, experience intellectual and experience physical, experience religious and experience sceptical, experience anxious and experience care-free, experience anticipatory and experience retrospective, experience happy and experience grieving, experience dominated by emotion and experience under self-restraint, experience in the light and experience in the dark, experience normal and experience abnormal.1

In a way, I am arguing with Lewis Ford’s book The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics, 1925-1929,2 and in a way I am arguing with the preponderance of Whitehead scholars. There is a sort of standard story about the development of Whitehead’s metaphysics which is not altogether incorrect, but it rests on a disastrous misunderstanding of his orientation on the scope and limits of philosophy, and upon the way that methods of inquiry are subordinate to working hypotheses in philosophy. Whitehead was a radical empiricist, following William James, Henri Bergson and John Dewey. (see PR xii) One can be a radical empiricist without being a pragmatist, as I will explain.3

1. The Unholy Trinity Whitehead always held that metaphysics is descriptive and hypothetical in character, and that philosophical hypotheses do not yield ontological

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knowledge. For example, Whitehead says that “speculative philosophy embodies the method of the ‘working hypothesis’.” He continues: The purpose of this working hypothesis for philosophy is to coordinate the current expressions of human experience, in common speech, in social institutions, in actions, in the principles of the various special sciences, elucidating harmony and exposing discrepancies. No systematic thought has made progress apart from some adequately general working hypothesis, adapted to its special topic.4

In this essay, I will make more of the way in which working hypotheses are adapted to their special topics in Whitehead’s own inquiries. Whitehead uses the word “theory” to describe a working hypothesis when it is adjusted to the proper level of generality, and co-ordinated with the needed concepts for the purposes of a given inquiry.5 But for the moment, we ask, do “working hypotheses” or “theories” in philosophy result in ontological knowledge?” Whitehead says they do not: “Philosophy has been afflicted by the dogmatic fallacy, which is the belief that the principles of its working hypotheses are clear, obvious, and irreformable.”6 That is, philosophers think that their hypotheses, when taken as principles, provide them with ontological knowledge. By “ontological knowledge” I mean basically the set of characteristics Dewey associated with “the quest for certainty,” which I would summarize as an unholy trinity in which the necessitarian structure of logic is used to close the gap between knowing or experiencing something, on one side, and the being or existence of the thing known or experienced on the other side. The tradition of associating logical and epistemological necessity with ontological necessity, which I call the “unholy trinity,” was the basis for claiming ontological knowledge from Aristotle up to the mid-nineteenth century. As the last 150 years have unfolded, the old assumptions about all types of necessity have come unraveled. All philosophy, and most science, that depends upon the iron association of logical, cognitive and ontological necessity has become untenable. It became finally unempirical with the discovery and advance of the quantum theory, which Whitehead embraced and made the basis for his investigation of cosmology. Just as he sought to separate the “principle of relativity” from its applications in 1922, he separated the quantum principle from its applications within the physical aspect of our present cosmic epoch. There are a few places in Process and Reality where Whitehead speculates as to whether the quantum principle might not also be found in other cosmic epochs, and also whether other cosmic epochs can be co-ordinately divided. He supposes that “perhaps” they must be, but does not assert that there can be no alternatives. In

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speaking of the structure of cosmic epochs other than our own, Whitehead always uses carefully qualified language. Within our own cosmic epoch, however, he embraces the quantum theory, and its indetermination, and yet insists that “cosmology must do equal justice to atomism, to continuity, to causation, to memory, to perception, to qualitative and quantitative forms of energy, and to extension.” (PR 239, my emphasis) This equal justice may involve giving the minima of our cosmic epoch, the actual entities and eternal objects, a certain interpretive finality, but such finality will still have to answer to the demands of applicability to experience as it is had. As a result of this great change in our understanding of physical reality (the quantum theory, made into a quantum principle by Whitehead), most scientists simply will not speak of “laws of nature” these days, except as approximate descriptions of regularities that can be profitably generalized, and even then they balk at the word “law,” for fear it will be taken in a universal and invariate sense.7 And as a negative example (of what not to do), the conception of “rationality” used by mainstream analytic philosophies is dependent upon at least the association of logical and ontological necessity (this is the very meaning of “rationality” in the way the term is used), and to the extent that scientific conceptions of knowledge have moved beyond this out-dated idea of necessity, science rightly ignores the demands made by mainstream philosophy that science should be or must be “rational.”8 Although most philosophy departments have not gotten the news, rationality today is based on the structure of possibility and probability, not on the structure of necessity; and knowledge today does not require necessity of any kind–logical, psychological / cognitive / epistemological, or ontological. Scientific knowledge is built upon responsible generalization, not upon deduced necessities from supposedly invariable universal necessities. At its most general levels, scientific theory is, in short, an ordering of possibilities. At its less general levels, scientific knowledge is a quest for the probable, and a statement of the best predictions our current tools (both intellectual and physical) can make. Even the movements, following C.I. Lewis, to reinvent logic so as to deal effectively with possibility, have been rendered largely pointless because they have clung to various modes of necessity to account for possibility, with each version of modal logic interpreting possibility according to a slightly varied sense of necessity and its corresponding notion of validity.9 So long as necessity is taken to be the guarantor of rationality, the conception of rationality advocated will be as useless to science as it is to practical life. I will not here rehearse the sins of David Lewis’s “modal realism”; I will only make the point that realism, when it adopts a narrow conception of rationality and necessity, has been left behind by any

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philosophy that has a genuine chance of surviving in the present century and beyond. This is another way of saying that radical empiricism has triumphed everywhere except in philosophy departments. Whitehead’s ontology presents living ideas precisely because it does not employ necessity of the indefensible kind for its ground. Whitehead’s ontology is grounded in the assumed primacy of the possible, and whatever necessity may be, it is subordinate to possibility.10 Thus, Whitehead never subscribed to the unholy trinity.11 For him, the broader aesthetic order grasped by imagination is prior to the enlivening exercise of reason upon the possibilities imagination presents.12 But since there is an entrenched habit of reading Whitehead as though he embraced ontological necessity and associated it with logical necessity, atomizing every possible world, it is needful that we begin to modify that habit in order to show the relevance of Whitehead to our viable contemporary conceptions of knowledge, which are proposed and used almost exclusively outside of philosophy departments by people who rightly ignore what philosophy talks about.

2. Radical Empiricism I want to make it clear that by “radical empiricism,” I do not mean a “method” in philosophy. It is a broad orientation on the scope and limits of philosophy itself, within which any number of methods might be adopted, including but not limited to pragmatism. Let us begin at the source. William James wrote: Radical empiricism consists first of a postulate, next of a statement of fact, and finally of a generalized conclusion. The postulate is that the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms from experience. The statement of fact is that relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are JUST MATTERS OF DIRECT PARTICULAR EXPERIENCE, neither more nor less so than the things themselves. The generalized conclusion is that therefore the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure.13

It is not crucial here to pin down every historical detail to show that Whitehead was a radical empiricist in precisely James’ sense. I think he was.14 Part of the reason is that what James called the philosopher’s fallacy,

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and what Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, are not avoidable unless one is a radical empiricist. So I am comfortable with the following exclusive disjunction: either Whitehead is a radical empiricist or Whitehead is guilty of misplaced concreteness. Whitehead certainly traded in abstractions, so what safeguards an abstraction-dealer from misplacing a few of them? It is really quite simple: never claim ontological knowledge for your metaphysical descriptions. The place where I depart from Lewis Ford in particular, and many other readers of Whitehead, has to do with whether Whitehead claims “ontological knowledge,” or indeed whether the logical rigor and rational necessity in his metaphysics entitles us to claim that actual entities temporally atomizing the extensive continuum, of necessity, exist. Ford wisely leaves open the question of whether Whitehead’s “claims” are in fact true of the universe and Ford restricts himself to interpreting what Whitehead thought and when he thought it. But it is assumed by Ford, as by so many others, that Whitehead took himself to be claiming ontological knowledge. This is simply incorrect. A close reading of Whitehead’s defense of speculative metaphysics at the opening of Process and Reality shows that Whitehead never claims any such thing there, and his discourse on the scope and limits of philosophy in Adventures of Ideas (pp. 220 and following) is only one of several places one can check to confirm it— indeed he never makes a claim of ontological knowledge anywhere. In fact, Whitehead comes closer to claiming that extension, undivided divisibility (and hence, contingent continuity) would have to be a feature of any cosmic epoch. (PR 288) If one were to try to pin on Whitehead a claim of ontological knowledge, there would be far more persuasive evidence to support the claim that irreducible extension is a metaphysical necessity than to assert that temporal atomicity is such. Whitehead could not possibly be clearer than he is about qualifying what he means by “time” as simply the first determination (i.e., a contingent division, conditioning subsequent divisions) of the extensive continuum in our own cosmic epoch. One might approach a defense of Whitehead’s radical empiricism relative to any of a number of topics, but I think I can safely restrict my demonstration to the issue of what Ford calls Whitehead’s “discovery” of “temporal atomicity” (a term Whitehead himself never uses). As Ford reads the text, in works prior to 1925, Whitehead defended a view of overlapping temporal events, or an overlapping hierarchy of durational epochs, but by 1929, Whitehead was defending “temporal atomicity,” the view that “continuity concerns what is potential whereas actuality is incurably atomic,”15 and that there is a “becoming of continuity but no continuity of becoming.”16 Understanding what temporal atomicity is, in the context of

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Whitehead’s radical empiricism, is our present aim, as an important illustration of our larger claims about how he conceives of philosophy, how methods are subordinate to working hypotheses and “theories,” and how this result provides some instruction for how to read Whitehead.

3. Mementos of a Timequake I could discuss the problem of temporality by means of the distinction between transition and concrescence (see, for example, PR 208 ff.), as would be typical among Whiteheadians, but I worry about staying closer to integral experience, “unwarped by the sophistications of theory.” (PR 208) Thus, I will approach the question of Whitehead’s radical empiricism in relation to “temporal atomicity” using a pair of artworks, the film Memento, written by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, and directed by the latter, and Kurt Vonnegut’s whimsical 1996 memoir Timequake. These two works point to the central problem of temporality in experiential terms, and will nicely orient us upon the problem of framing any sort of empirically adequate philosophy about time. We begin by confronting the problem of discontinuity—which is the very problem posed by “temporal atomicity.” Memento teaches us the problem of discontinuity “from the inside out,” or with the question, “what of the continuity of concrescence?” The story assumes that time is continuous and orderly in the objective world, but our central character Leonard Shelby has suffered a head injury and can no longer move his short-term memories into long-term memory.17 There is no problem with his perception, but his world effectively begins anew every five minutes or so. In order to live life, Leonard has to find ways of arranging the objective and efficacious world so that he can compensate for a crippling discontinuity in his concrscence, and most importantly, he must discern the difference between the truth and deception. Is there an adequate method of arranging the objective world so as to compensate for radical discontinuity of our internal temporality? Leonard combines many methods, but the most poignant among them is tattooing on his body true propositions, certainties. These get him into trouble, eventually, since it turns out that they may not all be true. In fact, the sentences tattooed on Leonard’s body come closer to being lures for feeling than certainties. Nevermind that. It’s a different problem than the one I am treating here. My point is a small one. How Leonard remembers that the things on his body are “truths” is one of many problems the Nolans cannot really solve, since it requires the continuity, in Leonard’s memory, of the proposition “the propositions on my body are true,” to be both true and to hold from

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one radical break to the next in Leonard’s experience. This is how, having posited radical discontinuity, or subjective temporal atomicity, the Nolans smuggle temporal continuity back into Leonard’s inner experience. Without the cheating, there is no story. Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake teaches us the problem of discontinuity “from the outside in,” or relating to the problem of transition. In this fanciful memoir, the universe suffers a tiny crisis of confidence regarding its own “decision” to expand. It pauses, hiccoughs, contracts for just a moment, and then recovers its confidence and expands again. The “moment” of contraction turns out to be almost exactly ten years on earth, which is nothing much from the standpoint of the universe, but it’s a significant durational epoch for the little creatures on earth, as they have to live the years 1991 to 2001 all over again. Disappointingly, they quickly discover that they are not free to change anything they did—which suggests to Vonnegut that in fact they weren’t really free the first time either, they just didn’t know what would happen, so their actions and decisions felt like “free will.” When the rerun of those ten years ends, and “free will” (i.e., ignorance of the future) kicks in again, everyone is caught off guard, having become bored with the rerun, and all sorts of accidents occur because people have to start actively paying attention to things like steering their cars and watching where they are going. Vonnegut is toying with Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, of course, but he would have no story at all if he didn’t assume that people were conscious of the fact that the rerun is a rerun. This is to say, they all remember the timequake and retain their memories of the events that have happened to them before, and will again, and they remain conscious of the radical objective discontinuity in external physical time, the timequake, even though they are not free to study it or do anything to prevent it, or make any different decisions while reliving the ten years. Vonnegut thus compensates for the discontinuity of the objective space/time continuum by smuggling in the continuity of particular conscious experience, the memories of all the people. Otherwise timequakes could be occurring all the time and it wouldn’t matter, since no one would be aware that reruns were reruns—and this idea is actually closer to Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same, but it doesn’t frame a story in any interesting way, and it’s a purely imaginative construction, not an experiential possibility.18 When we mess around with the idea of time’s continuity, whether it is the continuity (or at least the accumulative tendency) of internal time consciousness, or the assumed continuity of objective temporality, things get strange in a hurry. It is not actually possible to make phenomenological

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or narrative sense of radical temporal discontinuity, or as one might just as well call it, temporal atomicity. It would be difficult to reconcile the assertion of temporal atomicity, as ontologically basic, with may things Whitehead says, but let me offer two, in light of the examples above. Regarding the problem of external time, transition, Whitehead speaks in the language of causal efficacy and says: The reason why the cause is objectively in the effect is that the cause’s feeling cannot, as a feeling, be abstracted from its subject which is the cause. The passage of the cause into the effect is the cumulative character of time. The irreversibility of time depends on this character. (PR 237)

Thus, Leonard Shelby really does accumulate experience, whether the writers admit it or not, for without this accumulation, there would be no arrow of events. Even though the film is presented in reverse chronological order, to confuse us further, still, the accumulation of experience is presupposed in the way Shelby perceives his actual world. On the other side, what Whitehead says above leads us to wonder what could “cause” Vonnegut’s timequake. The “crisis of confidence” the universe has in its expanding is the given “cause,” and it is fitting that a momentary multiplicity is presented to the universe and the universe cannot, for a moment at least, make of that multiplicity a generic contrast, so that the datum the universe is feeling (which involves us as components) has to be ejected wholesale and re-integrated as a usable generic contrast a second time. But that cannot happen in our cosmic epoch because this feeling, this crisis of confidence, cannot be abstracted from the universe that is feeling it. This is the principle of subjective unity. Without it, there is neither time nor expansion of the physical universe. As Whitehead says, “simple physical feelings embody the reproductive character of nature, and also the objective immortality of the past. In virtue of these feelings, time is the conformation of the immediate present to the past.” In short, Vonnegut’s universe would have no datum to which it could conform if it had a timequake. Again, and I stress this, continuity is basic, and atomicity is a division of continuity, even temporal continuity, which is itself a way of dividing extension. In order to make sense of the supposition of radical discontinuity, we must cheat, and reintroduce continuity at some other level of supposition. But we need not go to the world of film or literature to find compelling versions of this problem. Whitehead was a mathematician. He understood the problem of continuity very well indeed. Getting from any natural number to the next poses the same difficulty of continuity. If one supposes the natural numbers as a continuum, say, a number line, that continuum is

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subject then to the same problems time suffers in the hands of the Nolans and Vonnegut. How many ways can we introduce discreteness between, say, 3 and 4? Infinitely many ways. But is there genuine, ontological discreteness between three and four? We don’t really know; the Pythagoreans thought there was, but for more modern number theory the situation is relative. In the case of 0 and 1, for example, for certain mathematical inquiries we do suppose, hypothetically, an absolute break in the continuum, in order to commit to binary coding the situation we observe when either a circuit is complete or not complete. We know that empirically, the situation is not absolutely discontinuous. We know that some energy moves between and through an incomplete circuit, but we discount that because it is negligible compared to what happens when a circuit is “completed.” In fact, if the circuit were not at least potentially complete-able, there would be no point in describing it at all.19 Yet, we have no compunction about calling the completed situation “1” or “the switch is on” and the incomplete situation “0” or “the switch is off.” In binary, the discontinuity between 1 and 0 is, abstractly at least, radical discreteness—we choose either “1” or “0” to represent the situation, and there is nothing in between. The description of the situation for the sake of binary is idealized (i.e., it is a “theory” prescribing a method); we begin with a continuous empirical situation—the continuity of a potentially complete-able circuit, and encode it with discrete characters for certain purposes. If we take numbers to be our imaginative descriptions, then binary is sort of like Leonard Shelby’s efforts to tattoo words on his body to arrange the physical world in a reliable way. There is a sense in which binary code is far more reliable, and to that extent “truer,” than actual circuitry. It would be like offering Leonard some phrases he could really count on, more than he can count on the empirical world to live up to them. In calculus, of course, the situation is reversed. We begin with a discrete empirical situation, say, where the moon is observed to be now, and where it will be a year from now—two discrete observed places, and we attempt to find symbols to integrate the two. We still use 0 and 1, but now as extremes or continuous poles of what we seek to measure. The whole effort is to find ways of overcoming the discontinuity (very real) between both 0 and 1 and between the position and motion of a body at one time, and its position and motion at another time. Things approaching one another asymptotically meet at 1, in infinity of course, for calculus, but empirically, well, the moon gets where it is going, just as Achilles outruns the tortoise and his arrow arrives at the target. Numerical continuity is created by a recursive function so as to approximate the continuous change in an empirical body, at least when we make no errors in the calculation. This

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abstract recreation of motion is not greatly different from the timequake, if we think of the moon’s motion as the first run through and our calculus as the rerun. In both of these examples, the irreducible assumption is not that of atomicity but of extension. As Whitehead expresses this point: The atomic actual entities individually express the genetic unity of the universe. The world expands through recurrent unifications of itself, each, by the addition of itself, automatically recreating the multiplicity anew […]. [And] for certain purposes, the actual world is to be conceived as a mere indefinite multiplicity. But this conclusion is to be limited by the principle of extensive order which steps in. The atomic unity of the world, expressed by a multiplicity of atoms, is now replaced by the solidarity of the extensive continuum. This solidarity embraces not only the coordinate divisions within each atomic actuality, but also exhibits the coordinate divisions of all atomic actualities from each other in one scheme of relationship. (PR 286)

This schema is the solidarity of the extensive continuum, which is, for Whitehead, indefinable and also cannot be explained, although its formal characteristics may be stated (PR 288). In short, temporal atomicity, far from being a necessary ontological feature of the universe, is a descriptive strategy for getting at undivided divisibility, or irreducible extension. Whitehead says immediately after that all “dimensions,” including time, if it is treated as a dimension, are added onto and not derivable from extension. In short, we have to postulate temporal atomicity. (PR 289)20 It is the way we divide in the first instance, the undivided divisible, designating a basic quantum of discontinuity, and we employ “time” as the divider because experience suggests to us time’s priority over space. This is to say nothing of the way we have to scratch our heads about quantum discontinuity in relation to relativity (which is continuity on a fairly grand scale). It is not as if Whitehead lacks awareness of this situation. His writings from the first make it abundantly evident that he is a master of dealing with both sorts of discontinuity, those associated with concrescence and those associated with transition. Do his interpreters believe he would simply grow impatient with this issue of division when it comes to metaphysics? Would he suddenly make a final assertion about how things really are, choosing discontinuity as the final reality and continuity as an appearance? The text simply does not support any such reading. Whitehead does not believe temporal atomicity is “just the way things are.” He believes that metaphysics needs, in order to give a description that is logically rigorous and empirically adequate, to privilege

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atomicity, and indeed temporal atomicity, as its first act of dividing the extensive continuum, and all he means by this is precisely what James meant is saying that “direct particular experience” is the stated fact of his radical empiricism. Direct particular experience is the kind of experience to which metaphysics must answer. If we insist or assert that there is any sort of thing as “experience in general,” which is neither yours, nor mine, nor anyone’s, then we commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Experience is always, as far as we know, experience from some particular perspective, and since we do not know much about the “experience” of non-human beings, we cannot safely postulate that all experience is like human experience. Nor can we easily be certain what characteristics of human experience are shared by others beings, and which are accidents of our kind of existing, and we certainly cannot safely generalize the temporal or atomic structure of our experience beyond our own cosmic epoch. To make our way of experiencing the measuring rod of all that exists is the mistake Protagoras made. So Whitehead postulates the “actual entity” as a metaphysical version of a geometrical point, calls it a “drop of experience” (James’s phrase), and denies to it any alteration or change as a matter of definition. The actual entity is a complex temporal unity, dividing extensity, for the purposes of metaphysical description. In the end, we will have no choice but to restore its continuity with other actual entities, and that is what the co-ordinate phase of inquiry does (which I will discuss further in the next section).21 Co-ordinate analysis proceeds algebraically by emphasizing what is structurally common and internal to the relatedness of the whole to any actual entity (as distinct from the self-externalizing achievement of satisfied concrescence, which is “narrative”). The structural description is co-present throughout the whole; no narrative can be constructed, but values that satisfy the requirements of a co-ordinate description of any given actual entity are structurally continuous with all other values.22 Whitehead is simply balancing James in this, when James says: “my ‘radical’ empiricism denies the flux’s discontinuity, making conjunctive relations essential members of it as given, and charging the conceptual function with being the creator of factitious incoherencies.”23 But James could only get good phenomenology this way, not good metaphysics. When it comes to the arrangement of the objective world in accordance with this kind of continuity, James is about as badly off as Leonard Shelby, and cannot distinguish a true proposition from one that merely seems to work. The other side of radical empiricism denies to the flux its continuity of becoming, in order to make it yield to spatialization. That gets us good

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metaphysics, but its descriptions have a kind of necessity that is untrue to experience. No one would say Whitehead is a determinist, so the necessity in the logical rigor required of good metaphysics has to submit to some limitation. Yet, in order to be a consistent “temporal atomist,” if Whitehead really believed this were a bit of ontological knowledge, determinism would be his only option, since he would be allowing logical necessity to become ontological necessity in governing whole-part relations (as Vonnegut does in Timequake). As Whitehead puts it: [F]or our epoch, extensive connection, with its various characteristics, is the fundamental organic relationship whereby the physical world is properly described as a community. There are no important relationships outside the physical scheme. To be an actual occasion in the physical world means that the entity in question is a relatum in this scheme of extensive connection. In this epoch, the scheme defines what is physically actual. The more ultimate side of this scheme, perhaps the side which is metaphysically necessary, is at once evident by the consideration of the mutual implication of extensive whole and extensive part. If you abolish the whole, you abolish its parts; if you abolish any part, then that whole is abolished. (PR 288, first emphasis mine).

This is as close to metaphysical necessity as Whitehead ever gets—that perhaps the mutual relations of whole and part, considered in relation to the extensive continuum itself, are such as to render this rule of abolition a metaphysical necessity. But radical empiricism, so long as it treats experience as particular experience, can have a good metaphysics. In fact, it does have a good metaphysics. It is in Process and Reality, and there Whitehead’s hypothetical Ontological Principle is what guarantees that misplaced concreteness will not occur. But he does not take the principles of his working hypothesis to be “clear, obvious and irreformable.” He adopts a version of the ontological principle for this one inquiry, and different versions of it for other inquiries. He makes clear that the ground of the ontological principle is in the formal structure of co-ordinate division itself. (PR 283)

4. How to Read Whitehead I will now make a suggestion as to how we should understand Whitehead’s structural organization of his inquiries in his various works, and how method is subordinate to “theory,” or working hypotheses, therein. The first

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thing to be aware of is that Whitehead is not attempting phenomenology in any of his inquiries. The description of experience that denies discontinuity to the perceptual flux, so as to discover discreteness in acts of consciousness (and structures and principles) is not Whitehead’s aim. He knows very well its importance, but it is not his task. If Whitehead were to have a phenomenology, it would, I think, look very much like the one Ernst Cassirer created in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, since culture and nature were Whitehead’s preoccupations, not consciousness and psychology. Wilbur Urban, who contributed essays to both of the important Library of Living Philosophers volumes on Whitehead and Cassirer,24 identifies the issue in attempting to bring together the ideas of Cassirer and Whitehead as follows: If the ideal form and immanental law of all knowledge is, indeed, to be found in the mathematical-physical sciences, then it would seem the symbolism of metaphysics must also be a symbolism of relations and that a philosophy of events, such as that of Whitehead for instance, would necessarily be the resultant metaphysics. On the other hand, if it is true, as we are told by Cassirer, that science as symbolic form has no exclusive value, but is only one way of constructing reality, and has value only from the standpoint of science, then it would appear that a metaphysics, to be adequate, must be a metaphysics of art and religion also and must have a language and symbolic form which includes these forms also—in which case it could no longer be a symbolism of relations merely, but must be a symbolism of things also.25

Here Urban expresses a point of view quite common not only among critics of both Whitehead and Cassirer, but even among their most sympathetic interpreters. The main failure of understanding in Urban’s comment is that he does not grasp “relation” as a concrete metaphysical hypothesis (what Whitehead calls “feeling”), but sees it only in its logical or mathematical sense, seeming to assume that method is prior to theory. He has not understood that for Cassirer and Whitehead, there are no “things,” in science, religion, art, or any other symbolic domain, until the “things” are constituted as the highly mediated outcome of a symbolization process. Nor has Urban appreciated that art, religion, etc., are modes of symbolization, ways of relating to and having a “world.” He has rightly intuited that a metaphysics of events like Whitehead’s is appropriate to the type of philosophizing Cassirer is doing, but he has not considered that there are “events” in more than the scientific sense of the term. Yet, he rightly recognizes that the tendency of Cassirer, in keeping with Whitehead, to

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endow science with the highest authority in “knowledge” is puzzling to many in light of their similar claim that science is an embedded and thoroughly mediated form of culture. Urban, like so many other 20th century realists, is assuming that science, done rightly (i.e., according to its “method”), has a privileged ontological path to the way things are, independent of the knowing mind. But the question of mind-independence is a holdover from substance metaphysics, with its assumption that there is some necessary relation between “knowing” and “being” (and that this relation is secured in mathematical or logical relations). Where one assumes only possible relations between reality and knowing, and places necessity strictly within the internal operations of knowing, reality becomes a contingent process. On this point Cassirer and Whitehead agree, and in no way does this restriction reduce the authority of science. The move to treating possibility as the fundamental modal category in metaphysics simply allows us to situate scientific knowing historically and empirically and to account for the growth and alterations in our scientific claims. But philosophy deals not with nature or religion or art directly, it deals with the structures of their possibilities foremost. As Whitehead says: “Philosophy is the ascent to the generalities with the view to understanding their possibilities of combination. The discovery of new generalities thus adds to the fruitfulness of those already known. It lifts into view new possibilities of combination.”26 Its aim is philosophical knowledge. It is worthwhile at this point to give special note to something Whitehead often says near the beginning of his inquiries. Whitehead regularly complains about how little philosophy can really accomplish, blaming this usually upon “weakness of insight and deficiencies of language.” (PR 4) As a result our initial descriptions remain “metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap. ” (ibid.) The difficulty, he continues “has its seat in the empirical side of philosophy”: Our datum is the actual world, including ourselves; and this actual world spreads itself for observation in the guise of the topic of our immediate experience. The elucidation of immediate experience is the sole justification for any thought [note, not just philosophic thought]; and the starting-point for thought is the analytic observation of components of this experience. But we are not conscious of any clearcut complete analysis of immediate experience, in terms of the various details which comprise its definiteness. (PR 4)

This is the cost of radical empiricism. With this issue understood, it is nevertheless true that Cassirer and Whitehead undertake very different projects, phenomenological and metaphysical respectively, from the same

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basic convictions about process and reality. I see no fundamental disagreement between the two, but I believe that few interpreters rightly understand their full complemetarity. Interpreters of Whitehead have commonly confused the issue of the development of his ideas, the genesis of them in his intellectual biography, with the meaning and purpose of his individual works. It is common for them, and Lewis Ford is a good example, to think of each book as presaging some further development of the whole philosophy of organism, culminating, for most, in Process and Reality, with the two major books he wrote thereafter drawing out consequences. There is great value in studying Whitehead’s development, but it has led many readers to overlook the common pattern in each of his books, and very often they have misunderstood his method (and how it is dictated by a working hypothesis) along with his way of structuring an inquiry. The structure of the inquiry is essentially the same in each book, but the methods vary as conditioned by the hypotheses under consideration. Whitehead is always careful in his introductions to supply some indication of where his present inquiry fits in the general effort of thought which is philosophy itself. He carefully qualifies the project at hand and suggests its limits. The proper “criticism of a theory,” or “working hypothesis,” for Whitehead, “consists in noting its scope of useful application and its failure beyond that scope.”27 Whitehead scholars have not been careful about this point, inadequately regarding his own statements of scope and purpose. Each book is an individual inquiry into some important domain of experience. Each book proceeds along the same basic line: he will describe the phenomena under investigation to provide a version of them, how they may be seen (not how they must be seen) and then he subjects that description to a systematic analysis. In no instance does he claim that the initial description (what he would call their “genetic account” in Process and Reality) is the final or the only way of describing these phenomena. In every case he notes that their analytically detailed and systematic characterization (what he calls the “co-ordinate account” in Process and Reality) provides the justification of the genetic description he has provided. In adopting this structure Whitehead follows standard mathematical methods. One must specify the entities and rules before proceeding to a discussion of their systematic interrelations. But those interrelations provided both the motive and the ground for the genetic description. There is a great deal of freedom in specifying the phenomena or entities genetically, but the test of whether it has been done well is whether interesting systematic relations, “new generalities” and “possibilities of combination” do come to light in the co-ordinate phase of the inquiry. And

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the whole inquiry, both genetic and co-ordinate, is measured against the ways in which it elucidates experience (the sole justification for any thought). In answer to the question “why should we accept this co-ordinate division, and genetic account?” Whitehead holds that its warrant looks back to experience, first, and attempts as accurately as possible to carve out the phenomena under discussion in ways that accord with our experience. Adjustments in this genetic account are inevitable in light of our further investigation of the phenomena, but before the genetic account can be altered, the new observations must be co-ordinated. Otherwise we do not know how to specify the entities, processes and modalities under consideration. In spite of that, we are justified in specifying the phenomena to the best of our ability for the purposes of a more thorough speculative understanding of their interrelations. Thus, the genetic phase of an inquiry is a spatialization of the phenomena, under descriptive principles determined not only by the co-ordinate account, but also by the purpose of the investigation at hand, more specifically, the working hypothesis or “theory,” the common character of which is to sequence and specify those phenomena, i.e., to limit what we mean in referring to them in that context so that we can discuss them systematically. The sequencing (and hence spatializing) does not have to be historical or chronological, but it can be, as in Religion in the Making and Adventures of Ideas. In every case, however, the aim is to get the phenomena to “stand still,” to provide a conceptualization which controls for their ephemeral and changing character so as to provide us with something we can trust from one thought to the next. With the genetic description in place, and the flux controlled, we can move to an explicit co-ordinate analysis, justifying and grounding our genetic description. This is a second order spatialization, more abstract and general in terms of descriptive structure, but more concrete in respecting the “togetherness” of experience, that allows us to examine and bring to light systematic features that were immanent in the initial genetic specification of the phenomena, demonstrating how these entites were abstracted from their experienced context. The exhibition of these relations presumably enables us to see how our own activity of characterizing phenomena genetically will necessitate certain conclusions about their relations and exclude other conclusions. To alter the necessitated conditions imposed by a co-ordinate account, one must back up and alter the genetic account also, and in so doing attend again to the ways in which experience presents those phenomena we had singled out for an initial description. The point is that genetic and co-ordinate descriptions do

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condition one another, and exhibit certain necessitated relations, but both are answerable to experience. The entire undertaking is thoroughly hypothetical. No conclusion about reality in itself is forced upon us by any result in the genetic or co-ordinate accounts, because the option always remains in Whitehead’s method of altering the purpose or scope of our inquiry, or of describing the phenomena genetically using different principles. No ontological knowledge is claimed for any result, by which I mean, no knowledge of any necessary relation obtaining between the way things are in themselves, our logic, and our knowledge. It is taken for granted that the relationship between experiencing and philosophical understanding is thoroughly contingent, yet there are still pressing reasons to attempt to gain philosophical knowledge. Philosophical knowledge of a subject allows one to recognize important possibilities within the adventure of living that will be overlooked without it, to the great diminishment of life. Human progress, to the extent that it is possible, has always involved the sort of recognition of possible connections that philosophy brings. Thus, Whitehead’s books are individual inquiries into well-circumscribed aspects of experience. He first submits to the reader a genetic description and then to a co-ordinate analysis, the results of which are limited by the way in which the initial inquiry and its purposes were defined. Thus, when Whitehead confronts the multiplicity of phenomena of religious experience in Religion in the Making, he is not there interested in their implications for modern cosmology. He does not describe these phenomena in RM for the purpose of seeing their relation to cosmology, he describes them for the purposes stated: “to give a concise analysis of the various factors in human nature which go to form a religion, to exhibit the inevitable transformation of religion with the transformation of knowledge, and more especially to direct attention to the foundation of religion on our apprehension of those permanent elements of reason of which there is a stable order in the world, permanent elements apart from which there could be no changing world.” (RM, Preface) When similar concepts come up in Process and Reality, they have been described for a quite different purpose, that of investigating “a phase of philosophic thought which began with Descartes and ended with Hume.” (PR xi). In reading the interpretive literature on Whitehead, one gets the impression that Whitehead’s followers simply do not believe him when he states explicitly what he is doing and why, in spite of the fact that he goes on to explain in detail what limits he places upon each inquiry. The inquiry in PR is about the way philosophers thought between Descartes and Hume, a certain turn of thinking, novel in human history, in which the algebraic

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and geometrical modes of thought came together. PR makes no attempt at a full assessment of philosophic thought from Kant forward or prior to Descartes. The method (genetic and co-ordinate analysis) is post-Kantian, but not the subject of the inquiry. Cosmology took a wrong turn with Kant, superimposing the structures of presentational immediacy upon all experience, and cosmology is better served by working from the promising insights that pre-dated that turn. Thus, Whitehead’s major work attempts to come to terms with the fundamental insights of Modern philosophy, not unlike Cassirer’s initial project. Why? Because the moderns had some things right, lots of things. Process and Reality is an investigation of that kind of thinking, and nothing else. Another clear example of the ordering of “genetic” and “co-ordinate” analysis is hard to miss in Adventures of Ideas. Part I of that book specifies genetically, in the mode of the history of ideas, of “the influence exerted by the Platonic and Christian doctrines of the human soul upon the sociological development of the European races.” Part II specifies genetically “the influence of scientific ideas upon European culture.”28 The transition to the co-oridinate account is in Part II, where Whitehead breaks with his earlier narrative style, numbers the paragraphs into a categoreal scheme of the essential ideas that have been genetically specified, and then proceeds in subsequent chapters to analyze them in co-ordination with one another. The book’s subsequent structure requires that we pay close attention. The break between the co-ordinate analysis and the results of it does come when Whitehead moves to Part IV, but he does not there explain it. For whatever reason, he saves the explanation for the beginning of the final chapter, but he is perfectly explicit about what he has done and how. He says: Our discussions have concerned themselves with specializations in History, of seven Platonic generalities, namely, The Ideas, The Physical Elements, The Psyche, The Eros, The Harmony, The Mathematical Relations, The Receptacle. The historical references have been selected and grouped with the purpose of illustrating the energizing of specializations of these seven general notions among the peoples of Western Europe, driving them towards their civilization.29

The co-ordination of these seven general notions preceded and provides a ground for their genetic specification, but in the exposition, the genetic specification is presented first. We find the justification for that specification only later. So the presentation of the selection (of the seven notions) was done in the genetic accounts of Parts I and II, and the grouping was done in the co-ordinate account of Part II. “Selection” and “grouping” are simply other names for genetic and co-ordinate analysis. In

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a way, one can see that these Platonic ideas function similarly in the domain of a philosophy of Western civilization as “symbolic forms” function for Cassirer’s much broader “philosophy of culture.” Whitehead goes on: “Finally, in this fourth and last Part of the book, those essential qualities, whose joint realization in social life constitutes civilization, are being considered. Four such qualities have, so far, been examined:—Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art.”30 Such structural statements as these are the ones that reveal Whitehead’s method, and they cannot be overlooked. For Whitehead, “Truth,” for example, does not mean the same thing from one inquiry to another, for scientific truth and historical truth are related but separate ideas, and they require different genetic phenomena and coordinate analysis to show their meaning, each answerable to its own domain of experience. To assume, for example that the account of “Truth” in Adventures of Ideas trumps the account in Inquiry into the Principles of Natural Knowledge, or Science and the Modern World, or Process and Reality is simply to miss what Whitehead does in a book. The mistake is to generalize the results of one inquiry into or out of the results of another in which the phenomena have been co-ordinated and genetically specified for other and different purposes, with different results. It cannot be assumed that later books reveal a development or change in Whitehead’s basic ideas. Perhaps there is development, but it is not because he says different things about, for example, Truth. What Whitehead says about Truth in Adventures of Ideas is tied intimately to the genetic specification and co-ordinate analysis of truth in that book, and for its purposes. The results are dependent upon this way of approaching it. It is revisable. One can coordinate the togetherness of a domain of experience differently, genetically specify different phenomena, or the same phenomena in other ways. The co-ordinate analysis is more restricted, because of its answerability to the concrete togetherness of experience, yet from any genetic specification, infinitely many co-ordinate analyses may be undertaken. The one we get in a given book is the co-ordination from which Whitehead began. For example, one need not choose just the seven notions Whitehead chose in Adventures of Ideas, nor Plato’s articulation of them. One could choose other notions, or co-ordinate the same notions differently. In Process and Reality, Whitehead chose, instead of those seven, the following: The aim of the philosophy of organism is to express a coherent cosmology based upon the notions of ‘system,’ ‘process,’ ‘creative advance into novelty,’ ‘res vera’ (in Descartes’ sense), ‘stubborn fact,’ ‘individual unity of experience,’ ‘feeling,’ ‘time as perpetual perishing,’ ‘endurance as re-creation,’ ‘purpose,’ ‘universals as forms

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By my count, that is twelve notions that in Process and Reality are coordinated, then presented genetically, and finally justified co-ordinately. There is nothing else done in Process and Reality that is a part of the formal inquiry. There are side notes and speculations along the way, but the inquiry treats only these notions. Further, and note well, Whitehead says immediately after providing this list of notions, “Every one of these notions is explicitly formulated either by Descartes or by Locke. Also, no one can be dropped without doing violence to common sense. But neither Descartes nor Locke weaves these notions into one coherent system of cosmology.” (PR 128) The inquiry answers to common sense and experience, which provides these notions whole, and as a group. Process and Reality seeks only to co-ordinate them coherently, in one possible way that they may find co-ordination, not the only possible way. To claim that Whitehead believed, at any point, that such an inquiry could provide us with knowledge of the necessary structure of the universe is to misunderstand, utterly, how Whitehead does what he does.

5. Conclusion The criterion by which we adjudge the entire process of philosophizing to have been done either well or poorly is the criterion of experience, although one needs to say what aspects of experience are most relevant to forming such criteria. In general Whitehead does adhere to adequacy, logical rigor, and exemplification as functional criteria. All of these criteria are experiential, but in different ways. It would not distort what Whitehead has done in every book to say that: (1) adequacy applies most directly to whether the genetic specification is both in agreement with the phenomena it divides and selects from experience (that these phenomena do occur and are appropriately specified), and whether those phenomena are representative of experience more generally, not simply within the domain of the inquiry at hand; (2) logical rigor or coherence or necessity deals with whether the phenomena as genetically specified are analyzed in accordance with logical principles appropriate both to the genetic specification, and without illicit inferences and contradictions, and in strict accordance with the conditioning co-ordinate scheme (this is coherence); (3) exemplification and/or applicability deals principally with whether the outcome of (1) and (2) does indeed elucidate our actual experience as had. There is nothing in this procedure that is in the least out of line with radical

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empiricism as James defined it. It is simply more worked out than anything James ever managed. To use Whitehead’s results from a single inquiry in another context, for instance, from Process and Reality to some other philosophic problem that arose after the advent of Modern cosmology, requires that we analogize. In this case we would be obliged to re-describe the phenomena first whole (in concrete co-ordination), then in the genetic mode for philosophic thinking since Kant if we wish to use the results, and of course, the results would be correspondingly modified. The analogies are rich and tempting. And there is much in Whitehead’s earlier works, especially on the developments in science, and several explicit discussions of Kant and transcendental idealism, which would aid us in a post-critical framing of the phenomena of post-Kantian philosophical thought, if we wished to undertake the inquiry. But Process and Reality is a book about Modern philosophy, and the way it was done from Descartes to Hume, and twelve specific notions it has given us that, in Whitehead’s view, belong together. To read it otherwise, one must simply ignore about half of the text. Adventures of Ideas is about Platonic philosophy, seven of its “notions” that belong together if we are to consider the drive toward culture of the sort that exists now. That is what the inquiry is. It is not some other. Simply to assume that Whitehead’s results in any of his inquiries have automatic application to problems that lie beyond their clearly specified scope is a great mistake. But it is a lamentably common one. To assume that the results of Whitehead’s inquiries include ontological knowledge, necessitated by the order of being and the order of knowing, is to misunderstand completely Whitehead’s method. Philosophical knowledge is not necessary knowledge for Whitehead, although the means by which it is attained will employ necessity internal to the terms of the inquiry itself. It is in that light that we should understand statements such as the one’s in Process and Reality (e.g., 34-35) that seem to be claims of ontological knowledge. To read such statements as having scope beyond the inquiry at hand is to ignore what Whitehead carefully and repeatedly says before, during, and after each and every inquiry.31

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Notes 1

Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, p. 226.

2

Lewis S. Ford, The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics, 1925-1929 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984). I want to make very clear that I hold this book in high regard. 3

I am not the first by any means to notice that Whitehead is a radical empiricist. For example, Victor Lowe states: “Whitehead was probably acquainted with James’s Psychology and perhaps heard much of the ingenuity of the concept of the specious present from McTaggart and others. From this point of view it is clear that his early empiricism was more radical than atomistic.” Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work, 2 vols., Ed. Jerome B. Schneewind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), vol. 2, 105. Lowe is here discussing Whitehead’s earliest philosophical writings. He takes for granted that Whitehead evolved away from this view towards an atomistic view, which I am here disputing, but he nevertheless allows that Whitehead was early on a radical empiricist. Whitehead’s familiarity with James increased as his writing went forward, such that James became a regular touchstone and reference in Whitehead’s philosophical writing. Another scholar who notices Whitehead’s radical empiricism is Gary L. Herstein. In interpreting a passage from Whitehead’s The Principle of Relativity (p. 65), Herstein says: “Whitehead is endorsing something that looks very much like a Jamesian ‘Radical Empiricism’. It is difficult to estimate how much influence James’s ideas might have exercised on Whitehead at this time.” Whitehead and the Measurement Problem of Cosmology (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2005), 96n. See also Robert M. Palter, Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 24-25. Numerous other interpreters have asserted that Whitehead is a radical empiricist throughout his career. 4

Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1967 [1933]), 222 (my emphasis); hereafter AI. I am concentrating on AI for this and similar points to make clear that the alleged “discovery” of “temporal atomicity” attributed to Whitehead by Lewis Ford, Victor Lowe, and their adherents, if indeed any such discovery was made, was certainly abandoned after PR. Of course, I hold that Whitehead never asserted any such doctrine, at least in the sense of claiming for it any standing other than a hypothetical notion.

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5

See Adventures of Ideas, 222-223. Compare with PR pp. 184 ff., which describes the technical sense of “theory” as a type of propositional entity, in the domain of cosmology, or the mode of existence proper to a theory. 6

Adventures of Ideas, 223.

7

Whitehead is fairly impatient with scientists who persist in treating “law” as if it were a guarantor of necessary knowledge. He wryly notes: “Nature is patient of interpretation in terms of Laws which happen to interest us” (Adventures of Ideas, 136). See also the discussion in The Function of Reason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958 [1929]), 48-53. 8

There is no reason to multiply sources here, but for those unfamiliar with such a claim, a good overarching critique of the failed project of analytic philosophy is Nicholas Capaldi, The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998). For an accessible account of the end of necessitarian science, see Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos (New York: Bantam, 1984). In the last decade, even the linear development associated with Darwinian evolution has begun to crumble. See the last-ditch effort of Stephen J. Gould to save it in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University. 2002). I have examined this issue in some detail in “The Death of Darwinism and the Limits of Evolution,” in Philo, 9:2 (fall-winter 2006), 193-220. Part of the philosophical background for this work is in Pete A.Y. Gunter’s recent work in the philosophy of science, especially “Darwinism: Six Scientific Alternatives,” in The Pluralist, 1:1 (Spring 2006), 13-30. 9

The classic text, G.E. Hughes and M.J. Cresswell, An Introduction to Modal Logic (London: Methuen and Co., 1968), simply starts out by saying that logical necessity is a “topic which bristles with philosophical difficulties,” but then proceeds to make necessity the most basic modal notion, followed by impossibility, contingency and possibility, which they do not even attempt seriously to define, saying rather that “the sense of these expressions should be sufficiently clear from what we have said in the case of necessity.” (22-23). These other notions are not sufficiently clear from what has been said of necessity, and to define any of these in terms of necessity, even much subtler accounts of necessity (such as Kripke frames), is simply archaic. 10

See Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 159-160. Here he makes clear that what he means by an “eternal

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object” is a possibility for an actuality, but there are varied modes of ingression, and while an eternal object “cannot be divorced from its reference to other eternal objects, and from its reference to actuality generally […] it is disconnected from its actual modes of ingression into definite actual occasions.” (159) This disconnection is a principle of discontinuity between actual and possible, grounded in a continuity principle of determinate order and co-ordinate ingression among possibilities themselves. The relation between possible and actual is pluralized and made contingent by this principle, while necessity is reinstated (in multiple modalities) among possibilities independent of their relation to particular actualities. That is what Whiteheadian “logic” studies. See this explained at, among other places, PR 256 f. To have such a character is what it means to be an abstract entity in Whitehead’s sense. Whitehead restates this same basic point in The Function of Reason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958 [1929]), 9, with explicit reference to possibility. It goes without saying that the theory of eternal objects in Process and Reality follows the same principles, and is far more worked out. But it is good to recall that an eternal object is for most purposes a mediating generalization at which we arrive by analyzing a satisfied actual entity. The only time we are justified in treating an eternal object as a universal is when we consider it in abstraction from the entity in which it was discovered by analysis. Only then may we treat a possibility as a logical predicate. 11

See Whitehead, The Function of Reason, 78-79.

12

See Whitehead, The Function of Reason, 71. For an earlier affirmation of this viewpoint, see The Principle of Relativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 63. 13

William James, “Radical Empiricism” (1909), in The Writings of William James, ed. John J. McDermott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 136. 14

I find Whitehead’s statement of his radical empiricism in a number of places, but an especially important one is the following: “It must be remembered that just as the relations modify the natures of the relata, so the relata modify the nature of relation. The relationship is not a universal. It is a concrete fact with the same concreteness as the relata,” Adventures of Ideas, 157. One of the reasons this is an important passage is that it was written in 1933, well after Whitehead supposedly “discovered” temporal atomism. This statement is not only an affirmation of radical empiricism, it

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is inconsistent with temporal atomism (if taken as an ontological claim). For a pre-PR statement, see The Principle of Relativity, 49, for the observed character concrete relations and relata, and also the reinforcement of his radical empiricism; cf., ibid., 73-74. Process and Reality is simply filled with statements affirming radical empiricism. Sometimes James is mentioned, or overtly alluded to (for example, PR 189), sometimes he is not. One can read the “reformed” subjectivist principle as an affirmation of James’s “generalized conclusion,” and it is notable that Whitehead sees the reformed subjectivist principle as “merely an alternative statement of the principle of relativity” (PR 166), which affirms James’s “statement of fact” quoted above. In Process and Reality, the final two sections IX and X) of Part II, Chapter IV, “Organisms and Environment “ (PR 126-129) can and should be taken as an elaboration of radical empiricism. Here he is explaining why his co-ordinate geometry has to start from bodily experience, which is direct and particular. 15

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 61.

16

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 35. It is advisable to read the entire passage with which this famous phrase is contextualized. It is clearly not a claim about concrete fact, but a claim about how we can use extensive abstraction to think about the problem of physical space and time (recalling that the entire concept of physical space and time is a product of the extensive method, not the experience with which it begins, concrete fact). 17

Such injuries can and do occur, although the consequences of them have been slightly different than the Nolans present in their story. 18

Vonnegut makes it very clear that he is only playing around with time, since he keeps repeating that he is writing about the timequake in 1996, which is not possible on his own schema, since no one would have known in (the first) 1996 the timequake would occur in 2001, and no one would have been free to write about it during the rerun. His constant repetition of the date of its writing is a challenge to the reader either to think of him as a Tralfamadorian, or a joker. 19

The simplified and “gross” use of 0 and 1 in computer coding, stands in contrast to the more sophisticated and interesting fuzzy logic now popular in theory. The features of fuzzy logic allow for a more adequate and applicable description of a circuit as it is experienced, and the three-valued logic associated with the electricity: 0, 1, and “inactive.”

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20

It should be noted that an argument like this one is central to Jorge Nobo’s excellent book, Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986), esp. pp. 214-222. 21

Parts III and IVof PR restore continuity in different respects. The theory of prehension implies, finally, that the entire universe is prehended from each perspective in it. In Part IV, the whole of the universe particularizes itself in modes of connection for every actual entity. 22

For example, eternal object (i.e., possibility) x for Entity 1 and x for Entity 2, while discontinuous on the basis of the genetic analysis of the prehensions of either 1 or 2, is still structurally x. Recall where Whitehead says he cannot demonstrate that x is x in some final sense, but he can think of no empirical hypothesis that is advanced by its denial. See Principle of Relativity, 69. 23

Letter from William James to Borden Parker Bowne in Francis J. McConnell, Borden Parker Bowne: His Life and Philosophy, (New York: Abingdon Press, 1929), pp. 277-278. 24

See Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1951 [1941]); and The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1958 [1949]). 25

Wilbur Urban, “Cassirer’s Philosophy of Language,” in The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, 437-438. It is interesting that Urban was also referred to by Langer as setting her problem up in the preface to the first edition of Philosophy in a New Key. 26

Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 235.

27

Ibid., 221.

28

Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 103. See also the “Epilogue” to Part I on p. 100. 29

Ibid., 284.

30

Ibid.

31

I am pleased to acknowledge the constant input and suggestions of Gary L. Herstein through many drafts of this essay. A number of his refinements have been incorporated here.

III. Systems Thinking and Emergence Joseph Bracken In the Preface to his book At Home in the Universe, Stuart Kauffman challenges the claim that natural selection is the exclusive mechanism for biological evolution: “Another source—self-organization—is the root source of order. The order of the biological world, I have come to believe, is not merely tinkered, but arises naturally and spontaneously because of these principles of self-organization—laws of complexity that we are just beginning to uncover and understand.”1 Natural selection, in other words, comes into play only after a certain level of self-organization has been already achieved. At that point natural selection decides which such novel experiments in self-organization will survive and prosper and which for various reasons (both internal and environmental) will inevitably fail. Thus only a combination of self-organization and natural selection ultimately explains first the emergence of life from non-life and then the amazing diversity of biological species that have historically come into existence in the last four billion years on this planet.2 Kauffman readily concedes that there is as yet no commonly agreed upon conceptual framework among biologists for conjoining the principle of natural selection with principles of self-organization within Nature.3 But in At Home in the Universe and in a later, more technically written book Investigations,4 he sets forth a generalized formula for the way in which self-organization and higher orders of complexity spontaneously appear not only in the life-world but also in economic and political systems. This is a very ambitious project undertaken by Kauffman and his associates in the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. In these pages I will content myself first with analyzing the general principles for his approach to spontaneous selforganization within Nature and then indicating how my own understanding of Whiteheadian societies as structured fields of activity for their constituent actual occasions might provide a clue to that generalized “conceptual framework” which he still finds lacking in his own and others’ work at present. In an early chapter of At Home in the Universe, for example, Kauffman claims:

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Let us now compare Kauffman’s proposal with Whitehead’s understanding of a “society”: A nexus enjoys ‘social order’ [is a society] where (i) there is a common element of form illustrated in the definiteness of each of its included actual entities, and (ii) this common element of form arises in each member of the nexus by reason of the conditions imposed upon it by its prehensions of some other members of the nexus, and (iii) these prehensions impose that condition of reproduction by reason of their inclusion of positive feelings of that common form.6 For Whitehead, accordingly, each actual entity/actual occasion is a unique subject of experience with its own pattern of existence and activity. Yet all the actual entities within a society still have an analogous self-constitution by reason of their common prehension of the pattern proper to the selfconstitution of their immediate predecessors in the same society. This common element of form carried over from one set of constituent actual occasions to another constitutes their group-identity as a society. Structurally, Kauffman’s notion of self-organizing chemical systems and Whitehead’s notion of a “society” as a set of actual occasions linked by a common element of form are quite similar. Both self-organizing chemical systems for Kauffman and societies for Whitehead are socially organized realities emergent out of the dynamic interplay of their component parts or members. In his book Investigations Kauffman frequently uses the term “autonomous agents” to describe self-organizing systems as entities emergent out of the interplay of their component parts or members.7 But here one must be careful. For, when Whitehead discusses “structured societies” or societies composed of sub-societies of actual occasions in Process and Reality, he seems to revert to a more classical understanding of the relation between non-life and life. Whereas Kauffman believes that life spontaneously emerges from the dynamic interaction of non-living components (chemical systems), Whitehead claims that structured societies which are “living” have a “regnant nexus” of entirely living actual occasions which is supported by but still functionally superior to the other subsocieties of actual occasions that are inanimate, non-living.8 What Whitehead thereby leaves unresolved is the question of the origin and the perpetuation of this nexus of “entirely living” actual occasions. How did it emerge out of a background composed of inanimate actual occasions? Likewise, once emergent, how was it sustained and carried forward to the next set of actual occasions within that structured society?

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Whitehead claims, for example, that “the growth of a complex structured society exemplifies the general purpose pervading nature”9 and then attributes this growth in complexity or emergence of new order to an increased intensity of experience among the constituent actual occasions. But how does this increased intensity of experience arise in the first place and how is it then communicated to future actual occasions? The problem is that Whitehead attributes agency exclusively to individual actual occasions and does not seem to recognize the validity of a collective agency for the society as a whole so that it can function as a reality in its own right. As a result, Whitehead’s system by his own admission is a type of metaphysical atomism: “the ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism.”10 Actual occasions “are the final real things of which this world is made up. ”11 But, if so, it is difficult to see how Whiteheadian societies as aggregates of similarly constituted but independently existing inanimate actual occasions can bring about a life-form radically different from themselves as individuals. Thus, if one wishes to claim with Kauffman that life is naturally emergent from the dynamic interplay of non-living components (chemical systems), then some rethinking of the dynamism at work within a Whiteheadian structured society is required. I suggest for this purpose three further specifications and/or modifications of Whitehead’s scheme: (a) that there is an agency proper to the various sub-societies within a structured society over and above the agencies of their component actual occasions, (b) that this agency functions as the structuring principle or common element of form for the sub-society as such and not simply for its component actual occasions in their individual self-constitution, and (c) that the structured society as a whole and all its sub-societies be conceived as a set of interconnected and hierarchically ordered fields of activity. Given these modifications, life can emerge from the dynamic interplay of inanimate actual occasions, as Kauffman maintains for chemical systems, albeit with gentle prompting from what Whitehead calls a divine “initial aim,” a feeling-level “lure” toward a higher order form of existence and activity. That is, a single set of inanimate actual occasions within a given sub-society of the overall structured society could by their dynamic interrelation under the guidance of a divine initial aim spontaneously generate a dramatically new common element of form for their collective reality as a sub-society within that same larger structured society. Furthermore, if this new common element of form with its potential for higher-order existence and activity is not immediately rejected but rather sustained and supported by the next set of actual occasions (and their successors) within that same sub-society, then the sub-society could evolve

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over time into what Kauffman in the above citation called a “self-sustaining network of reactions” or the “autocatalytic metabolism” characteristic of life as opposed to non-life. Functioning as an “autocatalytic metabolism,” this subsociety could then bring it about that the structured society as a whole eventually makes the transition from non-life to life. Key here is the way in which change normally takes place among subsocieties of a larger structured society. For, if and when a novel form of existence and activity is introduced within a single sub-society through the collective activity of its constituent actual occasions, then all the actual occasions within the other sub-societies have to adjust to what has happened in their midst, either by incorporating the change of pattern into their own individual self-constitution or by rejecting it. If they in some way incorporate this structural novelty into their own pattern of operation, then the structured society as a whole will be altered and thus could over time make the transition from non-life to life. If, however, the actual occasions within the other sub-societies do not accept this change of pattern proposed by some of their predecessors, then the sub-society that originated the change of pattern will either revert to its previous pattern of existence or break up altogether. The actual occasions within the other sub-societies will have equivalently suppressed this novel advance within their midst so as better to preserve the order and directionality received from the rest of their predecessors in the structured society. This account differs from Whitehead’s own explanation of the growth of complexity within the cosmic process because it focuses on the role that societies play in sustaining and transmitting a new pattern of existence and activity once it originates within a given set of actual occasions. The societies, in other words, constitute a necessary principle of continuity as actual occasions with their individual self-constitution arise and perish. Furthermore, this field-oriented understanding of Whiteheadian societies nicely correlates with what Kauffman in At Home in the Universe says about the relatively haphazard and unpredictable way that life emerges from non-life. He notes, for example, that “life evolves toward a regime that is poised between order and chaos.”12 It is never certain whether life will prevail over non-life and, if it does prevail, what precise form or structure it will take. “In such a poised world, we must give up the pretense of long-term prediction […]. Only God can foretell the future.”13 Likewise, in a field-oriented approach to Whiteheadian societies a delicate balance between novelty and order is achieved. The constituent actual occasions by their dynamic interrelation at any given moment account for the unexpected emergence of novelty. But the society as the context or field of activity within which the actual occasions arise and to which they

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contribute their momentary pattern of interrelation changes in its overall structure much more slowly. Whitehead himself comments in Process and Reality: “Error is the price which we pay for progress.”14 If the need for order prevails over the desire for novelty within the creative process, then stagnation at a given level of existence and activity ultimately prevails. But the opposite alternative is not simply the case. Unbridled desire for novelty undermines the order requisite for stable existence. In brief, then, a balance between order and novelty within a Whiteheadian structured society is the only way for it to survive and prosper: “A complex inorganic system of interaction is built up for the protection of the ‘entirely living’ nexus [of actual occasions], and the originative actions of the living elements are protective of the whole system. On the other hand, the reactions of the whole system provide the intimate environment required by the ‘entirely living’ nexus.”15 There are, of course, still other points of comparison between Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme and Kauffman’s notion of selforganizing chemical systems. Given that “structured societies” are Whitehead’s generic term not only for inanimate compounds, but also for organisms (plants, animals, human beings), even for supra-organic realities like human communities and physical environments, Whitehead as well as Kauffman seems to be saying that the same basic laws of self-organization are operative everywhere in the cosmic process. Kauffman, for example, compares the explosion of new species at the beginning of the Cambrian era on earth to the rapid spread of new technologies in modern times and then remarks: “I am not an expert on technological evolution; indeed, I am also not an expert on the Cambrian explosion. But the parallels are striking, and it seems worthwhile to consider seriously the possibility that the patterns of branching radiation in biological and technological evolution are governed by similar general laws.”16 Likewise, from a Whiteheadian perspective the issue is at least worth exploring. After all, the laws governing the aggregation of actual occasions into societies/ structured fields of activity are everywhere the same. What happens on the organic and, above all, the supraorganic or institutional level is only a more complex version of what happens at the inorganic level of atoms and molecules. In every instance, novelty arises within a system/society with the slow growth in complexity of constituent actual occasions, provided that the change in the “common element of form” from a single subsociety within a structured society to the structured society as a whole can be sustained and deepened over time. Another feature of Kauffman’s hypothesis in At home in the Universe which seems to resonate nicely with a Whiteheadian approach to reality is

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to be found in Kauffman’s reference to the “logic of patches.”17 His basic argument here is that complex self-organizing systems achieve maximal efficiency in dealing with conflict-situations if their individual parts or members stay focused on their own tasks and effectively ignore what is happening to others in the group: “if the conflict-laden task is broken into the properly chosen patches, the coevolving system lies at a phase transition between order and chaos and rapidly finds very good solutions.”18 Note how this compares with Whitehead’s description of a society in which the common element of form “arises in each member of the nexus by reason of the conditions imposed upon it by its prehension of some other members of the nexus.”19 If all the actual occasions prehend the common element of form from their predecessors in exactly the same way, then nothing changes from moment to moment. But, on the contrary, if all the actual occasions in the society prehend the common element of form from their predecessors in totally different ways, then the society itself as the principle of order and continuity between successive sets of actual occasions collapses. Hence, just as Kauffman says about the logic of patches in self-organizing systems,20 a Whiteheadian society only works well if it too is carefully poised between order and chaos in its internal constitution. Kauffman uses the term “receiver-based communication.”21 All the agents in a chemical system are in ongoing communication with one another but decide to respond positively only to some of their contemporaries in the achievement of some projected “team goal.”22 This too seems to correlate well with Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme, specifically, his distinction between positive and negative prehensions in the self-constitution of an actual occasion: An actual entity has a perfectly definite bond with each item in the universe. This determinate bond is its prehension of that item. A negative prehension is the definite exclusion of that item from positive contribution to the subject’s own real internal constitution […]. A positive prehension is the definite inclusion of that item into positive contribution to the subject’s own real internal constitution.23

The key point of comparison here is that for Kauffman an agent in a chemical system or for Whitehead a concrescing actual occasion is somehow in communication with its surrounding world but chooses positively to incorporate only some of what it knows/prehends into its own procedure/self-constitution. In both cases what might be called enlightened self-interest on the part of the agent/actual occasion paradoxically works quite well to achieve goals and values bigger than itself and its own immediate self-interest.

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One should not, of course, over-estimate these similarities between Kauffman and Whitehead on the overall pattern of self-organization and the emergence of novelty within Nature. Yet both are clearly opposed to a purely mechanistic approach to the phenomenon of change or development within an evolutionary world-view. Throughout At Home in the Universe, Kauffman makes clear his belief that natural selection alone does not explain the emergence of life from non-life or, even more generally, the unexpected emergence of novelty within natural processes: And so we return to a tantalizing possibility: that self-organization is a prerequisite for evolvability, that it generates the kind of structures that can benefit from natural selection […]. These two sources of order are natural partners.24

Whitehead in an early philosophical work Science and the Modern World already made clear his opposition to a purely mechanistic understanding of Nature.25 Then in Process and Reality he specified that “the final real things of which the world is made up” are not material atoms in purely mechanical interaction but actual occasions, momentary self-constituting subjects of experience in dynamic interrelation.26 Finally, near the end of his life he published Modes of Thought in which he called attention to the different methodologies involved in treating Nature first as lifeless and then as alive.27 Hence, even though one achieves considerable success in the mathematical formulation of the laws of Nature, the task of understanding what is really going on within the world around us and within us is at best only half-done. Accordingly, Whitehead’s metaphysical cosmology, modified along the lines suggested above, might well be a candidate for the much needed new conceptual framework to which Kauffman alludes in At Home in the Universe: “Nowhere in science have we an adequate way to state and study the interleaving of self-organization, selection, chance, and design. We have no adequate framework for the place of law in a historical science and the place of history in a lawful science.”28 What we need, in other words, is a new world-view within which both natural scientists and specialists in the humanities can be at home. Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme at least offers a promising beginning for that momentous task.

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Notes 1

Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. vii). In their comprehensive review of the history of Darwinism, David Depew and Bruce Weber conclude that Kauffman with his theory of self-organizing systems stands midway between two rival research traditions in evolutionary biology, namely, developmentalism and standard Darwinism. Developmentalism emphasizes the inner-driven activity of the organism; standard Darwinism, its relatively passive adaptation to changes in the external environment (see David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber, Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection, Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1995, 429-30). But for the same reason they argue that Kauffman’s approach might well be the way in which Darwinism itself will evolve to explain more complex patterns of adaptation and change in Nature. 2

A longer version of the essay is available as a chapter in Subjectivity, Objectivity and Intersubjectivity: A New Paradigm for Religion and Science (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2009). 3

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 8.

4

Stuart Kauffman, Investigations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 5

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 47. As others have noted and as Kauffman himself concedes, he has developed this theory for the emergence of life from the self-organization of molecular components not from observation and experimentation in Nature but from Boolean networks and other mathematical models with computer-generated results (see, e.g., Depew and Weber, Darwinism Evolving, 431-33; Kauffman, At home in the Universe, 75-86, 99-111). But at this exploratory stage of investigation into the laws of self-organization in Nature, his theories have generated considerable attention and interest among colleagues not only in molecular biology but in other areas of research (e.g., economics and politics) as well. 6

Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected Edition. Eds. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978), 34. 7

Kauffman, Investigations, 3-4, 8, 29, 68-73, 105, 120, 128-29 et. al.

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Whitehead, Process and Reality, 103.

9

Ibid., 100.

10

Ibid., 35.

11

Ibid., 18.

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12

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 26. See also Kauffman, Investigations, 22: “Communities of agents will coevolve to an ‘edge of chaos’ between overrigid and overfluid behavior […]. Moreover, autonomous agents forever push their way into novelty—molecular, morphological, behavioral, organizational.” Some of these experiments in novel self-organization work and others fail. Here is where Darwin’s theory of natural selection comes into play in the gradual buildup of complexity within Nature. 13

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 29.

14

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 187.

15

Ibid., 103.

16

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 205; Investigations, 240-41: “Laws for any biosphere extend, presumably, to laws for any economy. Nor should that be surprising. The economy is based on advantages of trade. But those advantages accrue no more to humans exchanging apples and oranges than to root nodules and fungi exchanging sugar and fixed nitrogen that both make enhanced livings. Thus, economics must partake of the vast creativity of the universe.” 17

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 247-71.

18

Ibid., 253.

19

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 34 (emphasis added).

20

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 262. See also Investigations, 7379: the discussion of “natural games” as the way that autonomous agents act on their own behalf and yet somehow co-constitute an environment suitable for all of them. 21

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 267.

22

Ibid., 267-78.

23

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 41.

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24

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 188. See also 8: “Laws of complexity spontaneously generate much of the order of the natural world. It is only then that selection comes into play.” 25

Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1967), 55, 75-94. 26

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 18.

27

Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: Free Press, 1968), 127-69.

28

Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 185. See also Investigations, 104: “While we have, it seems, adequate concepts of matter, energy, entropy, and information, we lack a coherent concept of organization, its emergence, and self-constructing propagation and self-elaboration.”

IV. A Study in the Process Philosophy of Science: Biosystems and their Properties Ross L. Stein These are exciting times for biologists. Over the past fifty years, we have moved from qualitative and descriptive studies of natural phenomena, to quantitative investigations that reveal the molecular details of the biological systems we study. In the past two decades alone, three achievements are noteworthy. First, we have developed the methods and advanced technologies to sequence entire genomes from dozens of organisms. Second, a detailed understanding has been secured for the structure, function, and regulation of the protein products of these genes. And finally, we have elucidated how these proteins are organized into the intracellular machinery that underlies life’s reproductive and homeostatic processes. Together, these studies have laid the groundwork for a new field of investigation known as ‘systems biology’, which integrates this diverse molecular information into biological models that allow us to visualize complex cellular processes more easily. Advanced computational methods drive these models, thereby allowing us to investigate not only the kinds of material output from the system but also the dynamic nature of the system, that is how the various outputs respond to environmental, metabolic, and genetic perturbation. Combined these two aspects, the output and its dynamic response, comprise what are called ‘systems properties.” In this paper, I propose answers to two fundamental questions about systems biology: What is the ontological status of a biosystem, and what types of properties are predicted to be manifested by such a system? The ontological investigation called for by the first question will be conducted within the framework of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism, which views the actualities of our world in constant process of becoming, where this evolutionary1 process is driven by internal relations conditioned by external change. The types of properties a biosystem is

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predicted to possess follow from this Whitehead-inspired ontology of systems and include not only the operational properties usually ascribed to biosystems, but also properties of global systems integration, reflecting a system’s interiority. In the system Homo sapiens, we call this property mind; in systems of less complexity, while we should not expect evidence of mind, we should expect evidence of systems integration.

1. Systems Biology Key concepts of systems biology have their origins in the General Systems Theory developed by Vienna-born Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (19011972), whose philosophical training, under the tutelage of Moritz Schlick, led him to question and ultimately offer answers to fundamental questions in biology. As early as the 1920’s, von Bertalanffy was puzzled by the lack of serious work in theoretical biology, and noted that what was being done on this front seemed mechanistic, disregarding broader aspects of biology. Bertalanffy believed that if the biological sciences were ever to gain an understanding of the bases of life, they must move towards approaches and methodologies that emphasize the organism as a whole—as a system. In his development of a systems theory of biology, he had occasion to survey other fields of science and noticed that certain phenomena in physics, chemistry, and even the social sciences could be described by the same mathematical models. The structural similarity of such models across these diverse domains led Bertalanffy to propose that certain basic problems, in all these fields, could be addressed by application of a single, unified theory of systems, or General Systems Theory, as he came to call it (Bertalanffy 1968). In this theory, Bertalanffy defined a system quite simply, as “a complex of elements in mutual interaction” (Bertalanffy 1968, 38) and emphasized that the elements of systems are related in nonlinear ways. General systems theory is a “general science of wholeness” (Bertalanffy 1968, 37). Bertalanffy explains: While in the past, science tried to explain observable phenomena by reducing them to an interplay of elementary units investigatable independently of each other, conceptions appear in contemporary science that are concerned with phenomena not resolvable into local events, dynamic interactions manifest in the difference of behavior of parts when isolated or in a higher configuration, etc.; in short, “systems” of various orders not understandable by investigations of their respective parts in isolation. (Bertalanffy 1968, 37)

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Systems biology emerged as a recognized field of study at the turn of the 21st century.2 The underlying experimental techniques and theoretical concepts were drawn from two independent lines of biological inquiry that have their own histories going back some fifty years (Westerfoff and Palsson 2004). One line of inquiry is molecular biology, which began with the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. The development of methods to manipulate DNA (i.e., recombinant DNA) together with technological advances in the automated sequencing of DNA made it possible to determine entire genomic structures. While the first of these to be published was the genome of the pathogenic bacteria Haemophilus influenza in 1995, the genomic structure that received the most ‘press’ was certainly that of Homo sapiens, in 2001. Running parallel to the development of molecular biology was the development of biochemistry, biophysics, and enzymology as legitimate fields of inquiry. Over time, these allied fields moved from a qualitative understanding of metabolic pathway feedback regulation in the late 1950’s, through the first tentative attempts at modeling these pathways starting in the mid-1960’s, to current computationally-intense pathway simulations that rely on methods of neural network analysis. With these tools in hand, system biologists have set ambitious goals, which fall into three principle areas (Kitano 2002). Systems biologists seek to understand: System Structures—the organization of system components (i.e., genes and proteins) into networks of gene interactions and biochemical pathways. System Dynamics—the evolution of a system through time as simulated by computational models that faithfully reflect network structures. System Regulation—the self-corrective (i.e., homeostatic) responses of a system to various perturbations as predicted by the model of system dynamics. In summary, then, the goal of systems biological research is to develop predictive and robust models that simulate complex biological processes. Biosystems exhibit a broad range of complexity, ranging from the relative simplicity of a metabolic pathway to the complexity of the human being. In this paper, I will concentrate exclusively on the metabolic pathway. We will see that the concepts developed here apply to the full range of biosystems. Let’s now consider the simple metabolic pathway of Figure 1 to see how the work of systems biology proceeds.3

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E1:C

C

A

E1

E2

E1:A

B

E2:B

Figure 1 Metabolic pathway with feedback inhibition.

This pathway is far less complex than those that are typically considered by systems biologists, but serves to illustrate several important features of systems biological investigation. In the first step of the pathway, substrate A combines with enzyme E1 to form the complex E1:A, within which A is chemically transformed into product B. In the second step, B serves as substrate for enzyme E2, which catalyzes the transformation of B into C. In this pathway, C plays the special role of feedback inhibitor.4 A systems biological study of the system of Figure 1 would entail several activities based on the principles outlined by Katio (see above). First, an exhaustive itemization of the system’s components would be conducted. This information would come from public-domain data archives built from the results of numerous genomic and biochemical studies. In this case the components are the enzymes E1 and E2, the starting material A, and metabolites B, and C. Next, we would need a detailed map of how the components are related. This information comes primarily from biochemical studies that identify the sequence metabolic conversations and how the various metabolites influence the enzymes of pathway. For the particular pathway comprising E1, E2, A, B, and C, this relational scheme of connectivity is illustrated in Figure 1. Finally, a computer-driven algorithm representing the current model of the system would need to be written. When deployed, the output of the algorithm would have to faithfully reflect how the system operates in nature. Operation of a system is reflected in the time-dependent rise and fall of substrates and metabolites. Figure 2 is a graph of the operation of the system of Figure 1, shown here with equilibrium and rate constants identified. In this biosystem simulation and others like it, the system is called into action with the introduction of substrate A. Note, in this

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simulation, [B]o = [C]o= 0.5 This needn’t be the case; often simulations are run with finite concentrations of metabolites present at time zero. Ki,C

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Run 1: 10019 steps in 0.183 seconds

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B 2e-6 2

00 0

0

50

50

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100time

150

150

(sec)

200

200

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Figure 2 Metabolite production for the pathway of Figure 1. In this simulation: KA = 2 µM, kc,A = 50 s-1, KB = 1 µM, kc,A = 10 s-1, and Ki,C = 1 µM; and, [E1] = [E2] = 10 nM, [A]o = 10 µM, and [B]o = [C]o = 0.

Now, as A is converted to B by the action of E1, B begins to be converted to C by the action of E2. As the concentration of C increases over time, it exerts its inhibitory effect and slows conversion of A to B, and B to C, thereby retarding the overall flux through the pathway. Ultimately, the concentration of A and B fall to zero, and C rises to its maximal level.

2. Foundational Questions As a new field of scientific inquiry, systems biology invites philosophical analysis. Questions that philosophers of science will likely consider include (Robert 2007, 371): What is ‘systems biology’? What are its concepts, assumptions, and motivations? What is the nature of ‘molecular systems biology’? There are other questions of course; questions of a foundational nature that require answers before an informed program of philosophical analysis can be undertaken. Two questions of this sort that I explore here

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are: What is the ontological status of a biological/biochemical system? What are the properties of such a system? Formulating an answer to the first question starts with three important features of biosystems. —Biosystems have internal structures comprising components in dynamic relation. —Biosystems interact with their environment and are conditioned by their environment. —Biosystems evolve, driven by their dynamic internal structures and their relation to the environment. Together, these features drive the evolution of a biosystem. Given what empirical science has established about the nature of biosystems, it seems that ontological investigation should be conducted within a metaphysical framework that views dynamic relation and change as central features of reality. An ontological description of biosystems based on such a worldview will lead us to predictions of the properties biosystems will possess, and thus an answer to the second question I pose above. Metaphysical frameworks of this sort fall within the broad category of ‘process philosophies’ and have been developed by a number of 20th century philosophers including, Whitehead (PR), Leclerc (Leclerc 1972), Laszlo (Laszlo 1972), Koestler (Koestler 1978), Buchler (Buchler 1990), and Rescher (Rescher 1996). Of these, two are most appropriate for my ontological investigations: Laszlo’s systems philosophy6 and Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. I will base my discussions on Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, for his is the most comprehensive.

3. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism and a Neo-Whiteheadian Twist Process thinking begins with the observation that our world is in constant flux. Static pictures of reality are eschewed and are replaced with a view that emphasizes the dynamic nature of actualities.7 Time and change are seen as principal metaphysical categories; contingency, emergence, and novelty are now the fundamental categories of metaphysical understanding. Whitehead’s thinking begins here, maintaining that process is a fundamental descriptor of reality and that the actualities of our world are constantly evolving, but goes on to propose a more radical view of reality. In his fully developed metaphysical system (PR), Whitehead offers a

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remarkable picture of reality in which the basic units of existence are not bits of material substance, but experiential events. Substance is a construct allowing the human mind to make sense of the whirl of process that is our world. In Whitehead’s philosophy, we find a synthesis of the quantum theory that was emerging in the early years of the 20th century and the human as experiencing subject. He clearly understood the challenge this synthesis posed both to philosophy and science. He explains what his new doctrine must achieve: “Any doctrine which refuses to place human experience outside nature, must find in the description of human experience factors which also enter into the descriptions of less specialized natural occurrences” (AI 185). His ambitious goal was to develop an ontology that could unify, at the most basic level, actualities of all complexities, from electrons to humans. In Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism, the feature of reality that unifies such diversity is the experiential event. His speculative leap, and the key idea of his philosophy, is the assertion that if humans are experiencing subjects, then it must be the case that actualities at all levels of complexity, including animals, cells, molecules, and atoms, must have some capacity, however small, for experience8. John Cobb later described the synthesis that Whitehead was seeking: “Whitehead launched boldly forth on the speculative possibility that human experience as such is a clue to the ultimate nature of things” (Cobb 1965, 27). The Actual Occasion Whitehead’s understanding of quantum theory and his desire to develop an ontology based on the experiencing actuality, led him to the ‘atomistic’ question: A theory of science which discards materialism must answer the question as to the character of primary entities. There can only be one answer. We must start with the event as the ultimate unit of natural occurrence. (SMW 103)

Whitehead posited that all actualities comprise sequential trains of experiential events. As the life of an electron is parsed out in quanta, so it must be for humans and all actualities. The ‘atoms of process’ in Whitehead’s metaphysical system are referred to as “actual entities” or “actual occasions of experience.” In the opening pages of Process and Reality, Whitehead tells us what these entities are the “final real thing of which the world is made up […] drops of experience,

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complex and interdependent” (PR 18). A question now arises which inquires into the precise relation between actual occasions and the actualities of our common experience (e.g., other humans and animals), and of scientific investigation (e.g., cells and molecules). The understanding of the precise relationship between actual occasions and the actualities they comprise has evolved from the position Whitehead took in Process and Reality. The actual occasion of Whiteheadian orthodoxy is the ontological unit, the only entity that has a legitimate claim to actuality. The things of everyday experience and scientific investigation merely comprise actual occasions and therefore are not genuinely actual. In contrast, according to an emerging Neo-Whiteheadian metaphysic, animals, cells, molecules, and atoms are themselves ontological unities, and as such, fully actual.9 An actuality is still thought to comprise actual occasions, but not in the way envisioned by Whitehead. The relationship between actualities and actual occasions can be seen upon analysis of the actuality in two possible modes: genetic and anatomical. Upon genetic analysis, an actuality reveals itself to be a serially ordered sequence of actual occasions, tracing-out an historic route through time. Each of these occasions is a ‘slice’ transecting the actuality’s trajectory of becoming, and captures the becoming of the actuality at that moment. Anatomical analysis of an actuality reveals it to comprise other, subordinate actualities. While subordinate actualities are all discrete, i.e., recognizable as individuals, they are, at the same time, interdependent and unified as constituents of the primary actuality. We see here a nested structure of actualities within actualities within actualities, much like Russian matryoshka dolls. Natural History of an Actual Occasion For any actuality, the actual occasion of the present moment comes into being by a process in which its particular pattern of organization is a unification of features of its lineage (Mills 2002, 32). However, the becoming of an actual occasion cannot simply be repetition of past actual occasions, or novelty could never enter the world. Rather, the generative process draws on and is conditioned by actual occasions of other actualities. The actual occasion of the present is generated with the perishing of antecedent occasions, both of itself and other actual occasions. In its development, the actual occasion also exercises self-determination or self-creation; not all antecedent actual occasions are allowed to influence it; some are banned from entry. Thus, every event has some power to exert creative influence on its future; its “creative advance into novelty.”

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The generative mechanism for the becoming of the actual occasion of the present involves flows of energy from antecedent actual occasions. The evolving lineage from one actual occasion to the next is constituted by the flux of energy, that is to say, by the way in which the occasions in question have inherited their energy from the past, and in which they are about to transmit their energy to the future. […] Energy passes from particular occasion to particular occasion. At each point there is a flux, with a quantitative flow and a definite direction. (AI 185-186)

The generative process for an actual occasion is atomistic, in which one actual occasion transitions to the next. Only through atomistic becoming, can there be physical causation. Whitehead tells us that while situated in the present, the actual occasion has an efficacious past, a past that has “an objective existence in the present” (AI 191). The vector relationship of past-to-present is the basis for cause-and-effect relationships. The ‘absorption’ of a perishing actual occasion by the developing actual occasion of the present is how “the past lives in the present. It is causation” (AI 237; my emphasis). Whitehead’s theory of causation, involving transfer of energy from an actual occasion as it perishes to subsequent actual occasions as they emerge, anticipates more contemporary conserved quantity theories of causation (Dowe 2000). The present is in relation not only to the past but also to a future beyond itself—this is the basis for Whitehead’s concept of teleology. The future is immanent in the present by reason of the fact that the present bears in its own essence the relationships which it will have to the future. […] The future is there in the present, as a general fact belonging to the nature of things. (AI 194)

These concepts are key to Whitehead’s notion of becoming, or evolution. The stream of change that defines all actualities is never a directionless meandering into a chaotic future of limitless possibility. Rather actualities are in constant process of becoming; where becoming implies a ‘becoming towards’. Each actuality of our world is evolving towards a particular future through a process defined by internal and external relation. Evolution is the actualization of potential, and is the “process by which the immature becomes mature in terms of the systematic whole that is being generated” (Harris 1970, 70-71). Structural Motifs of Actual Occasions in Relation Actual occasions can have interdependencies at three levels of increasing relational concern: the nexus, the most basic grouping of actual occasions,

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and two special nexùs of higher order, the society and the structured society. A nexus is a loose grouping of actual occasions that, while having a general connectedness, lacks any special type of order. At the next level of relational involvement is the society. Societies of actual occasions have an order that is defined by the existence of a common element of form reproduced again and again, giving the nexus endurance and a temporal nature. Nature exists as systems of nested societies—”societies of societies of societies” (Whitehead [1933] 1967, 206). These nested societies of actual occasions can be ‘structured’ in such a way as to contain subordinate societies. A Neo-Whiteheadian Actuality In the paragraphs that follow, I summarize the main points of this section and describe how actualities and actual occasions are related. Figure 3 illustrates these concepts. Actualities are the things of our world that exist as ontological units and include electrons, atoms, molecules, cells, multi-cellular organisms of all types, and humans. Actualities are known by their becoming or evolution; a thing is what a thing does. Each actuality comprises a sequential train of actual occasions, which traces out the trajectory of the actuality’s becoming. Such is the case for the three actualities of Figure 3A. But these actualities, while independent, still share a common potential future. The relationship among the actual occasions of actualities α, β, and γ is defined by a mutual immanence and constitutes a nexus of actual occasions. At a deeper level of involvement, actualities might not only share a common future, but may bonded together by a common element of form that is shared among the actual occasions of the involved actualities. The independent trains of actual occasions, in a sense, merge and are united by the common form. A

! " #

B

$

! " #

Figure 3 Compostion of actualities. Panel A Nexus. The actual occasions tracing out the becoming of !, ", and # are mutually immanent. Panel B Society. $ comprises a sequential train of actual occasions, when viewed in ‘cross-section’ reveal it to be a society of actual !, ", and # occasions.

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The actual occasions now define a society. Actuality Θ of Figure 3 illustrates these concepts. Like all actualities, the evolution of Θ is its train of sequential actual occasions. In cross-section, an actual occasion from this train is seen to be formed from the actual occasions of actualities α, β, and γ. The common form binds the becoming of these actualities in such a way that they unite to give rise to ontological unity Θ. If α, β, or γ is itself a society, than the actual occasions that define Θ comprise a structured society. Nature exists as systems of nested societies: “The Universe achieves its values by reason of its coordination into societies of societies, and into societies of societies of societies” (AI 206).

4. Ontological Status of Biosystems Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology, defines systems biology as the endeavor “to study biological systems in a holistic rather than an atomistic manner” (Hood et al. 2008). Hood’s thoughts reflects the underlying hypothesis of systems biology, that biosystems are ‘wholes’ with genuine ‘systems properties’. But what does it mean for a system to be a whole, and what is a systems property? These questions are ontological questions, and their answers can only be found in an ontology of systems. Of course, therein lies the rub. What systems biology lacks is a clear ontology of systems: It neither clear how systems are to be individuated nor what it means for a whole system to be under consideration. (Krohs and Callebaut 2007, 204)

In this section, I will lay the groundwork for an ontology of biosystems, starting with what science teaches us. Biosystems can exist in either of two states: quiescent or active. Our first step towards an ontology of biosystems is to investigate whether this change of state is accompanied by a change in ontological status. To help us address this issue, I need to introduce the biochemical concept of ‘enzyme coupling’. Consider the pathway of Figure 4. This is a simplified version of Figure 1 in that it lacks feedback inhibition. Pathways such as this and the one of Figure 1 have enzymes as their principle components; substrates and products come and go, but the enzymes remain. The collection of enzymes that make up a metabolic pathway will be referred to as an enzyme ensemble.

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In the absence of substrate A, the ensemble of E1 and E2 is metabolically inactive; it is in a state of quiescence. But upon addition of A, the enzyme ensemble engages. E1 catalyzes the chemical transformation of A into B, and the latter serves as substrate for E2, allowing the production of C. The dependencies of [A], [B], and [C] on time are shown in the upper panel of Figure 4 (note the logarithmic time-axis). When substrate A is added, a change of state occurs from quiescence to engaged, the ensemble is said to have become ‘coupled’, where —Coupled refers to a biochemical state that exists among the members of an ensemble of related enzymes after addition of the primary enzyme’s substrate. —Enzymes are related if the product of one of the enzyme-catalyzed reactions is a substrate or a modifier10 of another enzyme-catalyzed reaction. —An enzyme is primary if its reaction is capable of initiating coupling of the ensemble of related enzymes of which it is a member. —By virtue of the relatedness among the enzymes of an ensemble, a quiescent enzyme ensemble possesses coupling potential. Significant changes attend an enzyme ensemble as it undergoes coupling. Before coupling, the enzymes experience their common environment as independent proteins, each exploring conformational space11 in independence of the other. When coupled, the internal motions of the enzymes of the ensemble become coordinated. Catalytic activities of these enzymes now emerge; they too become coordinated. These aspects of enzyme coupling are illustrated in the lower panel of Figure 4, which traces the concentrations of enzyme species as the reaction progresses. We see in Figure 4, now referring to both the upper and lower panels, that after A is introduced, the concentration of E1:A immediately begins to increase, with essentially no conversion of A into B. When about five seconds have passed after addition of A, B begins to be produced and interacts with E2 to form E2:B. From this latter species, C begins to be formed. The reaction terminates when all of A has been converted, through the intermediacy of B, to C, and E1:A and E2:B have fallen to zero, and E1 and E2 have returned to their original concentrations. From a systems perspective, we see that coupling of an enzyme ensemble is an evolutionary process. Figure 4 illustrates that for the E1/E2 ensemble, engagement begins within milliseconds of substrate A’s addition. Full coupling is attained at the 1 second mark and endures for another 80 seconds. When fully coupled, the system not only comprises E1 and E2, but also E1:A and E2:B. Substrates A and B must become integral within the

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system for system evolution to occur and products to be formed. By 200 seconds, the ensemble has relaxed to a state of quiescence. This system has moved from an ensemble of related enzymes to enzymes-in-relation, ultimately returning to the ensemble of related enzymes. Run 1: 1019 steps in 0.0167 seconds

metabolite (µM)

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The question before us now is whether the observed change of state from quiescence to activity, reflects an ontological change. What we seek here is a holistic account. But to even explore the possibility that a coupled enzyme ensemble may have an ontological status different from that of an uncoupled ensemble, we must work within a metaphysical framework that allows holistic description. The framework most convenient to these ontological pursuits is process metaphysics. We start by considering the ontological status of the uncoupled ensemble from a process metaphysical standpoint, again using Figure 4 as illustration. In their uncoupled state, E1 and E2 exist as related enzymes, and as such share a potential future as catalyst for the transformation of A

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into C. Neo-Whiteheadian process thought would explain coupling potential as a manifestation of mutual immanence. The sequential train of actual occasions defining each of the two trajectories of becoming for E1 and E2 are mutually immanent in one another. Given this involvement, the actual occasions of related enzyme E1 and E2 can rightfully said to comprise a Whiteheadian nexus, where a nexus “does not presuppose any special type of order, nor does it presuppose any order at all pervading its members other than […] mutual immanence” (AI 201). Upon coupling, the E1/E2-nexus moves from potential catalyst to actual catalyst. This movement of potential to actual results from the evolution of the E1/E2-nexus into a relationship of occasions that manifests a “common element of form” (PR 34). This element of form is ‘pathway-catalyst’, and its emergence signals the change of nexus to society. As we saw above, for a nexus to become a society, it is not enough that there be a common element of form. The element of form must be passed on and reinforced throughout the life history of the society (PR 34). The passing on of the form pathway-catalyst from one actual occasion to the next of the E1/E2society, is the cause of the continued catalytic competency of the coupled E1/E2-ensemble and is manifestation of the Whiteheadian principle that past actual occasions have causal efficacy in the present. Let me summarize where this ontological investigation has led us thus far. When uncoupled, E1 and E2, by their status as related enzymes, have the potential of becoming a catalyst. The actual occasions that comprise the becoming of E1 and the actual occasions that comprise the becoming of E2 are mutually immanent, and thus constitute a nexus. Upon coupling, the E1/E2-ensemble evolves from nexus to society. I propose that this evolution constitutes a change in ontological status of the E1/E2-ensemble. Where once it had potential to become a catalyst, upon coupling the E1/E2ensemble has become that catalyst. The E1/E2-ensemble is now an actual catalyst and exists in the world as an actuality.

5. Systems Properties As an actuality, a biosystem is predicted to have properties that are related to its enduring element of form, internal structure, and level of integration of its subsystems. While each biosystem will possess all three types of property, each type may differ in quantity and quality depending on the complexity of the biosystem. A biosystem’s element of form is the basis for its functionality. From a biosystem’s functionality emerges its lowest order of systems property: the

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consumption and production of matter. The time-dependence of this functionality is mapped in diagrams such as those found in Figures 2 and 3, for the catalytic functionality of the coupled E1/E2 ensemble. Timedependent systems functionalities are currently the principle metrics used by systems biologists in their analysis of biosystems. Elements of form are 1st-order systems properties—properties of functionality. A biosystem elements of form arise from a biosystem’s internal structure. Internal structure involves not only the principle elements of the system but also structures within the principle elements. For example, in the coupled E1/E2 ensemble of Figure 2, the principle elements are the two enzymes. Structures within the principle elements include quaternary structure, protein domains, and amino acids. There is always some fuzziness in identifying the principle elements. Markers of functionality can become involved and part of these elements, perhaps even modifying the function of the principle elements. For example, in the pathway of Figure 1, not only do substrates A and B become integrated into the system, but also functional marker C, which enters into relation with the system by virtue of its interaction with E1, and, as feedback inhibitor, modifies the function of E1. In pathways in which enzymes are produced and consumed, the marker enzymes can become principle elements, and thus modify the biosystems internal structure. Principle elements of a biosystem and subordinate structures are 2nd-order systems properties—properties of internal structure. These are mapped in diagrams such as the one in the lower panel of Figure 3. 2nd-order systems properties are seldom investigated in systems biological studies. One wonders if 1st- and 2nd-order properties tell a biosystem’s whole story. While these properties accurately reflect the operation of a biosystem, they do not really provide insight into the system-as-actuality. One wonders if a system might possess a property that reflects the integral whole and ontological unity that is the system. I address this issue by first considering the biosystem with which we are most familiar, ourselves. Human beings not only possess the system properties mentioned above, but also another—the mind. The mind is that single property that reflects the integral human system, not just its myriad phenotypic, systems properties. The human’s mind is the integral property of the human-assystem, and is therefore distinct from both 1st- and 2nd-order properties. The mind is the human’s 3rd-order systems property—the property of global integration. I am not suggesting that less complex biosystems, such the metabolic pathways we have been considering, have minds, but rather that they possess a systems property that reflects the integral whole. In suggesting

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this I align myself with Whitehead who explained that if we refuse to place human experience outside nature we “must find in the description of human experience factors which also enter into the descriptions of less specialized natural occurrences” (AI 185). Thus, we must also grant that all systems will not only possess 1st- and 2nd-order properties, but also 3rd-order systems properties. Laszlo, in his systems philosophy, has similar thoughts. He maintains that all natural systems have the ability, however small, for introspection; and furthermore, the interior observer introspects “mind-events” (SP, 168). Thus, subjectivity is attributed to all natural systems, ranging from atoms, molecules, and humans, to supraorganic systems. Laszlo explains that even “social or ecological systems yield mind-events for the introspective analyst” (SP, 168). Thus, natural systems possess “interiority.”12 Although mind only exists to the subject (i.e., while I know I have a mind, I cannot be sure you do), there may be physical correlates of the mind that can be measured by spectroscopic probes, such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and positron emission tomography. Given this, one should expect that suitable techniques exist that might give evidence of 3rd-order systems property of biosystems even as simple as metabolic pathways. Such techniques would likely include spectroscopic probes that are highly sensitive to internal relations of a biosystem and to its environmental perturbation. This would also need to be a kinetic technique, sensitive to evolution of the system. In examining a coupled enzyme ensemble, for example, spectroscopic evidence would be sought for an emergent feature, one that is not merely the sum of the feature across the various members of the ensemble. Accepted wisdom tells us that such a search would be fruitless. But if holism is ever to move from its status of buzzword to foundation for experimental research programs, such evidence must first be sought.

Cited Works of Alfred North Whitehead SMW: Science and the Modern World. New York, Macmillan Publishing Co. ([1925] 1967). PR: Process and Reality. New York, Macmillan Publishing Co. ([1929] 1978). AI: Adventures of Ideas. New York, The Free Press ([1933] 1967).

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References Bertalanffy, L. v. (1968). General Systems Theory—Foundation, Development, Applications. New York, George Braziller. Bruggeman, F. J. and H. V. Westerfoff (2006). “The Nature of Systems Biology.” Trends in Microbiology 15: 45-50. Buchler, J. (1990). Metaphysics of Natural Complexes. Albany, State University of New York Press. Cobb, J. B. (1965). A Christian Natural Theology. Philadelphia, Westminster Press. Cobb, J. B., Jr. (1984). Overcoming Reductionism. Existence and Actuality— Conversations with Charles Hartshorne. J. B. Cobb, Jr. and F. I. Gamwell. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press: 149-166. Cornish-Bowder, A. (2006). “Putting the Systems Back Into Systems Biology.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 49: 475-489. Dowe, P. (2000). Physical Causation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Earley, J. E. (1981). “On Applying Whitehead's First Category of Existence.” Process Studies 11: 35-39. Griffin, D. R. (1988). “Of Minds and Molecules: Postmodern Medicine in a Psychosomatic Universe.” The Reenchantment of Science. D. R. Griffin. Albany, State Univesity of New York Press. Harris, E. E. (1970). Hypothesis and Perception. London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Hood, L., L. Rowen, et al. (2008). “Systems Biology at the Institute for Systems Biology.” Briefings in Functional Genomics and Proteomics: (June 25, 2008; Epub ahead of print). Kitano, H. (2002). “Systems Biology: A Brief Overview.” Science 295: 1162-1664. Koestler, A. (1978). Janus—A Summing Up. New York, Random House. Krohs, U. and W. Callebaut (2007). “Data without Models Merging with Models without Data. Systems Biology.” Philosophical Foundations. F. J. Boogerd, F. J. Bruggeman, J.-H. S. Hofmeyr and H. V. Westerfoff. Amsterdam, Elsvier: 181-213. Laszlo, E. (1972). Introduction to Systems Philosophy—Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought. New York, Harper & Row Publishers. Leclerc, I. (1972). The Nature of Physical Existence. London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Levesque, M. P. and P. N. Benfey (2004). “Systems Biology.” Current Biology 14: R179-R180.

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Mills, J. (2002). “Whitehead Idealized: A Naturalized Process Metaphysics.” Process Studies 31: 32-48. Powell, K. (2004). “All Systems Go.” Journal of Cell Biology 165: 299-203. Rescher, N. (1996). Process Metaphysics—An Introduction to Process Philosophy. Albany, State University of New York. Robert, J. S. (2007). “Molecular and Systems Biology and Bioethics.” The Cambridge Campanion to the Philosophy of Biology. D. L. Hull and M. Ruse. New York, Cambridge University Press: 361-371. Stein, R. L. (2005). “Enzymes as Ecosystems—A Panexperientialist Account of Biocatalytic Chemical Transformation.” Process Studies 34: 62-80. Stein, R. L. (2006). “A Process Theory of Enzyme Catalytic Power—The Interplay of Science and Metaphysics.” Foundations of Chemistry 8: 3-29. Wallack, F. B. (1980). The Epochal Nature of Process in Whitehead's Metaphysics. Albany, State University of New York Press. Westerfoff, H. V. and B. O. Palsson (2004). “The Evolution of Molecular Biology Into Systems Biology.” Nature Biotechnology 22: 1249-1252. Wolkenhauer, O. (2001). “Systems Biology: The Reincarnation of Systems Theory Applied in Biology.” Briefings in Bioinformatics 2: 258-270.

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Notes 1

In this paper, I use the term ‘evolution’ not in the Darwinian sense to describe how a species changes from one generation to next, but rather to describe how an actuality changes over time. In this sense, it has the same meaning as becoming. 2

Reviews of systems biology include: review articles (Wolkenhauer 2001; Kitano 2002; Levesque and Benfey 2004; Powell 2004; Westerfoff and Palsson 2004; Bruggeman and Westerfoff 2006; Cornish-Bowder 2006). 3

This discussion of metabolic pathways needs to be prefaced by several comments about the central elements that comprise these pathways— enzymes. Enzymes are protein catalysts that accelerate the critical reactions of an organism’s metabolic and catabolic processes. All enzymatic reactions proceed by mechanisms in which the reactant molecule (or ‘substrate’ as it is known) is bound by enzyme within a micro-environment that is known as the ‘active site’. Within the enzyme’s active site, chemical transformation of substrate to product occurs. After completion of the reaction, product dissociates from the active site and liberates the enzyme for another round of catalysis. 4

Feedback inhibition is a common means by which the flux through a metabolic pathway is regulated and involves the binding of a ‘downstream’ metabolite to an ‘upstream’ enzyme to form a complex that is catalytically inactive. The inhibition of this single enzyme retards material flux through the entire pathway. In the metabolic pathway of Figure 1, downstream metabolite C combines with upstream enzyme E1 to form E1:C which is unable to combine with A. Inhibition of the catalytic activity of E1 generates less material for E2 and thus flux is slowed. 5

Brackets translate as ‘concentration’ and the substrate zero, as ‘at time = 0’. So, [X]o is read as, the concentration of X at time zero or the initial concentratin of X. 6

Originating from Bertalanffy’s work and heavily influenced by the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Ervin Laszlo developed a philosophy of systems, with core doctrines (Laszlo 1972, 293-294) stating that: (i) process plays a central role in the universe, (ii) process is the “emergence of purpose itself; the emergence of the dynamic organization which manifests purpose” (Laszlo 1972, 176), and (iii) the knower is continuous with the known; there is no gap between subject and object.

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Laszlo’s basic unit of being is the natural system, a set of relationallyconnected entities with the following four properties (Laszlo 1972, Chapter 4): (1) Wholeness Natural systems are wholes with properties that are irreducible and not possessed by its parts. (2) Adaptive Self-Stabilization Natural systems maintain themselves in a changing environment, having the ability to return to a steady-state following environmental perturbation. (3) Adaptive Self-Organization Natural systems create themselves in response to the challenge of their environment. This accounts for the emergence of novelty. And, (4) Holon Property Everything that is, exists simultaneously as a whole with subordinate parts, and as a part, itself subordinately situated within some whole or wholes. 7

I take ‘actuality’ to be a complex entity that can be regarded as an ontological unit. Actualities include living entities such animals and cells, and non-living things such as molecules and atoms. 8

Critical to his project is that notion that not all experience need be conscious experience. Whitehead asserted that “consciousness presupposes experience, and not experience consciousness” (Whitehead [1929] 1978, p. 53). 9

Whitehead explains that the things of common experience are composed of actual occasions and organized ‘groupings’ of actual occasions. But since actual occasions are the only entities with a claim to true actuality, the things of everyday life and scientific investigation are only derivatively actual. Such an ontology has been countered by philosophers who regard all living entities, and perhaps some complex non-living entities, as fully actual ontological unities. Discussions of this Neo-Whiteheadian turn can be found in a number contemporary works (Cobb 1965; Wallack 1980; Earley 1981; Cobb 1984; Griffin 1988), where the actual occasion takes on a meaning Whitehead might not have intended. 10

Modifiers are compounds that fall into two classes: reaction rate inhibitors or reaction rate accelerators. Both inhibitors and accelerators exert their respective affects by first binding to the enzyme to form a binary of complex of enzyme and modifier. This binary complex will have catalytic properties that are different (i.e., slower or faster) than enzyme without modifier. 11

Enzymes are proteins and as such are polymeric strands of covalently linked amino acids. To gain enzymatic function, this strand must first fold in on itself and wind into a compact globular structure. But enzymes and

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other proteins are not rigid structures. To get an appropriate mental picture, one should imagine a ball of cooked spaghetti at zero-gravity; not the innards of a baseball. This long, wound-up strand is dynamic and in constant motion, adapting different 3-dimensional conformations. It is precisely this internal dynamism that allows proteins to express function (Stein 2005; Stein 2006). 12

Interiority is an attribute allowing the entity to react as an ontological unit to its environment; interiority allows the entity to experience. The concept of interiority is a generalization from the experiencing human self to all complex entities that has been made by a number philosophers, particularly those with an idealist bent; indeed, that complex entities have an interiority is part and parcel of subject-object dualism that these philosophers sought to defeat. Schopenhauer tells us that Kant’s “thing-initself” is the will; not an anthropomorphized will but rather the motivating factor that compels all actualities, not just sentient actualities, towards their futures. Schelling, in his Naturphilosophie speaks of how we must come to understand Nature as mind made visible, and Mind as the invisible Nature. Similarly, the American Transcendentalist Emerson speaks of Nature as the manifestation of consciousness. And finally, process thinkers of all stripes endorse the sentiment that all actualities possess some capacity for subjective experience by virtue of interiority.

V. Containment and Reciprocity in Biological Systems: A Putative Psychophysical Organising Principle Jonathan Delafield-Butt 1. Introduction The stuff of life, the living substance that is common to all biological organisms, is the aqueous society of biochemical activity ongoing in every cell in every living body. The basic biochemical ‘reactions’ of life are largely similar with variations of a theme played out in different cells living in different environments, e.g. the core biochemical metabolic processes of all life likely stem from an ancient, early-earth ancestor (Smith & Morowitz, 2004). However, even more common to life than shared biochemistry are the basic structural properties of all cells and all living organisms into complexes of compartmentalised units. In this paper, I will argue there are common feelings driving the generation of these ubiquitous structures in nature and that these feelings may constitute one of several primary forms of feeling in living systems. The panexperiential process philosophy, exemplified by Whitehead’s “Philosophy of Organism” (Whitehead, 1929), shifts the typical mechanism-driven theoretical framework to allow common principles of enacted self-organisation to come forward as driving forces behind biological organisation (e.g. Agar, 1936). It casts new light on what is occurring at the molecular, cellular, intra-, and inter-organismic levels to show common principles of process, or activity based on feeling, are occurring at each one (Agar, 1943; Birch, 1999). Biological organisation is similar to non-linear physical organisation where motifs are found repeated through many magnitudes of scale (West & Brown, 2005). However, biological organisation is also quite different. It is a self-generated activity of the parts that contributes to the formation of the whole—in significant quantities from trapped or collected resources—that does not happen in the

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purely physical systems. These patterns are ‘living’ patterns in flesh and blood of the type that we experience and that basic organisms may experience, too. It is the living patterns we are closely familiar with and that we drive into being through our actions dependent on the presence of primitive ‘instincts’, or feelings, arising during specific, usually social, contexts.1 It is these feelings that I want to bring out here, to show that one set of them can generate the most common organisations seen in biology, contained systems. This set of feelings appears to drive the activities of basic living systems and so they appear to be fundamental and ubiquitous.

2. Feeling Feeling Feeling Process thought emphasises feeling as being the primary ‘stuff’ of process and therefore the primary ‘stuff’ of the universe [PR 172]. Feelings contribute to the prehensions and to the guidance of the actual occasion to satisfaction (PR 19 [29]; Delafield-Butt, 2008). This “lure for feeling is the germ of mind” (PR 85 [131]). Actually, feeling is all there really is. Leue (2005) sums it up best, describing each actual occasion as “feeling feeling feeling.” In other words, an ‘organism’ is a feeling feeling another feeling (subject, transitive verb, object). If ‘feeling feeling feeling’ is at the heart of the material processes of life, then this suggests a new framework for biological processes based on the evolution and manifold expression of this basic processural system. But what are these feelings and how are they common among the different scalar layers of biological organisation? The process ‘feeling feeling feeling’ must share common principles reflected throughout biological organisation and that have evolved to give different expressions of the same fundamental process, just as different anatomical or genetic arrangements have evolved to serve specific purposes in specific contexts yet have developed from a common root to serve the basic life processes of the organism. What are these feelings and how do they express themselves in nature?

3. Universal Forms of Feeling If feelings operate not only in human relations, but are ubiquitously present in all relations between ‘organisms’, as the primary stuff of actual occasions, then some of the same feelings that structure and shape our human relations may also be present in the structuring and shaping of

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biological systems generally. These feelings common to nature and to man must be fundamental feelings in our human experience of them, and not just species-specific ones (see, e.g. Birch, 1995). I think, and will present here, that one set of these feelings are the feelings that underpin the quality of form of relating between two intimate individuals. To describe these feelings phenomonologically is very difficult because of their fundamental nature. Such a study of these experiences may be a useful approach for the future. Here however, I want to identify one set of them and look at what we can know of them through their rational study in two disciplines that recognise the importance of feeling in living, ecological developmental psychology and psychoanalytic theory. Both of these disciplines have examined the psychobiological nature of the mother-infant relationship. It is here where psychoemotional experiences interact so very closely with vital physiological process, providing us with informative material to consider how felt experience and the vital biological processes of living interact. In the interactions of the infant with adult others, our analytical adult minds can begin to see, and thus begin to appreciate, how feelings drive us to engagements with others and to steer our course of actions through them, thus shaping our behaviour and giving structure to our lives.

4. Reciprocity and Containment in Human Relations In an engagement between two intimate humans, feelings form their binding togetherness. These feelings are generated by, and generate ‘containment’ and ‘reciprocity’. They are based on contingencies of feeling between the two to form a fit that brings them together into a dyadic whole. Importantly, if this relation is capable of containment, then it is capable of enduring hardship and extremes of feeling. Containments and reciprocities are expressed in activity in the interaction, and so they manifest in a physical, bodily reality, but it is the containment and reciprocity of feeling that is the substance of the engagement and the driver of the activity (Stern, 2004). Containment and reciprocity lie at the two ends of a continuum of relating (Douglas, 2007). Reciprocal engagements form a shared patterning in the interaction, usually with a rhythmic balance of give and receive where one expresses then receives the expression of the other, reciprocates in expression, and so on (Stern, 1971; Trevarthen, 1977; Trevarthen, 1998). When the dynamic of the sharing becomes stretched when one individual is

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suffering in intense feelings, especially those that are not manageable by the individual alone, then in a reciprocal engagement, the other acts to ‘contain’ the intensity of those feelings (Bion, 1959; Bion, 1962). The relation moves toward the container-contained end of the continuum. Understanding this process of relating between containment and reciprocity forms a major foundation for modern psychoanalytic theory. It is a specific mechanism by which the concerned sympathy of one person is able to comfort, protect, and help the other to accept, live through, and survive a crisis. Feelings can become too much for one person to manage and must be contained by another for normal life to continue. Bion (1959, 1962) introduced the idea from his psychoanalytic work with patients, but drew on his observations of mother-infant interactions. Formalising the idea, he named the harmful extremes of feeling, ‘beta elements’, and the role of the other in containing these elements, the ‘alpha function’, to transform these into ‘alpha elements’, or manageable feelings. A containercontained relation is formed through the projection of beta elements and their transformation into alpha elements by a love and a drive to stabilise, or make well an otherwise reciprocal and intimate relationship. The process is important. It forms the foundations of a developing human mind. It is the mechanism by which the sympathy of an intimate other is able to comfort and protect another during a crisis, however great or small. When feelings become too much for one person, they can be contained by another. In this form of relating, the container is one who is able to accept and to accommodate the stresses and traumas experienced by the other, and the contained is the one with psychological extremes that cannot be ‘held’ by oneself, but must be somehow expelled. In a container-contained relationship, the expulsion of the extreme is then taken up and processed in a novel way unfamiliar to the expeller. This processing of the extremity is all important, because it shows the other how to cope with this apparently uncopable situation. In this way, the expeller brings back into himself the same energy originally expelled, but transformed into an acceptable new form through a previously unknown mechanism. We have all experienced container-contained relationships and we all still live in them even in our so-called ‘independence’ as adults. This form of relating is particularly noticeable in intimate relationships where the contained and containing element is especially deep, but these relations also exist more superficially in our everyday engagements, too, and form looser dynamics of professional companionship and friendship. The idea of containment in psychoanalytic theory is one of its most prominent contemporary ideas, because it lends itself as a pragmatic tool when understanding the patient-analyst relationship. The system is

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superficially similar to feed-back regulation, but the energies transmitted are feeling qualities and the one who feeds back does so by psychologically processing the energies of the other in order to give them back in an acceptable form. The patient-analyst relationship acts as a ‘containercontained’ relationship and its unique form enables the patient to revisit his or her early structures of containment formed during the first parent-infant and parent-child relations. These early relations are of importance for one’s healthy or unhealthy psychological development.

5. Dynamic Forms of Reciprocity and Engagement In an engagement with another, there is a patterned exchange of activity, all of which is communicative. Repeated cycles of reciprocated actions form the hallmark of a communicative engagement and set the foundation for language (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2008). In early mother-infant communication, these cycles of reciprocated activity form the bond of attachment. They generate strong affective feelings as well as a dyadic state of co-consciousness (Tronick, 2005). They take place in multiple modalities, including the voice, touch, and gesture, to express and to communicate internal feelings in reciprocal relation with those of the other. The engagement of the two organisms is an engagement of two feelings forming a common, coherent whole. In infant development, sympathetic sharing in the resulting dyadic state of consciousness is required for the healthy development of both parties, infant and mother. In a developing psychopathology, the reciprocity fails leading to distress, anxiety, and eventual developmental trauma (Reddy, 2008). It is the sharing, the ‘togetherness’, that brings satisfaction and health (Trevarthen, 1977). These rhythmic infant-adult episodes of mutual engagements of feelings occur through time in narrative patterns that open, then build, and climax before closing (Malloch, 1999). Importantly, the communication and narrative sequence is regulated by, and regulates autonomic physiological processes essential to vital health (Trevarthen, Aitken, Nagy, Delafield-Butt, & Vandekerckhove, 2006). There occurs a mutual regulation of visceral physiology, as well as a mutual regulation of feeling. The feeling and the physiology are entwined, so to speak, between two organisms in intimate engagement. The coming together of two is represented by the term amphoteronomics, coined to signify the reciprocal phenomenon of ‘ruling together’, and is closely related to, though distinguished from the traditional autonomic processes of self-regulation (Trevarthen et al., 2006). Mutual co-regulation

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of affect and physiology appears central to a human sympathy of motives that generates the prospective function of the whole ‘self as agent’ who, with specialised sensory capacities, picks up information as perceptual ‘affordances’ (Gibson, 1977) to guide, check and correct movements of the body and its parts so they will as one integrated system, attain their intended goals effectively and efficiently (Brazelton, 1974). In sum, reciprocity can be generalised from mother-infant research to be defined as “the sophisticated interactions between [two organisms] when both are involved in the initiation, regulation, and termination of the interaction. Reciprocity applies to the interactions in all relationships” (Douglas, 2007). In contrast, loneliness is, in a psychological reality, one of the most powerful ways that we can know death. The fear of death is rather an expression of the fear of loneliness, a fear of the lack of reciprocal relating and thus a dearth of living satisfaction.

6. Reciprocity as a Route to Satisfaction Whitehead’s notion that the actual occasion aims to achieve ‘satisfaction’ (Whitehead 1929) is an intriguing, but unclear idea. What is ‘satisfying’, exactly? I have been puzzled by whether in a spiritual sense it is simply satisfying ‘to be’, ‘to exist’, and that that is enough. Or if, in fact, there is something more tangible about a satisfaction. Whitehead’s metaphysical scholarship defines a satisfaction as an increase in ‘contrasts’, or in ‘intensities of feeling’. If we consider again the process of relating and bring these ideas to mind, we see in the infant-adult dyad the sharing of feeling can amplify the feelings, bringing great joy. Joy is the product of a mutual regulation of social exchange by both partners. Smiling back and forth is the prototypical example; it usually begins at a relatively low level of intensity. Each partner then progressively escalates—kicking the other into higher orbit, so to speak. The exchange occurs in overlapping waves, where the mother’s smile elicits the infant’s, reanimating her next smile at an even higher level, and so on. These overlapping waves build in intensity, until, most often, simultaneous mutual hilarity breaks out. (Stern, 1990)

Importantly, Stern brings us through the behavioural expressions of affect to look at affect communicating with affect, feeling feeling feeling, rather than behaviour sensing behaviour. Reciprocal relations generate a shared consciousness that has at its core a feeling of satisfaction. These feelings can be known though our own human

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dynamic of reciprocally relating and the phenomenology of this process of relating may be known through sensitive introspection. Their fundamental character and their essential importance in generating healthy psychoemotional foundations in humans suggests the feelings found in this reciprocal processural form, and the structure of that processural form, are strong candidates for universals applicable to all so-called ‘organisms’.

7. Biochemistry, Cells, Organisms and the Actual Occasion An understanding of biological systems driven by feeling requires the notion that even the most fundamental particles, or entities, of the natural world, the molecules that make up our cells, have within them small powers of self-willed action (Basile, 2008). It is on the back of Whitehead that, for example, the feelings that generate the containments we experience and act out as developing and adult humans are not merely human ones, but biologically universal feelings. An ‘organism’ is what Whitehead calls an ‘actual occasion’ or an ‘actual entity’. For the purposes of pragmatism, we can consider at the most basic level that an atom or a molecule is an organism with some possibility to enact its wilful action to achieve satisfaction; any entity is one that acts with a degree of unity. A macromolecular complex, for example, is an organism in an intracellular societal context, or a tightly bound collection of molecules in a cellular organelle may be an organism, or a cell may be an organism. Working up still further, cell systems are organisms and whole complexes of cells acting with unity are organisms. From the level of the cell upward, no biologist would disagree that this is the case; we only come into more controversial realms when we consider subcellular and molecular systems as ‘organisms’. The power of Whitehead’s philosophy removes these traditional barriers of thought and allows for conceptions of cellular and intra-cellular processes of felt experience by the entities that make them up, what we typically call molecules, proteins, etc. Further, the containing relationship does something peculiar. It creates a sense of an interior where there was none previously. Between two individuals there is no physical interior, but within both an effective reciprocating relation and a containing container-contained relation, a felt sense of ‘interior’ develops, or co-consciousness. This can manifest itself in the physical domain, but in a manner that is not entirely obvious at first. The containing relationship prevents certain actions and affords certain others through the change in internal feelings of each party, and also

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sometimes through direct or indirect physical intervention. The reciprocal relating creates a new world of possibility.

8. Reciprocity and Containment in Biological Systems In biological systems, reciprocal relations between parts are ubiquitous. For example, reciprocal relations between biochemicals form the basis of metabolic cycles (Smith & Morowitz, 2004), signalling complexes (Muller, Obeyesekere, Mills, & Ram, 2008), genetic regulation (Nelson & Bissell, 2006), neuro-hormonal systems (Nelson & Bissell, 2006), developmental systems (Oyama, Griffiths, & Gray, 2003), physiology (Bernard, 1865) etc. There is no biological system that is not engaged in a reciprocated exchange with another, nor is there one that is not made up of reciprocal relations between its parts. Reciprocated exchange forms the basis of socalled equilibriums (Kirkwood & Oppenheim, 1961) between chemical systems and so-called homeostasis (Cannon, 1929; Cannon, 1932) in ‘living’ systems, such as protozoans or metazoans. From the very process of conception through to the mature physiological functions of an adult, the organism is built on reciprocal inter-relations between specialised and complementary parts. Additionally, its self-driven activity in its social and object environment remains embedded in reciprocal relations with others, in this case made by the totality of the organisms acting in its world (Reed, 1996). Physical containment of these processes is also ubiquitous. Biological organisation is based on compartmentalised specialisms, each compartment contains a set of biological activity (e.g. biochemical activity, specialised cell function) that would otherwise not be able to endure without the protection of the containment. The difference between biological compartmentalisation and psychological inter-personal containment is obvious, the former is composed of biological material while the latter is composed of volitional action driven by feelings of sympathetic attunement, or love. However, the difference is not as clear-cut as it first seems and I believe that in these differences and similarities lie some clues to the nature of feelings in biological organisations. If there is even an iota of joie de vivre present in the interactions of molecules, then there will be cause to preserve this feeling. The first molecular arrangements that generated the origins of life are cyclic, or reciprocal. These make up the modern prokaryote thermo- and mycoplasmas constructed of three coupled cycles of biochemical activity

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forming sustainable relations through their reciprocal inter-relating. “The existence and co-operation of these three subsystems is the prior condition for the presence of life” (Gániti, 1971). One feeds into the other and the other feeds back to the first, and so on ad infinitum. Ad infinitum, that is, until some other molecular entity or energy extreme comes crashing in and disrupts the system, destabilising and ruining it. In order to preserve the fragility of the molecular arrangement, protection must be established. One protection is the first ‘compartmentalisation’, one of Gániti’s prokaryotic subsystems, the first membrane to surround the cyclical molecular system to preserve and protect it. However, in a panexperiential world-view, no entity is inert and passive. The molecular system that makes up the membrane must itself be contributing to a set of relations that provides a sense of satisfaction. This is important, and possible through two means. Either the immediate set of relations provides a sense of satisfaction by placing two entities in a stable relation, or the entities generate a sense of satisfaction by contributing to a greater whole, the entire complex of entities that make up the stable set, the primitive cell. I think it is likely to be both, that there is an intense satisfaction in the immediate set of relations and another quality of satisfaction in the generation of a greater whole. This question is really one of what contributes to any one actual occasion and how the degrees of physical (coordinate) separation or functional (genetic) intimacy correspond to degrees of prehensive intensity in any one occasion. In other words, a question best addressed at length elsewhere. The most primitive containment, the phospholipid bilayer membrane, is ubiquitous in cellular life. In fact, it characterises cellular life. The membrane is compose of two layers that are identical and surround the cell, giving the cell its boundary, its ‘skin’, and the regulatory apparatus allowing life-sustaining material in and keeping life-threatening material out (Nagle & Tristam-Nagle, 2000; Tristam-Nagle & Nagle, 2004). The molecular unit of the lipid bilayer membrane is the lipid. The membrane is composed of hundreds of millions of individual lipids, each one nearly similar to the next. The membrane becomes arranged because of the electrostatic properties of the lipids. Each lipid has an electrically charged head and two parallel electrically neutral tails. The medium of living biochemical organisation is water—our bodies are greater than sixty percent water. Water is electrically charged. Thus, the lipids arrange themselves so that their charged heads interact with the water and their tails then try to move as far away from the water as far as possible. A bilayer is one solution.

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Each lipid within the phospholipid bilayer membrane works to physically contain the entire inside of the cell through its interactions with its neighbouring lipids and water solutions. By its position in the membrane structure, it immanently produces that structure through the satisfaction of its own immediate relations, and thereby engages in and contributes to the process of ‘physical’ containment. In satisfying those immediate relations, therefore, it contributes its vital part in preserving and therefore satisfying the greater whole. How does it satisfy its own, immediate relations? It does so through a dynamic chemical process of balancing electrostatic charges. It must ‘work’ with its neighbour to find a stable balance of relations, and in this case doing so creates an organisation we call the lipid bilayer membrane, made from the resulting arrangement of electrostatic properties along its tail and head. On the basis of the foregoing discussion, how can we now account for reciprocity and containment in the individual molecular interactions? The same manifestation of containment and reciprocity that we witness in the infant-parent dyad and whose feelings we can come to know through analytic retro- and intro-spection of our own experience may be present in the interactions between two phospholipids in a cellular bilayer membrane. The same patterns of relating are apparent. The dynamic of electromagnetic charge interaction is one of reciprocal inter-relations that take place via ‘discreetised’ quanta of activity (Feynmann, 1985; Oppenheimer, 1931), analogous to those quanta of activity that make up any one gesture in a narrative of gestures in a parent-infant engagement. That is, I propose each lipid molecule is able to direct the placement and interaction of its electric charge in such a way that it resembles the direction and placement of limbs, voice, and body in our active engagement in interaction. That is to say that in molecular engagements, the most comparable apparatus to our effectors (hands, feet, voice etc.) are the outer electron shells (these are the most distal atomic components and the ones that interact most directly with others) and so it may be with these apparatus that an atomic organism may enact its iota of ‘will’. The phospholipids form stable relations between each other by balancing their charges to produce satisfactory hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity of its regions with that of its environment, the charges and neutralities of its neighbours. This arrangement maintains itself in calm, benign conditions through this type of reciprocal electrostatic dynamic, forming a stable balance and so an enduring relation. It is when a perturbation to this relation occurs that the relation is pushed from being in reciprocated balance to being under threat, or pushed to an extreme. Accommodation of the disturbance must be made. As one phospholipid moves out of position with the other, both experience

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higher energy feelings that have an inherent ‘pull’ to which they respond by resuming their former position. The dynamic both in spatial and in energic terms creates a relational ‘well’ of stability, what dynamic equilibrium theory calls a low energy basin. It is the inherent ability of one individual lipid to appropriate the increased (c.f. traumatic) energy of its companion lipid, to ‘process’ this additional energy, and to give it back to the other in a new, beneficial form that closely parallels the larger form of human psychological containment. In the lipids’ case, the containing lipid is less defined as an individual acting alone to contain as we might see a mother doing, and as is more observable as a component in a large sheet of dynamic relations. In this view, when the impact of high energy is felt by one part of the system, one lipid say, this experience is distributed over a sheet of hundreds of thousands of lipids. While this is observable, it occludes the fact that the distributions of energies comes back to the individual relations of, say, the impacted lipid and its neighbour. It is the arrangement of the lipids altogether that gives one the ability to be able to contain the up-swells of another. This core process-relational notion of ‘individual-in-community’ is an important fact not to be missed. For humans as well, it is our social distribution of containments and the distributions of energies that enables the one to contain the other. Isolated, each is bound to perish.

9. Concluding Remarks If we are to believe that we can apply experience down to the individual ‘experiences’ of molecules (Cobb, 1984; Griffin, 1988) and that experience holds some universal qualities present in every layer of biological organisation, then we have to consider how our human experience is driven by fundamental feeling and how these might be applicable. It has been shown that a process account of biochemical activity is achievable and may be necessary to explain the temporal course of reaction dynamics (Early, 1981; Stein, 2006). One set of feelings are the sympathies in the reciprocal, attuned relation with an intimate other. Psychoanalytic work has shown that the feelings present in this form of relating are fundamental to our psychological makeup and that these feelings are primary. They are thus a good bet for ascribing to them universal importance in every ‘organismic’ relation. From a biological view, molecules form the primary ‘building blocks’ of our constitution. Thus, what is present in us may be present in them. Our experience may be applicable to them. This reasoning forms the basis of exploring the possibility that common feelings present in and

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driving reciprocity and containment in human relations are also present in and are driving ‘reciprocal’ and ‘containing’ relations between the most basic entities, the molecules. I have given here only one infinitesimally small example of a reciprocal and containing relation between two seemingly insignificant lipids in a bilayer membrane of an anonymous cell that could be any cell in any organism in any part of the world. If we begin to examine this same structure of relating and driving engagement to form enduring relations through reciprocal and containing actions, then we begin to see this feature everywhere in nature. The biological systems positively explode with commonality. This can mean two things: either our definition is insufficiently precise to be useful, or the process is so very fundamental that it is ubiquitous in living systems. It may be that both are true: Increased resolution of the definition with precise examples by empirical observation and characterisation of this phenomenon will reveal in greater clarity the psychophysics of reciprocating and containing relations. Importantly, our definition of ‘organism’ must be improved, and our understanding of organisms as actual entities in biochemical systems must be enhanced (e.g. see Stein, this volume). This will give us greater understanding of what constitutes an ‘organism’ and what possibilities those, especially biochemical organisms have to enact themselves into satisfaction. If we can begin to identify these fundamentals, we will be better positioned to further examine not only reciprocity and containment in basic biological systems, but also the role such a putative set of feelings may play in creating enduring biological processive-order.

10. References Agar, W. E. (1936). “A Contribution to the Theory of the Living Organism.” The Quarterly Review of Biology, 11, 16-34. Agar, W. E. (1943). A Contribution to the Theory of the Living Organism. Melbourne & London: Melbourne & Oxford University Press. Basile, P. (2008). “Panpsychism.” In M. Weber & W. Desmond (Eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Vol. 1. Frankfurt: ontos verlag. Bernard, C. (1865). Introduction à la médecine expérimentale. Paris: Bordas. Bion, W. R. (1959). “Attacks on Linking”. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 40. Bion, W. R. (1962). “A Theory of Thinking.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 43.

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Birch, C. (1999). Biology and the Riddle of Life. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Birch, C. (1995). Feelings. University of New South Wales Press. Brazelton, T. B. (1974). “The Origins of Reciprocity: The early mother-infant interaction.” In M. Lewis & L. Rosenblum (Eds.), The Effects of the Infant on its Caregiver. London: Wiley. Cannon, W. B. (1929). “Organization for physiological homeostasis.” Physiological Reviews, 9, 399-431. Cannon, W. B. (1932). The wisdom of the body. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Cobb, J. B., Jr. (1984). “Overcoming Reductionism.” In J. B. Cobb, Jr. & F. I. Gamwell (Eds.), Existence and Actuality—Conversations with Charles Hartshorne (pp. 149-166). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Delafield-Butt, J. T. (2008). “Process and Action: Whitehead's Ontological Units and Perceptuomotor Control Units.” In K. Spyridon (Ed.), Process and Life. Frankfurt: ontos verlag. Douglas, H. (2007). Containment and Reciprocity: Integrating Psychoanalytic Theory andChild Development Research for Work with Children. London & New York: Routledge. Early, J.E. (1981). “Self-Organization and Agency: In Chemistry and Process Philosophy.” Process Studies 11: 242-58 Feynmann, R. (1985). QED: The strange theory of light and matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gániti, T. (1971). The Principles of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gibson, J. J. (1977). “The Theory of Affordances.” In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Griffin, D. R. (1988). “Of Minds and Molecules: Postmodern medicine in a psychosomatic universe.” In D. R. Griffin (Ed.), The Reenchantment of Science. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Kirkwood, J. G. & Oppenheim, I. (1961). Chemical Thermodynamics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Leue, W. H. (2005). Metaphysical foundations for a theory of value in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Ashfield, MA: Down-to-Earth Books. Malloch, S. (1999). “Mothers and infants and communicative musicality.” Musicae Scientiae, 1999 Special Issue, 29-57. Malloch, S. & Trevarthen, C. (Eds.). (2008). Communicative Musicality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Muller, M., Obeyesekere, M., Mills, G. B., & Ram, R. T. (2008). “Network topology determines dynamics of the mammalian MAPK1,2 signaling network: bifan

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motif regulation of C-Raf and B-Raf isoforms by FGFR and MC1R.” FASEB, 22, 1393-1403. Nagle, J. F. & Tristam-Nagle, S. (2000). “Structure of lipid bilayers.” Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 1469, 159-195. Nelson, C. M. & Bissell, M. J. (2006). “Of extracellular matrix, scaffolds, and signaling: tissue architecture regulates development, homeostasis, and cancer.” Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology, 22, 287-309. Oppenheimer, J. R. (1931). “Note on Light Quanta and the Electromagnetic Field.” Physical Review, 38, 725-746. Oyama, S., Griffiths, P. E., & Gray, R. D. (Eds.). (2003). Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reddy, V. (2008). How Infants Know Minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reed, E. S. (1996). Encountering the World: Toward an ecological Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, E. & Morowitz, H. J. (2004). “Universality in intermediary metabolism.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 101, 13168-13173. Stein, R. L. (2006). “A process theory of enzyme catalytic power—The interplay of science and metaphysics.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8, 3-29. Stern, D. (1971). “A micro-analysis of mother-infant interaction: Behaviors regulating social contact between a mother and her three-and-a-half-month-old twins.” Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 10, 507-517. Stern, D. (1990). “Joy and Satisfaction in Infancy.” In R. Glick & S. Bone (Eds.), Pleasure Beyond the Pleasure Principle (pp. 16). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Stern, D. (2004). The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Trevarthen, C. (1977). “Descriptive Analysis of Infant Communication Behavior.” In H. R. Schaffer (Ed.), Studies in Mother-Infant Interaction: The Loch Lomond Symposium (pp. 227-270). London: Academic Press. Trevarthen, C. (1998). “The concept and foundations of intersubjectivity.” In S. Braten (Ed.), Intersubjective Communication and Emotion in Early Ontogeny (pp. 1546). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trevarthen, C., Aitken, K., Nagy, E., Delafield-Butt, J. T., & Vandekerckhove, M. (2006). “Collaborative Regulations of Vitality in Early Childhood: Stress in Intimate Relationships and Postnatal Psychopathology.” In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental Psychopathology (pp. 65-126). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

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Tristam-Nagle, S. & Nagle, J. F. (2004). “Lipid bilayers: thermodynamics, structure, fluctuations, and interactions.” Chemistry and Physics of Lipids, 127, 3-14. Tronick, E. (2005). “Why is connection with other so critical? The formation of dyadic states of consciousness and the expansion of individuals' states of consciousness: Coherence governed selections and the co-creation of meaning out of messy meaning making.” In J. Nadel & D. Muir (Eds.), Emotional Development (pp. 293-316). Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, G. E. & Brown, J. H. (2005). “The origins of allometric scaling laws in biology from genomes to ecosystems: towards a quantitative unifying theory of biological structure and organisation.” J. Exp. Biol, 208, 1575-1592. Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality. New York: Macmillan.

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Notes 1

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging man How of my clay is made the hangman's lime. The lips of time leech to the fountain head; Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood Shall calm her sores. And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind How time has ticked a heaven round the stars. And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.” —Dylan Thomas, ca. 1934

VI. The Philosophy of an Infinite, Open and Integrated Universe Ronald Preston Phipps Philosophy is the welding of imagination and common sense into a restraint upon specialists, and also into an enlargement of their imaginations. By providing the generic notions philosophy should make it easier to conceive the infinite variety of specific instances which rest unrealized in the womb of nature. (Alfred North Whitehead 1929 / 1978)

Prologue The following essay in cosmology summarizes and expands upon a lecture given in May 2005, at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, Ireland, during a Conference on Science and Process Thought, sponsored by the Chapter for Applied Process Thought. This work is at once an antidote to the dogmas prevailing in contemporary physics and an attempt to creatively develop the cosmology and ontology of the great mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. The ideas and principles expressed herein were first formulated during the 7 years I served as personal research assistant to Henry S. Leonard, President of the American Philosophy Association, who served as Whitehead’s personal assistant at Harvard when Whitehead composed Process and Reality and other major philosophical works. Leonard was a colleague of the great Austrian mathematical logician Kurt Gödel at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University. Both Whitehead and Gödel, two of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, were critics of Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity. While critics, they found ways to embrace the enduring insight of Einstein that diverse Forms of Energy are transformable one into

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another. Whitehead’s fundamental ideas and postulates are the foundation of my own ideas, formed with the invaluable guidance of Leonard. Gödel’s conclusions about Einstein’s General Relativity Theory in relation to the theory of time are a second factor of importance for me. These ideas were initially formulated under the sponsorship of a fellowship in theoretical physics from the National Science Foundation. The paper will proceed as follows: 1) Introduction, 2) Process Philosophy, 3) Orderliness, 4) Cosmic Epochs, 5) Event vs. Particle Ontology, 6) An Ontological Alternative to Relativity Theory, 7) Some Remarks on Quantum Phenomena, 8) The Mental and the Material, 9) The Relation of Theology to the Philosophy of an Infinite, Open and Integrated Universe, 10) Conclusion.

1. Introduction This essay in cosmology is dedicated to our friend Professor Thomas Kelly, a man of great wit, thoughtfulness and profound humanity. Tom’s endearing charm still reverberates among all who knew and loved him. I am very happy indeed to give this lecture on the philosophy of an infinite universe in Ireland, the birthplace and home of James Joyce, author of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In this signature work, Joyce writes: He turned to the flyleaf of the geography and read what he had written there: himself, his name and where he was. Stephen Dedalus Class of Elements Clongowes Wood College Sallins County Kildare Ireland Europe The World The Universe.1

Joyce, like Whitehead, properly puts that which is finite and specific within its broader and more diffused context.

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It is also the centennial anniversary of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity and the year the United Nations designated as The Year of Physics. This talk will offer an alternative philosophic perspective to that which underlies the major prevailing dogmas of 20th century physics. Theories that at one stage are heretical, have a way of being transformed into new dogmas, which become in their time as unassailable as the dogmas which they once challenged, and then replaced. But in the realm of philosophy there are no dogmas that should remain unassailable and whose fundamental concepts and fundamental principles lie beyond challenge and beyond creative journeys that are resolved in new adventures of discovery which open new and illuminating vistas. Whitehead was keenly aware of the negative consequences that arise when orthodoxy suppresses adventures of inquiry and discovery. For much of the 20th Century’s intellectual, cultural and social life it is germane to realize that: ~ (BN=I). By that formula I point out that it is false that the bizarre (B) taken to the nth degree equals illumination. When we consider the World Wars that twice ravaged the planet, the genocide, the global environment degradation and the polarization between poverty and privilege, ignorance and knowledge, both within and among nations, the development of the capacity of nations to militarily annihilate humanity, the impending militarization of the heavens (space) and the cultural decadency that is all too prevalent we can perceive that for the past century there has been too frequently the reign of the bizarre. The bizarre and the discordant ultimately, however, cannot prevail over the cogent and harmonious. The bizarre has also entered intellectual life substituting the incoherent for the coherent. The role of philosophy is not to lead humanity to the altar of the obscure, the incoherent, the contrived, the trite, the trivial, the narrow and/or the sectarian. The creative and progressive function of philosophy is to lead humanity from lower to higher levels of clarity, cogency, coherency, integration, generality of understanding, comprehensiveness and breadth of vision. Humanity yearns for greater attainments of beauty, truth, justice, hope and harmony. Form without substance, content without form, analytic thinking without synthetic integration or synthetic thinking without analytic clarity is either vacuous or merely evocative and suggestive but non-illuminating. The creative advance of civilization requires greater harmony between and integration of form and substance, analytic and synthetic modes of thought. Whitehead’s philosophy of process and organism with its emphasis upon relationality among events can contribute to a progressive development of scientific, cultural and social endeavors.

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Until mere “formalism” rose during the 20th Century to ascendancy in the philosophic tradition, philosophy endeavored to create a systematic, comprehensive and integrative understanding of reality that was inclusive of the universe’s immense diversity of phenomena. Philosophy also endeavors in the purity of its mission to lead our imagination and curiosity to explore and envision new phenomena, new modes of relationships and unperceived expression of orderliness and potential in phenomena, which previously were perceived in their apparent separateness and randomness. Synthetic, substantive and speculative philosophy seeks to open new and broad vistas and to discern bonds of interdependencies and higher levels of orderliness amid the infinite and complex diversity of phenomena constituting the universe. The philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead arose as part of this traditional role of the philosophic endeavor. The mature philosophy of Whitehead is based upon the assumption of the primacy of process over passive endurance and the pervasive presence of organic relationship of interdependence among phenomena. Whitehead’s philosophy of process and organism is experiencing an international renaissance in North America, Europe and the East—including China, Korea and Japan. Whitehead’s metaphysics is to classical philosophy what J.S. Bach’s compositions are to classical music. Both required a renaissance to reveal the magnificence of their unique and profound creative attainments. Whitehead’s philosophy of process and organism stands in stark contrast to other ancient philosophic traditions which traditions underlie the system of presupposition at the core of two millennia of physics. I refer to the traditions of reductionism, mechanical materialism and atomism. The prevailing and predominant scientific philosophic view of reality is as if the actual universe could be constructed from the witch’s kettle starting with a singularity devoid of spatial extension and temporal duration. From this singularity emerged a mere few handfuls of elementary types of particles to which a few “forces” were added which were in turn spiced with a few “constants,” the brew was stirred and from this brew arises everything, the totality of all Being. A nice fairy tale, perhaps, but a fairy tale of bizarre extrapolation which is philosophically and fundamentally non-consonant with the world we perceive. Atomism had sought to understand the universe by hypothesizing that all entities constituting reality are particles that are neither created nor perishable. This conception begins in Greek antiquity and is expressed in philosophy of Democritis. Reductionism postulated that the myriad and immense variety found in the actual world was derivative from a far smaller and extraordinarily limited variety of types of fundamental

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constituents. Change merely expressed the changing spatial and geometric relations among changeless particles. The only relevant realm characterized by wide and infinite variety was the realm of geometric forms, shapes, distance and relations among the hypothesized atoms or particles. The more modern version of this doctrine hypothesizes that all reality consists of strings which are undifferentiated one from another in respect to their intrinsic nature and quality. All change and variety is merely differences among the modes of vibration of the hypothetical strings vibrating in “12 or 13 dimensions” of space. Again, the only fundamental variety presumed in the universe is that which is expressive of differentiation of geometric form. Whitehead, whose doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University concerned the electro-magnetic Field theory of the Cambridge physicist Clerk Maxwell, subsequently asserted in Process and Reality the pervasive significance of vibrating phenomena in nature. Whitehead wrote, “vibration and rhythm have a dominating importance in the physical world” (Process and Reality (1929/1978), 27). But Whitehead’s ontology never reduced change to geometry, thereby robbing and divesting the constituents of the universe of their intrinsic quality. Atomism and reductionism must be recognized as powerful philosophic presumptions. There are particles and much of the change and variety in the universe manifest differences in and changes among the less varied constituents of complex entities. Physics, chemistry and biology all attest to this power. These philosophic perspectives provide powerful tools for both the exploration and explanation of physical phenomena. Process philosophy can affirm both the relevance and power of the presupposition of reductionism and atomism. But process philosophy at the same time denies the omnipotence of the presupposition of atomism, mechanical materialism, and reductionism in their ability to explain all natural phenomena.

2. Process Philosophy From the perspective of process philosophy, whose penultimate expression is found expressed in the mature work of Alfred North Whitehead, atomism and reductionism, however powerful those perspectives are, remain inadequate, provincial, partial and limiting tools to capture reality in its full breadth and depth; its subtlety, vitality, variety and dynamic dimensions. The philosophy of an infinite, open and integrated universe seeks to creatively develop the insights and intuitions of Whitehead and to do so in

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a manner than opens new vistas beyond those of the reigning dogmas of contemporary physics, viz. relativity theory, quantum mechanics, Big Bang mythology, Particle Theory and String Theory. My academic work centers on the philosophy of theoretical physics and the creation of an alternative theory to the reigning dogmas of 20th century physics. Prof. Leonard, who inspired and guided so much of this work always emphasized to me that process philosophy to be true to itself, must be a philosophy in continuous development. Whitehead understood that process philosophy must be creatively developed and creatively applied. Its concepts and premises must be refined and modified, in some cases abandoned. Whitehead’s creative intellectual genius which spanned so many academic fields was equaled by his intellectual modesty and abiding curiosity. The last thing Whitehead wanted was for his ideas and premises to be mindlessly recanted by the modern equivalent of medieval monks and theologians. Professor Leonard told me many stories of how Whitehead during the process of composing Process and Reality elicited debate and contention.2 Under the influence of process philosophy, we offer, in contradistinction to the prevailing myth of a universe that is finite both spatially and temporally, a vision of an infinite and open universe, infinite and eternal in its spatial and temporal magnitudes and manifesting a dynamic, integrating orderliness among fields of events. From the orderliness that prevails over these Fields of Events, the infinite qualitative variety at the core of Being is derived. This is the fundamental Ontological Conjecture of our development of Process Philosophy. In process metaphysics, the quest for causal orderliness amid qualitative variety is primary, and reductionism’s quest to suppress and reduce apparent qualitative variety to: 1) qualitative sameness of constituents and 2) immense geometric variety, is secondary and limited, though often, as recognized earlier, of considerable philosophic and scientific value and power. Whitehead’s process philosophy is also a counterpoint to the rigid strict, mechanistic determinism characteristic of much of the Western philosophic and scientific traditions. Those traditions afforded no place for spontaneity, openness, freedom, teleology or value in their philosophic perspectives. Whitehead’s philosophy, thus, asserts that both causal orderliness and spontaneity are inherent aspects of reality. In my judgment, however, we must re-assert, as Whitehead does in many contexts of his philosophic writings, that orderliness is the more dominant and more fundamental, but non-exclusive, aspect manifested in the succession of events comprising

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the cosmos. Indeed, without a fundamental causal orderliness inherent in the fabric of reality, both teleological behavior and freedom would be effete and purposefulness would descend into an ineffective realm of pure chaos and randomness. Causal orderliness is at the core of the infinite cosmos. Western reductionism in its ultimate expression seeks to reduce all reality to one kind of entity and all mechanisms of change to one unified force governed by a few constants. The origin of all Being is reduced to one singularity in space-time. Process philosophy offers more open, variable, complex and elegant possibilities. My cosmology postulates Field Equations that roam over communities of events and over the causal pasts from which events emerge. These Field Equations describe how the qualities and relations of events within past communities of events influence the qualities and relations manifested within subsequent communities of events. These Field Equations, which describe the causal orderliness of nature and its physical laws, are amendable to infinite solutions. Therefore, from the very orderliness of nature, is derivative an openness to infinite qualitative variety at the Core of Being. This fundamental ontological postulate is profoundly harmonious with the deep intuitive insights and themes of ancient Eastern philosophy. It also implies that we must understand the dynamic and complex variety of things not from the perspective characteristic of Western modes of thought, i.e. strict dichotomies, but rather from the perspective of polar contrasts and their more subtle, shaded and refined gradations of quality. The Constants of physics themselves manifest conditions that are cosmologically local. Constants represent derivative phenomena when viewed from the wider, more open and infinite community of events that comprise the cosmos. Temporal relations and temporality are viewed as objective, hence nonsubjective, in Whitehead’s process philosophy. This contrasts with the subjective and fundamentally anthropomorphic perspective common to Kantian epistemology, logical positivism, logical empiricism, Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. This more objective, nonanthropomorphic understanding of temporality has many implications that will be discussed in subsequent sections. For example: 1) it interprets certain phenomena—like dilation—in a completely different way than Relativity Theory does; 2) it deduces other phenomena alleged in Relativity concerning the propagation of photons to be self-contradictory and 3) it is open to a wider range of possibilities. In respect to the latter, for example,

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there is no maximum velocity (whether in a vacuum or not) in the cosmos for either enduring objects (particles), transmissions of waves—including light—or Causal Futures. Instead, there is infinite variability in velocity dependent upon the intrinsic character and the extrinsic environment of any of the types of ontological entities (particles, waves or causal futures) for which velocity is ontologically possible. Within an infinite and eternal universe the velocity of light is neither constant nor maximal. Although there is infinite variability in velocities, all causal influence is transmitted at finite but variable velocity. Since particles, waves and causal futures are manifestations and consequences of a confluence of causal influences from multiplicities of anticedent events, all velocities are finite. Causation is transmitted through discrete actions of spatio-temporally contiguous events.

Diagram A Temporality also implies an integrated community of temporal entities. That means, in a series or sequence of events, there are not Great Walls dividing, isolating and separating the constituent events that constitute the sequence. In contrast, there are bridges integrating the disparate, but internally related member events of the sequence of events. The present both incorporates and perceives the past and anticipates the future. The fleeting present is integrated with the felt presence of past events and the lure and anticipation of future events. Sequences of events are, thus, internally bonded events that constitute temporal communities among which are not walls, but instead, bridges of transmission. This ontological principle of temporal immanence of the past within the present is manifest when either we perceive the melody and the rhythm from a sequence of notes, understand the meaning of a sentence composed of a sequence of sounds or follow the deductions of a mathematical proof. Whitehead’s theory of feelings or prehensions, and his opposition to the bifurcation of nature into the material and the mental, rest upon the foundation that sequences of events constitute communities of temporally related and

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integrated events each of extended duration. We cannot correctly understand the flux of events without a doctrine of temporal immanence. All finite events, including huge cosmic communities of events, that is, Cosmic Epochs, are embedded within an infinite and eternal spatiotemporal continuum. Cosmic Epochs may expand, contract or contort and alter their shapes. Cosmic Epochs may exhibit periodicity and alternating phases of expansion, contraction, acceleration and deceleration. Cosmic Epochs emerge and cease through internal causes and their external dynamics and causal interactions with neighboring Cosmic Epochs. Cosmic Epochs are delineated from one another not by the changing geometries they manifest in the course of their histories, but by qualitative differences in the Forms of Energy manifest in their event members. The interactions and transfers of energy among Cosmic Epochs are governed by Causal Orderliness. This cosmology postulates great openness in the Forms of Energy that pervade the infinite cosmos. Space is conceived as the totality of all possible Spatial Magnitudes and Spatial Relations among events. Space is neither finite, curved, nor created. Space is infinite and time eternal; what curves are enduring objects, propagation of waves, Causal Futures and Cosmic Epochs. When such ontological entities exhibit curvature in the course of their histories they do so neither arbitrarily nor capriciously, but under lawful and orderly causal influences that bond and integrate the spatiality and temporally finite within the spatially infinite and temporally eternal. Space, understood as the infinity of all possible spatial relations and magnitudes is presupposed by, not created through, the flux of events which co-jointly are the universe. Whitehead’s philosophy of process and organism, therefore, is a philosophy of the infinite, the open, the integrated and the orderly. It is most fundamentally a philosophy of change wherein one community of events comprising—from one unique spatio-temporal perspective—the present is swept into the past as a new community of events comprising— from that same unique spatio-temporal perspective—the future emerges. Just as Whitehead protested inert and isolated ideas in respect to educational reform, Whitehead protested more generally all philosophic perspectives, such as the perspectives of Descartes, Leibnitz and classic Greek atomism, which postulate a fundamental Insularity of Being. Change and Community are the two cardinal principles and universal features of Process Philosophy. For process metaphysics, intrinsic qualitative differentiation and variety have primacy over both sameness and mere geometric variety. Community of Being and Fields of Events similarly have primacy over the presupposed

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insularity and separateness of atomized forms of being. Change and dynamic interrelationships have also ontological primacy over presumptions of passive, inherent endurance. Having been steeped in the atomism of physics, my first encounter with Process Philosophy in Leonard’s class on metaphysics left me with a feeling of discomfort. What became a turning point for me was when I began to grasp the concept that endurance is not an intrinsic and inherent quality but an achieved and derived outcome of the impact of Fields upon events from which causal impacts particles emerge. Fields of events prevail over particles which are the causal outcomes of those Fields of events. The Many become the One by generating events. Enduring objects are spatio-temporally contiguous sequences of events that emerge as the Causal consequence of sequences of antecedent Fields of Events, i.e. sequences of Causal Pasts. That is the decisive insight and point of departure from classic atomism achieved by Process Philosophy. Process ontology makes a fundamental distinction between that which is recurable and that which can never recur. Forms, characteristics and, in Whitehead’s expression, “eternal objects,” represent the modes of definiteness such as a specific mass, shape, size or charge which ingress in the non-recurring events constituent of reality. Modes of Definiteness in their capacity as pure possibilities neither dictate nor preclude where, when or how often they ingress into the temporal flux of the cosmos. There are no pure and absolute “vacuums” in this ontology. Character, energy and causal potentiality pervade the infinite and eternal spatiotemporal cosmos that, as Heraclitus envisioned, is in constant flux with events perpetually perishing and events perpetually emerging. Within the manifold of events, there are co-present causal potentialities, some of which causal potentialities, are frustrated and others realized during the creative advance of the universe.

3. Orderliness The most fundamental character of the entire cosmos is its orderliness. In the first chapter “The Origins of Modern Science” in Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World, Whitehead applauds, “the rise of the instinctive faith that there is an Order of Nature which can be traced in every occurrence.” Whitehead notes, “from the classical Greek civilization onwards, there have been men who have […] endeavored to explain all phenomena as an outcome of the order of things which extends to every detail. Geniuses such as Aristotle, or Archimedes, or Roger Bacon, must

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have been endowed with the full scientific mentality, which instinctively holds that all things great and small are conceivable as exemplifications of general principles which reign throughout the natural order (Whitehead, 1953/1925). The fundamental character of the laws of nature is expressed by how the intrinsic qualities that ingress within or characterize events and the specific relations among events causally influence and determine the intrinsic characteristics and relationships of subsequent events. The fundamental structures of the orderliness of nature may thus be expressed by mathematical logic as follows: Law L1:

(e1)(e2)[(Q1Ie1·Q2Ie2·e1R1e2)  ((Эe3)(Эe4) (Q3Ie3·Q4Ie4·e3R2e4)·(e3·e4)A·(e1·e2))]

That is to say, for any events e1 and e2, if quality Q1 ingresses into e1 and quality Q2 ingresses into e2 and e1 and e2 enjoy relation R1, then there will emerge events e3 and e4 such that e3 and e4 are subsequent to e1 and e2 and quality Q3 characterizes e3, quality Q4 characterizes e4 and e3 and e4 are related to each other by relation R2. A parallel law may be: Law L2:

(e1)(e2)[Q1Ie1·Q3Ie2·e1R1e2)  ((Эe3)(Эe4)(Q6Ie3·Q7Ie4·e3R3e4·(c3·e4)A(e1·e2))].

From Laws L1 and L2 are generated diverse causal potentialities P1 and P2 for any event ex into which characteristic Q1 ingresses. Causal potential P1 means that for any event e1, characterized by quality Q1, there exists the potential P1 to create events e3 and e4 respectively characterized by qualities Q3 and Q4 and related one to another by relation R2. Causal potential P2 means that for any event e1 characterized by quality Q1, there exists causal potential P2 to create events e3 and e4 respectively characterized by qualities Q6 and Q7 and related to one another by relation R2. If, furthermore, qualities Q2 and Q3 are contrary qualities, then causal potentials P1 and P2 cannot concurrently be realized by event e1. This leads to the fundamental ontological conclusion that within the flux of events, there are causal potentialities that are co-present in events but incompatible for co-realization. Causal potentialities are expressive of and derivative from the orderliness of nature and do not represent mere logical pure possibilities but constitute the real, lawful and orderly manner in which events have the causal potentiality to influence the characteristics and relationship of subsequent events.

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There are also laws of nature structured as: Law L3: (e1)(e2) [(Q1Ie1•Q2Ie2•e1Re2)  ((Эe3)(Эe4)(Q1Ie3•Q2Ie4•e3R2e4•(e3•e4)A(e1•e2)))] Modes of causal orderliness of this form describe the orderly change in relations among, not the intrinsic characteristics exhibited within events and enduring objects (particles). Laws of gravitational attraction and electro-magnetic attraction or repulsion manifest this general structure of causal orderliness. The realization of causal potentials represents the confluence of multiple events and multiple variables. That is, the emergence of an event ex (or a community of events) derives from ex’s causal past or that community of antecedent events that constitute e2’s causal past. Nothing emerges and no causal potential is realized independently of the confluence of events. All events are causally the outcome of antecedent communities of events. This is a fundamental premise of process ontology. Later sections of this paper will apply the premise of co-present causal potentialities within events to important questions of particle physics, relativity theory and cosmology. The above expression in the framework of mathematical logic speaks to the essential role of the broader environment of any event ex which in conjunction with the intrinsic character of event ex must be referenced to discern the emergence of qualities and relations in the future as the future causally emerges from the past. Chemistry affords numerous examples of these general principles. A given chemical compound infused in water may dissolve into a dispersion of ions, whereas, the same chemical compound infused in a specific acid may cause the precipitation of new chemical compounds. The same general principle applies to psychological and sociological phenomena; as the poignant folk song expresses it: “There, but for fortune, go you or I, you or I.” From physics to biology to psychology we observe phenomena within which are co-present a plethora of causal potentialities that are incompatible for co-realization. In respect to the fundamental processes of botanical and zoological life, co-present causal potentialities are relevant to the explication of fundamental processes of the development of complex living organisms. The specific DNA of any living entity is postulated to be essentially the same for all cells of a specific biological organism. As the progenitive cells multiply into larger aggregates of cells each, ostensibly with the same DNA content and structure, the cells on the periphery versus the cells at the core or center of the aggregate enter different sub-environments with different electro-magnetic and chemical fields. These differences in successive sub-

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environments lead to the successive realization and frustrations of different causal potentials by the cells in the diverse sub-environments, e.g. the periphery vs. the center of the multiplying aggregation of cells. The theory of causal potentials that are co-present within but incompatible for corealization by, events, is in this way relevant to the fundamental biological process of differentiation in developing complex biological organisms. All development entails community and the interplay of the environment. In his charming and insightful book, The Music of Life, Prof. Denis Noble of Oxford University critiques the illusion of the singular gene operating with a presumed insularity when he writes, “we tend to ignore integrative (collaborative) properties of a higher level network which would apply to many genes simultaneously” and “the problem is not so much the indirectness of the interaction, but rather its complexity, with the products of many genes being involved cooperatively in each functional interaction” (Noble 2006). The causal confluence of events is the fundamental ontological foundation for the emergence and perishing of all individual and discrete events whether those events are parts of biological organisms, mental processes, elementary particles or Cosmic Epochs. There is no causal influence in abstract disjunction from broader communities of events. We may note in classical physics which enjoyed its culmination in Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, energy and force were defined in terms of the capacity to move particles with mass, i.e. to cause acceleration, deceleration or change in direction of particles. In that conception of energy we hear the echo from Greek antiquity of the contemporary presence of Greek atomism. The event ontology of Whitehead, in contrasts, leads us to perceive energy in the more general context of the causal potentialities of events in the present to influence the intrinsic characteristics of, and the relationship among, subsequent events. This perspective is inclusive of, but more general than, classic concepts of energy. Correlatively process ontology does not logically require the hypothesis of “force carrying particles” which in some mystical manner “carry, bear and forces” and then “transmit and transfer forces.” The invention of an array of “force carrying and transmitting” particles reflects the fact that the presuppositions of ancient Greek atomism still pervade the philosophic foundations of contemporary physics. These hypothesized “force bearing entities” such as the hypothetical graviton conceived as mysteriously “mediating” gravity, are postulated in a manner that fails to provide either coherency or illumination. The orderliness of nature and the laws of nature,

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as expressed in process ontology, mute those echoes from ancient atomism and provide a more economic and elegant theory of the impetus of change. An event ontology, coupled with the theory of causal potentialities, provides a more logical, elegant and coherent explication of the forces governing the interactions among elementary events. Just as the universe in its creative advance through time manifests the perpetual perishing and perpetual emergence of events, the universe also entails the perpetual frustration and perpetual realization of the co-present causal potentialities of events to influence the character and relationships of subsequent communities of events. This theory of causal potentialities incompatible for co-realization explicates, the ontological basis for Whitehead’s reference in Process and Reality to the infinite real possibilities that “rest unrealized in the womb of nature.”

4. Cosmic Epochs A fundamental postulate of process cosmology is that there is no event devoid of either environment, history or future. For all spatially and temporally finite events, there is the spatially and temporally beyond. To be finite is essentially to be immersed within an Environment of Being and a Community of Events. For Whitehead extension is the primordial feature and concept of geometry. The “extensionless” is a derivative concept. Rather than positing that spatial and temporal extension ontologically derives from the aggregation of an infinity of extensionless points or durationless instants, Whitehead defines “points” as certain types of classes of mutually converging classes of extended regions. The summation of an infinity of zeros remains zero. This ontological revision of the foundation of classic geometry was to be part of the projected fourth volume of Principia Mathematica3, a volume to be authored by Whitehead alone. The general outline of Whitehead’s geometry is found in Whitehead’s theory of extensive abstraction in Process and Reality. The ontology of Process and Reality contrasts the non-recurrability of events with the potential recurrability within multiplicities of events of eternal objects or modes of definiteness including spatial and temporal magnitudes and spatial and temporal relationships. This ontology in its mature development in Process and Reality, we note, is crucial to the critique of Einstein’s Relativity Theory4. Appealing to the primacy of extensiveness, we define a spatial region Rx as infinite if for any spatial magnitude M1, there is a region Ry such that M1 ingresses in Ry and Rx covers Ry

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Infinite Rx = Df. (Mx) [(Mxε Magnitudes)  (E Ry) [MxIRy · Rx CRy] A spatial region Rx is finite if there is some spatial magnitude M2 and some region Ry such that M2 ingresses in Ry and Ry covers Rx. As in traditional Chinese landscape painting the finite always evokes, and implies, the beyond. A spatio-temporal region Rx is continuous if for any regions Ry and Rz such that Rx covers both Ry and Rz and Ry + Rz = Rx; Ry is contiguous to Rz Since space is three dimensional and time is directional, we may introduce hybrid notions, whereby, a spatio-temporal region may be infinite in one dimension or direction but finite in respect to another dimension or different direction. All events have as their loci spatially and temporally continuous regions. To understand the evolution of any finite system or aggregation of events it is essential to understand the characteristics and causal potentialities inherent within that system, its internal dynamics and its causal interactions with surrounding and spatio-temporally contiguous communities of events. This principle, is valid for both micro and macro communities of events. Large continuous spatio-temporal communities of events are characterized by process cosmology as Cosmic Epochs. Therefore, for any Cosmic Epoch Cx and any 2 parts P1 and P2 of Cosmic Epoch Cx where the fusion of P1 plus P2=Cx, P1 and P2 must be spatially and temporally contiguous parts. Cosmic Epochs are, therefore, delineated one from another not geometrically but qualitatively, specifically by the Forms of Energy that pervade their constituent events. The theory of Cosmic Epochs as developed herein is in contradistinction to Big Bang Mythology, in which the Universe is conceived of as originating from a Singularity devoid of both spatial extension and temporal duration, devoid of environment, community and origin. Into this hypothesized Singularity All Being was miraculously compressed and condensed. From this hypothesized Singularity, dwelling in an absolute vacuum of Being, all differentiation emanated from an Explosiveness whose dynamics remain shrouded in the bizarre and whose evolution required deus ex-machina, hypothesis of inflation from inexplicable causes, i.e., hypothesized “dark matter” and “dark energy,” “cosmological constants” and bizarre repulsive forces which, unlike any other known forces, intensify and strengthen the greater the distances grow between entities subject to these alleged repulsive forces. It is a bizarre, and fanciful, drama worthy of repudiation. Cosmic Epochs are qualitatively differentiated one from another in virtue of the Forms of Energy that are exhibited among their constituted events.

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Process cosmologies presume that there are Forms of Energy which are not exhibited within that huge but temporally and spatially finite domain that constitute the Cosmic Epoch within which human life occurs and to which human observations are largely confined. A Form of Energy is a “Quantity” i.e. a set of Qualities which can be ordered by relations of “greater than” and which can be added and accumulated by the laws of number theory. A Set S1 of forms of Energy S1 “covers” a Cosmic Epoch Cx if, but only if, for every event ex in Cx there is some Quality Qx ingressed into ex such that Qx is a member of some Forms of Energy Fy within the set S1. We may formally define the concept of a set of Forms of Energy covering a Cosmic Epoch as follows: S1 covers C1 = [(e1)[(e1 εC1)  (ЭQ)(ЭF1)((F1eS1)•(Q1eF1)•(Q1 Ie1)]• [(e1)(Q1)[(Q1Ie1•e1εC1)]  [(ЭF1)(ЭS1)[(Q1eF1)•(F1eS1)] That is, set S1 covers C1 if, and only if, firstly for any event e1 that is a part of a Cosmic Epoch C1 there is a Form of Energy F1 such that F1 is a member of the set S1 and Q1 is a member of F1 and Q1 ingresses into and characterizes event e1 and, secondly, for any event e1 and quality Q1, if Q1 ingresses into e1 and e1 is a part of Cosmic Epoch C1, then there is a Form of Energy F1 and a set of Forms of Energy S1 such that Q1 is a member of F1 and F1 is a member of S1. A set of Forms of Energy cover a Cosmic Epoch if that set’s diverse Forms of Energy pervade, as defined above, the events that constitute that Cosmic Epoch. Different Sets of Forms of Energy cover different Cosmic Epochs which are delineated one from another by the Sets (S1,S2 or SN) that respectively cover them. Furthermore, (x)[xεE)  [ЭQ1)(ЭF1)(ЭS1)(ЭC1) [(QIx)•(Q1εF1)•(F1εS1 •(S1Cc1)] That is, for any entity x which is an event, there is a quality Q1, a form of energy F1, a set of forms of energy S1 and a cosmic epoch C1 such that that quality characterizes that event and is a member of a Form of Energy which is a member of a set of Forms of Energy which cover that Cosmic Epoch. This cosmological principle implies there are no events that are devoid of either intrinsic quality or belonging to a community of qualitatively similar events. That is, any event is a member of some Cosmic Epoch and no event floats within a realm of vacuous non-being, i.e. a realm of insularity. Cosmic Epochs can expand, contract and/or contort, i.e. change their shapes. Cosmic Epochs can accelerate or decelerate their expansion or contraction. They can transition from phases of expansion into phases of contraction; Cosmic Epochs may also transition from different modes of

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contortion. Cosmic Epochs, like all events, arise and perish existing within finite but fluid spatio-temporal boundary. The changes Cosmic Epochs experience are a function of internal causes and external interactions with adjacent Cosmic Epochs. The changes, thus, within a Cosmic Epoch are analogous to a balloon within which is an energy source—like a Bunsen burner—and the balloon is itself set within a large chamber with different vents through which pressure may be added or reduced and done so from different spatial quadrants. The balloon, like a Cosmic Epoch, may expand, contrast or contort through internal and/or external changes and their interactions one with another. Analogously, an embryo develops and differentiates as a consequence of genetic processes, energy exchanges between the embryo and the mother, the absorption and expulsion of energy and matter between the mother and the Earth and indeed interactions between the Earth and fusion processes in the sun. Change invariably references causal interactions with the Beyond. The above examples are merely metaphors. But the principle behind these metaphors is that we should seek dynamic causal explanations of cosmic changes that are coherent with modes of dynamic change exhibited within and among known phenomena. To leap to “explanations” which are inconsistent with known modes of change is philosophically precarious. The dynamic interactions among adjacent Cosmic Epochs are constituted by Causal transformations among different Forms of Energy. The interactions among Forms of Energy F1 and F2 may lead to the emergence of events that are characterized by Qualities that are members in Form of Energy F3. In that case, both Cosmic Epochs C1 and C2 may be mutually annihilated and a new Cosmic Epoch C3 may emerge from these interactions. The number of Cosmic Epochs itself may be infinite within the infinite spatio-temporal domain that is the universe as a whole. As Cosmic Epochs expand or contract, space is neither created (in an expansionary phase) nor destroyed in a contraction phase. Space is presupposed by an expanding Cosmic Epoch; it is not created as Big Bang Mythology contends. Space-Time is the infinite manifold of all possible spatial and temporal magnitudes and relationships that bind and integrate events within a unified cosmos. Space-Time conceived as this infinite totality of all possible spatial and temporal relationships (magnitudes, shapes, covers, overlaps, contiguous, continuous, finite, infinite, etc.) constitute the underlying ontological, primordial and atemporal (Eternal) foundation for the flux of events. Space and Time are not created, they are

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presupposed, by the flux of events within which infinite variety is manifested. This cosmology of the infinite and eternal entails that there are not separate multiple universes5 independent of each other that are accessible through “worm holes” or other exotic and bizarre processes. The laws of nature, furthermore, are not different in different Cosmic Epochs. Since the laws of nature concern qualities of given Forms of Energy, a given law of nature L1 may not be operative in or relevant to a given Cosmic Epoch C simply because L1 may not govern the qualities of the Forms of Energy of the set of Forms of Energy that “cover” C. The cosmos as a whole is organic, integrated and orderly. The interactions among Cosmic Epochs that influence the histories and changing geometries of those Epochs concern lawful and orderly exchanges among diverse Forms of Energy. Within this broad philosophic context the development of Whitehead’s Process philosophy contained in this paper is a development of a vision of a universe that I describe as infinite (in its spatial and temporal magnitudes), open (in its possibilities for infinite Qualitative variety) and integrated (in the essential and causally orderly transformation of Forms of Energy one into another. While, as will be seen in later sections of this paper, I disagree with what I regard as limiting and inconsistent aspects of Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity, the profound and enduring insight of Einstein’s genius is that Forms of Energy can change one into another. This insight of the Transformation of Forms of Energy into each other is entirely consistent and consonant with process philosophy that had its antecedents in Greek antiquity with Heraclitus and found its most comprehensive and profound development in the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead.

Diagram B

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The basic concepts are: F1