Applied Process Thought: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research 9783110328400, 9783110328042

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Mark Dibben & Thomas Kelly (Eds.) Applied Process Thought I Initial Explorations in Theory and Research

PROCESS THOUGHT Edited by Nicholas Rescher • Johanna Seibt • Michel Weber Advisory Board Mark Bickhard • Jaime Nubiola • Roberto Poli Volume 16

Mark Dibben & Thomas Kelly (Eds.)

Applied Process Thought I Initial Explorations in Theory and Research

ontos verlag Frankfurt I Paris I Ebikon I Lancaster I New Brunswick

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

Published with the help of Monash University North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Eire, Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected]

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Contents Contributors .................................................................................................................v Herman Greene Foreword....................................................................................................................1 Pete A.Y. Gunter Preface .......................................................................................................................9 Acknowledgements .....................................................................................................26

Mark R. Dibben and Thomas A.F. Kelly Introduction: What is Applied Process Thought? ....................................................27 I. Glenn McLaren Unifying Process Philosophy ...................................................................................43 II. Isabelle Stengers Unity Through Divergence.....................................................................................119 III. Keith Robinson Mediating the Divide ..............................................................................................137 IV. Michel Weber From Grown Organism to Organic Growth ...........................................................149 V. Duston Moore A Whiteheadian Critical Theory ............................................................................169 VI. Gary Herstein A Whiteheadian Perspective on Nature and Freedom ...........................................193 VII. Bogdan Ogrodnik A Whiteheadian Metaphysics of Light ...................................................................209 VIII. Jan B.F.N. Engberts Water as a Metaphoric Model in Process Thought ................................................223 IX. Jonathan T. Delafield-Butt Explaining the Processual Behaviour of a Cell .....................................................237

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X. Ross L. Stein Enzymes as Ecosystems ..........................................................................................261 XI. John Harpur The Embodied Mind and Inter-Subjectivity ...........................................................287 XII. Thomas Jay Oord Social Science Contributions to the Love-And-Science Symbiosis .........................315 XIII. Mark R. Dibben Understanding Organizations as Whiteheadian Societies ......................................329 XIV. William Desmond Facts and Events ....................................................................................................349 XV. Arran Gare Process Philosophy and Ecological Ethics.............................................................363

Table of Contents......................................................................................................383 Process Thought .......................................................................................................390

Contributors Dr Jonathan T. Delafield-Butt received his Ph.D. in Developmental Neurobiology from the University of Edinburgh Medical School and is currently a Research Fellow in Developmental Psychology at the Perception Movement Action Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh. His work focuses on two 'model' organisms, the unicellular protist Paramecium caudatum, and the neonatal bipedal primate, baby Homo sapiens. By studying the activities of these two apparently very different organisms, his work examines fundamental similarities in their perceptuo-motor control of purposeful movements, and therefore putative fundamental rules of the mind-body problem in nature. Dr William Desmond is Lecturer in Classics at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He completed a joint Ph.D. in philosophy and classics at Yale University in 2002; his research monograph The Greek Praise of Poverty (Notre Dame University Press) was published in 2006. He is currently writing a book on Ancient Cynicism (Acumen Press, forthcoming), and co-editing A Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought (Ontos Verlag) with Michel Weber. Dr 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 is Founding, and co-Director (with Thomas Kelly) of the Chapter for Applied Process Thought, the UK & 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 variety of disciplines, including information systems, management, medicine, and philosophy. Dr 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 honors. 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

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students, 99 undergradates and 22 post-docs; the group has so far published 465 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. Dr Arran Gare is Associate Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry, Swinburne University and founder of the Joseph Needham Centre for Complex Processes Research. The focus of his research is on transforming culture to create an environmentally sustainable global civilization. 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. Dr Herman F. Greene is President of the Center for Ecozoic Studies, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a centre for reflection on human culture and ecology. He was Founding Executive Director of the International Process Network, a global network for processrelational philosophies. He is also a corporate, tax and securities lawyer with Greene & Franklin, PLLC, Durham North Carolina. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida, an M.A. in Political Science from Stanford as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and an M.Div. in Ministry from the University of Chicago. He holds two doctorates, a J.D. in Law from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a D.Min. in Spirituality and Sustainability from the United Theological Seminary. Dr Pete A.Y. Gunter (B.A. Cambridge University 1960, Ph.D Yale University 1963) is Professor of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas. He has written widely on process philosophy, particularly on the thought of Henri Bergson and that of Alfred North Whitehead, but also on George Herbert Mead. He has focused on Bergson's philosophy of science and on Whitehead's educational and environmental ideas. Since the 1960's he has worked to create and enlarge the Big Thicket National Biological Preserve of southeast Texas. Dr John Harpur is Lecturer in the Computer Science Department, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. John Harpur’s interests lie in the philosophical implications of modelling autism for artificial intelligence, and in the design of user friendly and easy to learn computer applications. His research is supported by the Health Research Board, Enterprise Ireland, ASPIRE, Microsoft and Intel. Dr Gary L. Herstein is an assistant professor of philosophy at Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio. After some 25 years in the computer and high-tech industries, Dr. Herstein decided to abandon the Bill Gates business model of life for the fame and fortune of academics. His publications include Whitehead and the Measurement Problem of Cosmology, (ontos verlag, May 2006), and "Davidson and the Impossibility of Psychophysical Laws" (Synthese 145 1, 2005). Dr. Herstein's current areas of

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research include the logical bases of measurement, particularly as these connect with Whitehead's mereotopological theory of extension. He presently keeps house with his three cats, who despair of his ever learning anything interesting. Dr Thomas A.F. Kelly is 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 holds a First Class Honours MA, and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, from which he holds 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). His areas of research interest include Philosophical Theology and Ontology. Dr Glenn McLaren teaches in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry at Swinburne University and is a member of the Joseph Needham Centre for Complex Processes Research. His main research focus is on applying process metaphysics to issues in health as well as interpreting and developing the work of Arran Gare. He has presented papers at two International Whitehead Conferences and is currently researching a book on the relationship between growth and constraint. He is an assistant editor of Cosmos and History and a founding Director of the Australian College for Clinical Excellence in Natural Therapies. Dr Bogdan Ogrodnik is a senior lecturer at University of Silesia (Poland). Areas of research interest the philosophy of time (Ontology of Real Time, Katowice, 1995), the search for new formulations of process metaphysics (Treatise on Pure Activity, Torun, 1999) and process philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics (Between Whitehead’s Metaphysics and Quantum Mechanics or The First Hypotheses of a Philosophy of Nature, Katowice, 2008). Dr. Ogrodnik is founder and president of Whitehead Metaphysical Society (2003). The main aim of the society is to promote and develop process thinking in dialog with science and religion. Dr Thomas Jay Oord is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, Idaho. Dr Oord serves as theologian for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love and served Science and Theology News as its Academic Correspondent and Contributing Editor. Dr Oord has written and edited more than a half dozen books, the most recent being The Altruism Reader: Selections from Writings on Love, Religion and Science (Templeton), Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being (Templeton), and The Many Aspects of Love: Philosophical Explorations (Cambridge Scholars). His essays have appeared in dozens of journals and books, and his work have been featured in various magazines and newspapers. Dr Keith Robinson is Associate Professor in Philosophy at The University of South Dakota. He has published widely on Continental Philosophy, Whitehead and Process

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Thought. His most recent book is Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Dr 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, particularly process thought. Recently, Dr. Stein has entered the Science, Religion, and Philosophy doctoral program at Boston University. Dr Isabelle Stengers, born in 1949, is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her interests centre around the constructive adventure of modern sciences and the crucial challenge of an active ecology embedding our many diverging scientific practices in a democratic and demanding environment. She has written numerous books, among which, translated in English, "Order out of Chaos", with Ilya Prigogine, "A Critique of Psychoanalytical Reason," with Léon Chertok, "A History of Chemistry", with Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, "Power and Invention. Situating Science", and "The Invention of Modern Science". Her lifelong interest in Whitehead's speculative philosophy resulted in the publication of "Penser avec Whitehead", which has been accepted for translation by Harvard University Press. Dr Michel Weber is director of the Centre for Philosophical Practice « Chromatiques whiteheadiennes ». The Centre conducts its works according to three complementary axis (research, publication and counselling), each reflecting in its own order the guiding principles of the philosophical act (creativity, efficacy, and vision).

Foreword Herman Greene 1. The Importance of Process Philosophy Today In my role as Executive Director of the International Process Network, I was often asked “Does Process Philosophy Have a Mission?” Such a question can often become rather political, so I tend to answer it in terms of the importance of process philosophy today. That being settled, I would now like to address the question, “Does Process Philosophy Have a Mission?” in two parts, ‘What is philosophy?’—by which I mean ‘what is wrong with the taken-for-granted mode of thought in contemporary philosophy?’—and ‘Does process philosophy then have a mission?’ I shall conclude by considering the role that the International Processs Network might play in this. In so doing I hope to set a context for this anthology, which gathers together process scholars from a range of disciplines and a variety of countries, and thereby demonstrates the scope of current research in applied process thought. As such it represents, in scholarly terms, much of what the International Process Network stands for.1 I read this morning a paper by Herman Daly where he wrote of “personin-community”. This three word phrase contains with it a summation of all the remarks I will make here. Person-in-community is the beginning and the end of our effort. In philosophy we ask, “What does it mean to be a part of some larger whole?” It doesn’t matter if you stumble across process thought as a philosopher, a theologian, an economist, a psychologist, a physicist, a feminist, an ecologist, an anthropologist or a political scientist. We have all come to ask “What does it mean to be a part of some larger whole?” With reference to humans, and once again this is our common reference, the question becomes, “What does it mean to be a person in community?” So here we have it, part and whole, person and community. These are relational questions, but they are also inquiries into the nature of the part and the nature of the whole, the nature of the person and the nature of the community. The inquiry into the whole is ontology, the study of being or the nature of reality; it is metaphysics, the attempt to give a rational account of the totality of our experience; and it is cosmology the study of

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the order of existence. I am not sure that these are separate inquiries. Can one have a cosmology without a metaphysic or an ontology without a cosmology? When we consider the whole, this is also the study of theology. We could think of theology as being the study of ultimate reality, kind of a hyperontology-cosmology-metaphysic. We could also think of theology as infraontology-cosmology-metaphysic, for theology presupposes that at the ground, heart or base of the whole there is intelligence, compassion and morality. One could suppose such things and claim to be non-theistic, yet if one assumes that there is integrity in this pervasive, originating or supervening intelligence, compassion and morality, then it is simply a matter of semantics, in the narrow meaning of that term, as to whether one is theistic. And if one asserts there is no integrity in this pervasive, originating or supervening intelligence, compassion and morality, then one could claim to be non-theistic and would have indeed made a profound ontological-metaphysical-cosmological claim. This claim is, of course, what much of modern thought has been about (modern here meaning 16th century and later thought originating in the West and now widely influential throughout the world). Remi Brague in The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought,2 states “The image of the world that emerged from physics after Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton is of a confluence of blind forces, where there is no place for consideration of the Good.” The world was no longer a whole, but a result of disparate forces. Cosmology gave way to cosmography—the stars, for example, no longer reflected the order of heaven, an ethical model to which one was to adapt oneself, but lacked any significance until some new theory might account for the facticity of their existence. In the words of Nietzsche concerning the new astronomy, “‘Since the time of Copernicus man distances himself from the center, and moves toward X.’” Cosmology also gave way to cosmogony, as a focus on theories to account for the origins of nature became more important than the truth expressed in it. To the extent that post-Copernican science revealed a truth about nature, it was of its moral indifference. “[Consequently,] cosmology lost its relevance in two ways […]: on the one hand, its ethical value was simply neutralized as the cosmology was considered amoral; and on the other hand it was more seriously discredited as being immoral.” Further, in this modern view humans appeared as no exception to the new laws of nature. Morality was reconceived, in the liberal movement, to emulate amoral nature’s pursuit of self-interest as the way to the good; in various strains of existentialism, as a protest against nature’s indifference; or, in

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reactionary circles, as an “un-worldly” adherence to traditional, ideological, or religious values, in the latter case, sometimes as a protest against modern science. Thus, the “world” that came into being in antiquity and had endured through the medieval period gave way to “worldviews” each of which was, in principle, equivalent in the light of modern scientific understandings that would validate none of them. “The long use of world to mean an object so patterned and unified as [to constitute] the geocentric kosmos” gave way to the term “universe” to mean the totality of things, whatever this may be, whether good or bad or ordered or chaotic. Further, from this acosmic vantage point, good was no longer understood to be in nature, it had to be introduced by humans “by force, by taking nature against the grain […] inside the only realm that [was] within the scope of human action […] the earth. Modern technology defines itself through the undertaking of domination, through a plan to become, according to the famous epigram of Descartes, the ‘master and possessor of nature.’”

Thus, we have in modern thought a bias toward an acosmic, nonmetaphysical, nontheistic account of the world. This thought results from the world as it has come to be known in modern science, which, E. Maynard Adams avers, “has eliminated normative, value and meaning concepts […] from its descriptive/explanatory system because they cannot be funded with meaning by sensory experience, and so […] cannot be confirmed or falsified by scientific methods of inquiry. [A]ccording to the presuppositions of modern science, there are no normative laws, values, inherent structures of meaning, ends or teleological causality in nature— only existential and factual structures and elemental and antecedent causes that engage them.”3 Adams continues that “[o]ne cannot accept modern science’s descriptive/explanatory account of something as the truth about it without accepting its presuppositions about the basic structure of the world. Yet the presuppositions of [this] science are inconsistent with the presuppositions of most religious beliefs and humanistic thought in general.”4 Much of the effort of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy has been to accommodate philosophy to this situation. The most obvious example of this was logical positivism where it only those things that could be shown to be logically the case or empirically verifiable could be said to be true. Analytic philosophy sought to correct problems in the language of

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philosophy putatively to address the problems that philosophers had created for themselves.

2. Does Process Philosophy Have a Mission? This being the case, at least it is the case to me, I would then turn to the question does process philosophy have a mission? E. Maynard Adams states: Philosophy attempts to bring under critical review and to correct errors in the cultural mind of our civilization, the prevailing assumptions and beliefs about our knowledge-yielding powers, the various sectors of the culture, and the basic structure of the world. It holds the cultural mind accountable to the unavoidable presuppositions of experience, thought, and action. Errors in the cultural mind can lead to distortions in the development of the culture and to social and personal pathologies […]. The mission of philosophy today is to point out the errors in our cultural mind and to work for a humanistic cultural reform.5

With respect to the state of contemporary philosophy he says: [Philosophy] has been caught up in the dominant ways of thought in the culture and has tried to accommodate itself to the prevailing scientific paradigm of knowledge.6 Although much of what is taken for granted in our efforts to know and to cope with reality is no doubt subject to empirical confirmation or correction, the most fundamental assumptions and beliefs that constitute the mind of the culture are not. They pertain to the categorical features and structures of experience and thought as well as to the basic constitutive features and structures of whatever the subject matter of our experience and thought may be, including a comprehensive view of the world. We do not discover these features and structures of things by an empirical investigation of them in the way in which we discover contingent features and structures; rather, the way we empirically investigate and think about any subject matter presupposes commitments about its categorical features and structures. These presuppositions govern the outcome of empirical investigations rather than being the products of such investigations. This is not to say that our empirical findings may not

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generate problems that call into question our categorical commitments, but these problems [of categorical commitments] are of a different order from the logical problems among empirical beliefs that force revisions to keep them faithful to reality. […] Therefore, philosophy needs to focus on the presuppositions of experience, thought, and action in the various sectors of the culture, to develop a responsible methodology for excavating the inherent commitments about the categorical structures of various subject matters and the world as a whole that are hidden in these presuppositions, and to develop an account of how the culture is grounded in and maps the basic structure of the world [by which Adams means “cosmos”].

Isn’t this then the mission of process philosophy, “to bring under critical review and to correct errors in the cultural mind of our civilization, the prevailing assumptions and beliefs about our knowledge-yielding powers, the various sectors of the culture, and the basic structure of the world”? And should we be daunted that our efforts are resisted by contemporary philosophies which seek to accommodate themselves to the prevailing scientific—should we say “modern”—paradigm? Two requirements justify our efforts. First, adequacy of description and, second, that being adequate, the identification and discussion of those advantages to humanity that accrue from such description. These two combine in the single concept suggested by Ervin Lazlo. This is the concept of “coherence.” Process philosophy is coherent in explaining the world as it is and it provides a coherent manner of responding to the world to maintain its health as manifest in its creative potentiality.

3. Conclusion: The International Process Network If we have this mission, or we could simply say this work, to bring under critical review and to correct errors in the prevailing assumptions and beliefs about our knowledge-yielding powers, the various sectors of the culture, and the basic structure of the world, and if process philosophy offers more coherent understanding of person in community and of action as such, then what we are about is very important. We know the problems of approaching this mission with messianic zeal, yet, equally, there are problems with downplaying the significance of this effort or being oblivious or indifferent to it. We have a responsibility and it is of civilizational importance.

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Our work cannot and should not be organized as such, but I believe our efforts can be strengthened by maintaining connections and communicating with each other. There are a variety of ways we have done and are doing this. I would like to recommend to you one way we can do this better and that is through active communication with process-related organizations and individuals around the world to advance the Common Good. That is, engage in work that reflects the value of process thought through its expression of diversity in actual occasions, and an ordered society grounded in emptiness (creativity) and the whole. The International Process Network is representitive of and facilitative to such work, since it is precisely a network and not a competing organization or center. We do not know what role IPN will play within this process community. We could say this will unfold, we could also say this will depend on whether those of us who support process-relational philosophies will choose the IPN as a means of networking and communicating with each other. All we can say is that it is very much a Whitheadian conception, a means to active communication with process-related organizations and individuals around the world to advance the Common Good. The collection of papers in this book is very much indicative of the scope and inter-connectiveness of process-relational ideas that the IPN espouses, and is thereby a very encouraging indication of the potential contribution process thought may make to mankind’s understanding of experience in nature, as it unfolds—and re-folds—in its ceaseless creative procession towards the manifold complexity of its futures.

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Notes 1

The following was first given as an address to the 6th International Whitehead Conference, Salzburg, June 2006. It has been amended for the present purpose. 2

Brague, Rémi. The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought, Teresa Lavender Fagan, trans. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003). 3

E. Maynard Adams, “The Metaphilosophy 31 (2000), 353-54. 4 5

of

Philosophy

Today,”

Mission

of

Philosophy

Today,”

Ibid., 354.

E. Maynard Adams, “The Metaphilosophy 31 (2000), 349. 6

Mission

Neo-conservative philosophy has a different problem. It adheres to the authority-based tenets of pre-modern tradition and scientific worldviews.

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

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which he believes could undercut dualism: “radical empiricism” and “pure 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 [1799-1826] (1966-9), Celestial Mechanics, 3 Vols, (Bronx, New York: Chelsea Publishing Company). 6

Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabel (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 1933-58), 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.

Acknowledgements This volume would not have been possible without the formating skills of Rebecca Newton, who managed to transform the numerous and varied manuscripts into a broadly consistent format. In so doing, she accomplished in a few short weeks what we had singularly failed to accomplish editorially in very many long months previous; the debt owed is apparent in the dedication. We are also grateful to Val Clulow, Head of the School of Business and Economics at Monash University for providing funds for the final layout work. 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. In this regard, a number of the authors have for example elected to use the traditional mode of citation for the works of noted process thinkers such as Whitehead, Bergson and Hartshorne, as laid out by the journal Process Studies. Lastly we are grateful to Michel Weber not only for graciously finding room for this book in his series, but also for his editorial input. It remains that any errors of transcrption encountered herein, not to mention the delays endured by an extremely patient cohort of authors, are the fault of none but ourselves as editors.

Mark R. Dibben Monash University

Thomas A.F. Kelly National University of Ireland Maynooth

Introduction: What is Applied Process Thought? Mark R. Dibben and Thomas A.F. Kelly Applied Process Thought is a term we have coined to represent work that moves beyond not only detailed technical renderings of (primarily but not exclusively Alfred North Whitehead’s) process philosophy, but also broadsweeping process-oriented commentry, towards the wholehearted attempt to examine scientific and social scientific phenomena through the process philosophical detail. The chapters herein represent something of what is possible when philosophically oriented process scientists and scientifically oriented process philosophers grapple with the complexities of their chosen topics without shying away from either panexperientialism or, in most cases, God. However, just exactly what they understand by these terms reaches far beyond the taken-for-granted, commonplace assumptions of most scientists and philosophers concerning their nature or, indeed, their very existence. Although process theology is very clearly an example of ‘applied process thought’, it nevertheless has such an established literature and, indeed, position within theology itself, that we shall here leave the question of God aside. With regards in particular to the question of experience, which lies at the heart of much of the discussion in this volume, it may be prescient to build upon what has been said about the relevance and development of process thinking in both Herman Greene’s Foreword and Pete Gunter’s Preface, by considering process thinking’s understanding of the nature of experience in a little more detail. We shall do this by unpacking the relationship between experience and consciousness. In so doing, we shall rely for the most part on David Griffin’s discussion presented in his seminal Unsnarling the World Knot (1998). This, by way of an introduction to the arguments presented in the chapters which follow. Since process philosophy, and particularly Whitehead’s version, can ‘best be read as an extended solution to the mind-body problem’ (Griffin 1998: 118-119), unpacking the relationship between experience and

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consciousness is in essence an appeal to a ‘hard-core common sense’ understanding of that problem. It will challenge taken-for-granted understandings (particularly in the social sciences) of the nature and place of consciousness in experience, as well as handle more fully the problem of misplaced concreteness (see also Gunter, this volume). Thus, it will develop further some of the core principles of process-thinking (e.g. Cobb 1965, Cobb and Griffin 1976, Daly & Cobb 1994, Griffin 1976/1991, Hartshorne 1970, Whitehead 1929/1978) that lie at the heart of a more complete processual view of the world—core principles commonly understood by most process philosophers. These include amongst others: prehension before perception, before consciousness; internal as well as external relatedness; self-determination; and societies of experience. In sum, we seek to provide further explanation to the reader of both ‘panexperientialism’ (otherwise known as pansychism)—the view that experience not only belongs to cognitive systems like human brains—and ‘concrescence’—the process whereby an actual occasion comes about by subjectively experiencing its environment, and thereafter objectively influences the future.

1. Experience Before Consciousness Largely reiterating the explications of process by Cobb and Griffin (1976: 13-29) and Griffin (1976/1991: 117-162), we address the misconception that process metaphysics applies minds to atoms or gives consciousness to rocks. This misconception is itself based upon a further misconception, derived from Cartesian dualism, that to experience one must be conscious. The opposite is the case, since ‘consciousness presupposes experience, and not experience consciousness’ (Whitehead, 1929/1978: 83). This is because process thought holds to the principle that ultimately reality consists of a transition from one event, an ‘actual occasion’ to another, and these momentary events of transition perish immediately upon coming into being. These events have a unity of their own, encapsulated in the process of their own momentary becoming. From the external, temporal point of view both types of process, transition and experiential unity, happen all at once but process thought suggests they are not to be understood as things that endure through a tiny bit of time unchanged, but as taking that bit of time to become. This principle of ‘concrescence’ at once provides the contrast to ‘weak’ views of process (i.e. ‘change’) that are happy to maintain things are, then they change, then they are stable again as something else. Process

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thought argues in contrast that individual occasions are dynamic acts of experience. This means that what we ordinarily call ‘individuals’, the sorts of things that endure through time are better understood to be serially ordered societies of occasions of experience. In this way process thought does not suggest that everything is in process. Rather, it suggests that to be ‘actual’ is to be a process; anything which is not in process is an abstraction from process, not an actuality. This abstraction—for our immediate purposes an abstraction we make in our attempt to navigate the world we inhabit—is an abstraction to stable forms that we make so frequently we assume them to be real; things are isolated from each other, separated from time and not related to other ‘things’ in space. Our belief that this double abstraction is real, causes us to mis-place the locus of stability over time in reality (the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) and causes us to locate things in a simplistic manner, as isolated and distinct units having no relation to other things (the fallacy of simple location). For example, the desk upon which this chapter is being written appears to us as a distinct thing in the room, unconnected to anything else going on in the room and unchanging. In fact it is in and of itself a serially ordered society of individual occasions of experience, internally related to its own experience of the past and externally related to those aspects of the objective past it subjectively experiences in its momentary becoming. Otherwise, simply, it could neither be what it is in the present moment nor, amongst other things, could it ever wear out. What is the nature of such ‘experience’, and how do we make the abstraction? The experience each occasion enjoys is that of subjective immediacy in its concrescence (its coming into being). Once its process of concrescence is completed, is in the past, that unit of process then becomes an object for new process subsequent to it to take into account as part of their enjoyment of an inner reality in and for itself. By enjoyment in this sense, we mean that every process has an intrinsic value inherent in its actualisation, its capacity to be part of a wider community that informs the concrescence of future occasions. Experience is the ‘self-enjoyment of being one among many, and of being one arising out of the composition of many’ (Whitehead 1929/1978: 220). In this sense, enjoyment is not necessarily anything conscious or anything intrinsically and exclusively the preserve of higher grade animal bodies. For Whiteheadian process thought, an experience of subjective unity is an occasion’s subjective enjoyment of its very existence; ‘the experience enjoyed by an actual entity [is] what the actual entity is, for itself’ (Whitehead 1929/1978: 81). Every occasion begins as an experience of influences from the totality of the past, forming itself in response to these influences. Thus, the next

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moment of human experience is open to the contributions of others. As each occasion of experience is succeeded by the next, a ‘defining essence’ of that stream of experiences may be objectively distinguishable, but this enduring stream with its stable essence is an abstraction in comparison with the individual occasions themselves which alone are individually fully concrete. Each occasion of experience can be considered as comprising a number of phases the first of which, non-sensory ‘prehension’, consists of physical prehensions of other actualities as objects in terms of their ‘provocation of some special activity within the subject’ (Whitehead 1933/1961: 176). Prehension thus is the activity where an entity effects its own concretion from other entities. Physical prehension is also referred to as ‘perception in the mode of causal efficacy’, which is the basic mode of inheritance of feeling from past data. Physical prehension is distinct from conceptual (or confusingly for many Cartesian dualists, mental) prehension, the second phase, in which the object is a possibility, an ideal or abstract entity. It is in this phase that sensory perception is manifest, as an experience derivative from physical prehension. The redness we see as presentationally immediate ‘in’ a rose is our mental appetition (desire, longing for, seeking after) of a particular quality, a conceptual prehension of a particular set of physical prehensions impacting on the iris. In this way, and regardless of the fact that it may seem to be completely detached from the outside world, mental experience always arises out of physical experience. There then follows an integration of prehensions from the first two phases into a propositional feeling, the union of an actuality (from the physical prehension) and a possibility (from a conceptual prehension). An example would be ‘the rose is red’ (although the conscious judgement that ‘the rose is red’ would belong to the fourth and final phase of experience in which intellectual feelings arise) whereby the possibility of redness is brought into relief as a possibility in abstraction from the physical prehension of a particular wavelength falling on the surface of the eye that instigated it. In higher occasions of experience, the fourth phase, if it occurs, comprises an integration of a propositional feeling (from the third phase) with primitive physical feelings (from the first phase) in the form of intellectual feelings of judgements, which cover most of what is usually meant by thought that we tend to call knowing or cognition. Consciousness only arises occasionally as a subjective form of an intellectual feeling, a ‘negative intuitive judgement’. In this sense, consciousness requires an awareness of what is not. The triumph of Karl Popper’s now famous falsification statement ‘not all swans are white’ (Popper 1959, 1963; also 1974— wherein, as an aside, we discover Popper’s unsuccessful attempt, using a

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theological argument from his friendship with Charles Hartshorne, to convince Einstein that reality is fundamentally processual rather than static) arises out of his negative intuitive judgement. That is, his conscious discrimination of a contrast between what is and what might be (fact and theory) arising out of his experience of definiteness, affirmation and finally negation. Thus, ‘consciousness is how we feel the affirmation-negation contrast’ (Whitehead 1929/1978: 243). In sum, far from being at the heart of experience, consciousness and cognition are abstractions from more elemental aspects of experience. Whereas all actualities experience, only very few experiences rise to the level of consciousness, which itself lights up elements already unconsciously experienced. Consciousness is a selective activity, giving particular importance to a few out of the indefinite number of factors in experience and, in so doing, changes the appreciation of the basic elements since only a small portion of the ingredients is entertained consciously. Sensory perception, the perception of which we are most aware, is a derivative form of perception arising in the third phase of experience. It is a symbolic reference introducing interpretation of the data from that which is presentationally immediate in the second phase. Consciousness thus tends to illuminate this aspect of experience most readily, which is why we are most aware of it. But this is indicative of the fact that sensory perception is not the beginning of perceptual experience; it is more near the end of such experience. Further, every factor of experience is conditioned by the others; interdependence, not dependence, is an ontologically given characteristic of nature. As such, the moment of experience is a self-determining, partially self-creating whole in which the present individual inevitably takes account of its past but turns it to its own use. The distinction between ‘non-living’ and ‘living’ actualities lies in the nature of the conceptual or mental aspect of the second phase. In non-living occasions, the second phase involves ‘merely the appetition towards, or from, whatever in fact already is’ (Whitehead 1929/1978: 34), bringing nothing new into the experience but simply repeating the past or allowing it to decay. It follows that the experience of non-living occasions does not proceed beyond the second phase and that the first phase is causally efficacious of its experience. In living occasions, the conceptual prehension, being the subjective form of its own realisation, introduces the element of novelty to the experience that allows compatible contrasts of otherwise incompatible elements in the past to arise in the third and fourth phases. This brief description of experience has expounded four basic principles of process thought. First, sensory perception is a secondary mode of

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perception, a synthesis of more primitive forms of perception and, as such, derivative from more fundamental, non-sensory ‘prehension’. Thought, cognition and consciousness are highly abstractions from basic experience. They are symbolic references of the presentationally immediate, which itself is a novel derivative of causal efficacy. Conscious discrimination, for its part, is a further abstraction from symbolic reference. Second, all true individuals—as distinct from aggregational societies—have at least some iota of experience and spontaneity (self-determination). Third, and as such, all actual entities have internal as well as external relations. From this, fourth, all enduring individuals are serially ordered societies of momentary ‘occasions of experience’. It is this sort of panexperientialist understanding of a processual reality that the authors of the chapters presented in this volume bring to bear upon the topics in philosophy, science and social science that they enagage with. This is not to say, however, that all process philosophers inherently adopt the Whiteheadian rendering presented above. Rather, it is to say that all process philosophers are at the very least appreciative of what we term a panexperientialist rendering of the way in which past realities influence present ones, and thus of how reality is best understood as being dominated by process. By process we mean, to repeat, not merely transformation process, trans-form-ation, the change from one stable entity to another, but something altogether more fundamental. It is for the purpose of examining this more fundamental process that the chapters in this collection have been gathered together. They are presented in three sections. Firstly, applications of process thinking to some topics in philosophy itself, including critical theory and the question of modernity. Secondly, applications of process thinking to some topics in the sciences, notably physics and biology. Thirdly, applications of process thinking to some topics in the social sciences including management studies and environmentalism.

2. Applied Process Thought in Philosophy To begin our exploration, Glenn McLaren takes on the not insubstantial task of attempting to unify the diverse range of process philosophical perspectives alluded to by Pete Gunter in the Preface. He argues that process philosophy has the potential to underpin a grand narrative, reintegrating people and institutions in novel ways and thereby allowing us to envisage a different future to that presented by other metaphysical systems. To do this, McLaren adopts Arran Gare’s metaphysical system, whose

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distinctive characteristics he reveals by outlining and discussing its basic categories, contrasting these with those of other traditions of thought being developed to challenge the mechanistic materialist world-view. He argues that several problems exist within these alternative traditions, particularly theistic versions of process metaphysics, which are overcome by Gare’s metaphysics. The purpose of including McLaren’s treatise at this point, further to the general introduction provided by Pete Gunter’s Preface and the more technical discussion of panexperientialism provided above, is to allow a reader ‘new’ to process thought to be more than adequately acquainted with its scope, and to have had the opportunity to grasp its detail, prior to engaging with the chapters that follow it. Each of the remaining four chapters in Part One therefore appropriately deal with some of the detail of other process thinkers. First, Isabelle Stengers explores Alfred North Whitehead’s own thinking as a process-scientist and mathematician in the light of his later metaphysics. Stengers argues that, in essence, Whitehead’s early work on the philosophy of science is just exactly an example of applied process thought since it represents a mid-point in a continuum of his development from mathematician to full-fledged speculative philosopher. Moreover, reading Science and the Modern World (Whitehead 1925/1967) may lead to the hypothesis that even if metaphysics was on Whitehead’s agenda, the way it imposed itself was a surprise for him. Indeed we can see metaphysics “happening” in Science and the Modern World, the prime object of which was what he called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”, i.e. the fallacy of the conceptual authority assigned to the abstraction, so successful in physics, of simple location of instantaneous material configurations. In the two famously difficult chapters about “Abstraction” and about “God”, we indeed suddenly deal with a metaphysician, and any particular connection with the question of our modern world has vanished. Stengers argues that, while we will probably never know how Whitehead had planned to develop his interests in philosophy, interests that largely precede his move from London to Harvard. Nevertheless, she argues that the very peculiar audacity of the metaphysician suddenly appearing in Science and the Modern World may be related to the very quest for a new coherence among sciences which was the object of this, his first ‘American’ book. Keith Robinson develops the link between science and metaphysics by bringing together characteristics of the tradition of process philosophy with central elements of the traditions of post-Kantian continental philosophy in the context of their relation to and appropriations of science. He argues that

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articulating process philosophy, continental philosophy and science together is mutually corrective and offers resources for rethinking the various ‘two cultures’ and ‘bifurcations’ of modernity, bringing the current divisions between the humanities and the sciences into a new relation that lures philosophy and science toward openness, creativity and adventure. Michel Weber next discusses the question of the interaction between science and philosophy, in terms of the conceptual move from Greek to Whiteheadian organicism. To do this, he complements Koyré’s great maestria depiction of the move from the Greek Closed World to the Modern Infinite Universe (1957). As may be expected, Weber gives special attention to the question of time—the great absentee in Koyré. Weber concludes by arguing for the notion of pancreativism, and argues that for postmodernism to retain any meaningful influence it must abandon its abandonment of science and take a more holistic view that blends the best aspects of sprituality with the best aspects of ‘technoscience’. Lastly in this section on philosphical applications, Duston Moore advances the conceptual analytics of critical theory by refining the issues involved in the critique of the as it is. To do this, he focuses initially on a peculiar overlap between Whitehead and Marcuse before considering Whiteheadian critical theory in terms of tensions between Whiteheadian and Marcusian of ingression. Moore concludes that Marcuse’s assumption regarding the ingression of eternal objects adequately accounts for the polarities of abstract universal and historical character.

3. Applied Process Thought in the Sciences Developing the foregoing philosophical discussions of the interplay between science and philosophy, the second part of the book examines the particular application of process thought in the physical and life sciences. Gary Herstein argues that an essential characteristic of the orthodox physical model is to collapse all of nature into the mathematics with which that nature is represented within the physical sciences. He suggests that within the scheme of nature that is envisioned by the vast majority of working physicists, there is an extremely intimate correlation between nature “as it is” and the mathematics which is used to model that nature. Yet, Herstein argues, there is nothing in mathematics which can correlate with human freedom or choice, neither as an abstract possibility nor especially as a phenomenologically experienced reality. For Herstein, the problem of freedom and choice is ultimately a sub-category of the problem of the mental and the physical. As such, he asks a number of questions such

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as how are we to integrate mental and the physical without falsifying one or the other? And why are the mental and physical descriptively irreducible, the one to the other? The answer to such questions, Herstein explains, may be found in Whitehead’s philosophy of nature precisely because it both provides an explanatory framework for this irreducibility and makes sense of the enormous successes physics has enjoyed in applying mathematical tools to natural phenomena. As such, he concludes, it is possible to give natural sense to the notion of free human choice. Bogdan Ogrodnik takes on some of these general process-oriented questions in physics with the specific application of process thought to the physics of light. In so doing, he seeks to demonstrate how Whitehead’s process philosophy leads to a modern version of the metaphysics of light. Ogrodnik explains that although the metaphysics of light is usually associated with medieval philosophical and theological systems of the Franciscan masters of theology, philosophy and science, such as those of St. Bonaventura and Grosseteste, it can be meaningfully understood as a theory of reality reliant on the formal or material features of light for its explanation. In terms of metaphysical principles, Ogrodnik argues light is a type of dynamic entity, which possesses both immanent and transcendent aspects, whereby the immanent aspect is vibration and the transcendent one is incessant emanation or propagation. Moreover, he suggests that while light can be split up (not decomposed) into other units of light, it is not reducible in and of itself. Ogrodnik uses Whiteheadian process thinking to suggets that this effect is caused by the immanent creativity of the world. Further, the form of light is determined minimally, and is connected strictly with its metaphysical status as a border entity; the border status of light means that it is placed between corporeal and incorporeal entities. To elucidate his argument, Ogrodnik demonstrates how the study of light led directly to Whitehead’s discovery of process and the development of his metaphysics. He concludes by arguing that further study of light might provide useful new directions for its future development. From the metaphysics of light, we turn next to the metaphysics of water. Jan Engberts presents some ideas showing why water can be viewed as a relevant root metaphor in not only Whitehead’s but also and Zhu Xi’s philosophies, as seen in terms of Whitehead’s first category of the ultimate. The aesthetic experience of looking at the nature of things around us, he suggests, bring us happiness and peace of mind. Engberts argues that, from the standpoint of process thinking, beauty is not only found in mathematics, physics and biology. Chemistry, too, provides potential sources of aesthetic experience. Engberts argues that the outcome of a cooperative rearrangement of many water molecules contains an element of creativity

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and that, crucially, this confirms process as a key element of nature. Modern biochemical science, he argues, appears to be in accord with process thought and that metaphorical methods allow us to enjoy the beauty of these life processes in aqueous solution. Expressed in Whiteheadian phraseology, aesthetic values possess a metaphysical primacy in deciding and experiencing what is of ultimate importance. Jonathan Dellafield-Butt moves the focus of attention from water to the simple animals living in that medium. He examines the behaviour of a single-celled animal, the Protozoan Paramecium, with emphasis on the displacement actions the animal makes during everyday behaviour, to demonstrate the processual aand experiential nature of its existence. Dellafield-Butt explores Paramecium both in terms of its cellular anatomy and also the molecular physiology underlying its displacements. Using advanced research in electrophysiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology, he brings an understanding of process thought to bear upon the conventional models used to explain the Protozoan’s navigation. In so doing, he draws an distinction between the types of displacements the scientific models explain and the form of the displacements that are observed in vivo. The conventional models of displacement suggest mechanical, fixed responses to ‘stimuli’, while observed behaviours appear spontaneous and complex. Dellafield-Butt concludes by arguing that while a mechanical paradigm is best suited to explain gross behaviours, a process treatment of matter as active and engaging, rather than as passive and reactive, is a more suitable foundation for understanding the subtle, individual aspects of cellular behaviour. The last chapter in this section continues the theme raised by DellafieldButt with a detialed consideration of the chemical processes of living systems. Ross Stein gives an illuminating account of the means by which enzymes effect catalysis that runs counter to the established scientific norms based upon a metaphysics of substance. Enzymes are protein molecules that catalyze chemical transformation and function within living organisms to accelerate rates of chemical reactions that are critical to the organism's survival. In so doing, Stein gives ontologic priority to becoming over being and stresses relation among subjects over non-experiencing objects. He argues that the chemical transformation of molecules, and its catalysis by enzymes, may more helpfully be seen as excursions to new patterns of stability. That is, when molecular change is viewed as foundational to emergent complexity, a metaphysics of process allows the evolution of life to be seen as a process of creative molecular advance in which the enzyme is at once the result of and a condition for evolution. In this way, Stein argues that core doctrines of process thought cohere with

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quantum chemical thinking of the 20th century and support Whitehead's view of molecules as structured societies of actual occasions of experience; dynamic systems that endure through time as patterns of stability.

4. Applied Process Thought in the Social Sciences The question of society, in its more widely understood sense, is obviously a central issue for most social scientists. Not least, this is because it has a tendency to rise to the level of an apposite ‘unit of analysis’. The final section of the book brings together work that in various ways attempts to address the question of reconciling more commonplace social science understandings of ‘society’ with the processual one. This in turn leads to renewed debate around the mind-body distinction, in terms of how our thoughts may be related to societies (in whichever sense). To this end, John Harpur begins the project with a processually aware consideration of a renewed interest in the formation of the person that has been stimulated by developments in cognitive science, neuroscience and computer modelling of thought-related activities. He notes a growing awareness of the contribution of interactions with other persons to this process within debatres about minds and bodies, thoughts and brains, feelings and bodily expressions. In general, Harpur argues, philosophy has tended to examine the issues normatively, setting to one side awkward human psychopathologies. In comparison, he draws attention to several important philosophical implications of human impairments and encourages their wider insertion into the arena of mind-body debates. One of the more hopeful aspects of the interaction between mind and body may be found in love. This is so to the extent that an increasing number of scholars recognize the importance of scientific research for understanding love. Thomas Oord argues that while the biological sciences typically are cited in such research, little is typically heard from those sciences that explore data about which we theoretically know most: human experience. Oord addresses major research pertaining to love by psychologists and sociologists, notably Ellen Berscheid, Daniel Batson and Samuel Oliner. He notes an emphasis upon altruism as one primary motivation to help another. Pointing to the example of the risks run by rescuers of Jews from the Nazi holocaust, Oord suggests that, rather than being inherently selfish, humans can act for the good of others regardless of the risk to themselves. This is so to such an extent that love transcends mere altruism. The underlying presupposition for this work is that theologians, philosophers, and others can find helpful resources in social

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scientific research for their claim that love is a realistic religious and ethical imperative. Oord concludes by arguing that the science-and-religion dialogue facilitated by process thinking can benefit from careful attention to the social sciences. One of the newer social sciences that has risen recently to significant prominence is Management. Mark Dibben here seeks to explain the challenges of applying process thought more completely in management and, by extension, in the social sciences more generally. He notes a growing trend in management and organisation studies towards avoiding direct study of process philosophers themselves in favour of secondary citation via management academics. In contrast Dibben considers instead Whitehead’s own thoughts on management and organisation, arguing that a philosopher’s own inquiry into an applied field is most likely to yield the most profound insight. In the light of Whitehead’s input, he moves on to consider one of the more interesting problems for social science applications of process thinking, namely the notion of ‘society’ and the global phenomenon of business (and other) ‘organisations’. To do this, Dibben considers recent advances in process physics, in terms of Cahill’s principles of social self-awareness; reality is, ultimately, not about the identification of isolated individuals through externality, but related individuals through internality. Dibben uses the principles of process physics to argue that organisations—one of the more interesting of social constructions with which humans interact—may be best understood as event-fields, within which persons-in-communities reside. In the penultimate chapter, William Desmond argues that Whitehead’s doctrine of connectivity in the natural world can be extended also to historiography and to an understanding of the material of history—that is to, an understanding of the ‘facts’ that historians incorporate into their narratives. The ‘data’ or ‘facts’ that historians assume and work up into a full narrative are to be seen as counterparts of Whitehead’s ‘events’ or ‘organisms’. His question, therefore, is the following: what are historical ‘facts’, and how should facts be generally understood if they are to support the multiple uses that they may be put in different kinds of history? Desmond uses Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas to argue that the historian’s juxaposition of facts as events in a coherent tale of reality is tantamount to an attempt to recognize these infinite relations in all their complex, overlapping detail. This, Desmond argues, is an ideal, almost religious vision—to see ‘infinity in a grain of sand’ and so participate in the breadth and intensity of a divine mind. Nevertheless, the ideal is also efficacious of many historical undertakings. Thus, Desmond concludes, a Whiteheadian conception of the nature of the materials of history—the

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historical facts—may only articulate more clearly and explicitly what has been assumed all along by many scholars of history. One aspect of our contemporary experience that will likely be a central topic for future historians is the impact of human technological ‘development’ upon the environment. It seems appropriate, therefore, to conclude the book with a substantive discussion of this topic, from arguably its leading exponent; in so doing, we revisit the metaphysics laid out by Glenn McLaren in the very first chapter of the book. Arran Gare suggests that orthodox environmental ethics is no more effective at stopping global ennvironmental destruction than a bicycle brake on an airliner. He develops a very different rendering from process philosophy that might arguably gain some traction on the forces which seem to be driving it. Ethics, Gare argues, needs to be transformed so as to be centrally concerned with the virtues required to develop and sustain desirable social forms. This involves an axiological repositioning, in terms of what are taken to be the problems of ethics and how ethical philosophy is understood. To address global environmental problems, Gare suggests, ecological ethics must concern itself with the virtues required to develop and sustain democracy. Developing these virtues involves reversing the growing fragmentation of work to revive a feeling of responsibility for creating a better world. Such an ethics, Gare suggests, must not only provide guidance for action, but also provides people with a sense of their place and role in history and in nature and an inspiring vision to motivate them to work for a better world. In sum, Gare argues process philosophy can provide such an ecological ethics not only because it can justify respect for all living beings, but also because it is a revolt against the fragmentation of intellectual, cultural, and social life which led to the undermining of ethics and the trivialization of philosophy in the first place.

5. Conclusion Whether guided by the thinking of A.N.Whitehead, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Arran Gare himself, or indeed any number of other process thinkers such as those discussed by Pete Gunter in the Preface, it is a deeper process metaphysical understanding of just exactly what ‘process’ means that is brought to bear upon those aspects of reality dealt with in this collection. Examining reality in this way, we argue, generates far greater insight into the nature of that reality than is possible by the application of any version of the more readily appreciated or commonly accepted static metaphysics.

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It is our hope that the work of the authors presented herein provides a stimulus for further research into applied process thought.

6. References Cobb J. B. Jr. (1965) A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead. Philadelphia: Westminster Press Cobb J. B. Jr. & Griffin D. R. (1976) Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press Daly H. E. & Cobb J. B. Jr (1994) For the Common Good, 2nd Edition. Boston: Beacon Press Griffin D. R. (1976/1991) God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy. Lanham: University Press of America Griffin D. R. (1998) Unsnarling the World Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem. University of California Press Hartshorne C. (1970) Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. Lanham: University Press of America Koyré, A. (1957) From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Popper, K. (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books Popper, K. (1963) Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge Popper, K. (1974) “Autobiographical Notes”, in P. Schilpp (Ed.) The Philosophy of Karl Popper. Illinois: Open Court Whitehead, A.N. (1925/1967) Science and the Moderrn World. New York: The Free Press Whitehead, (1929/1978) Process and Reality, Corrected Edition. New York: The Free Press Whitehead, (1933/1961) Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Free Press

Applied Process Thought I: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research Mark R. Dibben Associate Professor of Management Monash University

and Thomas A.F. Kelly Professor of Philosophy National University of Ireland, Maynooth

(Eds)

I. Unifying Process Philosophy: Secular Metaphysics and Fragmentary Influences Glenn McLaren In Nihilism Inc: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability, Arran Gare argues that to properly comprehend, debate and then effectively confront the global problems confronting humanity, it is necessary to develop comprehensive, unified systems of thought. 1 To demonstrate this, he has identified patterns of metaphysical thought pervading civilizations which have endured through long periods of history. Rather than cultures being fragmented and chaotic, as postmodernists have suggested, Gare shows how these deep patterns unify cultures and the individuals and institutions defined through them. In particular, Gare has identified two main patterns of thought, one being mechanistic materialism, the other process philosophy. Mechanistic materialism, according to Gare, is based on belief in the primary reality of material components over composite entities. This is the core of a pattern of thought which, he argues, has come to dominate the modern world. It has underpinned some of its successes, most importantly by facilitating control of the world; but it also underpins much of its destructiveness and nihilism. Without the perspective provided by an alternative metaphysical tradition it is impossible to appreciate the root cause of this destructiveness or how it could be avoided. One destructive aspect of the culture dominated by mechanistic materialism is that by denying that it is one metaphysical tradition among others while censuring any practice not defined through this tradition of thought, it has blocked efforts to question it or to consider and develop alternative metaphysical traditions. For process thought to be considered as an alternative to it, it is first necessary to recognize mechanistic materialism as a tradition of metaphysical thought, and to do this it is necessary to create the conditions that will allow alternative systems of thought to be researched and articulated. Gare has shown how mechanistic materialism has made systematic approaches to philosophy unfashionable. This tradition, he argues, has

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privileged analytic, reductionist and highly specialized approaches to philosophical inquiry that has made it virtually impossible to question assumptions pervading an entire culture, or even to understand what a culture is. Such approaches within philosophy have not only blocked metaphysical thinking; by failing to provide solutions to questions raised in pre-philosophical discourse, such philosophy has marginalized philosophy as such from major public debates. As Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, philosophy is now seen to be ‘[…] a harmless, decorative activity, education in which is widely believed to benefit by exercising and extending the capacities for orderly argument, so qualifying those who study it to join the line of lemmings entering law school or business school.’2 What is required, contends Gare, is a systematic approach within philosophy providing a unified and integrated world orientation that can draw together common, but currently fragmented and isolated insights and alternative views which have been developed in opposition to prevailing ways of thinking. Gare outlines what such a systematic philosophy would consist of: My contention is that to be systematic, philosophy should consist of a metaphysical system which, by characterizing the nature of physical existence, can provide the foundations for the natural and human sciences, and by providing a basis for understanding life, humanity and society, provide the foundations for social, political and ethical philosophy.3

Systematic philosophy, he argues, should be developed as a new grand narrative. Through a grand narrative it is possible to not only articulate a metaphysical system but put in perspective and gain a greater understanding of the successes or failures of other systems; although as Gare points out, one advantage of dealing in characterizations of the nature of physical existence is that there are few rivals to contend with. Mechanistic materialism itself has been extremely successful in providing the basis of a grand narrative, a grand narrative that has not only articulated this metaphysics but integrated people and institutions into a story of social, political and scientific progress. This has culminated in the almost complete domination of the world by Neoliberalism. The purpose of this chapter is to outline Gare’s alternative metaphysical system, one that could underpin a grand narrative with the potential to re-integrate people and institutions differently and allow us to envisage a different future. This is a version of process philosophy. Its distinctive characteristics will be revealed by outlining and discussing its basic categories, contrasting these with those of other traditions of thought being developed to challenge the mechanistic materialist world-view.4 It will be argued that several problems

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exist within these alternative traditions, particularly theistic versions of process metaphysics, which are overcome by Gare’s metaphysics.

1. The Foundations of Process Metaphysics Metaphysics involves making explicit our fundamental categories of understanding; such categorizing being understood as inherent in the structuring activity of human consciousness. In the metaphysics of mechanistic materialism, categories and associated concepts: space, time, matter, motion, God, rationality and meanings in language, are understood as being fixed, static, eternal and immutable. In contrast, categories in process metaphysics are not fixed but are, according to Gare, in a dialectical process of constant re-formulation. This dialectical process has a number of dimensions that sees new metaphysical categories as firstly, developing within the culture of a functioning community; secondly, transcending former categories though elaborating new analogies which are then counterposed to dominant categories; thirdly, subjecting existing categories to both critical and comparative analysis; and fourthly, developing through their application and incorporation into practices.5 This means that process metaphysics is an evolving metaphysics, one that acknowledges processes of both emergence and transcendence that emerge from within cultural traditions. This ‘active’ metaphysics gives a different meaning to the foundation metaphor in Gare’s concept, aligning it with that of both Pols and Varela. Pols, like Gare, argues that philosophy has been and is, dominated by attempts to find static, solid ground as a basis of reality for all theory, particularly scientific theory. He identifies the central figures in this attempt as Plato, Descartes and the Logical Empiricists.6 Pols’ position is that the outcomes of such attempts to establish fixed foundations are abstracted from and given primacy to, the activity of their formulation, repressing certain rational capacities for satisfying the persistent appetite for reality fundamental to metaphysics. He argues that: […] the most important objection to the metaphor is that it fails to do justice to the active nature of the power or powers by virtue of which we know and by virtue of which we produce the complex propositional structures in which knowing is expressed, stabilized and made communicable. The foundation metaphor—with all those overtones of something that supports because it is static, inactive, and enduring; of something that does not actualize itself in the temporal

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Glenn McLaren order—strikes quite the wrong note. It also helps encourage that most hubristic of all aspirations of first philosophy and science: the aspirations to an ideal, complete and perfect knowledge consisting of a set of propositions bound together in a deductive unity.7

This static foundation metaphor also strikes the wrong note with Varela who reveals through his investigations in cognitive science, phenomenology and Buddhism, that no ultimate ground can be found on which such foundations can be based, whether it be in the mind from an idealist perspective, or in the world from a scientific realist perspective. To think in terms of a solid foundation always implies a disembodied view from a position of radical dualism similar to Descartes, as well as the possibility of atemporal structure or entities. Alternatively, Varela argues that all categorizing and conceptualizing is a constant process of dependent co-origination, (borrowing a Buddhist term), that cannot occur outside of immediate experience. Immediate experience, or ‘nowness’, he conceives of as occurring within the ‘specious present’, a term he borrows from William James but characterizes in Husserlian terms not as a point in time, but as a ‘temporal fringe’, or field, containing a unity of ‘now’, ‘before’ and ‘after’.8 Each moment or event of immediate experience within the ‘specious present’ involves the embodied acting, or ‘enacting’ of a world, that is neither fixed nor pre-given. From this perspective, fixed foundations become disembodied, autonomous, immutable realities existing outside or behind immediate experience that both nature and minds then represent. It is this logic that process metaphysics seeks to reveal as incoherent. Alternatively, it is the notion of primary reality being embodied action within the ‘specious present’ that is a pivotal concept in process metaphysics, one that makes the contradictory notion of a ‘groundless ground’ comprehensible.9 It is also a concept that aligns process metaphysics with many Eastern philosophies, particularly Zen Buddhism that Varela himself draws on. From this, one can understand that when Gare refers to the categories of process providing a foundation, it is foundation as a metaphor for the activity of formulating and re-formulating such foundations. In this following passage then, Gare is not only referring to what the categories of process relate to, but to the active nature of the categories themselves: Process metaphysics construes the world as a complex of processes of creative becoming rather than a world of things. In such a world each process is to some extent an immanent cause of its own being, new processes emerge that transcend their conditions of emergence, and objects, space, and time have only a derivative and

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relational status. As such this philosophy should not be identified with any particular philosopher. The exaltation of and excessive deference to a particular philosopher is a sign of the failure of his or her ideas to generate a creative tradition.10

In this quote, the importance of seeing the ontologically primary categories of mechanistic materialism as derivative of and in relation to, an active reality is stressed. The last two sentences refer to why the particular categories of Gare’s that will follow are to be understood as a synthesis of a rich tradition of thought. This tradition began in ancient times with the theories of the underlying reality of flux from Heraclitus and the activity of potentiality becoming actuality through processes of becoming in Aristotle. This was to influence radical Neoplatonist and Hermetic philosophers in the Middle Ages, the Nature and Romantic philosophers of the Enlightenment and more recently the Phenomenologists, Existentialists, Pragmatists, Poststructuralists and Constructive Postmodernists. Gare also draws on anti-reductionist movements in both the physical and social sciences. Many of those from within these movements, argues Gare, are united in their conception of the world as a process of becoming; ‘[…] an enduring pattern of activity, an island of stability within the flux which can only maintain itself through constant interaction with the background flux and other patterns of activity.’11 In this, they oppose the nihilism implicit in mechanistic materialism and the social order it underpins and affirm life, meaning and creativity. Practically, many of these, including Gare, offer socio-political alternatives that potentially serve to produce and re-produce process thought. It is these traditions that will now be explored.

2. Aristotle and Process Metaphysics While Gare’s metaphysics is to be understood as a synthesis of all of those thinkers he regards as process orientated, his categorial structure is heavily derived from Aristotle and Alfred North Whitehead, as well as interpreters of each, such as Ivor Leclerc. Both Aristotle and Whitehead are pivotal figures in process metaphysics due to their explication of categories that emphasize the temporal nature of reality. Where Gare transcends both though is in his insistence on the primacy of becoming and his rejection of Foundationalism, Substantialism and Absolutism, all of which he finds evident in some aspects of their categories and dominant within Western thinking in general. In this, he shares common ground with some Eastern traditions of process thought, particularly Zen Buddhism that has just been discussed in relation to Varela, traditions that have also influenced those

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such as Whitehead. According to Abe, Zen has long provided an alternative to Western thought through its radically different understanding of the nature of grasping towards absolutes, foundations and substance as well as its rejection of this determination of primary reality.12 Some important similarities will therefore be made throughout this chapter between this tradition of thought and Gare’s metaphysics. Aristotle can be understood as having contributed somewhat to mechanistic materialism mainly through his notion of ‘ousia’ being translated as substance and the Absolutism of his belief that the highest level in his hierarchy of reality, where the God’s exist as pure form, is not subject to change and represents an end-point in his cosmology. Another reading of Aristotle though sees his importance in the development of process thought. This importance stems from his insights into the nature of change and his inversion of Plato’s hierarchy of reality such that the more natural things become the more real. This inversion, argues Abe, introduces the notion of ‘Being’ as a fundamental category of human thought. This became the basis for Western metaphysics up until its replacement by Kant’s philosophy of ‘ought’, in his notion of the categorical imperative.13 Using the Buddhist terms ji, meaning particular or temporal, ri, meaning universal or atemporal and u, meaning being, Abe provides a different interpretation of ‘ousia’ by arguing that: According to Aristotle, form should be called ‘being’ or u rather than the ‘universal’ or ri. Only by thus denying universal ri that transcended individual ji was Being (ousia), which Aristotle took as the basis of metaphysics, realized as ‘Being’ that makes ji (particulars) to be ji. However, this ‘Being’ as form was in motion and never at rest. God, as the supreme Being, was also the prime mover, the pure first form (proton eidos) which had no trace at all of the shadow of matter. Ultimate Being was pure activity itself.14

Aristotle’s ‘ousia’, as ‘Being’, can therefore be understood as being a much more dynamic concept than that of material substance, one more consistent with a process orientation that I will now explore in more depth. The scientific revolution, beginning in the Renaissance and proceeding through the development of mechanistic science in the seventeenth century, was in large part a reaction against Aristotelianism and a return to Neoplatonism. Therefore, as Leclerc argues, Aristotle’s importance to process thought is evident in what it was that mechanistic science reacted against. He summarizes Aristotle’s concept of nature in the following:

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For Aristotle, physis, “nature,” pertains to a being, an existent, which has in itself the source of its kinesis, “change,” more particularly the process of change which is its becoming, its growth and development. A natural being stands in contrast to an artificial thing. An artifact cannot be, exist, in virtue of itself; its being is dependent on an artificer, and the latter must be a natural being, that is, one whose very being, existence, is not derivative […] A physical or natural being in Aristotle’s analysis is essentially involved in a process of becoming, genesis; it is not except in becoming. That is to say, for Aristotle the being, the existence, of all physical and natural beings involves an inner process of change which is their becoming. The becoming of a natural being is a constant process of actualization of its potentiality. This process of actualization is ultimately analyzable in terms of eidos, “form,” and hyle, “matter.” Actualization is the energeia, “enacting,” of eidos, “form,” “definiteness.” The concept of hyle is an essentially correlative one; that is, hyle is not understandable on its own, apart from form, but only in reference to form.15

Aristotle’s primary being therefore, comprises both matter and form, but, unlike Plato’s eternal, immutable Forms, it is form, that changes. A common example given is that of a substance such as metal that is fashioned into the shape of a spoon. The metal as a potentiality is made actual in the form of a spoon, but such a process of becoming is caused by a natural being and thus derivative. For the natural being, such a process of becoming is immanent. As Leclerc interprets it, this process of becoming is also immanent in the cosmos: Nature used as a collective noun meant the totality of natural or physical existents. This totality is no mere arithmetical sum; rather, it is a whole constituting a cosmos, “order,” which is an order of relatedness of the plurality of physical existents. The physical existents in this ordered relatedness have to be conceived, Aristotle maintained, as involving the conjoint operation of a fourfold determination— traditionally referred to, perhaps somewhat misleadingly, as the “four causes.” Aristotle held that the analysis of each physical existent requires its consideration in respect of (1) that out of which it comes to be, (2) that from which as a source it comes to be, (3) that form or definiteness which determines it as this existent and not another, and (4) that for the sake of which it comes to be, that is, that which determines the reason for its existence.16

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For Gare, as will be shown, it is Aristotle’s concepts of causation, (Leclerc’s fourfold determination), together with the notions of becoming, potentiality, actuality and energeia that help underpin a metaphysics that accounts for a partially self-causing relational order in the universe, one that is in process of becoming. For mechanistic science, however, it was a different matter. In agreeing with Aristotle that a primary physical existent must be a unitary entity, rather than composite, the discovery, particularly in medicine with Sebastian Basso, that human bodies are composite, led mechanistic thought at the time to conclude that human beings could not be primary physical existents. Rather, the primary physical existents are their most elemental components. This led to atomism and the consequent return to Neoplatonism in which reality was reduced to the divinely caused, mathematically abstract motion of inert, indivisible and immutable atoms. Matter was thus separated from what had been its Aristotelian correlate, form, and given primary ontological status, at the same time denying natural existents any immanent capacity for ‘kinesis’. As Leclerc argues, this formed the basis of modern physics as mechanism, rather than organism, and established motion, like space and time, as ontologically distinct, rather than as derivative.17 Another problem for the mechanists posed by Aristotle was the nature of extended bodies. Aristotle understood the contradiction in the notion that an extended, indivisible atomic body could be composed of smaller, indivisible atomic bodies. The reactions to this contradiction ranged from a denial of its relevance to scientific research, an attitude that Leclerc argues was prominent among medical researchers and came to characterize ‘positivism’, to Galileo’s assertion that atoms were without extension and were rather geometric points in a geometric universe, a notion that was advanced by Descartes and gave mathematics ontological primacy. The influential position of Newton on this problem amounted to a deus ex machina. It was Leibniz, according to Leclerc, who provided the most penetrating analysis of the problem of atomic matter having the attribute of extension, by introducing the concepts of relations and force. He states in relation to Leibniz: All the features which are ascribed as the attributes of body— extension, solidity, hardness or impenetrability—are not strictly attributes at all but must be analyzed as relations. Thus, there can be no simple body, as the atomist conceived it; a body is necessarily a plurality, and the features of body are the relations between the physical existents which are the constituents.18

In regard to Leibniz’s concept of force, he states:

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Leibniz argued that this concept can consistently and coherently be introduced only by grounding it in the nature of the physical existent, as indeed Aristotle had done. Now this is possible only if we reject the prevalent conception of the physical existent as simply actual, that is, in itself changeless, without any internal process of becoming. We have to recognize with Aristotle that the physical existent must be in-act, it must be an acting entity, and that the concept of “force” required in physics is to be grounded in this acting of the physical existent.19

From the incoherence of the mechanist’s arguments against Aristotle, one can gain an understanding of the importance of Aristotle to Process Philosophy. Not only did he originate metaphysics, that positive science and later Deconstructive Postmodernism tried to dismiss as pointless, but his ideas and cosmology underpinned many process oriented movements throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. His work has also influenced attempts this century to renew the philosophy of nature in light of current theories in science. The incoherence of the arguments against Aristotle by the mechanists raises the question of why his ideas, in relation to mutability and immanent purpose, were so vehemently opposed. While Leclerc focuses on the scientific and philosophical problems at issue, Gare adds relevant political issues. These were issues of power and ideology as the bourgeois elites, in their efforts to establish rule in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, opposed calls by the humanist Hermetics for an egalitarian distribution of wealth and harmonious relations between people and nature.20 Gare, characterizes Hermetic philosophy as a radical form of Neoplatonism that held that ‘[…] God is immanent in the world, that nature is active and divine and that the end of history, the millenium which was evidently at hand, would not involve a transcendence of the world, but the establishment of a new order on earth based on brotherly love and a reunification of humanity with nature.’21 The importance of the Hermetics is in their notion of God’s immanence in the natural world and the ontology that saw humans as self-organizing, creative agents capable of changing the dominant hierarchical order. It is ideas such as these that underpinned the theistic branch of Process Philosophy, as exemplified by the Idealists and the Constructive Postmodernists. The Hermetics, in challenging the status quo, were pitted against what Hans Jonas argues was a Gnosticism similar to that in the early GrecoRoman period of Christianity. Gnosticism is characterized by the split between man, God and the world and contempt for nature as a lesser reality relative to the divine realm.22 Ken Wilber characterizes this conflict

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between the Gnostics and Hermetics as the split between the Ascending, or transcendent view of God, and the Descending, or immanent view of God. He argues that both Plato and Aristotle, and much of Western cosmology prior to the Enlightenment, recognized two movements. The first, was the movement of transcendence from the Many to the One, and the second, was ‘[…] the movement whereby the One empties itself into all creation, gives itself to all forms, so that all creation itself is a perfect manifestation of spirit.’23 From this analysis, the bourgeois, ruling elite Gnostics of the Enlightenment, can be understood as Ascenders who were self-justified in treating nature and those regarded as lesser forms of humanity indistinguishable from nature, as means towards their ends of transcending the world. Those, (such as the Hermetics), who promoted a Descendent theistic view of a more earthly transcendence, were seen as a threat to the achievement of such ends. However, from this split also emerged secular Descenders, the atheists, agnostics and materialists firmly rooted in the world, who, in some respects, have proven to be as great a threat to the Ascenders through their nihilism and consequent self-destructive behavior. Wilber regards the most important thinkers to emerge from this split as those who sought to re-unite these movements, principally Schelling, Hegel and Whitehead. However, the notion of Ascendence is not so easily removed from human thought and action and raises problems for Descendent process thought, such as Gare’s, that will now be discussed.

3. Ascendence and Theistic Process Metaphysics Wilber’s view, synthesizing Eastern and Western metaphysics and developmental psychology typifies, in a contemporary sense, the dominant theism in Process Philosophy and the belief, following Aristotle, in the teleological conception of a universe that has a purpose toward which it is struggling, often conceived as a movement from the Many to the One. This view, suggesting a cosmic evolution of consciousness, is at the heart of the cosmologies of both Schelling and Hegel and influenced Whitehead’s metaphysics. Gare finds such views problematic in that they reduce humanity’s development to being ultimately determined by a grand, cosmic final cause. These views are in need of being re-formulated in relation to a more human scale, where emergent novelty is ontological. Of course, the idea of an evolution of consciousness is fundamental to the process view and the ontology that sees humans ‘[…] as self-creative participants in the becoming of nature and society, and the development of their understanding as the world becoming conscious of itself.’24 It is a view that is in stark contrast to the mechanistic view of humans as machines and thus

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incapable of growth. It is also in contrast to those Postmodern cultural relativists, or as Zohar refers to them, philosopher dilettantes, such as Rorty, who reject evolutionary progress through history as ‘[…] just so many elements of play.’25 What distinguishes Gare is that he stresses the contingent nature of such progress and its relatedness to both the natural and cultural conditions of life. Process Philosophy therefore needs to account for both. One cannot simply have two partial monisms that each trespass into the sphere of the other as is the unfortunate consequence, according to Jonas, of opposing mechanistic materialism with idealism. As Jonas argues: The problem is still the same: the existence of feeling life in an unfeeling world of matter which in death triumphs over it. If its dualistic solution is theoretically unsatisfactory the two partial monisms—materialism and idealism—at bottom evade it, each in its own manner of one-sidedness. Their means of unification, i.e., of reduction to the chosen denominator, is the distinction of primary and secondary reality: of substance and function (or “epiphenomenon”) in the case of materialism, of consciousness and appearance in the case of idealism. As an ontological position, i.e., as serious monism, either standpoint claims totality for itself and thus excludes the other.26

4. Hegel and the Evolution of Consciousness An evolutionary development of consciousness is therefore implicit in process thought that is itself a higher level of conscious awareness that can be reached through the identification, transcendence and integration of both mechanistic materialism and Idealism. Similar to many Buddhist traditions, it has the ability to transcend dualisms in order to reveal a middle way, the difference being in how such transcendence is conceived. Gare’s method is dialectical in the Hegelian tradition of seeking a new synthesis from opposing positions. He draws on many labeled either materialist, such as Marx, or idealist, such as Hegel, who he sees as attempting to transcend divisions. An example is in Hegel’s work, ‘Phenomenology of Mind’, which Gare sees as exemplifying the level of understanding required for scaling the heights of process thought. Of Hegel, he writes: Hegel rejected Kant’s notion of a preformed ego, the ‘I’ represented as a pure unity relating to itself. Instead Hegel portrayed the ego as the result of the development, from immediate sensitivity to

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Here we see, revealed in Hegel, two fundamental concepts in process thought. Firstly in his three dialectical patterns, there is the nonreductionism of seeking a broad and complementary understanding of human evolution and activity by drawing on multiple aspects of human development. Secondly, there is the idea that living systems to some extent are the immanent cause of their own process of becoming and not just passive participants in a pre-determined world. For Hegel, however, ‘[…] Reason […] is both substance and infinite power, in itself the infinite material of all natural and spiritual life as well as the infinite form, the actualization of itself as content.’28 History is therefore the progress of man’s Reason to higher levels of rationality and freedom, a process that had a logical and seemingly pre-determined terminal point in the achievement of absolute self-consciousness. Despite this, Hegel’s understanding of the development of self-consciousness was ground breaking, as Habermas affirms: […] Hegel does not link the constitution of the “I” to the reflection of the solitary “I” on itself, but instead understands it in terms of formative processes, namely the communicative agreement of opposing subjects, it is not reflection as such which is decisive, but rather the medium in which the identity of the universal and the individual is formed.29

Therefore: […] Hegel’s fundamental experience of the “I” as an identity of the universal and the singular has led him to the insight that the identity of self-consciousness is not an original one, but can only be conceived as one that has developed.30

Hegel, therefore, does not consider the experience of self-consciousness as the original one but as resulting from the experience of interaction where consciousness, or Spirit, exists as the medium. The development of selfconsciousness is a shared journey tied to the engagement with and

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recognition of others, as well as the shared tools and symbols engaged with. Hegel can be interpreted, therefore, as having transcended pure idealism through his emphasis on relations. This view also reveals the totally abstract nature of Kant’s moral philosophy, that Hegel was rejecting, and the extent to which it is removed from the formative domain of moral relationships. Kant, as Francis Fukuyama argues, saw progress to greater freedom driven by a universal, competitive human desire to dominate and rule, the ‘wellspring of social creativity’. This is revealed, however, as a static view of human nature that denies the possibility of transformation, echoing both Macchiavelli and Hobbes.31 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson support this in their argument, based on their concept of second generation cognitive science that emphasizes the embodied, metaphoric nature of reason, that Kant’s categorical imperative, the universal, unconditional and absolutely binding moral laws that man is duty-bound to obey, reveals a ‘strict father’ metaphor that facilitates the suppression of creative development.32 It is this static, Absolutist view of the pre-formed ‘I’, one that underpins Neoliberalism, that was challenged by Hegel, as well as the idea that individuals could achieve freedom abstracted from the social and cultural world. As Solomon argues in relation to philosophy prior to Hegel: Virtually every other philosopher […], whether metaphysician or epistemologist, essentially offered us a static view of knowledge, a concept of the understanding that—except for education from childhood and the detailed knowledge gained by the sciences—did not change, did not grow, did not develop. Hegel provides philosophy (and humanity) with a historical perspective. Truth is not, as many philosophers had insisted ever since ancient times, what is. Truth develops, as the human mind develops. Truth is not being but becoming.33

What Hegel does is link cosmology, ontology and epistemology such that the evolution of human consciousness becomes an immanent cause of the world becoming conscious of itself. Furthermore, this consciousness is totally integrated with the world and extends beyond the individual to become a World Spirit. The history of much process thought can be said to focus on those thinkers who have conceived of humanity and more broadly, all living systems, in this way. This teleological humanism (or perhaps purposive organism) seeks to transcend the gulf, highlighted by Jonas, between idealism and materialism. The supposedly idealist Hegel and his supposedly materialist critic, Marx, for example, are both pivotal process thinkers because they share this belief in historical evolution where man

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actively alters his consciousness and hence his world-view, through space and time. Also, as Dupre argues, both Hegel and Marx ‘[…] introduced social relatedness into the very heart of consciousness’, rejecting the notion dominating social thought, following Kant, of mere intersubjective cooperation.34 Marx’s utopian vision, however, while emphasizing this social dialectic, became too tied to advances in productive economic activity liberating man from scarcity, lending itself to mechanistic prediction. What is problematic for Hegel though, is the Absolutist and deterministic position that his process will necessarily unfold and reveal higher levels seemingly despite human agency.35

5. Wilber and Stages of Consciousness Development This seemingly inevitable, disembodied trajectory is evident in contemporary theistic process views such as Wilber’s. Wilber argues that evolution is a process of increasing complexity in the encompassing of greater and deeper wholes, or holons. Drawing on the rich tradition of developmentalists from Plotinus and Padmasambhava to Kohlberg, Loevinger, Maslow, Piaget, Gilligan, Habermas and including Hegel, to name a few, Wilbur’s synthesis suggests a hierarchy of consciousness development from the purely sensoriphysical world of the infant to levels of self-actualization and self-transcendence. Growth process in humans involves the overcoming of egocentrism and the continual de-centering of the self. The earliest stages of development are therefore highly egocentric where the infant or toddler is unable to differentiate between its needs and the world. As the child develops through to early adolescence they become more sociocentric as they recognize the needs of others and the demands and conventions of their society or culture. They can to some extent put themselves in the role of others and begin to identify with family, community and ethnic groups. At still higher stages toward adulthood they may become more worldcentric, transcending ethnicity and beginning to think about thought itself, questioning conventionality from the critical distance of such a higher level that begins to identify with all of humanity. At this level creativity can blossom as idealistic possibilities open up, but it is also a level from which one can slip back through an inability to recognize the process one has gone through to reach such a level. In other words, one can fail to understand that one is embracing a humanity that may not yet have developed to embrace you. At each stage of development,

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a different world-view emerges as greater levels of complexity are identified and integrated into greater and deeper wholes. In this chapter, I understand process thought as emerging within this first worldcentric stage, a stage that Wilber argues applies to the majority of academics in universities today. Process thought becomes fully integrated though at a higher level; what Wilber refers to as the vision-logic stage: […] vision-logic adds up the parts and sees networks of interactions. When employed in a merely objectifying […] fashion, it produces objective systems theory in general. But when it is the basis of actual interior transformation—which is not covered by systems theory! and which is very rare!—then it supports an integrated personality. When the self’s centre of gravity identifies with visionlogic, when the person lives from that level, then we tend to get a very highly integrated personality, a self that can actually inhabit a global perspective, and not merely mouth it.36

Reaching such higher stages, as was mentioned before, involves an evolutionary process of recognizing ones level, transcending it and then integrating new levels with previous ones. Wilber though, argues that there are high levels of complexity and fluidity involved as one is never wholly in one stage. There is, therefore, no simple linear progression but rather, it is non-linear in that, ‘[…] there are all sorts of regressions, spirals, temporary leaps forward, peak experiences, and so on.’37 Also, there is no guarantee that individuals, or humanity as a whole, will achieve the highest levels. As depth increases, span decreases, so there will always be less human beings with relatively deep levels of consciousness, than molecules, or atoms. As Wilber argues, the noosphere, or the deep realm of thought, transcends and includes the biosphere that transcends and includes the physiosphere. The destruction of the noosphere will not destroy those levels beneath it, but the destruction of either the physiosphere or biosphere will destroy the noosphere. From this is derived Wilber’s ‘moral intuition’ inherent in all holons of a drive to promote the greatest depth for the greatest span, the realization of which will require the unification of the Ascending and Descending. Such a union is where harmony is found,’[…] where the couple finally unite, the entire game is undone, this nightmare of evolution, and you are exactly where you were prior to the beginning of the whole show.’38 In this, Wilber importantly recognizes a hierarchical structure in human development that is continuous with a hierarchical universe, an important insight in process thought that will be discussed further in this chapter. What distinguishes Wilber as a theistic thinker though, is that reaching the

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highest stages of his hierarchy of consciousness development is a cyclic process, one that returns to its origin. What this passage of Wilber’s reveals is perhaps the underlying psychology of theistic thought, be it Descendent, Ascendent or both; that is, the overwhelming desire for a return to a harmonious state of homeostasis and the necessary contempt for evolutionary change this implies. Such celebrations of evolution and change as can be found in Wilber and other theistic Process Philosophers are therefore necessarily instrumental, relating to evolution as a means and never as an end in itself. Despite Wilber acknowledging that there is no guarantee of reaching higher levels, what one achieves when reaching them is essentially pre-determined. This is based on the notion of an evolution of consciousness that cycles between birth and individuation to death and reunification that is itself dependent on the notion of a cyclic universe.39 Such deterministic Absolutism viewed from a perspective that privileges becoming, such as Gare’s, is seen to trivialize fifteen billion years of evolution while necessarily denying the ontological reality of free will and novelty. In comparison, Gare’s metaphysics must be understood as attempting to provide an ontological basis for a truly open universe. Wilber’s deterministic Absolutism is manifest in his anthropocentric notion of the noosphere as an evolutionary development, but one with an intimate and privileged relationship to a transcendent, atemporal order. This problematic view derives from his notions, mentioned previously, deriving from Plato, Plotinus, Schelling, Hegel and many Eastern philosophies, of higher stages of self-transcendence, of pure ‘Emptiness’, glimpsed by some Western philosophers, but mainly attained through Eastern meditative techniques. The implication here is that being able to conceive of an interrelated universe is not enough. It must be accompanied by an interior transformation that affects the practice of one’s life, such as is derived through Buddhist meditative practices. This is the basis of Wilber’s critique of Western thought. While at the level of vision-logic systematic philosophers can be seen to emerge such as Schelling, Hegel, Whitehead, Marx, and Gare, who are able to encompass greater wholes and have an acute sense of interrelatedness, they, according to Wilber, have no means by which they can examine their own lived, transformative experience of knowing reality. Consequently, they are limited in how high they can go by continually elevating concepts over practice. Higher levels of transcendence, according to Wilber, necessitate an engagement in meditative practices that reveal the true nature of lived experience preconceptually. This presents a challenge to Western process thinkers as to how their concepts of reality may be experienced. It also raises an interesting paradox

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in relation to higher levels. According to Wilber, achieving high levels of a global perspective and a decentred self, ‘[…] is a rare, elite, extraordinary perspective of great depth, and […] relatively few individuals […] actually make it to that depth.’40 He also argues that the ‘moral intuition’ can be realized through the unification of the Ascending and the Descending at such levels. This raises the question; realized by whom? For Wilber, one has to be one of the few great sages who can only explicate what most can never experience. How though, can one’s ‘moral intuition’ be realized from a position of great depth and little span? In Wilber’s view, the universe can only become conscious of itself through the agency of an elite few, thereby denying the rest of humanity much of a role in cosmic evolution. This creates a problem for those partially transcendent individuals, such as the Western process philosophers previously mentioned who produce utopian visions of just, equal and creative societies where all can achieve higher levels of development. The implication is that utopian visions of such enlightened individuals for humanity’s growth, as a whole, are futile and wrongheaded. In other words, the elite few who break through to reach higher stages are deluded in suggesting any possibility of such transcendence for all. This though puts Wilber at odds with the views of other Buddhist scholars such as Abe, who see humanity’s salvation in the ‘self-awakening’ of all individuals. 41 It seems that in Wilber’s hierarchy there is the nihilistic implication that the ‘moral intuition’ of most holons must remain unrealized. We must put our faith in those rare, elite individuals who emerge from time to time within Buddhist communities with a privileged access to the Absolute who will remind us of our immutable inadequacies. This effectively denies human holons even the challenge of realizing one’s ‘moral intuition’ whereas this is precisely the challenge humanity, and particularly Process Philosophers, should be confronting. That is, to identify the pathways to levels at which there is great depth relative to great span, levels at which possibilities remain open to all, avoiding the utilitarian character of Wilber’s concepts. Wilber’s problem stems from his elevation of what has become the ideal of great depth, over the ‘moral intuition’, or the conditions for growth for all. This relates to his Absolutism as will now be discussed in relation to Schelling and Hegel.

6. Schelling, Hegel and Absolute Spirit Revealing the Absolutism inherent in Wilber and theistic Process Philosophy requires examining the problematic issue of Spirit, engaged

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with by the Idealists but, as Wilber argues, crushed in Modernity by a monological view of nature.42 The Enlightenment saw the transcendence of the ‘mythic’ stage of development and the differentiation of culture, morality and science. These have still not been integrated allowing empirical science to dominate. This domination has seen everything reduced to an empirical, material nature where both mind and Spirit cannot be accounted for. Contiguous with this development was the polarization of the ego and eco camps, ego being those such as Kant, who sought to transcend nature and eco, those such as Herder, who sought to be one with it. According to Wilber, it was Schelling who best sought re-integration through endeavouring to transcend the ego and eco camps by suggesting that we have to go beyond reason, or a return to nature. Interpreting Schelling he argues: […] we have to go forward beyond reason in order to discover that mind and nature are both simply different movements of one absolute Spirit, a Spirit that manifests itself in its own successive stages of unfolding. […] Spirit is not One apart from Many, but the very process of the One expressing itself through the Many—it is infinite activity expressing itself in the process of development itself […]. 43

Schelling, then, identifies absolute Spirit with infinite activity, from which mind and nature are derivative, a move that situates him within the process tradition. Hugo Meynell supports Wilber’s interpretation in his argument that Schelling was the philosopher who best revealed the merits and limitations of Idealist philosophy. He interprets Schelling in the following: It is the ultimate identity of real and ideal, of objective and subjective, which is the business of the philosopher to display; with nature as “visible Spirit’ and Spirit as “invisible nature.” Philosophy must show forth nature as a unified system which aims towards consciousness of itself through human thought. In the representation of itself through conscious human subjects, sleeping spirit awakens, and nature comes to knowledge of itself. “The Absolute is the ‘pure identity’ of subjectivity and objectivity. And this identity is revealed in the mutual interpenetration of Nature and Nature’s knowledge of itself in and through man.” The temporal order is a manifestation of the Absolute, and is related to it as a consequent to antecedent.44

Here we see repeated, however, the anthropocentric notion pervading theistic process thought, of a teleological movement in nature toward consciousness of itself through humans. This is nature that for Schelling,

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according to Wilber, is a spiritual process, a self-organizing dynamic system that is the objective manifestation of spirit: Thus, for Schelling (and for his friend and student Hegel), Spirit goes out of itself to produce objective nature, awakens to itself in subjective mind, and then recovers itself in pure Nondual awareness, where subject and object are one pure immediacy that unifies both nature and mind in realized Spirit.45

The problem here, however, is in the cyclic notion of something substantial being recovered, or of something returning to a substantial origin, in this case, absolute Spirit.

7. Schelling, Hegel and Substantialism This is where Zen Buddhism perhaps provides a less problematic account of ultimate reality than Hegel, Schelling, or Wilber. As Abe argues, from the perspective of Zen, there is always the suspicion that ultimate reality is something substantial in both Hegel and Schelling’s concepts. This is despite Hegel having many similarities to Zen, his use of the term ‘ […] the negation of negation being a great and absolute affirmation’, being a case in point.46 In Zen, the negation of negation leads to absolute Nothingness where the absolute and the individual are identical, a concept that can only be understood existentially. In Hegel, however, according to Abe, it leads to something arguably substantial, the absolute Spirit. He argues that: The individual may be paradoxically identical with the absolute only when the absolute is grasped as non-substantial—only when there is nothing substantial whatsoever as ‘absolute’ behind or beyond the individual. In Hegel, the individual is not fully grasped as an individual because for Hegel, the absolute is not absolute Nothingness, but absolute Spirit, which is in the final analysis something substantial. It may not be accurate to say that Hegel’s notion of the absolute Spirit is simply something substantial, for it is an extremely dialectical notion which is actualized only through the negation of negation. Inasmuch as this is the case, it cannot be said to be substantial. And yet, in the light of Zen’s realization of absolute Nothingness or Emptiness, the substantial nature of Hegel’s notion of the absolute Spirit becomes clear. Furthermore, when his notion of a ‘trick of reason’ is taken into account, one cannot but think that there is

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For Hegel then, the problem is that his notion of absolute Spirit, as ultimate reality, is itself differentiated. Schelling recognized this problem in his rejection of Christian concepts of Heaven and the spirit world as ultimate reality. He realized that difference could not emerge from that which was already differentiated, such as Heaven, conceived by those such as the German mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg as both, containing particularity and being the final resurrection immediately after death.48 It was Schelling’s alternative conception of an undifferentiated identity that was criticized by Hegel as being ‘[…] the night in which […] all cows are black.’49 As Abe argues though, Schelling’s notion of absolute identity, or Indifference, was still, like Hegel, a concept of something substantial, in this case, ‘oneness’. From a Zen perspective, primary reality is ‘[…] one’s realization in which everything and everyone, including oneself, are respectively and equally realized as they are.’50 This occurs temporally within the horizon of present experience. Therefore, the cyclic notion of a return to oneness, or absolute Spirit, that pervades Schelling, Hegel, Wilber and theistic process thought in general, involves the realization of something that is identical to something else, something that is ultimately an objective state and not pure identity at all. Realization of things as they are requires open-ended views of evolution that the process thought of the theistic Idealists ultimately cannot provide. These views will now be discussed.

8. Embodied Reasoning According to Wilber evolution cannot be fully understood by those whose evolutionary holarchy stops at reason. Schelling and Hegel reveal to Wilber the problem since the Enlightenment, of the separation of the Ascenders from the Descenders, or the ego from the eco as mentioned before. Today there is either the Descendent view of an immanent God, as well as atheism, or the Ascendent view that dominated the Middle Ages, of a transcendent God. In ancient views such as Aristotle’s and most Eastern religions, God, or Spirit were both transcendent and immanent, inspiring both Hegel and Schelling to suggest that evolution involves the interaction of both. This leads to Wilber’s suggestion, reflecting his Buddhist influence, that still higher stages of self-transcendence need to be aspired to that require engagement in meditative or yogic practices. These common practices then reveal the ‘Emptiness’ or non-dual ground state of conscious awareness, or what is generally being referred to in different contexts as the

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‘Divine’, Absolute Spirit or God. This begs the question, however, is this evolution in general that cannot be understood, or a particular view of evolution as a pre-determined teleological unfolding? Based on the limited experience of this author, meditative practices have some value in the development of a process world-view. Certainly, there are some similarities, at least with the aims of Western philosophical concepts such as Bergson’s notion of intuition, Husserlian phenomenology and what Gare refers to as ‘indwelling’, the ‘[…] development of subsidiary awareness of the ordering activity of the individual through which […] potentialities are actualized’, if not the practice.51 However, there are problems with Wilber’s conception of the role of meditative practices in the claims he makes for its ultimate insights, claims that, for instance, extend beyond Abe’s characterization of Zen. For example, Wilber’s contention that his highest stages of self-transcendence towards non-dualism go beyond reason can be interpreted as a dualistic separation of faith and reason. Surely non-dualism should also require the transcendence of faith? The problem lies in the nature and role of reason that needs to be better understood in relation to such practices. For example, Zohar argues that underlying Eastern practices is a rational science of consciousness, or states of awareness. In relation to Buddhism, she states that this science: […] was concerned with how to see through their illusions, how to control them, and the Buddhists thus conceived of the universe as something like the all-embracing ground state of consciousness, a consciousness from which human consciousness had become split off. The challenge was to return to the ground state, to achieve union with it and thus to achieve nirvana-timelessness and awareness /unawareness.52

This raises the question as to whether such rational conceptions condition meditative experience. If so, this then presents the problem for Wilber as to whether his higher stages of transcendence actually tap into the ultimate reality or whether they too reflect a particular world-view. As has been revealed through quantum theory, any truth human beings are seeking is influenced by the role of the seeker, a point acknowledged by Wilber.53 As Lakoff and Johnson point out, though, this role is often obscured through the processes of our mainly unconscious, embodied reason. This reason derives from and makes use of our sensorimotor system in its everyday functioning that, when correlated with our subjective experiences and judgements, gives rise to metaphoric reasoning. Lakoff and Johnson hypothesize that metaphors such as ‘nirvana’, ‘Emptiness’, ‘the face of the

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Divine’, or God and Spirit, all derive from this embodied process, making notions of these as transcendent, problematic. They also shed doubt on the ability of meditative practices to transcend the categorizing nature of living systems arguing that neural beings cannot have a purely uncategorized, unconceptualized experience.54 Therefore, the argument that one can go beyond reason can be said to be trapped in an outmoded concept of a disembodied, or purely conscious reasoning, one that itself reveals a certain lack of development or transcendence. An understanding of the sense in which meditation is not an unconceptualized experience, is provided by Varela in his argument for science to take seriously the nature of lived experience if it is to better understand the nature of consciousness. Varela sees Buddhist practice as particular and ancient research projects, projects that are far from being monolithic, that understand the primary nature of lived experience and the derivative, reflective nature of concepts.55 In Varela’s conception, Buddhist meditative practices of mindfulness/awareness, practices that seek to enable one to be present with one’s mind in its activity of conscious thought, fill a gap left unfilled by normal reflective science and philosophy. Essentially, Varela argues that mindfulness/awareness meditation incorporates various methods for experiencing directly the temporal and embodied nature of one’s present experience. It is a means for focussing on one’s thoughts as they emerge and decay, illuminating the temporal, impermanent nature of reality. From this though, one can argue that as an embodied activity, conducted within present moments of experience, it does not reveal a reality that is outside of the process of dependent co-origination of the individual meditator. Meditation, therefore, is itself an activity of ‘enaction’ whereby the embodied subject is engaged in processes of dependent co-origination. These processes are not removed from, but informed by concepts and past experience within the field of the specious present. In other words, each experience of meditation is informed by previous experience that conditions our direct experience of temporality. Otherwise, it would seem, meditation, as that which precedes reflection, would not be able to inform the rich philosophy that has emerged from it as it has. This leaves Wilber and other theistic process thinkers essentially with an objective view of a reality that is somehow outside and behind momentary experience, despite their belief in immanence. This then leads to the postulation of a finite evolutionary scheme that ends for some in a reunification with a necessarily objective Ultimate. While Wilber argues that one continually has to apply their enlightened understanding to newly emerging forms, such forms, according to his logic, come pre-understood.

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Also, there is no scope for transcending the reified highest structural levels of his holarchical scheme itself, which amounts to a static metaphysics. It is one thing to argue historically and empirically for the existence of general patterns of processes constraining the development of a child to an adult and seeing parallels in the development of humanity itself, it is another thing though to see this as firstly, identical to natural evolution and secondly, a process culminating in a mass enlightenment, or specifically, in a particular cultural practice that reveals what is apparently the one true, eternal, immutable reality. This type of thinking has much in common with Herbert Spencer’s cosmogony, one that Bergson argues necessarily sees intelligence both as conscious reasoning and as given, rather than engendered. Once a direction is admitted, then developmental psychology becomes an exercise in ‘[…] reconstructing evolution with fragments of the evolved.’56 Bergson argues that evolution cannot be understood simply through this exercise of the intellect in reconstructing evolutionary development through a series of snapshots on a single time-line. Similar to Wilber perhaps, he puts forward the idea of engaging in an intuitive immersion in the ongoing process itself. He suggests this though not in relation to the constraints of particular cultural practices or the pre-determination of the ultimate effect of such immersion, but introduces the notion of the emergence of multiple evolutionary pathways.

9. The Nature of Emergence This leads to the central problem for Wilber and theistic thought being the nature of emergent processes in evolution that apply as much to the form of his holarchy as they do to other form in the world. While Wilber uses the term emergence, he does not make explicit what it is he means by it. Revealing what is implicit in his understanding of emergence is necessary for an argument against theistic thought in general and requires an examination of the nature of emergence. Emergent processes can be characterized as those that transcend their own ingredients, therefore defying reductionist attempts at explanation. As Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart argue, the notion of emergence makes ‘[…] respectable the idea that a collection of interacting components can “spontaneously” develop collective properties that seem not to be implicit in any way in the individual pieces.’57 These processes have been highlighted through the work of Ilya Prigogine on far-from-equilibrium, dissipative, self-organizing systems, systems that are able to create negative entropy for a time.58

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Human beings as emergent processes, are such dissipative self-organizing systems that are as such, partial causes of emergent processes. Such emergent processes are conceived as being on a higher level than their ingredients and have a downward causative effect on their ingredients. This idea assumes, like Wilber, that many levels of reality co-exist and are interrelated. It is toward understanding the nature of this interrelatedness that theories of downward causation can be applied. The notion of downward causation is necessary for understanding the ontological status of emergent processes. As Emmeche (et. al.) argue, linear, reductionist models of bottom up causal processes logically imply that higher levels are relatively impotent and mere epiphenomena of lower levels. By complementing notions of upward causation with downward causation, the ontological prominence of higher levels can be restored. They argue that it is the relative strength of this ontological prominence and the nature of the downward causative power of higher levels that is at issue in revealing different concepts of emergence. In this regard, Emmeche (et. al.) outline three versions of downward causation that provide a basis for different views of emergence.59 They characterize these as Strong, Medium and Weak. Strong downward causation, or strong DC, is where ‘[…] a given entity or process on a given level may causally inflict changes or effects on entities or processes on a lower level.’ They argue that: This idea requires that the levels are sharply distinguished and autonomous. […] In the history of science, representatives of this theory may be found in the classical vitalists of early biology, who supposed the existence of a creative or formative power outside the range of scientific description. When the vital power has done its work and created the higher level entity, this entity functions autonomously and independently of the lower level. The best examples of such theories are probably found in psychology and philosophy among the classical dualists, who assumed the existence of an immaterial soul that inhabits the body and is able to control it due to its special causal powers.60

Medium DC is where ‘[…] an entity on a higher level comes into being through a realization of one amongst several possible states on the lower level—with the previous states of the higher level as the factor of selection.’ This definition is explained through the concept of ‘boundary condition’. They argue that:

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In relation to level theories, boundary conditions are conceived as the conditions which select and delimit various types of the system’s several possible developments. The realization of the system implies that one of these typical developments is selected, and the set of initial conditions yielding the type of possibility chosen are thus a certain type of boundary condition which has been called constraining conditions. They only exist in complex multi-level phenomena on a level higher than the focal level, and are the conditions by which entities on a high level constrain the activity on the lower focal level […]. In contrast to strong DC, medium DC does not involve the idea of a strict “efficient” temporal causality from an independent higher level to a lower one, rather, the entities at various levels may enter part-whole relations (e.g. mental phenomena control their component neural and bio-physical sub-elements), in which the control of the part by the whole can be seen as a kind of functional (teleological) causation, which is based on efficient, material as well as formal causation in a multinested system of constraints.61

In both of these versions, higher level emergent processes have a high degree of ontological prominence. In weak DC, as the term implies, there is less prominence. As Emmeche (et. al.) argue, theories of weak DC are derived from essentially static, decontextualized scientific models of reality called phase space models. Within such spaces, higher level emergent entities are characterized as attractors that form a basin of attraction for lower levels. In phase space scenarios, downward causation is an interpretation given to the regulation of perturbations by coincident, relatively stable attractors. While such attractors are understood as irreducible, their ontological status is the weaker one of an organizing principle, or formal cause, rather than a fully, or semi-autonomous entity.62 Such a conception can be understood as derivative of dominant, abstract scientific practices of quantitative analysis and computer simulation. For this reason, it is limited in its application to lived experience. From a process perspective, both strong and weak DC are the most problematic. Weak DC, is problematic due to its being limited to a context of an abstract, pre-formed phase space with fixed parameters and boundary conditions, a context that Emmeche (et. al.) argue gives this version scientific legitimacy. It is a context though that cannot account for higher levels changing the nature of the space itself through their very emergence. In other words, weak DC is not consistent with processes of dependent coorigination. The metaphor of the basin of attraction also produces the

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image of initially static lower levels being pulled in and trapped in one basin. There is no possibility therefore for a lower level to be correlated with several higher levels, as with medium DC. Strong DC on the other hand, is problematic in the theistic sense discussed in this chapter. It necessitates an unknowable and ultimate efficient cause, fully autonomous of lower levels, a view that again is not consistent with dependent coorigination. It is strong DC that ultimately underlies theistic views, whether process related or other. It is also the basis for theistic views such as Zohar’s, where lower level processes in the quantum realm are inverted to become the highest level.63 Alternatively, the position of this chapter is that medium DC is most consistent with a process view that sees ontologically real, higher level emergents as multi-nested constraints on a primarily active and open universe. This will become clearer when Gare’s metaphysical categories are outlined. Armed with a better understanding of the nature of emergence though, the problems of theistic process thought can be further explored.

10. The Nature of Evolution It is emergent processes involving medium DC that undermine notions such as Wilber’s, Schelling’s and Hegel’s, involving strong DC, of history as a teleological unfolding of some inner essence or World Spirit. It is this type of thinking that reduces individuals and cultures, as argued before, to the means toward some final end, providing common ground with mechanistic materialism.64 Emergence, requires that within the parameters of certain dynamic constraints, systems be open to a multiplicity of directions of evolutionary development so that the future of an organism, or a culture, is never fully determined, but may branch in novel directions. There are at least two important implications here for the coherence of the theistic process view, coming from more recent understandings of evolution. Firstly, as Cohen and Stewart argue in relation to their theory of complicity, these novel directions in evolution generally, but not always, involve an increase in complexity, (a phenomenon celebrated by the theistic Process Philosophers), as it is easier to add on to a process of development, building on whatever exists, than change it. As Cohen and Stewart point out though, this phenomenon is only intelligible when thought of as a continuous process. To use an analogy, if one ran a chocolate factory and decided to produce potato chips, one would have to go back to the start and develop a wholly new process for manufacturing potato chips, discarding all that went

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before. The chocolate, on the other hand, currently produced by the factory, has emerged from the company’s historical process of chocolate development. The decision to improve the chocolate, rather than make potato chips, would involve adding something to this process, so adding to the complexity of the process. In this way, increasing complexity continually and irreversibly distances processes from their origins as well as qualitatively altering their form. Furthermore, the more complex a process, the longer is its duration, as is evident in the evolution of the universe where, it is hypothesized, there was as much percentage increase in the trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, as there has been in the fifteen billion years since.65 Wilber’s notion then, of an evolution toward re-unification with one’s origin, would require a time reversal, devolution, or perhaps the annihilation of a process. Such annihilation though is also problematic due to the interrelatedness of processes in emergence involving medium DC, meaning that processes are only partially autonomous. The second implication relates to what Cohen and Stewart refer to as life at the edge of disaster: […] this process of continuing complication can’t go on forever. Living creatures are forced by evolutionary pressure to operate right at the limits of what they are capable of, to perform a delicate balancing act on the edge of disaster. There may come a time when the “style” of an organism—its system of organization—starts to get top-heavy. Having chosen to specialize, all it can then do to improve is to become more specialized; it’s trapped in an evolutionary dead end.66

The evolution of species, such as humanity, the emergence, transcendence and integration of greater wholes, is therefore both limited and finite. Greater specialization as complexity increases will in fact lead to less transcendence and integration of complex wholes as the universe evolves beyond both our understanding and existence. This is supported by the thesis of Konrad Lorenz, in regard to ‘sacculinization’, or retrograde evolution; a reversal of creative process through diminution of external stimuli. Humanity’s cultural devolution toward a monoculture as a response to greater complexity, he argues, leads to intra-specific selection, the consequences of which are the reverse of any pre-determined progressive advance.67 The implication here is that for humanity to continue to survive we must actively, slow down, the growth in complexity of cultural evolution to a more humanly comprehensible level. This is not a conservative argument but one aimed at preserving openness in the face of

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change rather than an agoraphobic retreat inward, or specialization as described by Lorenz. There is yet another problem raised by Cohen and Stewart for theistic Process Philosophy, the importance of the contingent role of the organism itself in evolution, in relation to both intent and context.68 While purpose and context are central to theistic philosophy in general, it is always subsumed by an ultimate purpose and an atemporal context. This devalues the individual’s ability to generate real novelty. Novelty in evolution is better understood as the product of the interaction of external environmental constraints with internal processes of individual organisms; the implication being, that individuals cannot be reduced to either species, cultures, evolutionary development ladders or Ultimate purposes. This is also supported by Varela’s notion of evolution as ‘natural drift’, rather than adaptation to pre-given environments.69 In dominant scientific realist perspectives, there is the notion of the pre-existing phase space to which natural selection is reacting to select organisms of optimal fit. In theistic perspectives, there is the pre-existing and eternal Absolute that ultimately determines the direction of adaptation. Both involve a prescriptive logic. Alternatively, ‘natural drift’ implies that rather than evolution following a path, it is always in the process of laying a path in each moment of present experience. Laying paths is a process where individuals, coupled to their environments, enact worlds, or dependent co-origination. What emerges is determined by a proscriptive logic that sees natural selection in the broad sense of a survival and reproductive constraint on the rich, self-organizing capacities of biological networks. In this sense, any attribution of optimal fit can only be made after an organism has emerged.

11. Implications for Theistic Process Thought What then are the philosophical implications of such emergence and complexity for the Absolutist, theistic view in process thought? In summary, fundamental to the Absolutist view is the cycle of emergence from the ground-state of existence, being God, Nirvana or the quantum vacuum, and an eventual, necessary return. This is the theistic answer to the age-old questions of; where do we come from, where do we end up? For theistic Eastern Philosophy this generally involves cycles of birth and rebirth and the idea that pre-conceptualized reality can be glimpsed through meditative techniques, the practice or non-practice of which will effect one’s next life. For theistic Western Philosophy, the idea of a transcendent God’s kingdom dominates, from which, one emerges and to which, one

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will return, provided certain moral obligations are met. Theistic Eastern Philosophy, views the universe as fully created, perfect and requiring active discovery by humanity, whereas theistic Western Philosophy, with its Fall myth, views humanity as having been ejected from God’s Kingdom and needing to create ways and means by which it can return. This can range from such contradictory practices of living a life of poverty and prayer to generating enormous wealth and transforming nature. The theistic process view combines both in the argument for a purposeful evolution of life toward a level of creativity that will match that of the immanent creative force, or Spirit. In this, there is the notion of a groundstate that can be glimpsed through particular development pathways, as well as the notion of progress towards a specific, transcendent end. Such emphasis though on the Ultimate ground of the universe ignores, as has been argued, the real complexity of evolution. While such a ground may have been the initial condition for the emergence of the universe, emergent evolution tells us that the universe is now a much more complex process, one, that is far removed from the initial conditions and which such initial conditions could not have predicted. Furthermore, continual evolution of complexity in a species is ultimately self-destructive, as is perhaps evident in humanity’s situation today. This more complex view of evolution reveals that humanity’s future success is not pre-determined or required by a universe seeking to become conscious of itself, but linked to humanity’s own ability to synchronize its pace of development with its environment. The Absolutist view of Wilber can therefore be understood as revealing a feedback loop that in his terms leads from a static view in the noosphere of an ultimately closed system, to extension into the reality of the biosphere and physiosphere, that in turn justifies this view in the noosphere. This is similar to what Alfred North Whitehead called ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness’ in relation to the degree in which abstract notions acquire the status of reality. The whole history of attributing to God a reality other than conceptual, must be seen as such misplaced concreteness, including some Eastern conceptions of the world as a self-sufficient completion of the creative act. One can argue that it is these abstract notions of closed systems that provide common ground between many process oriented thinkers and mechanistic materialists, the difference being that these process thinkers try to argue for freedom and creative emergence as derivative of the ultimate category of the Absolute, while the mechanistic materialists remain perhaps more consistently deterministic. Whitehead, however, is more complex in that he defines the primordial nature of God as being ‘[…] the acquirement by creativity of a primordial

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character.’70 For Whitehead, ‘creativity’, along with ‘many’ and ‘one’, are the ultimate categories of being: ‘Creativity’ is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity. ‘Creativity’ is the principle of novelty. An actual occasion is a novel entity diverse from any entity in the ‘many’ which it unifies. Thus ‘creativity introduces novelty into the content of the many, which are the universe disjunctively. The ‘creative advance’ is the application of this ultimate principle of creativity to each novel situation which it originates.71

12. Whitehead’s Metaphysical Categories Whitehead, writing in the early part of the twentieth century, realized that while new theories in science were emerging, specifically relativity and quantum theory, that challenged the coherence of Newtonian physics, no new metaphysical systems were being developed to take account of the new physics. In fact, with the rise of Logical Empiricism, metaphysics itself was seen to be unnecessary. Whitehead characterizes this development from modernity as a form of anti-rationalism that is content with a secondary level of explanation. As John Cobb writes: Modernity in the seventeenth century had turned attention from ultimate questions to penultimate ones, believing that at that level an adequate, intellectually satisfying account of nature could be found. It did not press theoretical questions about its mechanistic model, but it did assume that this model was an adequate, and even accurate, replication of the most important features of the natural world. For the founders of modern science and philosophy, therefore, the world was rational in the twofold sense that it conformed to an intelligible pattern, and that thought about the world should be coherent. If the work of biologists could not yet be interpreted fully in terms afforded physics, this represented a gap that further research would fill. The goal was rational, not in the sense of probing the meanings of the key terms and seeking the ultimate reason for things, but in the sense of

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seeking a unified and accurate picture of the whole and of all the details of the natural world.72

As Cobb argues, this view that the world could be adequately known, mechanistically, brought with it the segmentation of knowledge characteristic of specialized disciplines in universities today. However, it also brought with it the opposite view of a radical abandonment of any possibility of knowing reality other than our own relative knowledge, starting with Hume and Kant, through to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Deconstructive Postmodernists such as Derrida. It was Whitehead’s insight to see that the new physics demanded a re-appraisal of the ultimate questions of what constitutes primary being, as well as the re-conception of the organization of knowledge as a whole in order to breakdown both forms of anti-rationalism. According to Cobb: A Whiteheadian postmodernism begins by insisting that such bifurcation and fragmentation falsifies reality, that all things are interconnected, and that this pattern of relationships is constitutive of the relata. What is said from this perspective cannot be contained within the organization of knowledge based on modern principles.73

This emphasis on relations, which was discussed earlier in regard to Liebniz, is fundamental to Whitehead’s metaphysics and stems from the identification of sub-atomic entities in quantum physics. The Newtonian metaphysics of unchanging, indivisible atoms and their relative motions, was put in question by quantum physics, not only by the knowledge that atoms themselves are constituted, but also by the strange nature of the subatomic world where waves can be particles and particles, waves. The wave/particle nature of quantum reality is described by Hawking: Although light is made up of waves, Planck’s quantum hypothesis tells us that in some ways it behaves as if it were composed of particles: it can be emitted or absorbed only in packets, or quanta. Equally, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle implies that particles behave in some respects like waves: they do not have a definite position but are “smeared out” with a certain probability distribution. The theory of quantum mechanics is based on an entirely new type of mathematics that no longer describes the real world in terms of particles and waves; it is only the observations of the world that may be described in those terms. There is thus a duality between waves and particles in quantum mechanics: for some purposes it is helpful to

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For Whitehead, these sub-atomic quanta of energy were best described as energy events than as substances. This ontological inversion from substances with attributes to events in relation is a major shift in thought that introduces duration into the primary level of reality. The solid reality of substantial things that has dominated humanity’s sense of reality was therefore only apparent and could be more accurately described as stable patterns of activity. For Whitehead though, it was not such stable patterns of activity that were actual entities, but their constituents. With this in mind, Whitehead’s categories will now be discussed.

13. Actual Entities and Atomism There are forty five categories in Whitehead’s system. The following is to be understood as a general overview of the main themes. Whitehead’s metaphysical categories begin with his interpretation of Aristotle’s ‘ontological principle’ that asserts, against Plato, that metaphysics must be about what are the fundamental, actual existing things, and not the Forms of things: Actual entities’—also termed ‘actual occasions’—are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are gradations of importance, and diversities of function, yet in the principles which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level. The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.75

In this, Whitehead rejects monism, the idea that there is only one actually, existing entity, as well as the dualism of Descartes in favour of a plurality of actual entities. These actual entities are not enduring substances sustaining persistent qualities, either in their essence, or as accidents. Such simple notions are abstractions rather than concrete actualities and are incoherent in trying to derive change from the changeless. To account for change and durational processes in the world, actual entities themselves must be processes and their being, constituted by their becoming. An actual entity as a process of becoming cannot be moved by any agency in

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abstraction from actual occasions and so becoming must be by the agency of the actual entity itself. Therefore, as Leclerc interprets it, the term actual entity implies an acting entity that’s existence is constituted by its process of activity.76 As Leclerc points out, Whitehead’s concepts of process and becoming raised questions of how he could consistently and coherently account for changelessness and the completed unity that is an individual. The principle problem is that of the continuity of continuous processes through supersession, leading to an infinite regress. Whitehead’s answer to this problem is twofold. Firstly, he rejects the notion of a continuous process of becoming, or becoming as the continuous unfolding of a continuum. Such extensive continuity is not a feature of actuality but is ‘[…] constituted by the succession or supersession of individual units of becoming.’77 Accordingly, as Leclerc states: […] Whitehead declares, ‘the ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism. The creatures are atomic’. That is to say, if we hold the doctrine that actuality is a process of becoming, then since there cannot be a continuously extensive process of becoming, actuality must be ‘atomic’, consisting in epochal units of becoming, and the extensive continuity of the universe must be constituted by the succession of the atomic actualities.78

Secondly, in response to the question of why an infinite regress cannot also apply to the epochal units of becoming, Whitehead argues that while an atomic actuality is extensive by virtue of its process of becoming, ‘[…] that process of becoming is itself one ‘epochal whole’, and is not divided into earlier and later acts of becoming superseding each other continuously.’79 As epochal wholes, actual entities do not endure but are processes of becoming and perishing. They are changeless though in the sense of not moving; they are where they are and what they are in actual existence. Whitehead, then, identifies the fundamental constituents of reality as atomistic actual entities that as epochal wholes are individual processes of becoming and perishing. What though is the nature of the relationship between such atomistic actualities and how do they constitute reality? Cobb provides a relatively simple understanding of Whitehead’s answer to this question in returning to the notion that such actual entities can best be described as durational events in relation, or occasions of experience. He argues that: […] the atomic occasions of experience are analyzable primarily not into attributes but into relations. Consider one occasion of

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Glenn McLaren experience of Ms. Smith. That experience is constituted very largely by a continuation of her experience a moment earlier. Perhaps in that moment she was hearing the beginning of a word spoken by Ms. Brown; now she is hearing the end of that word. The fact that she hears it as the end of that word indicates that the previous moment is still alive in the present. This is a very intimate relation indeed! To describe the present occasion of experience apart from this relation would be to falsify it drastically. It is not as though there were a present experience of hearing the end of the word that then, subsequently, relates itself to the previous one in which the beginning of the word was heard. On the contrary, the influence of the previous occasion of experience is fundamentally constitutive of the present occasion. What Ms. Smith hears now is precisely the ending of the word, not a sound subsequently interpreted in that way by relating it to what was heard earlier. This immediate inflowing of the past into the occasion of experience is what Whitehead calls a “physical feeling,” or “physical prehension.”80

14. Perception and Prehensions The idea of prehensions leads to two important departures of Whitehead’s thought from conventional modernist thought. Firstly, similar to many Eastern philosophies, there is the recognition of an immediate level of perception prior to conscious reflection and not limited to our sense organs. Whitehead refers to this as perception in the mode of causal efficacy, as distinguished from sensory perception in the mode of presentational immediacy. Secondly, such immediate perception must be of the same character on the micro level as the macro level. Ms. Smith’s prehensions are therefore no different in character to the prehensions of sub-atomic actual occasions. This leads to the controversial view that in the nonhuman, sub-atomic realm, actual occasions are feeling subjects, or syntheses of prehensions of other events, the same as Ms. Smith. Not quite the same as Ms. Smith though, because Ms. Smith, as constituted by actual occasions, is a compound entity and therefore, according to Whitehead, not actual in the primary sense, reflecting Whitehead’s atomism. It is the idea of feeling subjects at the sub-atomic level that, for Whitehead, dissolves the distinction between mind and matter and makes the world sensible to us, as all actual occasions are constituted by both a physical and mental pole. This

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is not to say, as Mark Dibben argues, that process thinking ascribes a mind to an atom.81 Rather, as Cobb and Griffin argue: […] all actualities experience, but only a few experiences rise to the level of consciousness. Even in experiences in which consciousness is attained, consciousness lights up elements which had [already] been consciously experienced […]. Further, only a small portion of the experienced ingredients are thus illumined. Consciousness is a selective activity.82

In this way, ‘[…] consciousness presupposes experience, and not experience consciousness.’83 In spite of such clarification, it is this idea that perhaps unfortunately labeled Whitehead a panpsychist, or, with his further identification of feeling with experience, a panexperientialist. Our primary perception of the world then is feeling, or experiencing in the mode of causal efficacy. This causal efficacy is constituted by the syntheses of prehensions of atomic actual occasions in a process of becoming and perishing whereby past objects become subjects of present experience and present subjects become past objects. Therefore, compound entities, such as rocks, or humans with their consciousness and the products of their consciousness, language for example, must be seen as both derivative of these processes and having their essential nature. In this, with thanks to the discoveries in quantum physics, Whitehead was able to resolve many of the problems of metaphysical monism and dualism, as well as reveal the fallacy of the epistemological gap. He was also able to account for the reality of the universe prior to conscious life, with his argument that objects must also be subjects. Whitehead was also concerned with how such processes produced novelty. Here, it is necessary to return to his category of the ultimate, Creativity, that subsumes all other forty four categories. As was argued earlier, Whitehead’s concept of God as an actual entity enters the discussion here, along with his category of eternal object.

15. Creativity and the Nature of God Ms. Smith, as a syntheses of prehensions, is not only actively receiving past data through physical prehensions, she is deciding on potential, future alternative actions through conceptual prehensions. In other words, while physical prehensions are relations to past occasions, conceptual prehensions are relations to relevant possibilities; the former being determined but the latter implying some level of indeterminacy. Whitehead’s line of reflection here is, according to Cobb:

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Glenn McLaren […] that, if there is something in the present that is not derivative from the past, then the given reality is not exhausted by the past. His hypothesis is that, in addition to the past actual world, there are also possibilities not realized by that world and yet relevant to the occasion of experience as it constitutes itself in the immediate present.84

These unrealized possibilities are what Whitehead calls eternal objects. As Leclerc argues, eternal objects are very similar to Platonic Forms, in fact, Whitehead refers to them as such, except that, consistent with the ontological principle, eternal objects do not exist outside of actual occasions. Rather, as the determinants of the definiteness of the process of acting of actual occasions, they exist as having ingression in actual occasions. According to Leclerc: They can exist only as ‘ingredients’ in actual entities. Accordingly it must be from the past actualities that the forms have ingression into present actualities, namely those which are in the process of becoming. In other words, forms are ‘given’, and thus become ‘objects’, only by virtue of their existence in antecedent actual entities.85

Actual occasions are a three-phase process of concrescence consisting of 1) conformation of the pre-existing feeling, 2) the intermediate introduction of novel content and 3) anticipation in respect of the necessities which the occasion lays upon the future to embody it in the concrescence of future occasions.86 Without entering any further into the technical detail of what is said to be involved in each phase, concrescence can be summarized as a: […] temporal process of transition from one actual entity to another, whereby these entities are momentary events which perish immediately upon coming into being […]. The real occasions of which this temporal process is made are themselves processes […] of their own momentary becoming. From the external, temporal point of view they happen all at once; yet at a deeper level they are not to be understood as things that endure through a tiny bit of time unchanged, but as taking that bit of time to become. Only when its process of concrescence is past does the unit of process become a datum, or object for new processes to take into account.87

Through this temporal process of transition, therefore (and in particular the final phase of anticipation), a pulsation of actuality that is the particular existent occasion constitutes ‘[…] an original element in the constitutions of other particular existents elicited by repetitions of process.’88 Seen from the ‘external, temporal point of view’ for the sake of simplicity, transition

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is thus the efficient cause of the immortal past determining concrescence of actual occasions instantiated by a final cause, or subjective aim, which is Creativity. In this process, the past is immortal in that it always exists as objects for prehension. Objects of physical prehension are realized determinants, being data from past actual occasions. Conceptual prehensions though experience data as pure, unrealized potential for determining. Conceptual prehensions therefore evaluate data ‘[…] with a view to their compatibility for inclusion in the terminal unity, in accordance with the criterion constituted by the subjective aim.’89 Such an evaluation requires decision-making to bring about the satisfaction of becoming an epochal whole, a complex unity that is the ideal of the subjective aim. Decision-making implies self-causation and self-causation implies responsibility, both for becoming the actual entity it becomes as well as for the effects it has on others as an immortal object for prehension. Value for Whitehead is therefore the very essence of the universe. ‘Existence, in its own nature, is the up-holding of value-intensity.’90 Where do these values originate though? They emerge in relation to the subjective aim. As has been mentioned, the ultimate for Whitehead is Creativity that is self-generated activity. The aim of such activity is toward novelty and integration into complex wholes. The subjective aim is not activity though, but, data, for the activity of becoming of actual entities. In remaining consistent with Whitehead’s ontological principle, such data must itself be an actual entity. For Whitehead, such an actual entity is God. Whitehead goes to great trouble to avoid his conception of God being regarded as a deus ex machina, as had been conceived by Newton and Descartes’. For instance, as an actual entity, God cannot be transcendent for God is as much dependent on other actual entities as objects of data, as they are on God. Therefore, consistent with the theistic process view, God is both, immanent, in being within creation, interrelated to actual entities and of their character, as well as transcendent in being atemporal in God’s relationship to eternal objects. It is through eternal objects that God is felt. As Leclerc states: It is clear that God as the ‘principle of concretion’ must have conceptual prehensions of subjective aims relevant to particular actual entities. Now the data of conceptual prehensions are eternal objects. Thus subjective aims—whether in the prehension of the individual actual entities or of God—are analyzable into specific selections of eternal objects. Therefore the various subjective aims, as in God’s conceptual prehension, are eternal objects as potential for actualization by ordinary actual entities. In other words, God conceives or envisages

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Whitehead’s complex notion of God is made clearer by Cobb in his identification of three steps in its development. Firstly, the presence of relevant possibilities for conceptual prehension is the principle of novelty whereby decision-making is genuinely free. While such free decision making leads to a certain amount of chaos, the fact of emergence of complex patterns of order that sustain themselves, suggests the presence of certain ordering constraints correlating decisions. The principle of novelty is therefore also a principle of order. It is this ‘realm of ordered possibility’, that is the source of novelty and order, that should be worshipped as the ’primordial nature of God’. Secondly, God, being an actual entity, necessarily has a subjective aspect. It is this subjective aspect that is the ‘divine persuasion’, that encourages choices of possibilities in accordance with God’s decision that establishes the order among possibilities that makes possible the growth of value in the world. God’s decision then is one of benefit to creatures, associating freedom and novelty with goodness and love. Thirdly, there is the ‘consequent nature of God’, that relates to God as the conserver of value. The nature of physical prehensions, where the values of the past operate in the present, is such that in the course of events succeeding each other, achievements of value fade. Actual events are only able to encompass a tiny fraction of what has been. This, leads to Whitehead’s view, according to Cobb, that: God is quite different from the creatures, even though God, like all occasions of experience, is an actual entity. Whereas the human soul, or personality, is a succession of occasions of experience, God is one everlasting process of integrating all that happens with all possibility. God is thus always feeling directly all the creaturely feelings that have ever been. Whereas for us to feel a few of these feelings vividly means to exclude many other feelings, for God such exclusions are not necessary. In contrast to the constant replacements of one set of attainments by another, which characterizes the temporal process, God feels all that has ever been in the fullness of its immediacy. Thus what is past in the world lives everlastingly in God. What is lost in the world is alive in God.92

Ultimate reality for Whitehead is therefore God, but not God the actual occasion, but God the process of creative advance that has acquired His character. Whitehead’s God is the God of theistic Process Philosophy, as exemplified by Schelling and Wilber, that is, both Ascendent as the One, as

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well as Descendent in its immanence in the Many. If though, as has been argued, theistic Process Philosophy suffers from Whitehead’s misplaced concreteness, then so does Whitehead. The notion of misplaced concreteness needs to be understood as being relative to particular conceptions of reality. Whitehead’s metaphysics therefore, as a particular conception of reality, while being acknowledged as a major step forward in the history of process thought, can be shown to be in many respects, inferior to both Zen Buddhism and Gare’s concepts.

16. Whitehead and Buddhism Having now summarized the main themes of Whitehead’s metaphysics, his position and importance in Process Philosophy can be appreciated. Drawing on new developments in science, Whitehead was able to attack the anti-rationalism of modernity, revealing its incoherence, but like the great process thinkers before him, such as Schelling and Hegel, he was also able to articulate a new basis for human action. This basis, as has been argued, in its theistic overtones, drew conclusions similar to both Schelling and Hegel, with the emphasis on activity, process, creativity, self-causation and a God who’s immanence is the persuasive influence within a continual evolutionary development. There are further similarities with Wilber’s view of higher developmental levels of yogic practice, that facilitate the encompassing of greater wholes, where the eternal beneath the flux is glimpsed. As Cobb points out, Whitehead’s theism was strongly influenced by Buddhism, evident, for example, in his giving primacy to non-sensory perception. This is also evident in a passage Cobb quotes from ‘Adventures of Ideas’, written in 1933, where Whitehead seems to be referring to meditative practices and the ‘Peace’ that is achieved, ‘[…] where the ‘self’ has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.’93 However, as Abe argues, there are important differences between Buddhism, understood by him as ‘[…] nontheistic in nature,’ and Whitehead.94 These differences are found in both Whitehead’s idea of the relationship between God and the world and an understanding of the Buddhist idea of dependent co-origination. As has been revealed, for Whitehead, God’s ontological reality is somewhat different to the world. In agreement with this position, Abe, drawing on William Christian’s analysis of Whitehead’s theory of God and the world, concludes that: […] although actual occasions (as superjects) are completely immanent in God, God is not necessarily completely immanent in the

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Glenn McLaren world, and […] God transcends the world by virtue of his perfection, but the world, though transcending God, is lacking perfection. In short, this indicates that although there is interaction between the world and God, God finally transcends the world. God is more self-creative, more inclusive, and more influential, than any other temporal actual entity. He alone is everlasting.95

Abe contrasts Whitehead’s position with Mahayana Zen Buddhism and its fundamental notion of dependent co-origination that he defines in the following three points: 1. In the Buddhist notion of dependent co-origination, there is nothing whatsoever ‘more real’, (for instance, in terms of transcendence, immanence, or ‘in-between’), which lies beyond or behind the interdependence of everything in the universe. 2. But this ‘nothingness’ should not be taken as nothingness that is distinguished from ‘somethingness’. If so, we are involved in another duality, a duality between ‘nothingness’ and ‘somethingness’. ‘Nothingness’ realized behind the interdependence of everything is not ‘relative nothingness’ in contrast to ‘somethingness’ but the ‘absolute Nothingness’ which is beyond the duality of nothingness and somethingness. 3. When one says that there is absolutely nothing ‘more real’ behind the interdependence of everything, one means that its interdependence is determined and limited by itself without any outside principle of determination and limitation.96 Abe argues that although Whitehead’s conception of God, like Hegel’s Absolute Spirit, is dynamic in its interacting and interpenetrating of the world, and is therefore not something in a substantial sense, it is nothing in a relative sense. Therefore, ‘[…] Whitehead is lacking the realization of absolute Nothingness or ‘Emptiness’, a realization which is essential to the Buddhist notion of the interdependence of all things in the universe.’97 The implication here is that Whitehead has ultimately failed to make interrelatedness primary reality. Like all of those theistic process thinkers discussed, Whitehead has stopped short of realizing what is necessitated by the logic of process argued for in this chapter; that is, that there is nothing behind or outside of ‘nowness’, the specious present or immediate experience, and that all is contained within ‘nowness’. From this perspective, Zen Buddhism’s conception of ‘absolute Nothingness’ behind processes of dependent co-origination within each moment of immediate experience, is more consistent with the process view and the notion of a ‘groundless ground’ argued for by this author and Gare, than with

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Whitehead’s. One can gain a sense of this from Abe’s description of nirvana: […] nirvana has relevance to the human understanding of ultimate or universal Reality in that it overcomes the major objections to monistic absolutism […]. The concept of the one God who is essentially transcendent, self-existing apart from everything relative, is illusory to Buddhism in that God cannot be spoken of without a knower. In Buddhism, mutual relativity or interdependency is the ultimate truth […]. In nirvana, nothing is independent, self-existing, or permanent; having no permanent selfhood, everything is mutually related to each and every other thing. This is not a fixed relativism simply rejecting absolutes and resulting in a form of scepticism or nihilism, but a dynamic relativism in which even the absolute and the relative, the holy and the secular, the divine and the human, are all totally interrelated. This idea of the total interrelatedness of each and every thing at every moment is also termed ‘dependent co-origination’ in Buddhism, the realization of which is none other than nirvana.98

17. The Challenge for Process Thought This discussion of the foundations of process thought and its predominately theistic development in the West, poses a major challenge to current Process Philosophy; this being how to develop a non-theistic, groundless metaphysical ground for human action. As Abe argues, the notion of ‘Nothingness’ in Buddhist thought, when understood as an object, or goal, as in Wilber’s position, is often construed nihilistically as providing no basis for goal-directed action, whether individual or social. Also, Buddhism provides little insight into the dynamic structure of interaction. This is because Buddhism is essentially the philosophy of non-being that emphasizes the necessity of individual awakening to the ‘no-self’ ground of one’s subjectivity. From this realization though, ‘Nothingness’ becomes the basis for freedom in removing abstract determinants of human action and opening up possibilities for transformation beyond the constraints of such determinants. In other words, it provides a basis for an open universe and novel emergence. What is required to complement Buddhism’s emphasis on the awakening to ‘no-self’ though, is the development and embodiment of the ‘no-self’ concretely in the world. Abe concedes that in this regard, those such as Hegel and Whitehead have much to contribute.99

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This is also where Gare has much to contribute. His metaphysical categories challenge both mechanistic materialism and theistic process metaphysics, providing a new synthesis in Western thought. In the tradition of Whitehead, his synthesis seeks to make coherent, more contemporary scientific concepts of the dynamic structure of the world while emphasizing the derivative nature of such concepts. In the tradition of Hegel, he seeks to provide a philosophical basis for goal-directed individual and social action while in the tradition of Zen Buddhism, he seeks a non-theistic, nonsubstantial, non-Absolutist basis for reality. His categories will now be outlined and discussed with this in mind.

18. Gare’s Metaphysical Categories Gare’s categorial scheme follows that of Whitehead’s in its division into four main areas. These are The Categories of the Ultimate, The Categories of Existence and The Categories of Explanation, and whereas Whitehead’s fourth category is Categoreal Obligations, Gare’s fourth category is that of Ultimate Potentiality. Unlike Whitehead’s forty five categories, Gare lists only eight, because, as he argues, what is important: […] is to define only a sufficient number of concepts as can be easily grasped, kept in mind, and then deployed in any situation to displace those concepts which are at present dominating people’s thinking. The most important concepts to displace, those inherited from the seventeenth century revolution in thought, are space (the receptacle of matter), time (during which matter changes place in space), matter (identified with body and the occupancy of space), and motion (identified with locomotion of matter through space over time). The categories which are proposed to define the nature of the cosmos as a process of creative becoming consisting of a multiplicity of emergent processes, each being in a complex relation to other coexisting processes and having some degree of autonomy from all others, and to define the nature of these emergent processes, are: activity, order and potentiality; process, structure and event; cause; and spatio-temporal position.100

It is important to remember that these categories are not fixed. Rather, their coherence and adequacy is continually subject to re-formulation through the various dialectics of humanity. The importance of this point cannot be over-emphasized for it is humanity, according to Gare, that ultimately,

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must hold itself accountable for its own continued existence. With this in mind, the eight categories will now be explored in some detail.

19. The Categories of the Ultimate As has been discussed at length, the Ultimate in most metaphysical schemes throughout history has been some divine Being or presence, one that is predominately masculine, it should be noted. For the ancients it was a transcendent realm or, in Aristotle’s case, the ‘unmoved mover’, behind matter. In the Middle Ages, it was generally a transcendent God, who was either interested, or disinterested in worldly matters. For mechanistic science in the Enlightenment, it was the transcendent, disinterested and masculine God of Newton, who put the grand mechanism into motion. With increasing secularization from the Enlightenment to the present, metaphysical Ultimates have been set aside by positivist science awaiting empirical, reductionist verification. Filling the nihilistic vacuum this has left has been a desperate concoction of mathematics, economics, materialist consumption, mysticism and individualism. For theistic Process Philosophy, it is the Ascending and Descending God already outlined. With Whitehead though, this position was argued to be more complex as his Category of the Ultimate, ‘Creativity’, is the ‘primordial nature of God’, God being an actual entity and thus part of the Categories of Existence. For Gare, there are three Categories of the Ultimate; activity, order and potentiality, ‘[…] that are required to define the other categories without being presupposed by them.’101 This last point is important in emphasizing the impossibility of precisely specifying fundamental concepts from derivative ones, as Whitehead believed he had done. Where Whitehead’s Ultimate was ‘Creativity’, for Gare, it is ‘activity’. This he equates with an understanding of electro-magnetic energy prior to a relationship to mass where it can then be distinguished between outward activity, or change in position, and inward activity, as in the thermal motion of constituent molecules. Whereas ‘Creativity’ implied a purposeful, goal-oriented activity, ‘activity’ in Gare’s sense is more like the Heraclitean flux; it is the unordered energy released in the ‘Big Bang’ that pervades the universe, the ‘Big Bang’ being our most coherent theory of the origin of the universe so far, according to Hawking, and so our best available starting place.102 Zohar, identifies this flux with the quantum vacuum. She states that: In the language of physics, the vacuum is the “ground state” (the “minimum energy” state) of all that is in the universe. “The vacuum, empty space, actually consists of particles and antiparticles being

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Glenn McLaren spontaneously created and annihilated. All the quanta that we have discovered or ever will discover are being created and destroyed in the Armageddon that is the vacuum.103

The notion of the quantum vacuum that is an all-pervasive field of potential in which the universe is written and out of which it emerges has much in common with Gare’s ultimate categories. The concept though of a ground state of the universe called the quantum vacuum, is an objectifying concept, that makes such a ground state a thing, making its pervasiveness problematic in the same way that Whitehead’s God as actual entity is problematic. For Gare, ‘activity’, ‘[…] corresponds more closely to the concept of kinesis, as it was used by the early Presocratic philosophers, meaning the eternal motion pervading everything, without this motion being understood, as it came to be after Parmenides, as something requiring an unchanging being which is active.’104 Furthermore, ‘activity’ is not reducible to a ground state but is present in relation to the other categories. In relation to ‘activity’, ‘order’ emerges as enduring patterns of activity. Gare argues that the best way to conceive of ‘order’ is to imagine a complete lack of it. If one imagines the ‘Big Bang’ as producing ‘activity’, then the emergence of order can be understood as the active constraining of ‘activity’ that differentiates it, ‘[…] and in so doing makes possible other types of order.’105 This general concept of order, being thus a Category of the Ultimate, is in sharp contrast to Whitehead’s position that order can only refer to some definite, specific order,’ […] bound up with the notion of an actual entity as involving an attainment which is a specific satisfaction.’106 As was mentioned earlier, for Whitehead the principle of novelty was also the principle of order. Order is therefore ‘bound up with’ the subjective aim and the individual conceptual prehensions of eternal objects of actual entities. Disorder, in this conception, is identified with lack of satisfaction that does not create or conserve value. Here it is important to discuss an important difference in Gare’s and Whitehead’s conceptions in regard to what Cohen and Stewart refer to as preformationism.107 This is the notion that pervades Whitehead’s metaphysics that higher level features of the universe already exist within the atomic constituents; a notion associated with both atomism and scientific reductionism. Whereas Gare sees ‘order’ at a higher level as a general feature of the universe of a constraining of ‘activity’, Whitehead identifies order with the specific satisfactions of the subjective aim of each atom of concrescing actual entities. This is a view that is problematic in relation to the nature of emergence and the role of God. It is also a problem, as will be discussed shortly, in relation to levels of understanding relevant to humanity.

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Gare’s third category of the ultimate is ‘potentiality’, that ‘[…] can be understood as the possibilities—the powers and liabilities for ordering and being ordered which are produced and which can be realized or undermined in the becoming of the world.’108 For Gare, ‘potentiality’ is therefore a general term for the real indeterminacy experienced in the world. This is in contrast to Whitehead’s Platonic conception of all possibilities existing, but not yet realized in eternal objects as potential ingredient in atomic actual entities; such realization being constrained by the ordering of the subjective aim.

20. The Categories of Existence Gare’s three Categories of Existence are ‘process’, ‘structure’ and ‘event’. As has been discussed, the central tenet of process metaphysics is that actual entities are not inert substances in a state of being, but processes of becoming. The whole basis of the process argument against mechanistic materialism is that mechanistic materialism freezes the world into a series of static snapshots. These abstractions are then taken as primary reality. This then underpins humanity’s obsession with halting change, rather than an acceptance of our participation within it, an obsession Bergson argues may be a natural consequence of development stages of human consciousness.109 One can argue though that such a consequence is related to a level of development that, in referring back to Wilber’s developmental holarchy, is more identified with childhood than maturity. Gare seeks to emphasize, from a more mature perspective, the primacy of active process to counter this way of thought. In this counter-movement, Gare also recognizes the problem of static concepts entering so-called process metaphysical schemes. Examples of this are the Absolutist position, discussed in regard to theistic process thought such as Whitehead’s eternal objects, or notions of becoming as a means toward some pre-determined end such as Schelling and Hegel, or referring again to Whitehead, becoming as terminating in a state of concrescence. Gare’s Categories of Existence seek to avoid this tendency toward stasis while still acknowledging the superior position of these thinkers. According to Leclerc, science in the twentieth century has seen a change in the conception of the physical existent no less radical than that in the seventeenth century. One can argue that this change has almost gone full circle from Aristotle’s notion of potentiality and actuality of substance with three main attributes of quantity, quality and relations, none of which were reducible to the other, to the Neoplatonic emphasis on qualities inherent in

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unchanging being, to Descartes’ extension and Newton’s matter as inert quantity analyzable through mathematics, and now, to the realization that Aristotle was perhaps right in the first place. Relativity and complexity theory has shown that what science calls ‘matter’ is more accurately networks, or patterns of relations that are irreducible to either quantity, quality, or time and motion.110 Such relations are only comprehensible as active processes leaving the concept of matter a redundant metaphor. However, these developments in science have repeatedly had difficulty displacing previous concepts. It is only in Process Philosophy, one can argue, that the non-material concept of relations has been fully embraced, as is evident in Whitehead. The basis of Gare’s concept of the physical existent is therefore non-material in emphasizing active process and relations. Gare’s first Category of Existence is ‘process’: A process can be defined as an ordering activity which is to some extent (although never entirely) an immanent cause of its own being (or more accurately, becoming), a self-ordering activity in which activity constrains itself and reproduces these constraints. So, to be in the primary sense is to be a process […], and everything else must be understood as a part of or as an aspect of some process or processes, or an aspect of the relationship between processes […]. A process is that which in Aristotle’s terminology has in it its own source of movement, or in Whitehead’s terminology, that ‘which constitutes its own becoming’ […] along with Whitehead I wish to stress both the durational nature of this becoming and interdependence of primary beings. But in opposition to Aristotle and Whitehead, the idea that primary beings must be actualized in some completed end is rejected. Rather, primary beings are identified with processes of becoming, whether such becoming completes itself in some definite end, or endures indefinitely, as protons well might.111

The argument here is that order in the universe is constraining activity, or the activity of ordering, that consists of durational processes. There is no static, passive, inert matter as in mechanistic materialism. Processes of ordering are both partial causes of their own order and producers of order, meaning that they only exist in relationship to a hierarchy of other processes in which they are either constituent processes, or supervening processes. It is this relationship of constituent processes to supervening processes that makes emergence comprehensible. As Gare states:

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What is involved in any causal relationship is always additional constraining of activity so that processes relating to other processes are different than processes not relating to these processes. Emergence and hierarchical ordering can then be seen as self-ordering activities coming to be or being involved in further ordering, that is, being further constrained, as parts of higher level processes which are the ordering activity creating and reproducing these, and other, constraints.112

Emergence therefore is the activity of higher-level, or supervening processes, constraining other processes in such a way that they then constitute the supervening process and act to produce and reproduce these constraints. This is consistent with the concept of medium downward causation discussed earlier. For Gare, emergence of order is therefore process, a durational concept that avoids the static implications of ‘primary being’, or ‘actual entity’. This though leads to the problem, identified by Aristotle, Liebniz and Whitehead, of enduring structure and its ontological status. ‘Structures’, for Gare, are: ‘Ordered potentialities for ordering produced and maintained by processes.’113 They are not completed matter but are continually in the process of actively maintaining their integrity, or actuality. The notion of potentiality is introduced here to emphasize that a structure, as a process of becoming, must be understood as the potential for realization as a particular structure and not a state. This is similar to Whitehead’s notion of an extensive continuum where antecedent actual entities become objects of data for concrescing actual entities. For Whitehead though, this potentiality is equated with a Platonic Form, or eternal object, that as data is ingredient in actual entities as influenced by God. In other words, the Form, as object for concrescing actual entities, determines the production and maintenance of a structure. For Gare though, potentiality exists in the relationship between real supervening and constituent processes rather than in problematic, atemporal objects and a distinction is made between ordering and structure to emphasize becoming over the realization of ends. Structures, as ordered potentialities for ordering derived from ordering activity and processes of potential realization, has a broader application than for Whitehead who saw structures atomistically as compounds, or ‘societies’ of actual entities whose character is derived from actual entities. As Leclerc argues, the atomistic conception implies that ‘[…] no aggregate can have a character of its own transcending the individual characters of its constituents.’114 As has been pointed out though, emergence produces wholes with characters wholly different from those of their constituents.

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Gare differs with Whitehead then and agrees with Leclerc that compound actualities, as integrated wholes, can be considered primary actual entities. Gare disagrees with Leclerc though and agrees with Earley, that Prigoginestyle dissipative structures can also be considered primary actual entities.115 This avoids the problem of the unique features of individual organisms being reduced to their constituents, as in preformationism. It also gives real ontological status to both cognitive structures that order action and experience and higher-level environmental, contextual structures, such as human societies. This position is supported by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoietic systems, self-organizing systems that distinguish themselves by creating membranes that constrain the networks of their constituents. They argue that a living system is necessarily an autopoietic system and as such must be regarded as a unity. Such a unity is by their definition: […] a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it […] as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.116

Any compound actuality that behaves as an autopoietic system therefore, must necessarily be a whole individual, irreducible to its components and ontologically prominent. The nature of such a system’s interrelatedness, can be understood in terms of medium downward causation. This will be further addressed later in relation to hierarchy theory. Gare’s final Category of Existence is ‘events’. He describes ‘events’ as: […] the coming into being or the destruction of structures and processes, ‘decisions’ by processes to take one path of development rather than another, significant changes within or differentiated activities of processes, and contingent interactions between processes. Events must always be understood in relation to structures and processes, and it is not possible to completely analyze processes into events. Regularities in the relationship between events should be seen in relation to structures and as manifestations of processes. 117

This description is consistent with the nature of phase transitions in complexity theory and the nature of the ‘specious present’, discussed earlier.

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21. The Categories of Explanation While Whitehead has twenty-seven categories of explanation, all concerned with explaining the various aspects of the concrescing of actual entities through the process of prehension, Gare presents a notion of causation more akin to Aristotle’s. Earlier, Aristotle’s four causes were identified as; the material cause, referring to the matter involved; the efficient cause, or exercise of power; the formal cause, or the form aimed at; and the final cause, or the reason for aiming at this form. If one is making a clay pot, for example, clay would be the material formed by your energy into a pot for the purpose of containing a plant. The mechanistic view from the seventeenth century on, is the incoherent one that apriori formal, mathematical principles, or laws, determine that clay becomes pots. The process view, emphasizing causal relations rather than produced effects, seeks to re-introduce the agency of both efficient and final causation into processes. Gare particularly emphasizes immanent causation that is also emphasized in Buddhist notions of dependent co-origination, a concept that avoids problematic notions of apriori laws or Ultimate final causes of God’s determination. He states that: Where the world is conceived of as a multiplicity of semiautonomous self-producing processes, causation can best be seen to consist of, firstly, immanent causation (that is, self-creation) consisting of supervening causation whereby constituent processes or activities are constrained, and efficient causation or action on the rest of the world, and secondly, conditional causation (the production of the conditions of any process’s existence) which on the emergence of a process differentiates into environmental causation, the environmental conditions of a process—ultimately extending to the entire past of the universe, and material causation, the maintenance of the constituents of the process (although these are not always entirely separable).118

To conceptualize this view of causation one must again assume a complete absence of order. With no pre-existing order, causal relations can be seen as emerging as order emerges, order that is at least partially self-causing, (dependent co-origination). Therefore, there is no linear notion of cause and effect as a fixed universal law of the universe acting on inert matter as in mechanistic materialism, or a pre-existing order as in theistic philosophy. The very notion of effect is a static one that is seen alternatively in Gare’s Process terms as, active response, or appropriation by a process. In this, Gare is also at odds with Whitehead who, as Leclerc

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argues, turned the generally accepted notion of cause and effect upside down by seeing cause, as having lost its activity as a past object and effect, as the activity of receiving data from a past actual entity.119 ‘Cause’, in Gare’s concept, is durational activity realizing potentialities, that is, perhaps, the dialogue of emergence between the immanent causation of the emergent process that constrains its constituents, as well as acts on its environment and the conditional causation of the environment and its constituents, that act upon it. In this concept, causation as durational process must be understood as indivisible in that the final cause is already present in the beginning of an action. Any attempt to isolate discrete instants from a process is abstraction from the whole for which efficient causation acts. Causal relations must also be understood in relation to hierarchical orders, which brings one to the final categories of Ultimate Potentiality.

22. The Categories of Ultimate Potentiality Gare’s concept of Ultimate Potentiality relates to spatio-temporal position as defined by process thought. Space and time within the mechanistic view of those such as Newton, were seen as self-subsistent receptacles for matter. The position of matter could then be plotted as points of intersecting lines from fixed coordinates. As has been pointed out though, this is both mathematical and geometric abstraction from space-time that Einstein showed to be relational. In relational terms, ‘[…] ’position’ can be defined as the set of potential causal relations of an entity to all other entities, while ‘space-time’ can be conceived as emerging or becoming as an order of potential (and actual) relations between such positions.’120 Once again, if an absence of order is imagined, then space-time can be seen to emerge with the emergence of order, such order being a differentiation from the background of unordered activity. In this conception, the idea that time is a separate dimension of space is rejected. As Gare argues: […] rather than space being an order of places external to each other, this is an order from which extended places emerge from a dynamic, flowing continuum as emergent processes differentiate themselves and achieve some degree of autonomy. Space-time can then be defined as an order of potentialities for independence (space) and interaction (time) which becomes or emerges from a process of becoming with the emergence of semi-autonomous sub-processes. It is the order of potentialities for co-existence and interaction between

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these emergent processes, or the structures and events associated with them, and is continually produced and reproduced with the becoming of both the supervening and the emergent processes. The past is what a process, structure or event, can be causally influenced by and the future is the realm of what it can causally affect.121

This relational view of space-time makes coherent the emergence of a multiplicity of spatio-temporal orders, or domains. In other words, there is no Absolute space-time that has exclusive relevance, but multiple spatiotemporal orders that are both, constituents of the supervening spatiotemporal order of the universe and themselves, constituents and supervening spatio-temporal orders relative to other spatio-temporal orders. As Gare argues: Thus while galaxies must be seen as co-existing and interacting within cosmic space-time, the nature and co-existence of stars can only be fully understood in terms of galactic space-time, geological processes in planetary space-time, life processes in ecological spacetime, organic processes in life space-time, personal life in terms of a complex of social space-times, perception and action in personal or inter-personal space-time, and so on.122

23. Gare’s Categories and Postmodern Science Having outlined Gare’s Process metaphysical categories and their historical antecedents, it is now necessary to discuss some current major influences and their implications for Process Philosophy. Whereas all other metaphysical systems drew on the available scientific knowledge of their time, so Gare draws on what Best describes as postmodern science.123 This is to be distinguished from nihilistic Postmodern social theory such as Deconstructionism, and is more identified with Constructive Postmodernism, minus the theistic perspective as has been discussed. Gare goes beyond relativity and quantum theory, that were available to and influenced Whitehead, to more recent ideas in complexity, chaos, hierarchy and thermodynamics theory. According to Fritjof Capra, these are ideas that emerged from a better understanding of the nature of non-linear dynamics and non-equilibrium systems and have brought with it a shift from reductionist to systemic thinking.124 Best summarizes the general themes of this new scientific paradigm:

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Glenn McLaren In science, postmodernism emerges as a break from the mechanistic, objectivist and deterministic worldview of modern science. Advocates of postmodern science claim that the modern scientific paradigm—informed by Galileo, Bacon, Descartes and Newton—is giving way in the twentieth century to a new paradigm based on principles of indeterminacy, chaos and evolution. Like postmodern social theory, postmodern science sees modernity and modern reason as inherently repressive. Consequently, theorists of postmodern science define the new science as an ecological science that seeks a ‘reenchantment of nature’. Postmodern science rejects the crippling dualistic outlook of modern thought; instead it sees nature, human beings, and the relation between human beings and nature in holistic terms.125

Like Whitehead and Leclerc, Gare’s concern is to provide a metaphysical scheme that accounts for and makes coherent new knowledge derived from science, a project that provides the necessary complement to Buddhist metaphysics, discussed earlier. By grounding his epistemology in dialectics, as was discussed at the beginning of the chapter, Gare sees metaphysical categories themselves as subject to change in relation to humanity’s debates over changes in the knowledge base. This is why Gare’s metaphysical scheme firstly seeks to account for change in his emphasis on activity, potentiality and process. This, then becomes the basis for the continual formulation and re-formulation of narratives and metaphors that underpin human action. In what ways then do Gare’s categories account for the ‘new developments’ in science?

24. From Physics to Ecology Firstly, there is the idea suggested by Best that the new science is an ecological science. Both Leclerc and Frederick Ferré argue from a Whiteheadian perspective that ecology must replace physics as the basis for science. The non-materialist understanding advanced by Schelling, Liebniz, Whitehead and Abe, that the universe is not composed of bits of matter but relational processes, means that physics, which has dominated science as the study of matter, is no longer as relevant. For Ferré, ecology: […] is the science of relations. It studies relations between organisms and other organisms, as well as between organisms and their inorganic settings. Its central subject matter is systems, and

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systems of systems. It uses modern tools of analysis; it is in no way backward-looking when it comes to utilizing the advances of modernity in chemistry or physics or mathematics; but these tools are put to work in the interest of understanding whole systems in their complex networks of mutual influence.126

He further argues that ecology as a science is not value-free, that it recognizes natural final causation while not confusing teleology with premodern notions of purpose and that it breaks through the modern alienation between what is known and the human knower. It reverses the trend to ever-increasing specialization being ‘[…] essentially interdisciplinary, team-dependent, and long-term.’127 Similarly, Gare sees ecology as the science of the future. Particularly human ecology which he describes as ‘[…] the discipline charged with comprehending the relationship between the dynamics of societies and the rest of nature.’128 Ecology though, like other scientific disciplines, has aspects to it that he identifies as tending toward reductionism, such as the two main strands that have emerged being the ‘process-functionalist approach’ and ‘population-community approach’. The first, he argues,’ […] led to a form of systems theory which abstracts from the complexity of interacting species, the heterogeneity of populations and the complexities of competition and symbiosis, mutualism and predation. The second led via a fusion with the orthodox synthetic theory of evolution to socio-biology.’129 A better characterization of Gare’s position within ecology is that of Levins and Lewontin’s dialectical materialism from which they criticize both reductionism and what they term, ‘obscurantist holism’. Levins and Lewontin argue that: Unlike the idealist holism which sees the whole as the embodiment of some ideal organizing principle, dialectical materialism views the whole as a contingent structure in reciprocal interaction with its own parts and with the greater whole of which it is a part. Whole and part do not completely determine each other.130

Gare’s categories then, in emphasizing relations, processes and contingency, can be understood as providing a metaphysical basis for developing ecology into the supervening science, a basis that provides for a non-reductionist complementarity between different strands and disciplines.

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25. Hierarchy Theory Following on from Gare’s Categories of Ultimate Potentiality, as well as Levins and Lewontin’s notion of the relationship of parts to wholes, Gare’s metaphysics can be seen to make coherent a theory that has developed within ecology, hierarchy theory. Explicit in Gare’s categories is the notion of supervening and constituent processes ordering a natural hierarchy. All existents are processes in causal relationships. All processes exist in particular spatio-temporal domains. Such spatio-temporal domains as processes can be characterized as having a certain scale (space) and rate (time). All of the particular spatio-temporal domains referred to previously by Gare, for example, have different scales and rates. Galaxies are bigger and slower than solar systems that are bigger and slower than geological processes on planets that are bigger and slower than human societies that are bigger and slower than micro-organisms. This understanding of hierarchical order, deriving from ecologists such as Allen and Starr, is consistent with Gare’s concept of order as constraint, a notion that also applies to medium DC and Varela’s concept of evolution as ‘natural drift’. In hierarchy theory, large, slow processes constrain small, fast ones. As Allen and Starr argue: Ordered systems are so, not because of what the components do, but rather because of what they are not allowed to do. The emergent properties of nerves are so full of positive achievement that it is hard to remember that they work only because of restrictions placed on the position and movement of sodium and potassium ions. It is what sodium and potassium in the nerve cannot do that supports the emergent property of nerve reaction.131

Fundamental to this understanding of the relationship between spatiotemporal domains, or what Allen and Starr term ‘holons’, drawing on Arthur Koestler’s definition of biological entities with the dual tendencies of self-assertiveness and integration, is the nature of communication between holons. On a vertical hierarchical scale, the greater the distance between holons, the less influential on each other they become, or the less they communicate. In other words, the behaviour of the galaxy is largely irrelevant to human behaviour, as are quantum wave packets, due to massive asymmetry in their relationship, lending further weight to the irrelevance of much of both theistic and reductionist views. What are relevant are those levels in close proximity to humanity’s levels that

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provide the immediate context of our larger and slower environmental constraints, as well as the content of those smaller and faster levels that humanity constrains. Immanent and conditional causation therefore, relate to scale and rate, as does the ‘specious present’ where such concepts are experienced. Relevance, is in the communication of signals that indicate human action, such as thunder signalling the presence of lightning, indicating that it might be advisable to go indoors, or nausea and vomiting, indicating the presence of harmful bacteria in the stomach. It is on this basis, one can argue, that humanity’s immediate perception of the world should be understood, rather than through notions of panpsychism. Signals from holons are not directly prehended, but pass through scale filters such that reception, at the human level, is not to be identified with the transmission, and vice versa. According to Allen and Starr: When we study holons scaled very differently from ourselves, something is lost in translation to the human scale. When using a microscope, it is hard to remember that a Paramecium does not see a bacterium with light-sensitive senses any better than do microscopists. We detect readily only ecological phenomena that work in a time-scale with a lower limit of seconds and an upper limit of about three score years and ten, and at most the generation time of long-lived trees.132

Valerie Ahl and T.F.H. Allen suggest that this view focuses on the observer/observed interface and ‘[…] gives insights into a new class of solutions based on the pragmatic assessment of the limits of understanding rather than on the ritual or tight control within a limited problem domain.’133 Gare argues that such a notion of hierarchy is not to be construed as negative, or confused with views of evolution that sees large powerful structures reducing smaller ones to instruments for their domination and control. Hierarchy theory is concerned with that which is essential to life flourishing. As Gare argues: […] the higher levels of a dissipative structure are associated with slower rates. They act as constraints on lower levels not by reducing lower levels to instruments of the higher levels, but by limiting the possibilities open to the lower levels. In ecosystems, far from this being domination of the lower levels, such limitations enable external environmental factors to be incorporated to provide environments more favourable to the flourishing of life. The emergence of these higher-level processes with slower rates creates new environmental niches which provide the conditions for the emergence of new organisms, that is, processes characterized by faster rates. That is,

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Glenn McLaren there tends to be co-evolution of processes with slower and faster rates.134

Such co-evolution requires quality relationships of connectedness that provide the necessary stability in constraining levels. If a system is strongly connected in many dimensions, then change will occur at a pace too fast for constraining signals to have an effect. A good example is the accelerating growth of the internet before governments could impose any form of legal constraint on content. Alternatively, an underconnected system may be too fragmented for constraining signals to have any unifying effect. An example would be the impact of central governments on widely separated, remote outback stations. In both cases, systems become unstable. Overconnected systems, if not corrected, will eventually fail catastrophically, while underconnected systems may dissolve through disconnection. Stability in systems then, requires a balanced level of connectedness, where change can occur within appropriate constraints. This balance can be understood in terms of the capacity relationships have for facilitating the flourishing of life, a capacity that gives such relationships a relatively superior quality. Such a quality, in Allen and Starr’s view on evolution, may be understood as being anticipated by organisms.135 The superior nature of this quality can be related to the evolutionary dynamics of what Brian Goodwin terms, ‘life at the edge of chaos’. In his ‘science of qualities’, Goodwin explores a perspective on biology that sees relational fields as primary and the study of whole organisms as the key to understanding such fields. Fundamental, in Goodwin’s view, is an understanding of how patterns of order emerge spontaneously from the complex, chaotic dynamics of life. He argues that novelty emerges from oscillations between order and chaos, or rest and play, in which symmetries are broken and new patterns of order created. Such oscillations can also be understood as relationships with a quality for facilitating the flourishing of life. Goodwin argues that: For complex nonlinear dynamic systems with rich networks of interacting elements, there is an attractor that lies between one region of chaotic behaviour and one that is “frozen” in the ordered regime, with little spontaneous activity. Any such system, be it a developing organism, a brain, an insect colony, or an ecosystem, will tend to settle dynamically at the edge of chaos. If it moves into the chaotic region, it will come out again of its own accord; if it strays too far into the ordered regime, it will tend to “melt” back into dynamic fluidity where there is rich but labile order.136

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Order in the universe then is constituted by a hierarchically organized multiplicity of oscillating spatio-temporal orders with varying intensities of communicative relations depending largely on proximity. In referring to dissipative structure, Gare introduces non-linear, or far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics into the hierarchy. Living systems are then, spatiotemporally ordered, dissipative structures. That is, processes of ordered potentiality for ordering negative entropy into entropy in far-fromequilibrium conditions. Structures, as such ordered potentialities for ordering can then be seen to both emerge from disorder, as well as generating disorder at the edge of chaos, giving indeterminacy to future processes. This is consistent with non-linear dynamics and chaos theory where the initial conditions of living systems are too complex to be determined, therefore making prediction problematic. Such systems are open, and as was discussed earlier, continue to evolve away from their initial conditions. In terms of complexity theory, this means that both the initial conditions of an evolving living system and its future are ‘fuzzy’. To use an analogy, a living system’s lens is able to focus within a range in close proximity to its spatio-temporal domain. Beyond that, everything begins to go out of focus. Each moment of experience in the field of the ‘specious present’ has this character as the distant future and receding past become fuzzier; of course, humanity has extended its lens somewhat with technology, but ultimately such devices will discover greater complexity with receding relevance. The further implication here is that what is always out of focus and chaotic for living systems, is the future. As ordered potentialities for ordering though, living systems generate both order and chaos, making them autopoietic systems, and as such, able to influence the future.

26. Process and the Nature of Humanity This conception of the universe and life as co-evolutionary, emergent processes, makes coherent Gare’s ontological view of humanity as selfcreative participants in the becoming of nature and society. He contends that: […] humanity must be understood as an emergent process or complex of processes within nature, as part of the biosphere, the complex of dissipative structures which has emerged in the thermodynamically far from equilibrium situation maintained on earth by the sun. Living entities are processes which define their environments as their worlds, worlds in which they are then

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This view of Gare has influences and implications, not only in the natural sciences, but also in the human, or social sciences. The most important of these, as Best also argues, the rejection of the ‘[…] dualism between the objective ‘explanation’ of the natural sciences and the subjective ‘understanding’ or interpretation of the social sciences, and their awareness of the hermeneutical nature of all intellectual activity.’138 This development can be understood through Gare’s concept of humanity as self-creative participants in the becoming of nature and society and as existing within particular, shared spatio-temporal domains, as being a recognition of what forms of knowledge perception and communication are relevant to our level of understanding. Humans, as social organisms, have a shared means of perceiving the world, the contents of which are expressed through signs, the truth of which are determined through evaluating interpretations through a dialectical process. This applies equally, ontologically, to two scientists interpreting the image from an electron microscope and two friends discussing the merits of a movie. This is because, in Gare’s conception, as in Whitehead’s and Abe’s, ontological primacy is given to our immediate engagement, or relationship, with the world, rather than to abstractions that mediate such relationships which must be seen as derivative abstractions, such as language. An important influence in the development of this idea is Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his argument from phenomenological psychology for the primacy of perception. He argues, that perception is not an intellectual synthesis that interprets, deciphers, or orders sensible matter according to an ideal law that a subject’s consciousness possesses. It is, rather, the activity of the direct ‘grasping’ of the real world through our body’s relationship to the world, from which, an intellectual synthesis is derived. According to Merleau-Ponty: We observe at once that it is impossible, as has often been said, to decompose a perception, to make it into a collection of sensations, because in it the whole is prior to the parts—and this whole is not an ideal whole. The meaning which I ultimately discover is not of the conceptual order. If it were a concept, the question would be how I can recognize it in the sense data, and it would be necessary for me to interpose between the concept and the sense data certain intermediaries, and then other intermediaries between these

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intermediaries, and so on. It is necessary that meaning and signs, the form and matter of perception, be related from the beginning and that, as we say, the matter of perception be “pregnant with its form”.139

The nature of embodied immediate experience, developed by MerleauPonty, is also the basis of Lakoff and Johnson’s work in second-generation, cognitive science that has already been introduced in this chapter. In this view, emphasizing embodiment, language can be understood to be derived from direct perception of the world, through the sensori-motor system. The content of such perceptions are then expressed largely as metaphors, relating to perception of movement, such as ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘forward’, ‘back’. Human language is therefore structured by and bound to, embodied experience, rather than any disembodied, atemporal or ahistorical realm. Lakoff and Johnson provide a good example, in relation to causation, of how derivative abstractions in science are often at odds with such embodied perception: One important thing that cognitive science has revealed clearly is that we have multiple conceptual means for understanding and thinking about situations. What we take as “true” depends on how we conceptualize the situation at hand. From the perspective of our ordinary visual experience, the sun does rise; it does move up from behind the horizon. From the perspective of our scientific knowledge, it does not. Similarly, when we lift an object, we experience ourselves exerting a force to overcome a force pulling the object down. From the standpoint of our basic-level experience, the force of gravity does exist, no matter what the general theory of relativity says. But if we are physicists concerned with calculating how light will move in the presence of a large mass, then it is advantageous to take the perspective of general relativity, in which there is no gravitational force.140

The unbroken wholeness of embodied consciousness, particularly at the primary perception level, described phenomenologically by both MerleauPonty and Lakoff and Johnson, cannot be accounted for in mechanistic terms that see such a unity as consisting of separate, interacting parts. Consciousness can only begin to be understood in Gare’s process terms, as an emergent whole that is a supervening process constrained by higher level processes. This concept is supported by the work of those such as Ricoeur who stress the primacy of narrative as the language structure that has a reciprocal relationship to temporality.141 In other words, human beings are story-tellers, whose consciousness is to be found, not in the

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individual parts of language, but in their embodied experience expressed within the context of a narrative plot. Movement related metaphors such as ‘up’ and ‘back’, for example, are meaningless unless understood within the context of sentences such as; ‘I am going up to the shop to bring back some bread.’ Such a narrative plot is understood, in Ricoeur’s terms as being ‘within time’, another metaphor suggesting containment. Contained within the ‘going to the shop’ narrative is a time-frame based on previous experience of how long it takes to go to the shop and back which conditions an anticipation. If the person does not return from the shop within that time-frame the anticipation is not satisfied, or, a whole has not been completed, or, someone has ‘lost the plot’. This implies though that there is someone else who was told the story, understood the plot, and shared the temporal anticipation. Here one must return to the primacy of relations and the reciprocity that this entails. A story cannot exist unless there is someone else to tell it to, whether physically present or not. The independent existence of language and its parts, suggested by mechanistic approaches, is therefore absurd. Language exists and is comprehensible to human beings at the supervening level of narrative that, is a constituent of cultural processes that are derivative, of dialectical relations. Axel Honneth argues that such dialectical relations are essential to human self-realization, or, ‘[…] the process of realizing, without coercion, one’s self-chosen life-goals.’142 Interpreting Hegel’s dialectic of recognition, Honneth emphasizes the intersubjective nature of ego formation. He argues that: The connection between the experience of recognition and one’s relation-to-self stems from the intersubjective structure of personal identity. The only way in which individuals are constituted as persons is by learning to refer to themselves, from the perspective of an approving or encouraging other, as beings with certain positive traits and abilities. The scope of such traits—and hence the extent of one’s positive relation-to-self—increases with each new form of recognition that individuals are able to apply to themselves as subjects. In this way, the prospect of basic self-confidence is inherent in the experience of love; the prospect of self-respect, in the prospect of legal recognition; and finally the prospect of self-esteem, in the experience of solidarity.143

Recognition, for Honneth, is the basis for humanity’s ongoing struggle for freedom. The intersubjective nature of this struggle though, reveals freedom, not as the unconstrained, autonomous Kantian self, armed with a universal morality and free of external influence, but conditioned by

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constraints of various intersubjective, spatio-temporal levels of processes, both internal and external. The ‘ethical life’ then, for Honneth, is achieved through internal processes of positive self-formation and the external constraints that are the intersubjective conditions for such formation. Such an ‘ethical life’ reveals process thought that has emerged in individuals with positive selfformation within intersubjective conditions, enabling transcendence of more ego-centred relations. As is evident in the history of process thought, however, this is not necessarily characteristic of any one historical period. This relation-centred view is only comprehensible through Gare’s process metaphysics that sees a hierarchy of processes in multiple spatio-temporal domains in which there is both immanent and conditional causation. Narrative, language and morality then, can be understood as having emerged with culture from the evolving relationships of human beings who are partially autonomous ordered potentialities for ordering. This conception of language and reciprocity refers back to Hegel’s three dialectics of culture, referred to earlier; these being labour, representation and recognition. Gare re-formulates Hegel’s dialectics in to dialectical patterns of power, orientation and recognition. In this formulation, power refers to the capacity to order and the ordering of the flow-through of usable energy and materials by complex dissipative structures, that are human beings and their various social structures. Orientation refers to the ways in which human beings orient themselves to the world by communicating through systems of signs, each in relation to particular spatio-temporal domains, as has just been discussed in relation to narratives. Recognition refers to the process of individuation and the dependence of this process on the recognition and affirmation of others. An anti-reductionist analysis of humanity therefore, requires situating humanity in relation to all three. This applies to methodology within disciplines understood as autopoietic systems and so cannot be satisfied with the mere aggregation of disciplines as monological atoms. The claims of various atomic disciplines to epistemological closure can therefore be understood as the incoherent ‘grasping’ for recognition from a monological perspective that denies reciprocity.144 Alternatively, Gare argues that: […] dialectical activity carries with it the possibility of critical reflection and transcendence. To be participating in these dialectical patterns is to be at least provisionally committing oneself to certain evaluative stances within these patterns, and to be at least tacitly aware that such stances are incompatible with other possible stances, and that one’s own stance is therefore questionable. So as Hegel saw, the

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Glenn McLaren dialectic of representation carries with it the tendency for people to transcend limited, one-sided forms of thinking and replace them with forms of thinking which come nearer to grasping the whole in its complex diversity, the dialectic of recognition tends to reciprocity, carrying with it a tendency to generate social relations which extend recognition and respect to more and more people, and the dialectic of labour tends to generate more effective technologies and organizations.145

In articulating the nature of these processes, he argues that: These patterns are dialectical because they are based on people as conscious agents creating themselves. As such, they cannot be understood simply in terms of individuals, nor as emergent processes transcending individuals, but must be understood as processes through which individuals emerge to become semi-autonomous participants in the on-going creative becoming of these patterns, which are semiautonomous from these individuals. Furthermore, individuals are struggling for goals which are neither final ends nor simply potentialities for achieving these, but are simultaneously both ends desired and potentialities for pursuing further ends. Orientation, recognition and power thus have, as Derrida has noted in relation to desire in general, a deferred quality; it is never possible to actually achieve these as final states, as final resting points.146

Gare’s metaphysics reveal that no particular discipline or profession is privileged epistemologically. Ecology, particularly human ecology as Gare conceives it as the science of relations, is privileged ontologically as a supervening science that constrains other disciplines to a humanly relevant and coherent level of understanding; that being the dialectic. All human endeavor in gaining knowledge is primarily a conversation, whether it be physics, sociology or literature studies. In MacIntyre’s terms, it is the comparative evaluations of narrative traditions.147 The implication here is that the privileging of particular disciplines as having exclusive access to the truth is wrong. The study of humanity is primarily about humanly relevant relationships and the quality of those relationships. All means for acquiring knowledge that enhances the quality of relationships are valid. What are not valid, are means that serve to undermine relationships, such as the privileging of particular disciplines at the expense of others. It is in the sense of improving the quality of relationships that I believe Gare sees possibilities for cultural development, rather than just through

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technological innovation. Such development requires moving away from the obsession with controlling the energy flows of the world through power relations, a reduction predominant in Neoliberalism, and giving equal weight to the dialectics of both recognition and orientation. He argues that: These […] two dialectical patterns are at least as important as the dialectic of labour in human history. It is through the ability of humans to achieve a reciprocity of recognition and to establish their identities through this that complex forms of cooperative organization and enduring institutions are possible, and because such identities require reciprocal recognition, there has been an impetus through history for the recognition to become more adequate. That is, the dialectic of recognition has engendered the quest for and provided the impetus to achieve justice, and the advance of justice has made possible more complex forms of human enterprise.148

The facilitation of such development though will involve both immanent and conditional causation at humanly relevant spatio-temporal levels that acknowledges natural and ethical constraints as well as takes responsibility for constituent processes. In other words, cultural development and human freedom are linked through the actions of partially autonomous human agents in creating and maintaining the conditions, both natural and cultural, in which a mutual self-realization can occur. Such actions will be expressed by human beings in the form of narratives in which individuals, communities, nations and global citizens can situate themselves. Such narratives can be understood as constituent of and constrained by, a supervening narrative stemming from the process tradition of thought. Mechanistic materialism, therefore, must be actively opposed as a worldview that undermines justice and freedom by creating the conditions in which natural and ethical constraints are obliterated, and constituent processes abused, in the pursuit and preservation of power by a few, made possible by the non-reciprocal relationship to the many as means toward these ends. In other words, process metaphysics facilitates the advancement of human freedom through the improvement of the quality of relationships. Mechanistic materialism destroys human freedom by facilitating deterioration in the quality of relationships. The challenge for Process Philosophy is not just to recognize this danger, but to unify against it.

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27. References Abe Masao, Zen and Western Thought, ed. William R. LaFleur, (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1989). Ahl Valerie and Allen T.F.H., Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology, (Columbia University Press, New York, 1996). Allen T.F.H. and Starr Thomas B., Hierarchy: Perspectives for Ecological Complexity, (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982). Bergson Henri, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, (University Press of America, Lanham, 1983). Best Steven, ‘Chaos and Entropy: Metaphors in Postmodern Science and Social Theory’, Science as Culture, Vol. 2, Part 2, No. 11, (1991). Capra Fritjof, ‘Complexity and Life’, Emergence, Vol. 4 No. 1-2, (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2002). Cobb, Jr. John, ‘Alfred North Whitehead’, Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993). Cobb Jr. J.B. and Griffin D.R., Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, (The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1976). Cohen Jack and Stewart Ian, The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World, (Penguin Books, London, 2000). Dibben M.R., ‘Exploring the Processual Nature of Trust and Cooperation in Organizations: A Processual Analysis’, Philosophy of Management, (2004). Dupre Louis, Marx’s Social Critique of Culture, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1983). Dyke C., ‘Complexity and Closure’, Evolution at a Crossroads: The New Biology and the New Philosophy of Science, eds. David Depew and Bruce Weber, (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1986). Emmeche Claus, Køppe Simo and Stjernfelt Frederick, ‘Levels, Emergence, and Three Versions of Downward Causation’, Downward Causation: Minds, Bodies and Matter, eds. Peter Bøgh Anderson, Claus Emmeche, Niels Ole Finnemann and Peder Voetmann Christiansen, (Aarhus University Press, Århus, 2000). Ferré Frederick, Knowing and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Epistemology, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1998).

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Fukuyama Frances, The End of History and the Last Man, (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1992). Gare Arran, ‘Philosophy, Civilization, and the Global Ecological Crisis: The Challenge of Process Metaphysics to Scientific Materialism’, Philosophy Today, Vol. 44, No. 3-4, (Fall, 2000). __________, Nihilism Inc.: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability, (Eco-Logical Press, Como, 1996). __________, ‘Is It Possible to Create an Ecologically Sustainable World Order: The Implications of Hierarchy Theory for Human Ecology’, International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, Vol. 7, No. 4, (December 2000). __________, ‘Human Ecology and Public Policy: Overcoming the Hegemony of Economics’, Democracy and Nature, Vol. 8, No. 1. Goodwin Brian, How the Leopard Changed its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001). Greene Brian, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, (Vintage, London, 2000). Gunter Pete A.Y., ‘Henri Bergson’, Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993). Habermas Jurgen, Theory and Practice, (Heinemann, London, 1974). Hawking Stephen, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, (Bantam Books, Sydney, 1990). Hegel G.W.F., Reason in History, (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1977). Honneth Axel, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1996). Horn Friedemann, Schelling and Swedenborg: Mysticism and German Idealism, trans. George F. Dole, (Swedenborg Foundation, Pennsylvania, 1997). Jonas Hans, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Phoenix Edition, 1982). Lakoff George and Johnson Mark, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, (Basic Books, New York, 1999). Leclerc Ivor, The Philosophy of Nature, (The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1986).

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__________, Whitehead’s Metaphysics: An Introductory Exposition, (University Press of America, Lanham, 1986). Lorenz Konrad, The Waning of Humaneness, (Unwin Hyman Limited, London, 1988). MacIntyre Alisdair, ‘Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Science’, Monist, 60, (1977). Maturana Humberto and Varela Francisco, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Vol. 42, (D. Reidel Publishing Company, Holland, 1980). McIntosh Robert P., The Background of Ecology: Concept and Theory, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988). Meynell Hugo, ‘Metaphysical Lessons of Idealism’, Metaphysics as Foundation: Essays in Honor of Ivor Leclerc, eds. Paul Bogaard and Gordon Treash, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993). Nagatomo Shigenori, Attunement Through the Body, (Suny Press, Albany, 1992). Pols Edward, ‘The Metaphor of a Foundation for Knowledge’, Metaphysics as Foundation: Essays in Honor of Ivor Leclerc, eds. Paul Bogaard and Gordon Treash, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993). Prigogine Ilya, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences, (W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1980). Ricoeur Paul, ‘Narrative Time’, On Narrative, (W.T. Mitchell, Editor, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1981). Sherburne Donald W., ‘De-centring Whitehead’, Journal of Process Studies, Vol. 15, (Summer 1986). Solomon Robert, Introducing Philosophy: Fifth Edition, (Harcourt, Brace and Company, Orlando, 1993). Varela Francisco, Thompson Evan, and Rosch Eleanor, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993). Francisco J. Varela, ‘The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness’, Francisco Varela’s Home Page: Articles on Neurophenomenology and First Person Methods (June 2000) , (3 December 2002) Whitehead A.N., Adventures of Ideas, (The Free Press, New York, 1933/1961)

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_____________, Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne Editors, The Free Press, New York, 1979. Wilber Ken, A Brief History of Everything, (Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, 1996). __________, Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm, (Anchor Books, New York, 1983). Zohar Danah, The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics, (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1990). Zohar Danah and Marshall Ian, The Quantum Society: Mind, Physics, and a New Social Vision, (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1994).

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Notes 1

Arran Gare: Nihilism Inc.: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability, Eco-Logical Press, Como, 1996. 2

Alasdair MacIntyre: “The Future of Philosophy”: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, September, 1987, p. 85, quoted in Arran Gare: “Philosophy, Civilization, and the Global Ecological Crisis: The Challenge of Process Metaphysics to Scientific Materialism”, Philosophy Today, Fall 2000, p. 283. 3

Ibid: p. 284.

4

Throughout this chapter the terms process metaphysics, process thought and Process Philosophy will be used. Process metaphysics refers to the tradition of thought I define through Gare’s categories; process thought is the activity through such categories and Process Philosophy is the particular school of thought underpinned by process categories and engaged in the activity. 5

Gare, Nihilism Inc., pp. 311-312.

6

Edward Pols, ‘The Metaphor of a Foundation for Knowledge’: Metaphysics as Foundation: Essays in Honor of Ivor Leclerc, eds. Paul Bogaard and Gordon Treash, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993), Ch. 11. 7 Ibid, p. 219. 8

This is in Francisco J. Varela, ‘The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness’, Francisco Varela’s Home Page: Articles on Neurophenomenology and First Person Methods (June 2000), (3 December 2002), pp. 2-3. 9

This concept can be found in Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993), Ch. 7. 10

Gare, ‘Philosophy, Civilization and the Global Ecological Crisis’, p. 288. 11 12

Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 310.

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, ed. William R. LaFleur, (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1989), Ch 4.

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13

Abe situates Aristotle as enunciating ‘Being’ as one of three fundamental categories of human thought, the other two being Kant’s ‘Ought’ and Nagarjuna’s ‘Nothingness’. Ibid., pp. 83-87. 14

Ibid, p. 89.

15

Ivor Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature, (The Catholic University of America press, Washington, D.C., 1986), pp. 20-21. 16

Ibid, p. 21.

17

Ibid, pp. 22-25.

18

Ibid, p. 33.

19

Ibid, pp. 31-32.

20

Ibid, pp. 125-130.

21

Ibid, p. 125.

22

Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Phoenix Edition, 1982), Ninth Essay. 23

Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, (Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, 1996), p. 250. 24 Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 350. 25

Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, The Quantum Society: Mind, Physics, and a New Social Vision, (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1994), pp. 159-160. 26

Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, p. 17.

27

Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 351.

28

G.W.F. Hegel, Reason in History, (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1977), p. 11. 29

Jurgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, (Heinemann, London, 1974), pp. 152. 30

Ibid, pp. 156-157.

31

Frances Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1992), pp. 58-59. 32

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, (Basic Books, New York, 1999), pp. 436-439.

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33

Robert Solomon, Introducing Philosophy: A Text with Integrated Readings, Fifth Edition, (Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth, 1993), p. 257. 34

Louis Dupre, Marx’s Social Critique of Culture, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1983), p. 277. 35

Gare argues that the notion of becoming actualizing pre-determined ends, held by German Romantics such as Hegel, was itself an Absolutist position. Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 310. 36

Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, p. 191.

37

Ibid, p. 148.

38

Ibid, p. 339.

39

A good example of this is Danah Zohar’s New Age concept of the chain of evolving consciousness in which things emerge as fluctuations in the quantum vacuum, ‘[…] grow towards renewed coherence, and return to the vacuum as “enriched” fluctuations,’ her version of the cycle of God, “The Fall and Redemption”. In Danah Zohar, The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics, (Quill/William Morrow, New York, 1990), pp. 227-230. 40

Ibid, p. 157.

41

Abe, Zen and Western Thought, Ch. 15.

42

Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, Part Three.

43

Ibid, p. 298.

44

Hugo Meynell, ‘Metaphysical Lessons of Idealism’: Metaphysics as Foundation, p. 75. 45

Ibid, p. 303.

46

Abe, Zen and Western Thought, p. 19.

47

Ibid, pp. 19-20.

48

This is in Horn’s thesis that Schelling, while not referring to him directly, was strongly influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, particularly in relation to his views on life after death. Friedemann Horn, Schelling and Swedenborg: Mysticism and German Idealism, trans. George F. Dole, (Swedenborg Foundation, Pennsylvania, 1997). pp. 95-99. 49

Abe, Zen and Western Thought, p. 67.

50

Ibid, p. 181.

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Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 321.

52

Zohar, The Quantum Self, pp. 217-218.

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53

This point is particularly emphasized by Ilya Prigogine: From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences, (W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1980). 54

Lakoff and Johnson: Philosophy in the Flesh, Ch. 25. These ideas challenge Eastern philosophers such as Shigenori Nagatomo: Attunement Through the Body, (Suny Press, Albany, 1992), who have been at the forefront of notions of embodiment and unconscious perception, but have failed to associate these with reason. 55

Varela, Thompson, and Rosch: The Embodied Mind, Chapter 2.

56

Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, (University Press of America, Lanham, 1983), p. 364. 57

Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World, (Penguin Books, London, 2000), p. 232. 58

Prigogine, From Being to Becoming.

59

Claus Emmeche, Simo Køppe and Frederick Stjernfelt, ‘Levels, Emergence, and Three Versions of Downward Causation’: Downward Causation: Minds, Bodies and Matter, eds. Peter Bøgh Anderson, Claus Emmeche, Niels Ole Finnemann and Peder Voetmann Christiansen, (Aarhus University Press, Åarhus, 2000), pp. 13-34. 60

Ibid., p. 19.

61

Ibid, p. 25.

62

Ibid, pp. 27-31.

63

This is in Zohar, The Quantum Self, and reveals Zohar to be both a reductionist and Absolutist. 64

Gare, Nihilism Inc., pp. 369-373.

65

This claim is made in Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, (Vintage, London, 2000), p. 356. 66 67

Cohen and Stewart, The Collapse of Chaos, p. 140.

The term ‘sacculinization’ refers to the organism, Sacculina carcini, that begins life as a free-moving crayfish and ends up as a genital gland on

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the common green crab. Konrad Lorenz, The Waning of Humaneness, (Unwin Hyman Limited, London, 1988). Ch. 2. 68

Ibid, Ch. 10.

69

Varela (et. al.), The Embodied Mind, Ch. 9.

70

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, eds. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, (The Free Press, New York, 1979), pp. 7-8 and 344. 71

Ibid., p. 21. I acknowledge that while Whitehead has been embraced by theologians such as Charles Hartshorne, many argue that Whitehead’s metaphysics can be made to work without God because it is panentheistic (i.e. God is influential in all things) rather than pantheistic (i.e. God is in all things). I argue, however, that Whitehead is primarily a theistic Process Philosopher in support of those such as Donald Sherburne who are critical of what they identify as his theistic process position. An example of Sherburne’s arguments against Whitehead’s theism is in Donald W. Sherburne, ‘De-centring Whitehead’: Journal of Process Studies, Vol. 15, (Summer 1986), pp.83-94. 72

John Cobb, Jr., ‘Alfred North Whitehead’: Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993), pp. 168-169. 73

Ibid, p. 170.

74

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, (Bantam Books, Sydney, 1990), pp. 60-61. 75

Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 18.

76

Ivor Leclerc, Whitehead’s Metaphysics: An Introductory Exposition, (University Press of America, Lanham, 1986), Ch. IV and V. 77

Ibid, p. 74.

78

Ibid, p. 75.

79

Ibid. p. 77.

80

Cobb Jr., Alfred North Whitehead, pp. 172-173.

81

M.R. Dibben, ‘Exploring the Processual Nature of Trust and Cooperation in Organizations: A Processual Analysis’, Philosophy of Management, (2004), pp. 25-40.

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82

J.B. Cobb Jr. and D.R. Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, (The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1976), p. 17. 83

Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 83.

84

Ibid, p. 190.

85

Leclerc, Whitehead’s Metaphysics, p. 94.

86

A.N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, (The Free Press, New York, 1933/61), pp. 183-184, 192-193. 87

Cobb and Griffin, Process Theology, pp. 14-15.

88

Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 210.

89

Leclerc, Whitehead’s Metaphysics, p. 187.

90

Ibid, 188.

91

Ibid, p. 196.

92

Cobb Jr., ‘Alfred North Whitehead’, p. 192.

93

Ibid, p. 193.

94

Abe, Zen and Western Thought, p. 157.

95

Ibid., p. 156. For this view Abe draws from the W. Christian’s interpretation in, An Interpretation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics, (Yale University Press, Connecticut, 1959). 96

Ibid, p. 158.

97

Ibid, p. 159.

98

Ibid, p. 209.

99

Ibid, pp.168-170.

100

Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 312.

101

Ibid, p. 313. Note that these categories are not capitalized to avoid the implication of some anthropomorphic identity. 102

Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Ch. 3.

103

Zohar and Marshall, The Quantum Society, p. 238.

104

Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 314.

105

Ibid, p. 314.

106

Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 84.

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107

Cohen and Stewart, The Collapse of Chaos. This argument is made in relation to a critique of quantum mechanical theories of consciousness, similar to Danah Zohar’s theory, pp. 425-427. 108

Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 314.

109

For this argument see Bergson, Creative Evolution and Pete A.Y. Gunter, ‘Henri Bergson’: Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993), Ch. 3. 110

Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature, Ch. 11.

111

Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 315.

112

Ibid, p. 316.

113

Ibid, p. 316.

114

Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature, p. 131.

115

Ibid, p. 168.

116

Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, ‘Autopoiesis and Cognition’: The Realization of the Living, Vol. 42, (D. Reidel Publishing Company, Holland, 1980), pp. 78-79. 117 Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 317. 118

Ibid, pp. 317-318.

119

Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature, p. 162.

120

Gare, Nihilism Inc., p. 319.

121

Ibid, p. 319.

122

Ibid, p. 319.

123

Steven Best, ‘Chaos and Entropy: Metaphors in Postmodern Science and Social Theory’: Science as Culture, Vol. 2, Part 2, No. 11, (1991). 124

Fritjof Capra, ‘Complexity and Life’: Emergence, Vol. 4 No. 1-2, ( Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2002), p. 15-33. 125

Ibid, p. 189.

126

Frederick Ferré, Knowing and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Epistemology, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1998), pp. 271-272. 127

Ibid, p. 272.

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128

Arran E. Gare, ‘Is It Possible to Create an Ecologically Sustainable World Order: The Implications of Hierarchy Theory for Human Ecology’, International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, Vol. 7, No. 4, (December 2000), p. 277. 129

Arran Gare, ‘Human Ecology and Public Policy: Overcoming the Hegemony of Economics’, Democracy and Nature, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 13. 130

Quoted in Robert P. McIntosh, The Background of Ecology: Concept and Theory, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988), p. 253. 131

T.F.H. Allen and Thomas B. Starr, Hierarchy: Perspectives for Ecological Complexity, (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982), p. 11. 132

Ibid, p. 31.

133

Valerie Ahl and T.F.H. Allen, Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology, (Columbia University Press, New York, 1996), p.11. 134

Gare, ‘Is It Possible to Create an Ecologically Sustainable World Order’, p. 284. 135

Allen and Starr, Hierarchy, Ch. 11.

136

Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001), pp. 182-183. 137

Gare, Nihilism Inc., pp. 350-351.

138

Best, Chaos and Entropy, p. 203.

139

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology’, The Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, ed. James M. Edie, (Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 15. 140

Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, pp. 231-232.

141

This argument is in Paul Ricoeur, ‘Narrative Time’: On Narrative, ed. W.T. Mitchell, (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1981). 142

Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1996), p. 174. 143 144

Ibid, p. 173.

A good argument for complexity making hopeless the attempts at epistemological closure by particular disciplines can be found in C. Dyke:

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‘Complexity and Closure’: Evolution at a Crossroads: The New Biology and the New Philosophy of Science, eds. David Depew and Bruce Weber, (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1986), pp. 97-131. 145

Gare, Nihilism Inc., pp. 354-355.

146

Ibid, p. 354.

147

This argument is in Alisdair MacIntyre, ‘Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Science’, Monist, 60, (1977). 148

Gare, ‘Is it Possible to Create an Ecologically Sustainable World Order’, p. 287.

II. Unity Through Divergence Isabelle Stengers 1. Whitehead’s Answer to the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness As we all know, for most of his professional life Whitehead worked as a mathematician. The way he became, in a very few years, a full-fledged speculative philosopher is, I believe, a unique adventure in the history of thought. Moreover, reading Science and the Modern World may lead to the hypothesis that even if metaphysics was on Whitehead’s agenda, the way it imposed itself was a surprise for him. Indeed we can see metaphysics “happening” in Science and the Modern World, the prime object of which was what he called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”, i.e. the fallacy of the conceptual authority assigned to the abstraction, so successful in physics, of simple location of instantaneous material configurations. In the two famously difficult chapters about “Abstraction” and about “God”, we indeed suddenly deal with a metaphysician, and any particular connection with the question of our modern world has vanished. We do not know, and will probably never know, how Whitehead had planned to develop his interests in philosophy, interests that largely precede his American adventure. My hypothesis, as I will develop it here, is that the very peculiar audacity of the metaphysician suddenly appearing in Science and the Modern World, may be related to the very quest for a new coherence among sciences which was the object of this first American book.

2. Nature and Physics in Whitehead However, I would first like to insist that already in Concept of Nature, that is in conferences delivered in 1919, there was no possibility of confusing Whitehead’s philosophy of nature with a generalization of physics. Indeed when Whitehead writes “There is no such thing as nature at an instant posited by sense-awareness” (57), it is not only to simultaneity of distant

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instantaneous events that the status of “natural entity” is denied, but to the very concept of “durationless instants” which is presupposed by the whole of mathematical physics starting from Galileo and including Einstein’s relativity. What is affirmed is that any event has got a temporal extension, a duration, and that the concept of an extensionless instant is only a working ideal of thought. In other words, I would insist that already at the time when Whitehead was recognized as a philosopher of science, when he worked on an alternative formulation of general relativity, he never confused mathematical physics with a privileged path to philosophy. From the start Whitehead considered that it belongs to the responsibility of philosophers to take the success of the various sciences as important “facts” to be understood. As he wrote in Process and Reality: “Science is either an important statement of systematic theory correlating observations of a common world, or is the daydream of a solitary intelligence with a taste for the daydream of publication. But it is not philosophy to vacillate from one point of view to the other” (329).

But also from the start, he took science as an important statement, not as a source of authority guiding the creation of philosophical concepts. It is the task of philosophy to interpret how scientific statements indeed do matter for its own enterprise. I wanted to underline what is to me an invariant position, common to Whitehead the natural philosopher and Whitehead the speculative philosopher, in order to define my own position with regards to those contemporary physicists who attempt to directly confront Whitehead’s speculative concepts and their own conceptual interpretation of physics, especially quantum mechanics. Quantum reality may well appear as delocalized or entangled, the questions it provokes remain physicist’s questions, important ones for philosophers maybe, but not to be confused with philosophers’ questions. In other words the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, of accepting the general authority of abstractions relevant in physics, still lurks today, and it will lurk as long as the habit of privileging a relation between physics and metaphysics will remain alive. In Science and the Modern World, published in 1925, Whitehead’s problem was no longer the 1919 concept of nature, that is the unifying concept covering everything that “we are aware of in perception”. His problem was the “order of nature”, as it is required by science and as it has, to some extent, been confirmed by the success of science. Again, such an order is not a common problem shared by scientists and philosophers alike. Indeed for Whitehead as a philosopher “The faith in the order of nature

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which has made possible the growth of science is a particular example of a deeper faith”, that is faith in reason, “faith that at the basis of things we shall not find mere arbitrary mystery” (18). Faith in reason is what is required both by the growth of science and by the adventure of philosophy. Scientists may affirm this faith as a personal conviction, but for the philosopher, “There is no parting from your own shadow. To experience this faith is to know that in being ourselves we are more than ourselves: to know that our experience, dim and fragmentary as it is, yet sounds the utmost depths of reality; to know that detached details merely in order to be themselves demand that they should find themselves in a system of things; to know that this system includes the harmony of logical rationality, and the harmony of aesthetic achievement[…] “

In other words, physics as a specialized science may well part from its own shadow. Physicists and other scientists may well forget their own questions when discussing the meaning of what they consider to be “objective answers”. They may reduce their own faith to a psychological, or subjective conviction, which does not matter when the order of nature is concerned. But Whitehead wants philosophers to take what this faith requires as an important fact, as important as scientific statements about nature.

3. Scientific ‘Faith’ The way Whitehead here formulates this challenge is not to be confused with an answer. It already discloses however the reason why such an answer will have to resist the dominant trend in modern philosophy. The rise of modern science is contemporary to an anti-speculative philosophy as it is centred around the question “what can we know?”. It so happens, Whitehead emphasized, that the philosophical answer given to this question makes it generally impossible to justify scientists’ faith that they are able to discover an order which would designate nature and not the knowing subject. Scientists never cared too much. As Whitehead wrote “scientific faith has risen to the occasion, and has tacitly removed the philosophic mountain” (4). In order to regain its relevance, philosophy, for Whitehead, would also have to rise to the occasion, that is explicitly remove the mountain and answer the truly important question, that is not “what can we know?”, but “what do we know?” (MT, 74)

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However, in Science and the Modern World, Whitehead’s first concern was not the revival of philosophical speculation, as it will be in Process and Reality, but rather what he defined as the urgent need of science itself for a radical conceptual transformation. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness inspiring what he called the materialist theory of nature, was not only a philosophical mistake, it was poisoning the progress of science. It is important to emphasize that Whitehead never saw what he criticized as a distortion which would be due to the human mode of intellectual apprehension. “You cannot think without abstraction” (SMW, 59), he stated, and this is not something to deplore as abstractions do not separate you from concrete things, just as their tools do not separate the craftsmen from the wood or earth or metal they work with. Against Bergson, but also against those who equate realism with a reference to a reality which would be known as it is “in itself”, independently of the knower, Whitehead would affirm that nobody has a more realist knowledge of wood than the woodworkers because wood matters for woodworkers and their tools do make the difference between daydreaming and craft. They are however selective tools eliminating away what that craft defines as irrelevant. For Whitehead, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness is a bit like giving general relevance to tools that proved themselves convenient for woodwork for instance, since ulè meant wood in Greek before meaning matter in general. It is merely an accidental, or historical, error, that is an error which may be corrected. New abstractions were needed in order for sciences like biology, psychology or sociology to progress, new tools for thinking and paying attention. In Science and the Modern World, philosophy has for its special responsibility, among other disciplines, to care for our prevalent modes of abstraction, that is, to be critical indeed, but not to be critical against abstractions as such. Its task is to pay a critical attention to what a mode of abstraction abstracts away in order to have what it selects matter. The importance of what is eliminated away may signal the need for a revision.

4. The Concept of Organism as a Primary Natural Entity Whitehead’s conviction was that now the time had come for new modes of abstraction. For him William James had begun the job in psychology, saving it from the dreary pointlessness of eliminating away about everything that matters in human experience. But he, himself, chose evolutionary biology as the critical point.

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“Evolution, on the materialistic theory, is reduced to the role of being another word for the description of the changes of the external relations between portions of matter. There is nothing to evolve, because one set of external relations is as good as any other set of external relations. There can merely be change, purposeless and unprogressive. But the whole point of the modern doctrine is the evolution of the complex organisms from antecedent states of less complex organisms. The doctrine thus cries aloud for a conception of organism as fundamental for nature” (107).

The importance of the conception of organism for Whitehead has been such that he still talked of his own speculative Process and Reality philosophy as the “philosophy of organism”, even while organism was no longer a primary term, having been disentangled into actual occasions on the one hand, societies on the other. It is thus important to describe the kind of abstraction the organism was proposing. But before doing so, I would emphasize that eighty years later, we can more than ever recognize the relevance of Whitehead’s conviction. As we know, what Whitehead calls the modern doctrine, evolutionary biology, has been enslaved by what can be called genetic selectivism, that is by the power of the coupled abstractions of selection, as the only responsible for evolution and the appearance of new forms of life, and of the so-called genetic program as both the product of selection and the only responsible for the order of each living organism. The power of those abstractions is indeed grounded on what Whitehead called scientific materialism since it equates understanding life with identifying what would be responsible for the difference between an organism and matter as understood in terms of blind set of external relations, one being as good as an other one when physics is concerned. Selection is then the only source for values, and this judgement is now in the process of invading and reconfiguring psychology and anthropology. Whitehead guess has been confirmed, even if his hopes were disappointed. Evolutionary science has been poisoned by his link with physics abstractions. Let us come back to Whitehead’s organism as it would be able to displace blind matter and valueless external relations as an unifying concept, relevant from physics to human sciences. The primary feature of an organism is that it endures. And enduring here does not mean having a duration, as the events in Concept of Nature, but succeeding in enduring. Enduring is not an attribute, it is an achievement. It is the achievement of a togetherness, what Whitehead will describe as a grasping and holding together in a definite pattern, of other beings.

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Obviously we have not the means to feel it as an achievement when atoms or molecules are concerned, and we deal then with the simple contrast between stable and unstable. Organisms allude to biology because biology is that science which imposes on us a sense of wonder about what we take for granted when we think about atoms or molecules. However we may point the most general consequence of thinking with the concept of organism in physics. It would mean that the very way we explain the behaviour of an atom or of a molecule, for instance, as a function of interactions, is depending on the fact that they succeed enduring. No explanatory concept indeed ever explains an organism, or, in Process and Reality, a society starting from non social terms because their explanatory power depends on the stability of the society they claim to explain. In other words, the possibility to describe and explain something is part of the social achievement, the enduring grasping-together that is an organism. Thus organisms do not obey functional laws, we are commenting in terms of such laws the enduring pattern those organisms succeed in maintaining. This may appear as a play of words when atoms and molecules are concerned, even if it enlightens some limitations, and for instance the very indirect way we are able to characterize events such as chemical reactions. But it dramatically exhibits the high feat we refer to when we speak about a biological function. Here the progress in the description at the molecular level, assigning to particular molecules logical, functional, roles such as activation or inhibition, has been accompanied by a deeper and deeper sense of the bewildering entanglement from which emerges such functions. Some biologists now even propose to reverse the usual course of reasoning. Selective value would be a secondary property. Robustness, that is the emergence of a pattern of functioning able to maintain itself in a changing environment, would come first, would be the primary attainment, as a condition for the creation of a specific biological functional value. This is exactly the kind of guiding abstraction Whiteheadian organism was meant to inspire. As Whitehead wrote, “There is no such thing as mere value. Value is the outcome of limitation. The definite finite entity is the selected mode which is the shaping of the attainment. The mere fusion of all that there is would be the nonentity of indefiniteness. The salvation of reality is its obstinate, irreducible, matter-of-fact entities which are limited to be no other than themselves” (94).

This leads to the second aspect of an organism as a primary natural entity, that is its capacity for affecting its environment.

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“That which endures is limited, obstructive, intolerant, infecting its environment with its own aspects. But it is not self-sufficient. The aspects of all things enter into its very nature. It is only itself as drawing together into its own limitation the larger whole in which it finds itself. Conversely it is only itself by lending its aspects to this same environment in which it finds itself.”

Again, to tell about a molecule or an electron as infecting its environment with its own aspects would appear as a simple play of words even if it may enlighten some very technical difficulties, for instance the problem of what is the true electron: the one with its so-called “naked mass” or the renormalized one with its “physical mass”? Would it help to comment on renormalized particles as drawing together into their own limitation the larger whole in which they find themselves? At least this example may be indicative of what may be a fruitful relation between physics and metaphysics: not at the level of the physicist’s “grand picture” but at the level of the many technicalities needed to articulate the partial theories and produce the rather specious unity of a “vision of physical reality”. However it is again in and for biology that the relevance is clear. Living enduring entities, be them cells, organs or organisms in the usual sense, are not themselves independently of a complex environment they partly shape, upon which they depend but which can also put them at risk. Moreover, when you turn to enduring human institutions or organizations one of the consequences of Whitehead’s concept of the organism becomes particularly thought-provoking. The Whiteheadian organism is a grasping of both what we call its parts and its environment. There is no clear-cut difference between parts and environments as in both cases the grasping draws into its own limitation what it grasps, but also infects it with its own aspects. And in both cases endurance depends on the patience of what is infected with regard to the way it is infected. Let us take an hospital for example. Everybody knows that as soon as you enter an hospital, it is better that you forget the kind of civilized manners you are used to, when outside. It is hard to say if you are now part of the hospital or still part of its environment because even if you are just coming to visit an hospitalized friend, you are prepared to see something you would not accept outside: for instance, doctors or nurses entering a room whenever they like. And if you are a patient, you will accept them discussing about you, in front of you but not with you. The complex enduring pattern we call an hospital selects those aspects of both its environment and its parts that are relevant for its functioning and infects, that is lends its own aspects to, what it draws together in its own limitation.

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But it also depends upon the patience of what it infects. If ever those who are quite rightly called the patients did become impatient, collectively refused to be infected by the hospital pattern and demanded to be treated in a civilized manner, what we call an hospital would not endure, be it for the better but maybe also for the worse. For Whitehead, endurance is a value for the organism, not a transcendent value, and so is impatience, that is for a part or for an environment not to fulfil the role an organism requires it to play in order for this organism to be itself. As Whitehead will state in the new language of Process and Reality, “A new actuality may appear in the wrong society, amid which its claims to efficacy act mainly as inhibitions. […] In other words, the novel fact may throw back, inhibit, and delay” (PR, 223).

Among the environments that may play the demanded role, or disastrously betray the demand of an organism, we should count scientific environments. The problem is well known in biology with the distinction between intrusive and non intrusive methods, the ones that kill what they apply to, and the ones that give access to a living process without destroying it. The same problem has been dramatized with the quarrel between experimental psychology and ethology, when ethologists claimed that the artificial environment meant to make behaviour observable and reproducible was in fact responsible for what was observed, not an animal behaviour but an animal disaster. But social scientists are probably those scientists who most dramatically oscillate between two extremes: either explain what endures as it explains itself, that is being themselves infected, ratifying reasons that are directly derived from the pattern that endures, or resist infection and try and promote the kind of impatience in the environment which would make endurance more difficult. It may be because social sciences do unfold the full questions elicited by the question of what endures that Whitehead, in Process and Reality came to name anything that achieves a measure of endurance a “society”. In this perspective all positive sciences, from physics to sociology, are indeed social sciences. But an other striking difference appears in Process and Reality, which has created difficulties for many Whiteheadian scholars and around which I will now centre my discussion. In Science and the Modern World, organisms are defined as realization, as what is real. But in the speculative perspective of Process and Reality, only something that has got a duration but that does not endure, does not achieve endurance, actual entities or actual occasions, do really exist. Actual entities, not societies, are now the only res verae for Whitehead. In speculative terms, as the ontological principle states, actual entities are the

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only reasons. Worse, “all real togetherness is togetherness in the formal constitution of an actuality” (32), that is of an actual entity. Which means that the enduring grasping together organisms did achieve in Science and the Modern World is dismissed from metaphysical consideration.

5. From Whiteheadian Science to Whiteheadian Metaphysics How to understand this transformation, which signals the transition from Whitehead the reformer of science to Whitehead, the speculative philosopher? A philosopher who aimed no longer at a revision of the abstractions that dominate modern thought, but at the satisfaction of what he considered as the demand proper to philosophy itself. Many tales have been told, and must be told, about this transition. The one I will tell is thus one tale among others, the prime interest of which is to elucidate why Whitehead the metaphysician already appears about the end of Science and the Modern World, in some paragraphs that Lewis Ford has shown to be late additions, and in the chapters named “Abstraction” and “God”. It is as if Whitehead had understood that metaphysics was needed for the very problem of the unity of science he was dealing with in Science and the Modern World. It seems clear, reading Science and the Modern World, that Whitehead first thought that his concept of the organism was meant to be relevant also for psychology as the science of human experience. But it may well be that it is when he turned to psychology, under the guidance of William James, that Whitehead did experience what a famous dictum of Leibniz describes: “I thought I was safely in the harbour and I was rejected in full see”. Indeed, in psychology, organisms, as I have characterized them, are something obviously relevant, but they very directly communicate with the notion of habits. An habit is what is able to endure in changing environments and the disarray you experience when you feel your environment is displaying impatience against your habits, not yielding to them, is a beautiful illustration of the risk, which is part of any organism’s way of being. Also, for William James and the whole Anglo-American tradition, starting from Hume, habits are not something to criticize. They are achievements indeed. However this achievement has a price, that is what abstractions organized around habits abstract away. In particular, what they are bound to abstract away is the thinker, the one who struggles for relevance, against habits of thought. And they can correlatively give no

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meaning to the growth of scientific knowledge as it requires no blind faith, but an aesthetically demanding faith in the order of nature. In Modes of Thought, published in 1938, Whitehead expressed in a free manner his deep-felt conviction about the contrast between animals and men. “In animals we can see emotional feeling, dominantly derived from bodily functions, and yet tinged with purposes, hopes and expression derived from conceptual functioning. In mankind, the dominant dependence of bodily functioning is still there. And yet the life of a human being receives its worth, its importance from the way unrealized ideals shape its purposes and tinge its actions” (27).

For Whitehead the contrast is not between habits and rationality, because what we call reason comes after the entertaining of unrealized possibilities, the importance of which may sometimes dominate the consideration of what is. Whitehead never tires of emphasizing that human experience is not about what first matters for the continuity of our life: “Instead of fixing attention on the bodily digestion of vegetable food, it catches the gleam of the sunlight as it falls on the foliage. It nurtures poetry. Men are the children of the universe, with foolish enterprises and irrational hopes” (30).

Now, it may well be that if sciences stick to their business of understanding the order of nature, this science called psychology has for its fate to deal with habits only, even trying to explain away what brings novelty where habits prevail in terms of other, more fundamental, habits. Foolish enterprises and irrational hopes are indeed primary features of mankind, including reductionist scientists. However I would make the hypothesis that Whitehead could not accept that the kind of abstraction he was proposing would encourage sticking to habits, having enduring order prevail over novelty, all the more so since it would ratify the cut between the order scientists are looking for and the aesthetic ideal their very activity is testifying for. Organisms could not be the last word, even if it is an useful tool for sciences. But giving its full conceptual importance to the fact that if men were not children of hope, there would be no science, meant being rejected at full see: the see of what Whitehead recognized as metaphysics. Indeed the point is not only to recognize the empirical importance of hope or the sense of possibility when humans are concerned, but to create concepts that give an irreducible meaning to the feeling for what may be possible, concepts that make it impossible to reduce this feeling to mere uncertainty plus human illusions. Metaphysics must give the means to

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affirm what the human adventures, of which it is itself a part, require. But possibility cannot come from nowhere. It may well belong to mankind to exhibit the importance of possibility, but to affirm that mankind is the creator of possibility would be to accept dualism. Therefore, everything that exists must be conceived not first as enduring, but as becoming, as the actualization of a potentiality, as making a difference between what could have been, but will not, and what will be. This was what Whitehead tried to do in the two metaphysical chapters of Science and the Modern World. In Process and Reality, when actual entities are the only res verae from the metaphysical point of view, existence and possibility are affirmed together right from the start. One can even say that the very specificity of the abstractions produced by Whitehead metaphysics, in contrast with the abstractions involved in any positive science, is to avoid any consideration privileging actual existence as able to explain itself through its actual effects, or as a function of other actual existences. The whole conceptual scheme is centred around the challenge of having any actual entity conceived as “causa sui”, transforming potentiality into its own actuality, as it decides for itself how it will fulfil its own process of becoming itself. It is important to emphasize that actual entities are metaphysical abstractions: their role is not to give access to a truth which scientific abstractions would miss, but to transform our relation with the specialized modes of abstractions prevalent in current life, in sciences and in philosophy. They are meant to produce coherence, an appetite for relevance and a distrust for the power of explaining away, which is the glory of most scientific abstractions. Their failure would be that they could be used in order to confirm certain types of specialized abstraction against the others. For instance, the Whiteheadian metaphysical term “decision” may well invoke our experience of choosing something while something else would have been possible, or of affirming the importance of possibility in front of what is. But it is not to be confused with freedom as it has sometimes been philosophically defined by the power to decide against good reasons, the very reason of this definition being to assure a sharp, radical opposition with causality as it is associated with the laws of nature. Actual entities have this opposition loosing its grip, and they do not so by some halfway compromise like those of complexity theories, explaining away what appears to be new by concentrating on the surprise of the observer. They do so by exhibiting the false simplicity of the two opposite claims, grounded on the abstractions of freedom and of causality. “How an actual entity becomes constitutes what an actual entity is” (23). With this simple statement, Whitehead overcomes the double simplification hidden by the claim that something is explained by something else, and by

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the claim that a so-called free subject may be the ultimate source and reason for his or her own decisions. Both claims take for granted that it belongs to a cause to define how it will cause while the whole point of actualization is the determination of this very “how”. The becoming of the actual entity is the process of determining how causes will matter. Its experiential analogue is not what we would call a free decision—the fist striking the table—but envisagement, hesitation and concern. Once hesitation is over, it becomes possible to define how the situation came to matter, how the decision was derived from the situation, but before that, we do not lack any knowledge, we do know what should be taken into account. What we do not know is how. Whitehead is thus able to affirm that the decision is causa sui, but also that nothing happens without reason, and further that actual entities are the only reasons. He has just to emphasize that among the actual entities, which are the only reasons, there is the actual entity which is the subject of the process of determination of how other actual entities will contribute to its own being.

6. Understanding ‘Societies’ of Actual Entitities This chapter is about Whitehead and sciences, and I will not therefore dwell upon the process of concrescence of an actual entity. Let us just emphasize the crucial role of “eternal objects” for what concerns unity beyond our oppositions between what can be explained by something else and what is free. Among what Whitehead defined as required by an individual becoming, eternal objects indeed stand in their utter strangeness. We cannot imagine an eternal object, we cannot associate it with a particular experience, but we may define why they are indeed required. They are required in order to deprive any cause of the power to define how it will cause, and more generally to protect any becoming against its reduction to a function of something else. Ingression of an eternal object in a process of concrescence means determination, the determination of how a cause will contribute in the final satisfaction. The fact that Whitehead had to create such a strange metaphysical concept indicates how crucial it was for him to make the difference between production of existence and explanation of something by something else. If eternal objects were not eternal, if they were, one way or another, the outcome of some kind of a process of emergence, there would be a metaphysical possibility to explain the fact of their ingression as a

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function of this process which would be transcending, one way or an other, the individual process of decision. Actual entities would not then be the only reasons, and they would not be causa sui, deciding for themselves and by themselves. They would be explained as aspects of a global emerging evolution. To go on in this direction would mean addressing the difficult subject of Whitehead’s God, and its functioning in relation with eternal objects. My point however is not metaphysics but sciences and I will now turn to the challenge of Whitehead’s position: societies, not actual entities, are what endures, they are the object of sciences but they are also what we designate when we describe ourselves as persons endowed with continuous memory, identity, intentions, hopes or reasons. But they are not res verae, and they are not reasons. Should we say then that all our hopes and reasons are daydreams? Is not metaphysics explaining away what matters in favour of the fictitious entities it invents? Whitehead was a mathematician. Invention for a mathematician is not the destruction of a past definition—here the importance of organism—but its conservation as a particular aspect of a transformed definition, which creates new questions and new relations. Societies conserve organisms as enduring, as achieving endurance. It may even be added that everything that has continuity is to be understood now as enduring, that is, as a social continuation, from individual decision to individual decision. Even what Whitehead calls the extensive continuum, a non metric generalization of space-time assuring the solidarity of all possible standpoints throughout the whole process of the world, is a potentiality, which means that solidarity does not transcend individual decision but must actualized by each new entity as it produces its own situation in relation with what it has got to unify. Any continuity is continuation. That societies are not res verae means that a society is not a reason, has no power to impose its own continuation. It is not a subject, it does not grasp, and no entity obeys a social law. No entity obeys anything. However a decision is always a situated decision, dealing with real potentiality, not an act of abstract omnipotence. Concrescence is not to be identified with the overwhelming task of creating its own unified actual world starting from chaos. What an actual occasion has to decide, as it becomes itself, is rather how it will eventually provide a continuation for what is always a social environment. Continuity means conformation, reiterating the mode of self-determination of others that have already decided for the continuation of some defining characteristic, producing again the relevance of some particular interrelated “how”.

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We may think about a familiar situation when we have to give an interpretation about a situation after many others in a group have already given a convergent same one. Yes we are free, but it is hard to disagree. There is no need to invoke the power of the group, the possibility that a divergent interpretation will result in adverse consequences: it is the situation itself as we perceive it which has been progressively shaped in such a way that the prevalent interpretation appears as the normal, obvious one. We perceive it the way it matters for others, and it may be said in a positive way that we have learned how it did matter, or, in a negative way, that we have conformed. And if the decision is to disrupt the consensus in the making, it may well happen that the group’s interest for the situation will be lost, all the interest being then focused on your “disagreeable “ attitude. Metaphysics, for Whitehead is neutral about the contrast between conformity and non conformity. What it is concerned with is that, when we describe an actual entity, agreement and disagreement, continuation or betrayal of social continuity be put on the same plane, none needing a supplementary explanation, both being equally decisions, none being forced choices. Organisms were meant to unify the multiplicity of our sciences. Societies are meant to elucidate their divergences. And the most important divergence, for Whitehead, concerns living and non living societies. Biology is again at the centre, but no longer as an example of selfsustaining enduring order in nature. The contrast is that while the success of physics designates the dominance of conformity with past decisions, biology deals with beings able to adapt, which means to innovate, to produce original answers to changing conditions. Whitehead wrote that “Life lurks in the interstices of each living cell and in the interstices of the brain” (105-106). In other words life as such is not a defining characteristic of living societies. A living society, as any other societies, “binds any one of its occasions to the line of its ancestry” (104). What is particular with living societies is the possibility for some diverging actual occasions, as they escape the shackle of reiteration from the past, not to be averaged away, dismissed with no consequences. Living societies are structured in such a way that novelty may matter, may induce an enduring social modification. Novelty is thus canalized into originality, but canalization also means that novelty has found a stable, if restricted, expression.

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7. Towards a Unification of the (Social) Sciences? While contemporary biology, as centred around genetic transmission, emphasizes conservation, biological innovation being due to transmission defects, Whitehead thus proposes to see living societies as agencies the very specificity of which is not order as such, but their ability to harbour and canalize novelty into a new order. And now, the connection with psychology is easy. Habits are no longer threatening. We may say that laws of nature, as discovered by physics, are habits indeed, but the distinction that matters, the one because of which actual entities had to be speculatively invented, concerns habits. Physical habits can only endure or disintegrate, living body habits are open to originality. And what we call mental habits may even signify a reversal of importance. The mental habits of a mathematician can be compared to a social order at the service of its own interstices. Originality, in this case, can no longer be interpreted as adaptation, emphasizing continuity through modification. Originality now means adventure, irrational hopes and foolish enterprises. Adventures that may mean disaster, hopes that may be disappointed, and enterprises that may destroy their environment, but that all proclaim that the continuity of conformity has become a matter of speculation and concern, requiring the intense contrast between what is and what may be. For Whitehead the human and social science by excellence was education, the aim of which should be to provide habits of sensitiveness against dead abstractions, that is habits that may be compared with a culture medium for interstices. I named unity through divergence Whitehead’s final answer to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. This is an other way of expressing why societies which different sciences study cannot be res verae, cannot be defined in terms of metaphysical categories. We cannot define a society because what matters is not only the defining characteristic the transmission of which produces social continuity. What matters is the relation between a society and its own interstices, between continuity and the production of the individual which designates the only unitary reality, the reality of any and every actual entity as causa sui, deciding how it will appropriate what its social environment proposes. Any unity among sciences would be a trap because it would downplay the divergences that matter. Physics is doing a perfectly relevant job in privileging conformal transmission, as it is still the case today: whatever the sophistication of contemporary physics, continuity, symmetry and invariance remain central abstractions, abstractions the authority of which cannot however be extended outside their domain of relevance without renewing the fallacy of

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misplaced concreteness. This is the case when biology, in order to conform to physics reduces such features as adaptation to “as if” appearances: biology may be said to recoil in front of the adventure of divergence. Natural selection as a general explanation then separates biology from the adventurous task of learning from the bewildering varieties of the relations living beings entertain among themselves and with their environments, shaping them, making them matter, learning from them. And the result is the production of the deepest obscurity concerning the transition to human experience. The only unity for diverging sciences would then be a nomadic one, refraining from general definitions that dismiss the demanding adventure for relevant empiricism. If nothing may transcend the empirical consideration of what a society makes matter, and how, a same question must be produced again and again, in each case: “what is this being able of?”, “what can it become able of?”

8. Conclusion In a way, what Whitehead proposes could be seen as a generalization of the experimental adventure. Against Aristotle, Galileo did not stop to a generality such as the heaviness of falling bodies, he inquired about details, discovering that through details, through what can be learned from balls rolling down inclined planes, he was able to demonstrate how bodies gain speed while falling. But in contrast with the first experimental sciences, a nomadic experimental science would also be tinged with an ethical concern, because learning what kinds of adventure living, feeling and thinking societies are able to initiate or participate, means also taking some responsibility for the adventures we induce because of the new environment which our questioning and our interest produce. Interstices may mean disaster, but the worse disaster is to avoid such a risk by inhibiting interstices, insisting that true knowledge is knowledge of what is, against the entertainment of what could be. We are responsible anyway. A dramatic exhibition of this responsibility is the creation of those apes who, because of the environment we provide, become able of what looks like talking. Some scientists quite vividly feel the responsibility for these creatures who now require a human environment, because their very existence cannot be disentangled from the human adventure. But psychologists who try and define human experience are responsible as well, when their definitions ratify the power of the environment to define the individual: they allow for the economy of what

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first matters, that is how to empower the diverging adventures of thought and feeling we are individually and collectively able to share. For many decades now, we have heard the complaint that while technical evolution develops at full speed, human societies lag behind, keeping fixed and obsolete habits. I would certainly not state that modern social and psychological sciences bear responsibility for this fact, but I would certainly state that they have not helped as they tried to mimic the so-called objective definitions of physics. It may be that Whitehead proposal, that all sciences are equally social sciences, with no other unity than the challenge of the adventurous entertainment of relevant contrasts between what is and what could be, is what we need today, as much and maybe even much more, than at his time, more that seventy five years ago.

9. References For readers able to manage in French, the themes of this presentation are developed in Stengers Isabelle, Penser avec Whitehead (Paris: Le Seuil, 2002). The genealogical interpretation, emphasizing the transition from organisms to actual entities, has benefited from the analysis of Lewis Ford: The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics, 1925-1929 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984). The mathematical and physico-mathematical aspects of Whitehead conception of the order of nature are beautifully abalysed in Murray Code’s Order and Organism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).

III. Mediating the Divide: Process Philosophy between the Two Cultures Keith Robinson In this chapter I bring together characteristics of the tradition of process philosophy with central elements of the traditions of post-Kantian continental philosophy in the context of their relation to and appropriations of science. I argue that articulating process philosophy, continental philosophy and science together is mutually corrective and offers resources for rethinking the various ‘two cultures’ and ‘bifurcations’ of modernity, bringing the current divisions between the humanities and the sciences into a new relation that lures philosophy and science toward openness, creativity and adventure. Of course neither continental philosophy nor process philosophy can be considered unified traditions. However, I would suggest that two principal ideas enable us to yoke them together: 1) a critique of philosophy in its complicity with the concept of ‘ground’, ‘foundation’ or ‘first principle’( usually as ‘subject’ or ‘substance’ in both traditions); 2) an emphasis on history, time or the ‘temporalization’ of experience as the primary ‘event’ of the real. If these two themes characterize the contemporary traditions of process and continental philosophy their respective approaches to these themes have been, in their fundamental orientations and representative positions, singularly different if not radically opposed. Continental philosophers have typically embraced the condition expressed by the synthesis of groundlessness and immanence, drawing out the extent to which the unique and unrepeatable ‘otherness’ or difference of the real cannot be captured in concepts. This is the well known critique of representation or the problem of the aporetic status of philosophical discourse. On this view philosophy as ‘metaphysics’ is at an end and has been absorbed into science or the philosophical impulse is now thought to be lodged in metaphor and must become the ‘poetry of being’ or an endless folding back upon the ‘undecidable’ nature of thought. The site of ‘philosophy’ is increasingly reduced or even abandoned. In my view

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continental philosophy as it has been generally understood in the 20th century, in its (Heideggerian?) tendency to refuse to engage the sciences as anything other than calculative thinking or as ‘scientistic’ maintains a simple bifurcation of the real that appeals to the ‘essence’, ‘authenticity’ or primordiality of the pretheoretical. In response to the alleged reduction of the ‘life-world’ to a mechanistic system the approach of continental philosophers is to recoil to a position of more or less absolute opposition, approaching the sciences merely as a source of metaphoricity that unworks its own conceptualizing impulse. Modern process philosophy on the other hand emerges, but far less visibly, out of the same Kantian philosophical legacy as continental philosophy and yet is thoroughly conversant with contemporaneous work in the sciences, looking to them for evidence with which one can make ‘imaginative generalizations’ across all experience. Indeed many modern process philosophers contribute to and utilize the data and theories of contemporary science to argue for the replacement of a ‘scientistic’ (ie, a positivistic, deterministic and mechanistic) science with a much more organic, open, complex and indeterminate paradigm. In short contemporary process philosophy has drawn upon science as well as the other disciplines to develop the twin themes of non-foundationalism and temporality without being forced into the ‘either/or’ or ‘blackmail’ of choosing: analytic or continental, science or the humanities, either for enlightenment reason or against it. However, process philosophy has been unclear about the pattern or principles that could be said to characterize the nature and type of processes that one might consider most important and the relations between them.1 Here continental philosophies of difference can help. I suggest that the immanent pattern or logos of process is difference, creativity and self organization and that the relations between processes can be explored by an expanded conception of rationality, whether we call that rationality ‘intuition’, ‘clarificatory remarks’ or, more simply, ‘metaphysics’. These ways of thinking offer opportunities for philosophy to overcome its own ‘two cultures’, eschewing the ‘end of philosophy’ or ‘end of metaphysics’ scenarios that characterized philosophy in the 20th century. In order to support these claims we need to understand something of the history and development of philosophy out of the Kantian legacy from which the philosophies of process and difference both emerge.

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1. Kant’s Legacy Nineteenth, Twentieth and now Twenty-first Century philosophy inherits the legacy of Kant’s ‘critical philosophy’. What divides the post-Kantian legacy is the precise status, meaning and authority of reason. Kant had tried to find an ‘exit’ from the ‘immaturity’ of our condition, balancing out the conflicting demands of scepticism and dogmatism, which meant saving science from scepticism, morality from reason and religion from dogmatism. This prompted a number of responses from post-Kantians. One strand, focussing on the First Critique within the limits of ‘Verstand’ (‘understanding’) and emphasizing the impossibility of synthetic apriori truth, reverts to ‘Hume’s fork’ (either ‘matters of fact’ or ‘relations of ideas’) and continues the enlightenment in the form of psychological empiricism, positivism, and a metaphysical, moral and religious scepticism combined with epistemological naturalism or ‘physicalism’: a ‘mathmaticism’ of concepts and the logicization of experience. Another strand, in tension with the first, focussing on ‘Vernunft’ (‘Reason’) and the more systematic ambitions of the Third Critique, is united by its opposition to the divisions of experience into cognition, morality and aesthetics and attempts to offer a unified, immanent and allencompassing description of the nature of things. This distinction is carried into German neo-Kantianism as a distinction between the Marburg school’s focus on natural science and the South-West German school’s focus on the human sciences. The Marburg school searches for a theoretical language that will describe the objective world of facts, clarifying the properties and relations in this world in accordance with logic, computation and argument.2 By contrast the SouthWest German school that eventually became phenomenology is concerned with the role of ‘intentionality’ and the construction of meaning in understanding experience, how we know ‘facts’ only through their incarnation in languages, cultures, biologies, etc. It is of course predominantly the ‘Marburgers’ who left Germany in the thirties and took up positions in America. These divisions are usually crystallized, so the story goes, on the cusp of the 20th century as a choice between Frege or Husserl. The canonical history of modern philosophy, then, bifurcates into differing philosophical cultures: one ‘empiricist’, ‘scientific’ and ‘positivist’ and seen as committed to upholding the values of enlightenment rationality; the other ‘speculative’, ‘romantic’, ‘literary’ and ‘hermeneutic’ and committed to a critical confrontation with or ‘transvaluation’ of a

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tradition that has delivered us, in one way or another, into crisis; the one an ‘analytic’ philosophy of knowledge and truth, the other a ‘continental’ philosophy of wisdom and meaning (in Modes of Thought Whitehead refers to these as the ‘critical’ and ‘speculative’ traditions divided by ‘The Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary’). The responses to Kantianism, then, gives us the ‘two cultures’ in philosophy, a version of the broader science and humanities separation of CP Snow that could be said to characterise not only the enlightenment legacy but the very structure of ‘modernity’.3 I want to argue that incorporating the complex history of process into this standard story opens up new possibilities for thinking in novel ways about the philosophy/ science relation after Kant. Much of so called ‘continental’ and ‘process’ philosophy can be seen as a series of responses to this legacy of Kant, an effort to unify, bridge or ‘overcome’ the seemingly irreconcilable dualisms of Kantian philosophy. What unites many process philosophers with continental post-Kantians is their opposition to the Kantian divisions of experience and their attempts to offer a unitary and immanent description of the nature of things. For Kant’s immediate successors—Fichte and Hegel—this description entailed the positing of a ground that will unite subject and object in the “identity of identity and non-identity”, whether we call that grounding principle ‘Absolute ego’, ‘I’ or ‘spirit’. However, the originality and significance of process philosophy and philosophies of difference as philosophical contemporaries, I argue, is best seen in relation to the attempt to think the Kantian legacy independently of any grounding principle, identity, metaphysical origin or first cause, form or substance. Developing the Kantian analysis of spatio-temporal extensity as irreducible, as the condition in terms of which things occur, process philosophers push the philosophy of being in the direction of the ‘event’ of its own actualization. In this sense, process philosophy lies in close proximity to the French philosophies of Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. We may gloss the distinctive features of their tradition as the effort to think the conditions of real experience (as opposed to possible experience) in terms of their own self organizing or self actualizing nature. These conditions are variously characterized in this tradition as ‘will to power’, ‘ereignis’, duree, or difference. Process philosophies own primary operative concepts for this thought are ‘creativity’, ‘process’, ‘activity’, ‘stream of consciousness’, etc.

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2. Revisioning the Transcendental Both philosophies can be seen as responding to the Kantian legacy by developing and reworking Kant’s philosophy. Although this is accepted as one part of what makes the continental tradition distinctive it is barely recognized let alone understood within process scholarship. Many simply treat modern process philosophy as a pre-Kantian anachronism that refuses to take the ‘critical turn’. For example, Whitehead’s professed desire to return to pre-Kantian frameworks is seen as evidence of the irrelevance of his work—a sure sign of an outdated metaphysical realism4. However, much of modern process philosophy operates on the premise of a thoroughly adapted, revised and inverted Kantianism. Moreover, this ‘inversion’ of Kant requires reactivating elements of pre-Kantian thought (Hume, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, etc) but within the context of certain crucial Kantian and post-Kantian themes. Rather than any simple rejection of Kant, process philosophy fuses certain themes from rationalism and empiricism with strands from realism and naturalism into a unique form of philosophical analysis that we may variously call critical, immanent or ontological constructivism. It is in these elements of process philosophy that we begin to see a unique philosophical vision, parallel with current strands within French philosophy, and which can only be understood within the context of the Kantian tradition. In this regard, perhaps the most important theme that process philosophers recover from pre-Kantian and Kantian categories and utilize within a post-Kantian context is the theme of the transcendental. In my view the detailed working out of an inverted and revised transcendental philosophy is an essential component of the various projects that make up the philosophies of process. It is this neglected aspect of process thought, we shall argue, that stands as a fundamental conduit—a kind of secret gateway- to contemporary continental philosophy from Derrida’s ‘quasitranscendentals’ to Foucault’s ‘historical transcendental’, Irigaray’s ‘sensible transcendental’ and the ‘transcendental empiricism’ of Gilles Deleuze5. However, unlike the mainstream continental tradition, the historic route of the transcendental in the process tradition is also bound to a philosophy of nature: the transcendental production of nature. In its earliest post-Kantian form modern process philosophy is a transcendental philosophy of nature that attempts to explain the emergence of consciousness as a product of a more constitutive activity or set of temporal processes.

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It is in this element of the Kantian legacy that in general separates the philosophies of process and continental philosophy and acts as a bridge linking process to strands that connect to the analytic and empirical traditions. However, the naturalisms of the process tradition bears little resemblance to any positivistic reductionism, physicalism or unity of science based on logic as a foundation that tends to characterize the analytic traditions. Whitehead’s development from the Principia or the Dewey of Experience and Nature or Peirce in his Collected Papers amongst others could be cited here. On this analysis the position of process philosophy can be seen as an ‘in between’, in a kind of secret alliance with traditions from which both analytic and continental emerge. A synthesis of these traditions with process as a kind of ‘mediator’ or ‘intercessor’ may offer opportunities and resources to transform philosophy, stepping beyond the ‘two cultures’ toward achieving a broader and more productive synthesis.

3. Science and Philosophy It is, then, in their respective responses to the science/philosophy settlement of the Kantian legacy and their revision of the Kantian transcendental that we may find themes that place process philosophy and continental philosophy in direct contrast if not outright opposition. The relation to the natural sciences is crucial here. Contemporary continental philosophers are for the most part deeply informed by the phenomenological tradition— pushing it in one direction or another, radicalizing it, overcoming it, etc. However, the basic thrust of phenomenology is to reconnect consciousness to the natural world which had been split by the modern scientific world view, showing how subjectivity is bound up with the process of objectivity. Indeed, perhaps the constant theme of all phenomenologies is the perceived opposition to and repudiation of science. From the Husserlian claim that science takes ‘for true being what is actually a method’ to Merleau-Ponty’s “phenomenology […] is the rejection of science”, to Heidegger’s infamous ‘Science calculates but does not think” the phenomenological tradition programmes a certain response to science—especially to the project of scientific naturalism conceived in its positivistic and mechanistic forms— that ranges from suspicion to outright rejection. Heidegger is perhaps most influential here linking the ‘end of metaphysics’ and the completion of philosophy to the triumph of science and technology. (Whether such a clear cut opposition to ‘science’ is truly representative of any of these authors is doubtful. However, this is the

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overriding perception and interpretation of their work). Science is here grounded in and finds its conditions of possibility in a pre-theoretical world of human experience, a lived world—‘being in the world’—that has ontological priority over the (albeit very useful) abstractions of science. At best within contemporary continental philosophy the sciences are tapped as systems of metaphoricity that can be transposed to other fields, or as models turned against themselves in order to critically examine and deconstruct their own conceptual frameworks. It is with these types of uses of science that the authors of Fashionable Nonsense6 have so much fun (from Lacan on ‘topology’ to Irigaray’s ‘fluid mechanics’ and Deleuze and Guatttari’s use of ‘fractals’, etc). At worst within the Heideggerian inspired phenomenological traditions the sciences are viewed as instruments utterly tied to ontic realms, enmeshed within systems of power and domination, unable to see beyond their own technological frenzy and completely incapable of accessing the ‘essential’ or the ‘primordial’. Science encounters other entities as ‘presentto- hand’, as sets of quantifiable properties in efficient causal relations without overriding purpose or value. In this view science strips the natural world of ‘meaning’ and presents it as a barren mechanical world of ‘matter in motion’, divorced from human subjectivity, conscious experience and bodily life. The critique of science, here, could be encapsulated in one decisive claim: the inability to think being as time. However, this presupposes a fixed and static view of natural science and its limitations— as if the sciences were inevitably and inescapably bound to mechanistic and reductionist models. Process philosophers—beginning with Leibniz but perhaps in its most recognizably post-Kantian form with Schelling—tie the transcendental to an account of nature that is not mechanistic or reductionist but in complex, active temporal processes of creation of which we are a part. From Enlightenment figures like Diderot with his early doctrine of evolutionary ‘transformism’ and others like De Maillet, Maupertuis and Lamarck with his views on what would now be called ‘punctuated equilibrium’ to Goethe and the German Idealists and Romantics we can see a range of speculative and alternative naturalisms developing that include consciousness and time and oppose static mechanistic and materialistic models of science. It is from this rich pool of evolutionary cosmologies that current process philosophy is formed7. These alternative naturalisms are distinguished by their attention to change, development, becoming and process; the ontological importance of events over an underlying and essentially static substance; a ‘critical realism’ that attempts to show the continuities between subject and object,

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knower and known; and a concept of ‘experience’ as coextensive with nature rather than limited to an arbitrary range of entities. These ideas are carried over into the process traditions post-Kantian forms as various version of the infinite and restless self-activity of Nature that culminates in the production of human consciousness—a kind of proto history or genetic account of consciousness that Hegel would adapt onto a cultural and historical plane. The post-Kantian roots of process, then, branch out into differing and overlapping traditions including the continuation of evolutionary themes through to Darwin and neo-Darwinism; the development of pragmatism as a distinctive philosophy along with new forms of realism; and of course the various Idealisms culminating in Hegelianism. It is of course from a certain ‘anglicized’ or more properly ‘British’ version of the latter that ‘analytic’ philosophy first detached itself. In all of these post-Kantian process traditions there is a more or less concerted effort to bring together natural science and human culture, to ‘naturalize’ the transcendental and enculturate or transcendentalize the ‘natural’. Process naturalism here encompasses a fluid range of ontological and epistemological perspectives that cannot simply be reduced to a single method or approach. Insofar as analytic philosophy is perceived, not just by adherents, but also by continental philosophers as identified with the ‘one’ version of ‘naturalism’ (‘physicalism’) then rich resources for transforming the impasse of analytic and continental are abandoned. With the exception of Deleuze, Latour, Serres, and a handful of heretics, contemporary French philosophers have too often uncritically accepted the phenomenological and Heideggerian caricature of science as instrumental, mathmaticising, reductionist and positivist almost to the point of not requiring philosophical engagement. (Arguably, Derrida is a case in point here). However, the process traditions feed directly into what Prigogine and Stengers have called a “new type of science”8: thermodynamics, relativity theory, quantum mechanics along with chaos theory and the sciences of complexity have broken open the mechanistic conceptions of space and time, of a stable objective world and a neutral observer to reveal “the multiple, the temporal and the complex”. This new scientific paradigm is governed by primciples “such as entropy, evolution, organism, indeterminacy, probability, relativity, complementarity, interpretation, chaos, complexity and self-organization”. In short, this new paradigm is ‘temporalized’ or attempts to think being with time. This emerging paradigm offers, then, a new set of powerful assumptions about the world, complete with strategies of investigation and suggestions for interpreting the results of these investigations. In other words, a set of metaphysical

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claims and assumptions that offer new possibilities to understand experience.

4. A New Metaphysics That process philosophy is capable of providing a metaphysics for these sciences—a metaphysics that critically and creatively engages these new sciences—is clear. Without this metaphysics science “would remain abstract, deprived of meaning or intuition”9. Post-phenomenological philosophy can also contribute to this task. Such a task, I suggest, would represent an attempt to develop a new kind of transcendental philosophy that fuses a conditions analysis with a philosophy of being as act. However, although the post-phenomenolgists purge the transcendental of the phenomenological tendency to tie it to a subjective reference or anchor it in consciousness such that the transcendental, in one way or another, mirrors the empirical (what one philosopher call ‘transcendental—empirical doubling’) this too often remains within a negative, ‘deconstructive’ or ‘aporetic’ movement obscuring the positive sense in which difference is the primary process in the self-actualization of the real. Placing difference at the heart of process in this sense offers an opportunity to provide a new metaphysics in parallel with the transformations of science that takes us beyond the two cultures. Philosophies of process and difference respond to the Kantian legacy in ways that can be fused at the level of a new metaphysics that places science and philosophy in a transformed relation. Process philosophers respond to the bifurcations of reason through the development of what we might call a Koalitionsystem, a paradoxical conjunction or coalescence of realism and idealism, empiricism and naturalism that attempts to reconcile the dualisms bequeathed by Kant, thereby overcoming the ‘doubles’ of modern philosophy and radically refusing the either/or structure of its predominant positions. For process thought this requires bringing together the disconnected strands of modern philosophical culture (rationalism and empiricism, subject and object, science and philosophy, etc) by refusing the ‘for or against’ alternatives of modernity. (What Foucault called the ‘blackmail’ of the enlightenment). In this regard, process texts often operate with something like the thought of ‘inclusive disjunction’, a constructive synthesis or coalition that functions as an affirmation of the ‘both/and’ in an effort to, as Whitehead says, ‘bring together the two streams [science and philosophy] into an expression of the world picture derived from science, and thereby end the

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divorce of science from the affirmations of our aesthetic and ethical experiences’ (SMW 156). To this end, the coalition of process philosophy involves a recurrence to pre-Kantian metaphysical ideas (especially breaking with cognition as principle of analysis) within a distinctively postKantian transcendental framework, effectively reinserting the ‘critical’ tradition into a uniquely speculative and naturalistic scheme but on the basis of a novel and distinctive constructive or speculative realism. Constructive or speculative realism, here, is not to be confused with any concept of correspondence, mediation, representation or identity. Rather, the real is directly given in experience, but an expanded and purified experience as wide as the cosmos and immanent only to its own groundless actualizations. This is, as Donald Sherburne would say, a conception of experience that will enable us to do justice to human beings as a part of our twenty first century vision of nature10. Contemporary philosophies of process do not so much generalize from this experience but seek out the conditions immanent to its production. However, these are not the universal and necessary conditions of all possible experience but the contingent and singular self actualizing conditions of real experience. This moves the overall structure of process thought in the direction of what Schelling called ‘superior empiricism’, what James called ‘radical empiricism’ and what Deleuze calls ‘transcendental empiricism’. These positions effectively synthesize strains from the various traditions into a metaphilosophical vision, a vision of philosophy as itself a power or force of life that operates through creation, process and difference.

5. Conclusion Eschewing the ‘end of philosophy’, ‘end of metaphysics’ scenarios that characterized philosophy in the 20th century, philosophy as process and difference offers a new or revised metaphysics that positively engages the insights of science in productive syntheses of logic and speculation, concept and metaphor. In this view the nature of philosophy and philosophizing itself is perhaps best understood as an ongoing interaction of different transformative processes that cannot be identified with or reduced to one image of what philosophical thinking is. Philosophy becomes an adventure of ideas that involves freeing thought from any fixed image so that it may participate in its own ‘becoming’, ‘creative advance’ or difference. Philosophy retains its specificity as conceptual creation responding to the ever changing problems of reality.

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Notes 1. Nicholas Rescher’s Process Metaphysics (SUNY, 1996) could serve as a good introduction to some of the issues here. See especially chapters 3&4 on process particulars and universals. 2. See Michael Friedman’s Parting of the Ways (Open Court, 2000) for an analysis of developments within German neo-Kantianism emerging in the context of the work of Carnap, Cassirer and Heidegger. 3. Simon Critchley has developed this argument in his Continental Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001). 4. James Bradley is the outstanding exception to this. See his “Transcendentalism and Speculative Realism in Whitehead”, Process Studies, V23, issue #3 (Fall, 1994). 5. In several papers I have elaborated this claim in relation to Deleuze and Whitehead (“The New Whitehead? An Ontology of Virtual in Process and Reality”, Symposium, V10, issue#1, 2006) and, in a different context, in relation to Foucault (“An Immanent Transcendental. Deleuze, Foucault and Critical Philosophy”, Radical Philosophy, 141, Jan/Feb, 2007). 6. Jean Bricmont & Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense, (Picador, 1999). 7. See George Lucas’, Genesis of Modern Process Thought: An Historical Outline With Bibliography, (Scarecrow Press, 1983). 8. Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos, (Flamingo, 1985). 9. Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, p. 116, (Zone Books, 1988). 10. Donald Sherburne, Presidential address to the Metaphysical Society of America, Vanderbilt University, March 12, 1994. Review of Metaphysics, 48 (September 1994), pp. 3-17.

IV. From Grown Organism to Organic Growth Michel Weber Koyré1 has depicted with great maestria the move from the Greek closed World to the Modern infinite Universe. The purpose of this chapter is to complement his analysis with a sketch of the conceptual move from Greek to Whiteheadian organicism in the context of the discussion of the question of the interaction between science and philosophy. Unsurprisingly, the great absentee in Koyré—time—receives here a special attention.

1. Prolegomena William James has claimed that “the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”2 Perhaps that the scholar who can only pretend to be on the path towards some (most probably) lower form of wisdom should be satisfied with suggesting what ought not to be overlooked. By doing so, this scholar would basically accept the fate of reason, hoping that it will be replaced sometimes by the fate of intuition. Hoping, in other words, that second-hand experiences will be superseded by a first-hand experience. This is pure James, of course, but—as we will shortly see—this theme goes at least as far back as Plato's treatment of the concept of theoria within a rational philosophical framework. To make sense of the history of the interaction between science and philosophy, it is impossible to overlook its double historical genesis: Greek and Renaissance. In envisaging these two roots, the present chapter intends to be more speculative than strictly speaking historical: we plan to weave together the major concepts that have paved the way for Whitehead's dialogue with science rather than depicting the historical context of the classical period in and for itself.3

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2. Paideia To understand science is to rediscover the Greek episteme; and to understand Greece is to understand paideia. Unfortunately, the Greek word “paideia” does not allow a straightforward translation in English. Each language has of course its candidates (e.g., Heidegger argues for Bildung), but there is no need to examine these controversies here. As usual with polysemic terms, the trick is to make sense of its entire semantic nebula, i.e., to find its focal point, to revive the experience it embodies. The concept of paideia (that literally means childishness) corresponds mainly to the idea of culture, of civilization, but not in a static way (the way of tradition): it is a matter of a deliberate pursued ideal and of the conditions of possibility of its actualization, the main one being: education—the moulding of all citizens by ideals, i.e., by values.4 Paideia is a living ideal that is kept active by education and that nurtures education. This feedback loop is foundational of the Hellenocentric Weltanschauung. The Greek mind is political. All Seven Wise Men were legislators and most philosophers have worried about “politics”: at one point or another of their conceptual journey, they became concerned with the definition of the best political regime, the one that would bring internal harmony (which does not necessarily mean equality) within the State as well as external harmony with Nature. Greek philosophy raised the question of the human dwelling in the world and did so in continuity, first with mythological patterns (the archaic theogonies5), and former with the State-religion. From the perspective of that semantic quest, we claim that arche and theoria impose themselves as the two main functors through which paideia could bind together the mesocosm (the City-State or polis) and the micro/macrocosm (Nature or physis).

3. Arche The concept of “arche” is also semantically very rich. The locus classicus is Aristotle's Metaphysics
that underlines mainly the following meanings: Principle, Source, Origin, Spring, Beginning or starting point (both of the knowledge and of the movement), (first) Cause of all manifestation. Its foremost semantic area lies in the natural dynamism of the world: it designates what bursts forth (phuein), arises, is born (cf. the medieval natura), i.e., the primordial upspringing energy shaping the world. But it

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has also a more static meaning: the total of all existents and the “place” of genesis of all phenomena. As a matter of fact, the question of the source or principle of all things/events has put the philosophical entreprise into motion. Since the arche provides the foundations of the world as we know it—physical and political—, it constitutes the standards (the archetypes) by which the citizen of the State (polites)—who is also a citizen of the world (cosmopolites)— ought to live. In other words, its two basic semantic realms are scientific and political. On the one hand, archeo-logy deals with the origination of natural phenomena (while natural things are what they are because they cannot be otherwise); on the other, it deals with nomothetical origination by the higher magistrates—the archontes—(while political things are as they are because they have been made that way). Nomos is the complementary key we will encounter again in the course of our argument.

4. Theoria The theoria of Greek philosophy was deeply and inherently connected with the concept of arche for it embodied one aspect of the rational foundation of the world; more precisely (as the etymology implies) it named the archic vision, the vision which apprehends the Whole, the vision which envisions the idea. It names the clear intellectual perception of the permanent rules which underlie all events and changes in nature and in human life. The dynamic dimension of the arche is here tamed: its is the arche qua eternal essence, suressential plenitude. Plato makes it akin to contemplation in the mystical sense of the word. Finally, let us notice that the meaning of theoria we have just introduced constitutes its private significance; the collective one is religious in the social sense: it names the religious processions that were punctuating the City's life. Now, the manipulation of the concept of theoria has to be cautious because of its dualistic trend. The two-world theory depends upon the categories of the bios politikos in the following way: on the one hand, the embodied individuals are physically independent; on the other hand, qua rational individuals, they share one common logos and city. Jonas soundly claims (and perhaps directly inspired by his reading of Whitehead) that “the mind has gone where vision pointed”6: the metaphor of vision imposes the idea of a spectator-subject factually unaffected by the scenery or by visceral awareness. Jonas identifies its three main dimensions: simultaneity of the data presented (instant-like coordinated picture); neutralisation of the causality of sense-affection (frozen, non-relational, perspective);

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distantiation in the spatial and mental senses (objectivity; totally passive onlooker independent of all mundane contingencies). In order to avoid these undiserable connotations it is thus advisable to consider the private philosophical meaning of theoria in connecton with the idea of a holistic contact rather than holistic vision.7 And the quest it names holds furthermore a holistic transfigurative virtue: it is through theoretical reason that meaning is personally encountered and that one’s destiny can be bent.

5. Synthesis So far we have claimed that paideia should be interpreted as the intersection of two complementary planes: physis/polis-nomos defines the common environmental plane and arche/theoria defines the individual kathartic plane. The common plane is synchronic, it encourages an ahistorical and analogical understanding of the relationship between the human mesocosm and the natural micro/macrocosm. The individual plane is diachronic, it represents the individual development from the understanding of the genetic principle towards the contact with the eternal principle. One recognizes two requirements: on the one hand, the necessary concrete aim of scientific inquiry, the need to bathe oneself in experience; on the other hand, the abstracted goal. Ultimately, it is a matter of becoming a genuine human being (a phronimos) acting for the better of the State because he (no she was envisioned here) was born anew to truth. The free citizen should be liberated as well from a destinal standpoint. These principles are described a ‘pictorial paideia’ in Figure 1 below.

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6. Science and Philosophy in Greek Culture The tension between arche and theoria puts into motion paideia and, thereby, makes vivid both the belonging of human beings to their world and specifies the way in which they differ from the other forms of life. It is an organic scientific philosophy, a togetherness of beings and of gnoseological fields, that is promoted by paideia. The cosmos is understood as an organic Whole, an intelligent Being (cf. the Timaeus8) that is also a finite Being, i.e., a closed World: Geo-anthropo-centrism went hand in hand with cosmos understood qua well-structured (welldifferentiated) totality where the laws of the supralunar cannot be the ones of the mundane Coming-To-Be and Passing-Away. And it is not just a matter of spatial closedness, but of temporal closedness: time is cyclical or circular, eternally locked upon itself. The previous section laid the basis for understanding the togetherness of beings; let us now unfold the togetherness of gnoseological fields and hence show its global impact on the interplay between science and philosophy.

7. Fourfold of science, philosophy, religion and politics Through the togetherness of the individual (arche/theoria) and collective (physis/polis) planes, paideia bound all four main dimensions of human beings' business in the world: science, politics, philosophy and religion. Science and philosophy were at that time primarily (although not exclusively) an individual commitment while politics and religion were most definitively communal realities (the latter being necessarily embedded in the former). From the perspective of our prolegomenal concepts, we can envision the community of the four disciplines in the following way: science is the quest of the arche in the physical realm; politics is the quest of the arche (here: nomos) in the political realm; philosophy is lured by the transfigurative contact with the ultimate physical reality; religion is embodied in the common theoria of priests and dignitaries. We now need to dig further in order to show that paideia's dialectic is, at a deeper level, strictly dependant on two presupposed correlated living realities: the cosmos and the logos.

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8. Cosmos “Cosmos” gathers also a wealth of meaning, philosophical or otherwise: ornament, (heavenly) order, world or universe, ordered and harmonious system. That double fourfold community of principles and disciplines— animated by the well embedded idealistic paideia—receives its foundations from the Greek cosmic evidence. Nature and the State are fundamentally cosmic: they are (or ought to be) a rather strictly ruled totality. One is the macro-cosmos, the other is its micro-reflection. Stability is the built-in feature. Sense-perception discloses of course major and continuous changes in our environmental landscape, but structure is first and changes are (most of the time) pure exemplifications of structure. This paideia unification is presented as Figure 2 below; it brings us irresistibly to the topic of logos.

Figure 2

9. Logos Logos is also a term cristallizing a very complex semantic nebulae—to name a few of them: Word, Speech, Story, Language; Debate, Thesis,

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Argument; Intelligibility, Cause, Reason, Truth; Measure, Relation, Correspondance; Balance, Harmony; Reckoning, Proportion; Common element of arrangement; Ratio; Law… All things are united in a coherent (rational) complex of which humans themselves are fully part. In one sentence: human rationality and natural rationality are one—one matches the other, there is a rational transparency. One Law pervades everything. The consequences are immediate: the individual diachronic plane, the collective synchronic plane and their paideian synergy receive a remarkably steady foundation. Since there is such a thing as a universal architechtonic logos, it makes sense to educate the youth to find it in the germinating concreteness of events and to contemplate it in the purity of their minds. The analogy between the political rule (nomos) and the natural rule (physis) is furthermore straightforwardly reinforced and the convergence between the two axes occurs without effort. This is not simply the outcome of an “instinctive faith” (when Whitehead discusses this issue, he has in mind Santayana's “animal faith”). There is a cosmic unity of all things because of the permanent rules which underlie all events and changes in nature and in human life. Wisdom consists in understanding the Logos in things, and consequently in embodying measure (i.e., in refusing dysharmony and hubris).

10. Change qua Trans-formation Since change occurs within a cosmos, a pre-given, closed—anhistorical is not atemporal—, ordered Totality, no cosmic growth (hylogenesis) is thinkable: change exhausts itself in (can be understood only by) kinesis (movement that presupposes the essential continuity of the mobile as subjectum) and morphogenesis (generation/corruption by trans-formation). In other words, all events occur in closed circuit; Pre-Plotinian Greek thought, whatever the appearances are, remains fully immersed in nature; it is purely horizontal.9 This is its strength, but also its weakness: on the one hand, the double fourfold community of principles and disciplines solidly anchors human beings within a living Totality, factually restricting its dualistic trend; on the other hand, it has proven to be difficult to discover meaning in a closed world—not because of the incoherence or inapplicability of such a worldview (although the case of katharsis, as we have tried to build it here, is probably borderline), but because we do live in a historical pluri-verse.

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11. Science and Philosophy in Modern Times Whitehead is probably the first philosopher to have framed a strong argument for the importance of the theological foundations of Renaissance science. In Greece, no reason is given for the logics of our natural world; it is just the way things happen to be. When Christianity systematically established its faith upon a reliable dogma (the credo has for sure a complex history of stratification but this fact does not question the intuition at stake here), it gave a reason for the mundane logics: God the creator has built his creation on rational granite. According to SMW12, the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement [is] the inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the imagination, which is the motive power of research:—that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted on the European mind? When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilisations when left to themselves, there seems but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality. Remember that I am not talking of the explicit beliefs of a few individuals. What I mean is the impress on the European mind arising from the unquestioned faith of centuries. By this I mean the instinctive tone of thought and not a mere creed of words. In Asia, the conceptions of God were of a being who was either too arbitrary or too impersonal for such ideas to have much effect on instinctive habits of-mind.

A certain reading of the Scriptures has given to men the stewardship of the created world and the Renaissance interpreted this as the explicit mandate to develop technoscience. In the light of the current socio-ecological disaster, this brings the immediate question: why have narratives of world ownership and destruction played such a large part in Western religious consciousness?10 For instance, Locke's Second Treatise itself does not hesitate to refer to this unfortunate socio-theological construction to justify

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private property (cf. his chap. V), paternal power (chap. VI) or even war (chap. XVI). We can't develop this crucial question here, nor peruse the steps that lead from the Greek organic but closed world to the Renaissance mechanical but open world (supernaturalistic dualism, naturalistic dualism and naturalistic materialism). It is more urgent to disclose how Whiteheadian organic philosophy inherits from both pictures in promoting an organic but open world, viz the world qua growing organism.

12. Science and Philosophy in the Philosophy of Organism Whiteheadian organic philosophy exploits a two-fold vision: one the one hand it is a Philosophy of Organism proper (Whitehead does not speak of “process philosophy”11); on the other hand, it promotes the creative advance of nature, i.e., its complete openness. It is a matter of organic growth treated conceptually (for the sake of the quality of experience) and logically (for the sake of quantitative dimensions of experience).12 From a historical perspective, this hybrid dimension makes it akin to the most promising characteristics of, respectively, Greece and Renaissance. On the one hand, the atomic mechanicism of Modern science understood the Universe as a lifeless machine secured by external relations (basically allowing and requiring the fragmentation of gnoseological fields) and carved by a rational creator. Whitehead's organic vision fosters a nondualistic worldview that is obtained from the togetherness of all beings and that furthermore promotes the solidarity of all gnoseological fields. On the other hand, Whitehead inherits from Bruno and Darwin the destruction of the cosmos (i.e., the opening of the world) and the geometrization of space (i.e., its homogenisation). Helio-cosmo-centrism institutes an infinite mechanical universe, free from the Aristotelian hierarchy (i.e., topology) of natural laws. This section will show how Process and Reality seals, so to speak, this openness with the category of the Ultimate. Let us now peruse Whitehead's treatment of the four steps used to depict the Greek Weltanschauung: (i) change in an open universe is no more simply trans-formative, it is percolative; (ii) the architectonic logos is now bridled by non-rationality; while (iii) the closed cosmos is replaced by an open chaosmos; (iv) as a result, Whiteheadian organicism goes back, beyond Modern bifurcation, to a reformed gnoseological fourfold.

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13. Change qua Percolation Whitehead it clear repeatedly that speculative philosophy has to tackle— one could almost dare to add once and for all—the question of the conditions of possibility of real becoming. To give to an eternal matter a new formal coating is not enough. The crux of his argument is made in Process and Reality, where he claims that “all things flow” is the first vague generalization which the unsystematized, barely analysed, intuition of men has produced. […] Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system. […] The elucidation of meaning involved in the phrase “all things flow,” is one chief task of metaphysics. (PR208)13

Although the ultimate is process-like, Whitehead is very prompt to add that there is a rival notion, antithetical to the latter. I cannot at the moment recall one immortal phrase which expresses it with the same completeness as the alternative notion has been rendered by Heraclitus. This other notion dwells on permanences of things—the solid earth, the mountains, the stones, the Egyptian Pyramids, the spirit of man, God. (PR208)

One recognizes here the bold Parmenidian claim: [The One is] ungenerable and imperishable, unshakable, neither was nor will be since it is whole now, either perfectly whole or not at all; equally poised from the center in every directions. (Parmenides in Diels/Kranz, B8)

So, the goal of the philosophy of the organism is to overcome the most fundamental antinomy of all times: being and becoming. Furthermore, on the occasion of the Symposium given in honor of his seventieth birthday, Whitehead insists that these two apparently antithetical notions have to be dialecticized with the help of a third one—perishing—borrowed from Plato and Locke and reconciled with Aristotle: Philosophers have taken too easily the notion of perishing. There is a trinity of three notions: being, becoming, and perishing. Plato states the question (Plato raises all fundamental questions without

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answering them) by introducing the notion of that which is always becoming and never real. The world is always becoming, and as it becomes, it passes away and perishes. Now that notion of perishing is covered up as a sort of scandal. […] That is one key thought around which the whole development of Process and Reality is woven.14

In other words, we need to throw light on the mysterious way the Ultimate operates to generate the One from the Many, and to clarify how and why the One perishes and thereby returns to the Many. It is a two-fold process that brings change into the World wherever it settles. According to the categoreal scheme: The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the “many” which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive “many” which it leaves, it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesizes. The many become one, and are increased by one. (PR21)

Beings are the Many, becoming is the One, perishing is the topling of the One among the Many. This bare principle receives in Process and Reality's Parts III and IV a skilled categorialization in terms of concrescence/genesis and transition/morphology. In Greece everything changes and nothing really becomes; genuine novelty is impossible. According to the epochal theory, everything becomes and nothing changes; genuine novelty is the rule: “nature is never complete”, “it is always passing beyond itself”. The epochal theory grants the irruption—the budding—in the world of totally new features: if not axiologically, at the very least topologically. The creative advance garantees in principle that new intensities and new values are reached in new actualities, but it is never a certainty. It is certain, however, that the locus of the new concrescence (the “proper region”, i.e. the occupied region, of the extensive continuum categorialized in Part IV) will never be the same twice. We live, so to speak, in a Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe.15 In sum, the overall picture is percolative: the budlike concrescing actuality constitutes a new experiential togetherness that occurs as a Whole (totally or not at all, as Whitehead claims after James of course, but also after Parmenides, Plato, Leibniz16…); when it has achieved its process, it perishes, i.e., loses its immediacy and stricto sensu its epochality (it can be now prehended by parts), making irruption into the world.

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14. Non-Rationality In this reformed organicism, non-rationality contrasts with the allembracingness of logos; it means that natural laws are but processual habits of the world, their fitness with human rationality is purely local, indeed pragmatic. This is a necessary consequence of the percolation of real novelty in the world: if totally new features are percolating, they can't be foreseen; as a matter of fact, even contemporary actualities have no access to each other's processes of concrescence. Consequently, at first sight, the archic quest (the quest for the principle) seems to be useless at best and misleading at worst. At the same time, only consequences seem thinkable (this constituting a weaker version of the Greek theoretical wager), but there are two ways of refining the concept to suit the new process paradigm. On the one hand, one can speak of an antifoundational arche to signify, first, that the arche is not one or so to speak “standing” and, secondly, that the process of phenomenalization is not a bare unfoldment of pre-existing essences. The arche is many and “growing” while phenomenalization is creation. It is also advisable to envision the arche qua excluding limit [Schranke] (i.e., qua mile-stone that minimally specifies the Ultimate while preserving it from the corset of human pragmatic rationality) rather than qua boundary [Grenze] (i.e., qua terminating limit that prevents rationalization).17 On the other hand, the cognitive opacity that accompanies this nonrationality can be de facto mastered from the standpoint of everyday life: Meso-logos (remember Reichenbach's Spencerian concept) and transfiguration can thus remain a sure flag of the actual philosophical goal.

15. Chaosmos As a result, the concept of cosmos is to be replaced by the concept chaosmos (which we owe to J. Joyce and which was former championed by G. Deleuze and F. Guattari) understood as an organic and growing Totality. We live in a partially ordered world where stability is earned over creative process, where stability never has the last word. The concept of cosmos goes hand in hand with the logical transparency of its various transformations; the concept of chaosmos spells out the an-archic dimension of

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its percolative processes. This provides us with an amended paideia, presented as Figure 3 below. Antifoundation and consequentialism, taken under the modalities suggested supra, still grant a relativized transfigurative/kathartic personal trajectory, but they do so in a completely different environment. From a Whiteheadian perspective, of primary importance is of course the renewal of the community of gnoseological fields that is sketched in our next section—but, as a matter of fact, this togetherness is not necessarily promoted by the general chaosmotic framework. As Cobb and Griffin have underlined again and again, postmodernism has been so far semantically destructive. So the main differential axis between Greek and Whiteheadian organicism is actually the common plane, that is no longer materialized by the physis/polis binomial but rather by the creativity/anarchy one (rather than creativity/representative democracy). Nature and the City have now to be understood through their chaosmosis (cf. Guattari and Deleuze). Interestingly enough, the common projective point of the two centers of the reformed common plane (creativity/anarchy) is—for better and for worse—the idea of progress or unbounded improvement (of individuals and societies alike) that, its eschatological origins put aside, was brooding in the Dutch Republic (1579–1632), got expressed especially by Priestley (1771), was then fully specified by Condorcet (1793) and eventually sanctified by Spencer (1855) and Darwin (1859).18 Creativity—and the free rational subject—lie now at the heart of humans' existence and this has necessarily a strong impact on how society has to be thought: there has to be some form of enhanced bottom-up capillarity; the social order cannot be given anymore from above, once and for all. (There is a paper to be written on the exact impact the idea of progress had on Whitehead's concept of creative advance: he obviously takes it for granted but his vision is far more general.) Let us resume our argument.

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Figure 3 On the one hand, the wherabouts of the open world are best seen through the lens of the “Category of the Ultimate”, which basically promotes the ceaseless occurrence of genuine novelty in the World—especially of course in its higher grade actualities such as human beings. It could be furthermore argued that all events, all beings, all principles… are either characters or instances of creativity (creativity being the core of the “Category of the Ultimate”). Qua ultimate, creativity is all-embracing, omnipresent; nothing past, present or future escapes its grip: Whitehead's worldview really deserves to be called pancreativist. On the other hand, we owe the concept of democracy, imperfect as it is, to Solon's agrairian reform (circa 593 BCE), to its consequent radicalization by Pericles (circa 460 BCE), and its former redefinition by Locke's Second Treatise (1690)—in dialogue with Hobbes' Leviathan (1651). Three quick historical reminders are in order here. The Greek democratic ideal, however beautiful in its intrinsic coherence and factual cultural realisations, was still-born because of its structural oppression of the non-citizens: according to current estimations, the total population of fifth-century Athens was around 250,000 (men, women and children, free and unfree, enfranchised and disenfranchised), out of which 30.000 were citizens per se (adult males of Athenian birth) while perhaps only 5000 were regularly attending the meetings of the popular Assembly.19 Now, Solon's foundational reform, tame as it might have been in practice, was

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theoretically quite subversive: it was aiming at obliging citizens to think and thereby to make them realize that a few of them were endowed with an illigitmate power while all the others were, volens nolens, supporting their own servitude.20 This constitutive blindness (that Bourdieu called “symbolic violence”) ought not to be forgotten in critical times such as ours. In order to foster a synergy between individual freedom and common wealth in far bigger (and uneducated) political entities than the City-State, Locke laid the basis of the XVIIth century parliamentary system, precisely when nascent technoscience was under the spell of Newton's works (the Princicipa date of 1687). In light of the present radical desintegration of the political sphere, one can however wonder if modern political institutions per se have ever been the theatre of any serious harmonisation of social tensions. The ruling classes have indeed always been well represented in all the centers of decision, but it is doubtful that the lower social strata were loyally served by their representatives—or, at the very least, that they were taking the lead (Jean Jaurès being a notable exception). In the late XIXth and early XXth centuries, the living strength of Western societies shown great readiness to fight, but their instances were not strictly speaking political: they were pressure groups such as denominational workers associations and trade-unions (that are legal only since 1824 in the U.K. and 1901 in France). As hinted above, this is less caricatural that it may seem when we consider the current absence in most political arenas of any willingness to promote the much needed alternative to neoliberalist ideology, while this willingness abounds among pressure groups of all sorts.21 If political circles were ever animated by some form of democratic ideal, they have become the vulgar mouthpiece of the corporate ownership of the planet. Solon urged Athenians to think; economical and political leaders aim nowadays at the obliteration of all signs of thought in the social tissue or in institutions of higher education, for that matter. More and more, they intend to rule by cupidity or greed if possible and by fear if necessary. Indeed, at this hour, most Westerners have a life that is far more civilized than it used to be: solitary, rich, nasty, brutish, and long. And it is not the announced bio- and nano-technological (indeed Drexlerian) breakthroughs that will bring much hope for an atrophied democracy.

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16. Destruction of the modern Bifurcation of the Fourfold The main modes of the Whiteheadian “bifurcation of nature” are wellknown: the Subject / Object dualism (encouraged by materialisitic substantialism and its instrumental external relationships, themselves rooted in simple location, which is—in Whiteheadian parlance—nothing less than an instance of the fallcacy of misplaced concreteness), the antagonism between cognitive territories (philosophy, science, religion…), the Krisis made famous by his German colleague (the obliteration of the world of life by the world of science) and, within philosophy itself, the sharp distinction between specialized disciplines (epistemology, ontology, ethics…) that apparently do not necessarily need to be compatible anymore. One should add Bourdieu's antinomy between scholarship and commitment: scholars are urged, for the sake of the objectivity of their works, not to participate in the social life—especially if this would lead them to scandalously denounce the current cultural misery and its blatant ideological manipulations. All these modes are methodically revoked by Whitehead, who argues that there should be no “watertight compartments” between beings/events or gnoseological fields. Togetherness, whether ontotological or gnoseological, is not wishful thinking for him. Science, politics, philosophy and religion cannot be set aside if meaning is to be preserved. In his philosophical publications, Whitehead was especially interested in the feedback loop existing between science and religion22, but this does not involve that politics is to be treated differently. Whitehead was no doubt less daring in his political explorations (Religion in the Making even features some puzzling colonialist remarks…), but this does not mean that Whiteheadians should be.

17. Conclusion This chapter intended to exploit both the proximity and remoteness of Whitehead to the general speculative trend that was embodied in classical Greece in order to sketch the broad context of the interplay between science and philosophy in (post-)modernity. Most commentators have been tempted by the promotion of some form pan-adjectivation of the philosophy of organism: Hartshorne talked of panpsychism and

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panentheism, Griffin argues for panexperientialism and pantemporalism, Lowe maintains panvaluism and this chapter suggests the relevance of the concept of pancreativism… This is a sure sign of the ambiguous relationship that binds Whitehead and most Greek thinkers: on the one hand, there is a common holism, perhaps even some shared form of hylozoism (according to which matter itself is alive); on the other hand, the sharp reader will not find traces of panpsychism or animism in the philosophy of organism. The necessarily large brush strokes used here to depict the formation of the modern worldview out of a past that was both, so to speak, organically closed and mechanically open, leave us at a bifurcation point (no pun intended but appropriate) that is dramatically epitomized in two of Aldous Huxley's (1894–1963) most inspiring works: Brave New World (1932) and Island (1962). Postmodern society will either desintegrate the meager social advances that are implemented in the “first world” at the price of a total predation of the rest of the planet, or—pushed by stubborn facts—take a major turn in the direction of a holistic culture integrating the best of technoscience and spirituality. Such seems the price to pay for a meaningful worldview. It is about time that intellectuals recognize it. And act accordingly.

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Notes 1

Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957. The author wishes to acknowledge the feedback received from Bruce Duncan MacQueen and Anderson Weekes in polishing his argument. 2

William James, The Principles of Psychology [1890]. Authorized Edition in two volumes. Volume Two, New York, Dover Publications, 1950, p. 369. 3

Werner Wilhelm Jaeger, Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen, Berlin und Leipzig, Walter De Gruyter & Co., 1936. We use the second edition of the excellent translation supervised by the Author (1888– 1981), who taught at Chicago during the years 1936–1939 and later at Harvard (1939–1958): Paideia. The Ideals of Greek Culture. Volume I. Book I, Archaic Greece; Book II, The Mind of Athens. Translated from the Second German Edition by Gilbert Highet (OUP, 1939); Volume II, In Search of the Divine Centre. Translated from the German Manuscript by Gilbert Highet (OUP, 1943); Volume III, The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in the Age of Plato. Translated from the German Manuscript by Gilbert Highet (OUP, 1944). 4

Werner Wilhelm Jaeger, Paideia, Introduction and passim.

5

Cf. Hans Blumenberg, Luc Brisson, Francis MacDonald Cornford, Raffaele Pettazzoni, Jean-Pierre Vernant… 6

Jonas, 1966

7

This reading has offered a direct access to Christian speculation to take over Plato's dialectic for apologetic purposes. There is no need to enter into this debate here, but we have to notice that the Medieval appropriation of the concept of theoria has led some contemporary scholars to cast doubt on the “mystical” assessment of the concept. As usual in dogmatic matters, one extreme tends to argue with another extreme. 8

Cf. e.g. Luc Brisson, Le même et l'autre dans la structure ontologique du Timée de Platon. Un commentaire systématique du Timée de Platon, Paris, Éditions Klincksieck, Publications de l'Université de Paris X Nanterre. Lettres et Sciences Humaines. Série A: Thèses et Travaux: N°23, 1974 (Seconde édition revue, pourvue de Corrigenda, d’Addenda, d’Index révisés et surtout d’une bibliographie analytique nouvelle, Sankt Augustin, Academia Verlag, 1994, International Plato Studies).

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9

For a more extensive argument, cf. our “Introduction. Process Metaphysics in Context”, in Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2004, pp. 4175. 10

Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God. An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing, San Francisco, Calif., HarperSanFrancisco, 1992, pp. 61 sq. 11

PR's leitmotive is “ according to the philosophy of organism”; B. Loomer coined the term”process theology” and then former tried to replace it with process-relational. 12

Lowe underlines the importance of D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's epoch-making book On Growth and Form [1917], that pioneered the treatment of biological growth and form in mathematical terms, to understand PR. Thompson was a good friend of Whitehead from his undergraduate days at Trinity. One shouldn't forget either the everlasting impact the Timaeus had on Whitehead's soul. Cf. Victor Augustus Lowe, A. N. Whitehead. The Man and His Work. Volume I: 1861-1910; Volume II: 1910-1947 (edited by J. B. Schneewind), Baltimore, Maryland and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985 & 1990, I, pp. 81-83 & II, p. 86. 13

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. Hereafter “PR”. 14

“Process and Reality”, in Gordon W. Allport, et alii, Symposium in Honor of the Seventieth Birthday of A. N. Whitehead, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1932. rep. ESP117. Cf. PR60 for Locke. 15

To use the expression of Andrei Linde (cf. his “The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe”, Scientific American, November, Volume 271, Number 5, 1994, pp. 48-55). 16

Leibniz is of special relevance here; cf. the straighforward claims of his Monadology (1714): one cannot understand the becoming of monads either in a trans-formative manner (they are not compounds or aggregates) or in a spatio-temporal one (precisely since they have no parts); a monad can only come into being—or come to an end—all at once (i.e., only by creation or

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by annihilation). This double abruptness is constitutive of Whitehead’s genetic analysis. 17

This discussion occurs of course in Kant (after Leibniz and before Wittgenstein); we don't pretend here to struggle for any orthodox interpretation. 18

Cf. John Hope Mason, The Value of Creativity. The Origins and Emergence of a Modern Belief, Aldershot, Hampshire, Ashgate, 2003. 19

Cf. William George Grieve Forrest, The Emergence of Greek Democracy, 800-400 B. C., New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., World University Library, 1966; Paul Cartledge, Paul Millett, Sitta Von Reden (Editors), Kosmos: Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1998; Paul Cartledge (Editor), The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. 20

“Réformer les lois pour obliger les citoyens à réfléchir paraît être à Solon, bien avant l’instauration de la phronèsis aristotélicienne, la seule voie pour harmoniser la cité en apportant un équilibre entre le spartis qui s’y opposent, afin que les uns prennent conscience de leur puissance illégitime et que les autres comprennent qu’ils cautionnent leur servitude par leur comportement même.” (Lambros Couloubaritsis, Histoire de la philosophie ancienne et médiévale. Figures illustres, Paris, Éditions Bernard Grasset, Le Collège de Philosophie, 1998, p. 136.) 21

Cf. Pippa Norris' comparatist works: e.g., Democratic Phoenix. Reinventing Political Activism, Cambridge University Press, 2003. 22

“Whatever suggests a cosmology, suggests a religion.” (1926: Religion in the Making [The Lowell Institute Lectures of 1926, delivered in King’s Chapel, Boston], New York, Macmillan and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1926, p. 136).

V. A Whiteheadian Critical Theory Duston Moore The purpose of this chapter, broadly speaking, is to advance the conceptual analytics of critical theory by refining the issues involved in the critique of the as it is. One peculiar overlap between Whitehead and Marcuse will serve as a point of departure. Reflection on the ‘great refusal’ and tensions between Whitehead’s and Marcuse’s notions of ingression will serve to survey the terrain of a Whiteheadian critical theory.

1. Revolutionary Subjectivity and the Great Refusal Critical theory is an umbrella term initially grounded in neo-Marxist and neo-Hegelian critiques of social reality. While the methodological and conceptual tools have evolved, contemporary critical theorists continue to advance a radical, indeed revolutionary agenda based upon the supposition of the inherent dignity of man and discontent with the current metasocial orders. The vulgarities of capitalist society with the associated exploitation of human potentiality continue to motivate theorists in their critique of the as it is. There is nothing unprecedented in suggesting interesting associations between Whitehead and critical theory. Recent efforts involving the comparisons between Jürgen Habermas and Whitehead have demonstrated the significant overlap between the two thinkers. As Sullivan (1975) demonstrates, there are a number of important structural parallels between Habermas and Whitehead. Most important is the centrality of a historically unfolding interplay between powers infusing society with a sometimes dim, sometimes acute awareness of vectors of historical transcendence. Critical theory advances an agenda to promote the effectiveness and subtlety of human consciousness within the transcendence of history. “In this effort social philosophy finds its role as critique of norms of interaction misunderstood as quasi-natural rules of behaviour” (Sullivan 1975: 90). Mentality ingresses into the physical and consciousness disturbs enduring rhythmic patterns. For both critical theory and the philosophy of organism, society need not be the way it is. Humanity’s refined appetition for the

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symbolic opens a realm of alternative social orders; there are better alternatives. “This makes social functioning open in principle to conscious awareness and direction through the process of reflection” (Sullivan 1975: 90). For both Habermas and Whitehead, philosophy is aimed towards understanding the nature of social change and ultimately affecting some deliberate influence upon the development of social reality. This challenge to the social value formation of the status quo cuts to the heart of what it means to be human. “To live, to live well, and to live better” (Whitehead 1958: 8). This point of intersection between Whitehead and critical theory serves as the point of departure. These are philosophies with a sense of purpose. Supporting any technical and methodological parallels between Whitehead and critical theory is the revolutionary or adventurous comportment of these philosophies. The role of philosophy is not simply some twilight project to survey and understand the accomplishments of the day with an owl’s eye view. Philosophy is an agency in the unfolding of history and one of philosophy’s roles is to be active in the creation of the future. Whitehead ends Science and the Modern World with this hymn to the transformative agency of philosophical reason. The moral of the tale is the power of reason, its decisive influence on the life of humanity. The great conquerors, from Alexander to Caesar, and from Caesar to Napoleon, influenced profoundly the lives of subsequent generations. But the total effect of this influence shrinks to insignificance, if compared to the entire transformation of human habits and human mentality produced by the long line of men of thought from Thales to the present day, men individually powerless, but ultimately the rulers of the world (Whitehead 1985a: 259-60).

Whitehead’s philosophy aims to transform the world we live in. So too the transformative function of critical philosophy aims to identify superfluous societal suffering. After the fact studies of human behaviour have a limited value in the development of alternative visions of social order. In fact, the exclusive reliance on economic metrics and technological advances in manipulating the human condition runs the risk of entrenching forms of repression and exploitation. The performance principle, the counterfeit double of reality, induces a sense of resignation; it has always been and will always be thus. Both critical theory and Whitehead’s philosophy oppose confining the development of social order but in different ways. As we shall see in the third section, Whitehead’s considerations on the origin of novelty are rather different than the novelty of critical theory.

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2. Marcuse and the Great Refusal As fecund as the parallels between Whitehead and Habermas may be, there is a more immediate link between Whitehead and critical theory than Habermas. There is the suggestive textual association between Whitehead and Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse quotes Whitehead in both Eros and Civilization and One Dimensional Man. He also adopts in these and other texts a number of Whiteheadian terms and phrases like ingression, eternal objects, and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The rigorous examination of Marcuse’s use of Whitehead is not within the scope of this chapter.1 The following section shall focus attention on a phrase that Whitehead used only once and that Marcuse made his own: the great refusal. In his seminal work, Eros and Civilization, first published in 1955, Marcuse introduces the phrase ‘the great refusal’ with a citation from Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World. Marcuse is in the midst of discussing the extension of the Freudian notion of imagination. For Freud the idea of a non-repressive reality principle was a simple retrogression. For Marcuse, however, the truth of imagination is not to be limited to brute facts. Rather, “that the propositions of the artistic imagination are untrue in terms of the actual organization of the facts belongs to the essence of their truth” (Marcuse 1974: 149). This is immediately followed by these two sentences from Whitehead: “The truth that some proposition respecting an actual occasion is untrue may express the vital truth as to the aesthetic achievement. It expresses the ‘great refusal’ which is its primary characteristic” (Whitehead 1985a: 197).

For Marcuse, it is an aesthetic, political, indeed existential revulsion with the as it is that constitutes the great refusal. And it is the great refusal that, in Marcuse’s terminology, marks the identification and hope for the eventual transformation of ‘surplus-repression.’ Central to Marcuse’s critique of one dimensional economic positivism is his rather unorthodox interpretation of certain Freudian concepts. Principle to Marcuse’s nuance of Freud is the distinction, never made in Freud, between basic repression necessary to sustain the biological dynamic and surplus-repression. Surplus-repression is: “The restrictions necessitated by social domination. This is a distinction from (basic) repression: the ‘modifications’ of the instincts necessary for the perpetuation of the human race in civilization” (Marcuse 1974: 35). It is Marcuse’s contention that the material conditions now exist whereby surplus-repression can be transformed. Marcuse claims

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that there is a counterfeit double of the Freudian Reality Principle. Namely the Performance Principle: a self-sustaining mimicking of reality whereby radical novelty and revolutionary alternatives are unconsciously and systematically being repressed. For Marcuse, Freud never appreciated the true scope of his psychodynamic theory; he lacked both the necessary philosophical breadth and political radicalism. Moreover the economic conditions were prohibitive in Freud’s day. Scarcity and disease were quasi-natural laws of nature. The self-evident prosperity of the United States after the Second World War bore the promise of the transformation of surplus-repression and the liberation of humanity’s true potentiality. Marcuse would later become iconic in the counter-cultural movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is important to note that while Marcuse’s rhetoric was often a product of his times, his analysis of the repressive forces of economic positivism remains pertinent. The years following Marcuse’s return to academia and publication of Eros and Civilization are a quest for a revolutionary subjectivity capable of sustaining the transformation of surplus-repression and affecting the fabric of metasocial reality. The great refusal, like the other Whitehead notions that Marcuse adopts, is concerned with the coming into being of novelty. Marcuse is concerned with the ingression of novelty. It is a question of how to find and then dwell in novel alternatives of the great refusal. For Marcuse, the great refusal is both aesthetic impulse as well as revolutionary slogan. Between direct social activism and eschatological dreams is art as the most widespread expression of the great refusal. Art has the remarkable power that can link vastly divergent projects through a refusal to dispense with value. “This Great refusal is the protest against unnecessary repression, the struggle for the ultimate form of freedom- ‘to live without anxiety’” (Marcuse 1974: 149-50). The great refusal is a family of emotional patterns that runs from the uncanny, through tragedy and into peace. The great refusal is distinguished by its negative qualities rather than anything positive; the breaking through of novelty is not limited to any medium. The negative presence of the great refusal in the emotional patterns of revolutionary subjectivity sensitises this dwelling in alternatives. In Establishment thinking, the performance principle canalises this transcendence of alternatives into self-sustaining ordering of selfevident reality. The self-referential rationality of the performance principle grounds itself through negative prehensions. This negatively present has historically underwritten the elite’s playful expenditures through the efficient capitalization of the masses’ sufferings. Not only does the great

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refusal repudiate the projects of exploitation—fascist, fundamentalist, or consumerist—, it goes against common sense. The great refusal announces an unashamedly non-conformist critical methodology. Marcuse’s agenda is highly critical of the political and economic status quo. The great refusal is characterised not so much by its content as by its break with established styles; it is in discord with and contrasts against conventional attitudes. This rejection of the status quo, the Establishment rejecting the ruling performance principle is, in part, a refusal to rest content, or to be resigned to the lowest common denominator. Simply because logical/linguistic analysis can provide a reductive explanation does not in any way mean that this explanation is adequate. For Marcuse, the great refusal is, in part, an indictment of wanton parsimony. There is a superfluity to the aesthetic that Marcuse refuses surrender to the analytic rationality of the performance principle. The great refusal is an insistence of this fundamental equivocity. Marcuse held that the great refusal arises from an aesthetic alienation rather than anything exclusively economic. This is a shift away from the proletariat as the agents of the revolution towards the marginalised and aesthetically daring. Marcuse understands the great refusal as an existential lure towards a realm of transcendent possibilities: infinitely suggestive of the not yet. He explores this realm through a searing indictment of the political status quo. The great refusal is the negation of the performance principle, id est the status quo. “Whether ritualised or not, art contains the rationality of negation. In advanced positions, it is the Great refusal—the protest against that which is” (Marcuse 1991: 63). This is not simply a question of taste or apodictic judgments, although both are involved. Nor is the great refusal a simple negation. It is a negation of a rather complex sort. The material negations of the marginalised are framed by daring aesthetics. Non-conformism itself need not be a refusal of the performance principle. Indeed many a subjectivity simply reinforces the performance principle by pathological negation. The great refusal is a complex doubling negation. It accompanies and announces the accomplished fact of the transformation of surplus repression. The great refusal is both a cry for as well as a cry of revolution. The negation of the performance principle can linger like a dream, but the break involved in the great refusal is difficult to maintain. The cries of the marginalised against the performance principle and the negation of the as it is need to be reflected back, breaking into subjectivity itself and exploring the porosity of alternative ways of being. This requires the development of aesthetically sensitive emotional patterns. “Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the

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established reality principle [performance principle]” (Marcuse 1978: 72). This dimension is transient, wavering, yet persistent. The expression the great refusal seems vaguely noble and certainly hopeful. Marcuse puts an enormous emphasis on human potential; it is a stubborn optimism. Such hopefulness was difficult for many twentieth century philosophers. Yet, by this very token, the dominant economic, political, and philosophical reasoning of twentieth century humanity needs a sustainable alternative. When discussing a life given to the great refusal, Marcuse quotes Walter Benjamin: ‘It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us’. The melancholy of total deconstruction can only linger as nostalgia as long as there remains someone to remember or, at a minimum, to recall that something was forgotten. Marcuse is nostalgic insofar as history is providing the elements of a revolutionary subjectivity. Otherwise Marcuse refuses to slip into the ironic melancholy of metaphysical despair although he is certainly aware of this danger. Instead he embarks upon a quest to inculcate a new revolutionary subjectivity. The complex emotional patterns of the great refusal are an element Marcuse used to develop a revolutionary subjectivity capable of the sustained transformation of surplus repression. Propagation of the revolutionary subjectivity of the great refusal involves a novelty capable of transforming surplus repression by undermining the performance principle. This is a double effort. First the new sensitivity demands a new language. The linguistic universe of the Establishment perpetuates the performance principle. Consequently, the revolutionary subjectivity of the great refusal aims to subvert the universe of discourse. Second and following from the first, the political must be infused with the aesthetic. The poetic truth of the aesthetically finessed revolutionary subjectivity involves the disassociation of the ego from the Establishment. “Today’s rebels want to see, hear, feel new things in a new way: they link liberation with the dissolution of ordinary and orderly perception” (Marcuse 1969: 37). Individual liberation from the Establishment anticipates, however inadequately, the social liberation that will arrive when enough aesthetically sensitive individuals succeed in infusing this sensibility into the body politic. Until now the perpetuation of the ruling performance principle has isolated the great refusal in a state of ‘permanent challenge’. In confronting each failure with renewed effort the great refusal bears significant witness to the promise of transformed surplus-repression. The idiot wisdom of the great refusal speaks from the depths of a perpetual turning point where the novelty of what might be briefly ingresses into the present. For Marcuse, the source of this novelty is the social refractions of

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self-determining powers of creativity. The autonomous self can embrace an aesthetic equivocity of imagination and guide the reconstruction of social reality. Negation of the status quo and the refusal of the performance principle would refract repression while experiments in desublimation would encourage a polymorphous eroticism. It is the infinite pliability of the polymorphic erotic emotional pattern that mimics the originating novelty of the revolutionary subjectivity. The great refusal can be an immediate alienation or gradual isolation. It can be a suspicion or paranoia. The great refusal is an existential comportment, a posture in the face of being. It is an emotional pattern; it is practiced, it is learned, and it can be taught. Marcuse had particular recourse to literature as a pedagogical tool of how this realm of the great refusal can confront, lure, and frustrate human experience. He describes this as a disassociation within the current situation. “The ‘estrangement-effect’ is not superimposed on literature. It is rather literature’s own answer to the threat of total behaviourism- the attempt to rescue the rationality of the negative” (Marcuse 1991: 67). The discordance between the individual and the society frames the negative possibilities of the great refusal. The critical-logic of the great refusal helps to explain Marcuse’s appeals to myths and aesthetics not as a longing for some sub-historical past or hope or utopia. Rather, Marcuse’s allusions to Narcissus and Orphic mythologies aim to inspire in his readers a glimpse of something that is not yet but could be. This vanishing of some universal standard perpetually haunts humanity and promises a world of transformed repression. “But this idea could be formulated without punishment only in the language of art” (Marcuse 1974: 150). Adventurous philosophy and revolutionary politics investigate the imaginative universals with an aim of transforming social reality. The metasocial fabric of reality sustains its own dynamic through humanity’s relationship with nature and critical philosophy aims to provoke and sustain interest in the process of the ingression of alternatives. Political and administrative societies forcibly suggest alternatives through their powerful historical objectivity. The great refusal is a persuasive plea to allow the playful entertainment of alternatives. The objectivity of the as it is includes the as it was. Critical theorists, like Marcuse, simultaneously acknowledge and undermine the link between as it was and as it is. It is the emotional pattern of the great refusal that both grounds and undermines the universals of provisional reality. “The living link between the individual and his culture is loosened” (Marcuse 1974: 104). It is this negative present that critiques, contradicts, and transcends the as it is. This is the

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origin of the rupture of novelty and can, for Marcuse, ultimately only be framed negatively. Marcuse observes that social dialectics and critical theories never offer a remedy. “On theoretical as well as empirical grounds, the dialectical concept pronounces its own hopelessness” (Marcuse 1991: 253). The distinction between diagnostic critical theories and the prescriptive remedies remains useful for speculative thought. Does this mean that the critical theory of society abdicates and leaves the field to an empirical sociology which, freed from all theoretical guidance except a methodological one, succumbs to the fallacies of misplaced concreteness, thus performing an ideological service while proclaiming the elimination of value judgments? (Marcuse 1991: 254) The refusal of the critical theorist to quit the field is itself a great refusal. Any theory, critical or empirical, is advanced by a refusal to rest content with fatigued explanations. It is through the vision of the artist most particularly, but also all critical theorists to appreciate the discord, and disjunction, as well as horizon and limit of meaning within context. Great art is great through the imaginative re-imaging that frames a truth revealed somehow differently than the concord between usefully mundane facts. The great refusal does not rest satisfied with methodologies of forecast that repress curiosity outside the scope of method. Despite the apparent triumph of economic positivism, critical sociology must refuse to allow forces of simple or dialectical univocity to dispense with humanity’s inherent equivocities. It is a displaced concreteness that enables emotional patterns that substitute consuming for living. Such displaced concreteness sustains the myths of valueless judgements and transparent descriptions that underpin the marketing of economic positivism. With economic positivism, supposedly aesthetically valueless reason achieves a univocal communicability. Performance principles of positivist efficiency insist on rationalising towards the bottom line.

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3. Imaginative Universals and the Function of Reason Marcuse understood that reason was a historically developing entity. The shared concern with and for the ingression of novelty lead both Whitehead and Marcuse to suggest a pre-Kantian restoration of the breadth of reason. Whitehead warned that univocal methodological reason would, in its search for concord, sterilise reason. “But as soon as the true function of rationalism is understood, that it is a gradual approach to ideas of clarity and generality, the discord is what may be expected” (Whitehead 1958: 88). Marcuse and Whitehead are in broad agreement that both the great refusal and reason itself are related to aesthetics and art. Their shared metaphysical project involves an appeal to aesthetics discord. Both Marcuse and Whitehead appeal to a reality confusingly in discord with itself. The persuasive appeal of the great refusal arises out of a committed rejection of the ruling performance principle. And this in turn involves the promise of an enlarged sense of reason. “The function of Reason is to promote the art of life” (Whitehead 1958: 4). Through focusing the process of the ingression of aesthetic novelty into the metasocial reality, the aesthetic transcendence opened by a revolutionary subjectivity undermines what is reasonable and in doing so transforms reason. It is imaginative reason that arbitrates the modes of abstraction prevalent in any society. Reason moderates the space between particular special sciences, specific cosmological schemes, and their associated concepts. There is a decidedly historical transition of styles wherein novelty enters as variations percolating through the porosity of alternative ways of being. The novel style never entirely breaks with the past; both the revolution and reality are provisional modes of togetherness. Marcuse viewed the ingression of novelty as an historical affair. But if this is the situation, then the case of metaphysics, and especially of the meaningfulness and truth of metaphysical propositions, is a historical one. That is, historical rather than purely epistemological conditions determine the truth, the cognitive value of such propositions. Like all propositions that claim truth, they must be verifiable; they must stay within the universe of possible experience. This universe is never co-extensive with the established one but extends to the limits of the world which can be created by transforming the established one, with the means which the latter has provided or withheld. The range of verifiability in this sense grows in the course of history. Thus, the speculations about the Good Life,

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the Good Society, Permanent Peace obtain an increasingly realistic content; on technological grounds, the metaphysical tends to become physical (Marcuse 1991: 229-30). For Marcuse, the ingression of metaphysically imaginative universals into physical reality was the task of aesthetically sensitised reason. The polymorphous eroticisms of the revolutionary subjectivity, awakened in the great refusal and inculcated against the performance principle, pursue the imaginative universals. These universals promise more than the performance principle is capable of safely allowing. It is the success despite an irrational impossibility of art that opens the realm of alternatives. “Thus the concept of beauty comprehends all the beauty not yet realized; the concept of freedom all the liberty not yet attained” (Marcuse 1974: 214). The negatively present framing art fixes the transcendence of alternatives. “Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world” (Marcuse 1978: 32). Art alone can do nothing. For the ingression of novelty to affect the metasocial reality, to open new dimensions of humanity, to transform surplus-repression requires more than aesthetically sensitised subjectivity. The relevance of Marcuse’s investigation into the question of universals, his adoption of Whitehead’s early notion of eternal objects and the later re-imaging of the function of reason follow an explicitly historical ontology. Revolutionary art may predispose the subjective emotional patterns to suggestions of alternatives. But the ingression of novelty involves a process far wider than the aesthetic. The historical actualisation of imaginative universals like ‘the good life’ and so forth calls for a metaphysical investigation: an investigation that takes the provisional reality of the process of ingression seriously. Marcuse is content to simply claim some sense of historical ontology as an allied notion involved in the identification of surplusrepression. He is quick to attack the proponents of views that give fact a priority over process. Yet he remains content to simply invoke a modified form of Hegelianism. Marcuse’s use of Whitehead is certainly piecemeal. Yet there seems to be a promising overlap between the two. Flushing out what Marcuse intends by revolutionary subjectivity requires a development of an alternative metaphysics. Whitehead provides such an alternative. Analysis of the Whiteheadian notions invoked by Marcuse affords the opportunity to contribute a robust post neo-Marxist critical theory.

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4. The Great Refusal and the Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics Whitehead himself uses the phrase ‘the great refusal’ only once. But the notion he is attempting to describe is central to his later works. The chapter on abstraction in Science and the Modern World describes two interconnected realms. There is the realm of actuality, the as it is and the realm of entities that “transcend that immediate occasion in that they have analogous or different conditions with other occasions of experience” (Whitehead 1985a: 196). This is Whitehead’s realm of eternal objects, alternately described as ‘the principle of satisfaction,’ ‘god’s primordial nature,’ ‘the eros of the universe,’ and ‘peace’ among others. “This realm is disclosed by all the untrue propositions which can be predicted significantly of that occasion. It is the realm of alternative suggestion, whose foothold in actuality transcends each actual occasion” (Whitehead 1985a: 196). The objective ambiguity of the unparsed experience arises from the interconnection of a transcendent realm of alternative possibilities within each actuality. The state of events is disclosed by the inference of what these events are not, yet could be. “The truth that some proposition respecting an actual occasion is untrue may express the vital truth as to the aesthetic achievement. It expresses the ‘great refusal’ which is its primary characteristic” (Whitehead 1985a: 197). Whitehead is dealing with a specific group of propositions. The ontological relevance of the great refusal is therefore linked to the status afforded propositions. In Process and Reality, Whitehead developed an elaborate series of propositions that mediated the process of ingression. It is important to note that in Science and the Modern World, Whitehead presented an initial theory of eternal objects. This theory was to be modified in the preparation of the Gifford Lectures and the publication of Process and Reality2. Marcuse, it seems, was unaware of the development in Whitehead’s thinking. It was Whitehead’s concern with the process of ingression of novelty that attracted Marcuse to the notion of eternal objects. Ironically, ingression underwent significant expansion and revision following the publication of Science and the Modern World. A brief digression on the development in Whitehead’s thinking between Science and the Modern World and Process and Reality is necessary before we continue to discuss the ontological status of propositions in general and the status of the great refusal specifically. In Science and the Modern World, every actual occasion synthesises itself in every eternal object. There is a gradation of relevance. “There is thus an

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analysis of the realm of possibility into simple eternal objects, and into various grades of complex eternal objects” (Whitehead 1985a: 208). Eternal objects, unlike Platonic forms, exist only in actualisations. Yet there is a translucency of realisation. Id est, eternal objects remain themselves no matter the mode of ingression. Every happening contains every possibility. Abstract hierarchies order eternal objects through out, within, and because of subjective actualisation. Mentality is marked by an abruptness that differentiates between the eternal objects concerned with physical events and mentality arising from and referring to the physical. This is a difference between full and partial ingression. “This differentia is abruptness. By ‘abruptness’ I mean that what is remembered, or anticipated, or imagined, or thought, is exhausted by a finite complex concept” (Whitehead 1985a: 213). The great refusal is a marked abruptness that suggests novel mentality breaking through the rhythmic patterns of the physical. The great refusal is the lure for feelings of eternal objects as yet incompletely ingressed. In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead goes on to explain that the principle of limitation that grounds the patterning of eternal objects can be called God. Beyond God as a primordial limiting of eternal objects there is no reason. “There is a metaphysical need for a principle of determination, but there can be no metaphysical reason for what is determined” (Whitehead 1985a: 222). This is move that Marcuse simply cannot make. Rather Marcuse, following the tradition of Feurbach, seeks the principle of limitation in the unimaginable wealth of liberated human potential. For Whitehead, the liberation of human potential is witness to the lure of God’s ordering of eternal objects. Yet the humanist names for the principle of limitation correspond to systems of thought that assume a certain metaphysical comportment. As we shall see in the following section of this chapter, Marcuse’s refusal to continence the possibility of an overdetermined origin as a gift, results in his ultimate embrace of a counterfeit double of the original. Marcuse’s phantasmagorical liberated subjectivity reflects inward the novelty of metasocial possibilities. Whitehead’s source of novelty is felt in the concern of the solitary individual. Process and Reality developed a far more elaborate description of the process of ingression than had been previously outlined in Science and the Modern World. There are two aspects of particular importance in the development of Whitehead’s thought concerning the process of ingression. The most immediately important is the alteration of Whitehead’s original thesis on the inclusion of negative prehensions into the process of concrescence. “Instead of ‘grades of entry’ he [Whitehead] depends upon

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the elimination of alternative possibilities by means of negative prehensions” (Ford 1984: 75). Actual occasions prehend more than they feel. In Science and the Modern World, such a distinction was impossible. “The introduction of subjective form, however, greatly facilitated the identification of prehension and feeling, for now prehensions could be endowed with the subjectivity of response expressed by the subjective form” (Ford 1984: 213). The epochal theory that emerged from the composition of Process and Reality did not simply include all eternal objects in a gradated abstract hierarchy. The concepts of subjective form and negative prehension allow Whitehead to make a distinction between the data which are felt and the datum which is felt. With negative prehensions “the datum are inoperative, but the subjective form of exclusion is felt as contributory to the final subjective form” (Ford 1984: 214). The negatively present abides in the intimate subjectivity of the forms of feeling. In Science and the Modern World, the negatively present was the gradations of irrelevances. Now in Process and Reality the negatively present is at the core of individual becoming. Consequently, the unrefined term ingression became too clumsy for use in terms of concrescence. In terms of the various nexs of actualities that are part of the processes that constitute human drama, the term ingression remains somehow appropriate. The great refusal opens the realm of fanciful alternatives. Having now located the issue as the relation between the actual and the possible, the problem remains, how do alternatives come into being? Or more critically, what prompts the abrupt realisation that there are alternatives? The ingression of universals, the envisagement and realisation of radical alternatives, the breadth of reason, and the historically developing styles of ontology all deal with the relation between eternal objects and simple physical feelings. This section will consider one category of existence: propositions. I shall begin with generalities and become increasingly specific.

5. Propositions One of philosophy’s abiding preoccupations consists of discerning, dissecting, mapping, and in all ways analysing various families of propositions. Such a long tradition of propositional analysis has created a vast body of literature concerning the nature of propositions. Whitehead was aware of the baggage associated with the term proposition and

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therefore goes into considerable detail as to the differences between tradition’s use of the term and his own unique contribution. It is important to begin by recalling that a proposition for Whitehead is not necessarily a judgement. Indeed a proposition need not enter into consciousness. The propositions with which logicians have generally concerned themselves are very complex propositional feelings that have become judgements. Indeed some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements; and most logicians consider propositions as merely appanges to judgements. The result is that false propositions have fared badly, thrown into the dust-heap, neglected. But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than it be true. The importance of truth is, that it adds to interest. The doctrine here maintained is that judgement-feelings form only one subdivision of propositional feelings; and arise from the special sort of integration of propositional feelings with other feelings. Propositional feelings are not, in their simplest examples, conscious feelings (Whitehead 1985b: 259).

The primary function of many negligible propositions is as a negatively present background that helps distinguish judgements and the like as emerging out of a realm of alternatives. Propositions are thus the fodder for creative advance. They are the mechanism of effusion inflating existence. Eternal objects function as two-way relations between the conformal physical feelings of the past and the novel conceptual feelings luring anticipations of the future. The specific propositions of judgements are always the result of selection and intensification. But the mass of propositions remains present in the dim background as un-articulated and un-thought possibilities. “Propositions have the passive totality of the universe in their background” (Whitehead 1926 quoted in Ford 1984: 322). For Whitehead, a proposition is not to be understood in terms of the saturation of a concept (predicate) with an object (subject). The Whiteheadian proposition is more diffuse than sentences, thoughts, or references. Judgement, thought, meaning, and reference all have some delineation. In its most basic form, the Whiteheadian proposition mediates a super-saturated field out of which more delineated realisations of possibilities like sense, meanings, judgement, and reference emerge. To begin with a general definition, Whitehead states that a proposition involves “the abstract possibility of an assigned nexus illustrating an assigned pattern” (Whitehead1967: 243). The extremes of pure potentiality

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(eternal objects) and realised actuality are bridged by a welter of propositions. Propositions, broadly construed, involve logical subjects and predicative patterns. The nexus of past actualities gives rise to a predicate pattern. “In other words, the eternal object in the proposition is a potential predicate or predicate pattern of just that selected nexus of actual entitiesthe ‘logical subjects’ of the proposition” (Hooper 1945: 62). A proposition is a restriction of the generalities of the eternal objects as well as the transmutation of the nexus of actualities into a bare ‘it.’ Propositions themselves are neither completely actual, nor are they pure potentiality. Propositions span the between of the conceptual and the conformal. It is out of this reciprocal interplay between the logical subjects and predicative patterns that propositions emerge as the clothing of feelings and a lure for actualisation. Propositions are a doubling of the original. First there is the function of propositions in the concrescence of occasions. Second there are the propositional networks that support the complex emergence of novel social entities. Whitehead’s analysis of prehensions develops into a complex of various intermediate propositions used to assay actuality. Part III of Process and Reality outlines a series of increasingly complex new relational feelings. Propositions mediate a field of the between. Between the world as actualised fact and the realm of pure possibilities is the between of propositions. This ‘between’ it itself over-determined, supersaturated with propositions that mediate the more complex propositions of consciousness. The complexity of the societies necessary to sustain these feelings of higher experience is significant. The coming into being of very complex feelings is necessarily going to be a historical process. Given the temporal character of this process ontology, there is going to be a confused tension and possible misidentification between the ingression of pure potentialities and dominant historical contingencies that infuse predicative patterns. Propositions are the pre-conscious grounds for judgements; they function as lures and aversions for thought. Only a small minority of propositions become the propositional feeling of a judgement. Most find their way into the dust-heap. Here then is the negative present that marks the gestalt of highly complex and refined propositional feelings. The processes that filter and refine the welter of foundational propositions into streams of propositional feelings emerge as the qualification of feelings by emotional patterns. There is a doubling of the ingression of eternal objects: first in the physical feeling and again through social reality. Selections, intensifications and background all involve the leap from the actuality of the immediate occasion to the realm of potentiality. The flash of novelty that characterises the mental pole of an actuality reaches out for

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the physical feelings of the past. Like a lightning rod, the role of propositions is two-fold: a lure for feeling from the conceptual unto the physical and the reverted physical feeling reaching out towards satisfaction. A proposition, as such, is impartial between its prehending subjects, and in its own nature does not fully determine the subjective forms of such prehensions. But the different propositional feelings, with the same proposition as datum, in different prehending subjects, are widely different according to differences of their histories in these subjects (Whitehead 1985b: 261).

Because the proposition is in this between of past fact and future possibilities, the propositions themselves are impartial; it remains incumbent upon the choice of the prehending subjects to select the vector of meaning to grow out of feeling of the proposition. Propositions therefore involve a doubling. There is the over-determinateness of the pure possibilities of eternal objects juxtaposed with an incomplete abstraction of determinate actual entities. The results are the historically conditioned possibilities: feelings waiting to be felt. The ‘objective lure’ is that discrimination among eternal objects introduced into the universe by the real internal constitutions on the actual occasions forming the datum of the concrescence under review. This discrimination also involves eternal objects excluded from value in the temporal occasions of that datum, in addition to involving the eternal objects included for such occasions (Whitehead 1985b: 185).

Propositions are the vehicle not simply of novelty, but of complexity as well. Because propositions bridge physical conformal feelings and mentality, alternatives are excluded as well as included. But it is not the propositions that either include or exclude. This is the preserve of the subjective form infused by the subjective aim. The driving force behind novelty is the subjective aim. Propositions are the expression of both novelty and decay. It is the metaxalogical propositional web that allows for the contrasts, abstractions, selections, and intensifications of feelings necessary for complex sociological existence. Nothing can come from nothing and no new eternal objects are ever created. Propositions double the original novelty of concrescence into the transition of social reality. This doubling of the original allows novelty to emerge out of recursive eternal objects. It is the field of propositions that facilitates the infusion of strife into harmony. Complex societies of actualities involve the conflation of fundamental feelings. Propositions support the historically evolving field

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or mode of togetherness that allows the relating of modes of possibilities with modes of actualities. This process can be shortly characterized as a passage from reenaction to anticipation. The intermediate stage in this transition is constituted by the acquisition of novel content, which is the individual contribution of the immediate subject for the re-shaping of its primary phase of re-enaction into its final phase of anticipation. This final phase is otherwise termed the ‘satisfaction,’ since it marks the exhaustion of the creative urge for that individuality. This novel content is composed of positive conceptual prehensions, that is to say, of conceptual feelings. These conceptual feelings become integrated with the physical prehensions of antecedent occasion, and yield propositions concerning the past. These propositions are again integrated and re-integrated with each other and with conceptual feelings, and yield other propositions (Whitehead 1967: 192-3).

The various permutations that grow out of the integrations and reintegrations of objective physical fact with the conceptual possibilities facilitate the abstractions of transmutation. Social complexity emerges from this field of conditioned possibilities and it is in this manner that a space of alternatives is opened in-between the past matters of fact and future impure possibilities. Anticipation ushers in novelty through the multiple reimaging of various patterns of perspective. The point of intersection between the actual and the possible is enmeshed within the subjective feelings of an objectively immortal past projected against the anticipation of the future. This relationship between the consequences of the past schematised by the matrix of the possible expresses the fundamentally dipolar nature of reality. And it is this dipolarity of the propositional field that allows for the emergence of novelty out of recursive eternal objects. Because propositions have both conformal and non-conformal functions, because they provide lures for feeling in both correspondent and coherent ways, they are able to mediate between philosophical beliefs and social practices in dynamic and novel ways. In this way the systematic investigation of novel propositions is both a quest for the real and a striving after the widest possible agreement; the two are not, finally disjunct (Nancarrow 1995: 74).

Propositions bring with them the style of their own potential realisation. I employ the word style here following Ian Hacking (2002). The interest in introducing the notion of style into the analysis of propositions is that it can

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account for the historical transformation and evolution of ways of reasoning as well as the distinction between the performance principle and the reality principle. For Hacking styles of reason generate new classes of possibilities. This is not to be identified with Quine’s indeterminacy of translation, or with the Kuhnian and Feyerabendian idea of incommensurability. Nor is it the case that all propositions depend on a particular style of reasoning. A style is not a set of sentences that are held true. “A style is not a scheme that confronts reality” (Hacking 2002: 175). Rather a style is a pattern of reasoning, with a discernable history. The scientific delineation of the emergence and development of the various styles of reason is possible. What Hacking develops is an articulation of the philosophical consequences. In terms of propositions, this means that propositional feelings and judgements will develop within styles of reasoning conducive to their emergence. Moreover, the development of styles of reason introduces historical contingencies into the categories of possibilities. For Hacking, the historicity of emergent styles implies that “propositions that are objectively found to be true are determined as true by styles of reason for which in principle there can be no external justification” (Hacking 2002: 175). This is because “the propositions have no existence independent of the ways of reasoning towards them” (Hacking 2002: 175). It is here that Whitehead’s distinction between propositions and propositional feeling is useful. Certainly by the time the propositional feeling enters into a judgement, the historically canalised style of reasoning is framing the feeling’s final aim. But the simple proposition carries with it the realm of alternatives. Not the determinate truth or falsity of the judgement. Rather propositions are the portals to novel styles of reason that bring with them their own standards of objectivity. The emergence of styles of reasoning involves a flash of mental operations. The successful endurance of the styles of reason depends upon self-stabilising techniques. Thus “philosopher and historian alike are part of the community of living things that has been transformed by bearers of that vision in their interaction with nature as they saw it” (Hacking 2002: 199). The historically emergent forms of novelty arise in many types of propositions. The great refusal is, however, a very peculiar type of proposition that somehow announces a heightened sensitivity concerning the emergence of novelty. The great refusal is the conscious entertainment of the realm of alternatives. The not yet critiques the as it is by reconfiguring the eternal objects such that a contrast emerges. The triumph of consciousness comes with the negative intuitive judgement. In this case there is a conscious feeling of what might be, and is not. The feeling directly concerns the definite negative

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prehensions enjoyed by its subject. It is the feeling of absence, and it feels this absence as produced by the definite exclusiveness of what is really present. Thus, the explicitness of negation, which is the peculiar characteristic of consciousness, is here at its maximum (Whitehead 1985b: 273-4).

The great refusal is an example of the negative intuitive judgement. It is the propositions of negative intuitive judgements that qualify Whitehead’s realism as provisional. It is a family of feelings with a peculiar emotional pattern. Negative intuitive judgements are a mindfulness of that what might be yet is not. It is this family of very peculiar propositional feelings that ought to be of great interest to critical theorists. The identification and consequent transformation of surplus-repression begins with the great refusal, the great refusal begins with a negative intuitive judgement, and such judgements arise as a result of certain emotional patterns. This brings us to the third and concluding section of this chapter.

6. Emotional Patterns and the Civilised Universe Systematic Considerations The explicit distinction between modes of ingression was not present in Science and the Modern World. The notion of ingression would develop substantially after the publication of Science and the Modern World. Notes from Whitehead’s lecture of November 20th 1924 contain this statement about ingression. “‘Ingression of a pure object into a basic object is in a particular part and in another sense on other parts.’ Ingression of pure objects differs depending on the standpoint of the object” (Ford 1984: 266). Although it is far from certain what Whitehead is talking about, there is a clear intonation of a doubling of ingression. In Whitehead’s Harvard lectures in 1926, there are four modes of ingression viz. physical ingression, conceptual ingression, no conceptual ingression, environmental conceptual ingression. (Ford: 314) In Process and Reality, Whitehead collapses these four modes into three primary modes of ingression. Ingression is involved as an ingredient in the datum of a physical feeling, the datum of a conceptual feeling, or in the subjective form. Whitehead’s theism protected novelty from becoming simply a metasocial Nirvana. In Process and Reality, the term ingression is therefore to be primarily associated with the novelty underlying the coming into being of nexs. “This [Science and the Modern World] strict correlation of a ‘mode of ingression’ with a particular actual occasion is gradually abandoned.

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Modes of ingression, when used later, [Process and Reality] refers less to any particular concretization as to a general type of ingression” (Ford 1984: 74). The ingression of novelty originates from an overdetermined welter of propositions. The great refusal is a specific emotional pattern that canalises the propositions with an aim to emphasise discord. The truth of this discord in turn highlights a more primordial harmony and it is this tension between the as it is and the not yet that characterises the aesthetic gestalt of highlevel occasions such as negative intuitive judgements. Whitehead is talking about an emotional pattern of experience that supersedes the rhythmic patterns of the ordinary and everyday and points beyond the factual to what could be. This is one level of the emergence of novelty. The ingression of novelty into the nexs that is human civilisation is intimately related to yet ontologically distinct from the novelty of concrescence. The social reality promised by the great refusal and the more general ingression of novel subjectivities ought to be of interest to critical theorists. To develop a revolutionary subjectivity, one must inculcate certain emotional patterns. There is an immediate problem regarding the origin of emotional patterns. “The emotional pattern in the subjective form of any one feeling arises from the subjective aim dominating the entire concrescent process” (Whitehead PR 275). While the subjective aim is the origin of emotional pattern in each occasion, the negative intuitive judgements of the great refusal require a vast historically emergent sociology. There is a doubling of the origins of novelty. First is the realm of eternal objects. Second is the realm of alternatives within a social reality. The ingression of novelty involved in Marcuse’s great refusal is of the second source. Of course there is but one realm of eternal objects. The doubling of this realm within the complexity of social reality constitutes the source of the aesthetics of the great refusal. Each of the actualities that constitute these vast arrays of societies carries the mark of every eternal object. There is no privacy, only the immediacy of subjectivity. The realm of alternatives of social reality is qualified and conditioned via a historically developing ontology. Private concerns promote group conformity; concrescence vivifies transition. These two origins of novelty are fundamentally related. The propositions of the concresing subject belong to the same subjective from as the feelings of a transmuted nexus. These two distinct modes of novelty are triangulated by the dual functioning eternal object. However, despite the primordial involvement of concrescence, there is no reason to suppose that these modes are transparent one to the other. Nor is there any reason to assume that the two modes are always disjointed. The problem lies in not making this distinction at all.

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7. Conclusion Revolutionary subjectivity requires a novel coming into being and subsequent ingressions of the novelty into sociological being. The transformation by human consciousness of world history is more than just the brute facts of economic positivism. The great refusal is a dram of worry confronting the heady success of globalisation and the self-justifying rationalisation of the performance principle. For Marcuse, revolutionary metaphysics involved the transformation of surplus repression. This required a new revolutionary subjectivity. Overcoming the current performance is not enough. Simply surpassing emotional patterns with greater inclusive emotional patterns imports and translates the old performance principle. The great refusal marks a break, a negation, a rejection of current styles of reasoning. Marcuse’s generator of novelty was humanity itself. The focus of his analysis is therefore concerned with exploring the creative and destructive power of the marginalised. The quest for a revolutionary subjectivity took shape as a part psychological, part sociological analysis of the novel ingressions. For Marcuse, the doubled relation between eternal objects and private prehensions contributing to satisfaction and all other non-coincidental actualities through the public negative prehensions was a convincing explanation of the process of historical ontology. Marcuse’s quest for revolutionary subjectivity was two-fold. Marcuse sought to discover modes of explanation that would be helpful in developing a new subjectivity. Further, he sought to educate and inculcate those sparks of revolutionary novelty that he encountered. Clearly Marcuse found something useful in Science and the Modern World’s notion of eternal objects as well as in Whitehead’s pamphlet on reason. Equally clear is that Marcuse was unaware of systematic developments within Whitehead’s metaphysics: developments concerning the very issues that were of interest to Marcuse. Whitehead was concerned with the status of ingression. It would be incorrect to say that Marcuse was unaware of doubling of ingression. In Eros and Civilization, ontogenesis (the origin of the repressed individual) and phylogenesis (the origin of repressed civilization) are considered the heart of Freud’s metapsychology. The two levels are continually interrelated. This interrelation is epitomized in Freud’s notion of the return of the repressed in history: the individual re-experiences and re-enacts the great traumatic events in the development of the genus, and the instinctual dynamic reflects

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A solution to this conflict would not have to reconcile one to the other. Rather accounting for the polarity and the propositional field that such conflict supports would cast light upon the interrelated polarity. Marcuse assumes that the ingression of eternal objects adequately accounts for the polarities of abstract universal and historical character. In the terms of Science and the Modern World, there is every indication that Marcuse is correct.

8. References Ford, Lewis (1984) The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics 19251929. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hacking, Ian (2002) Historical Ontology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hooper, Sydney (1945) ‘Propositions and Consciousness’ The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 20: 59-75. Marcuse, Herbert (1969) An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, Herbert (1974) Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, Herbert (1978) The Aesthetic Dimension: Towards a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, Herbert (1991) One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Moore, Duston (2007) ‘Whitehead and Marcuse: The Great Refusal, Universals, and Rational Critical Theories’ Journal of Classical Sociology Vol., No. 1, 83-108. Nancarrow, Paul (1995) ‘Realism and Anti-Realism: A Whiteheadian Response to Richard Rorty Concerning Truth, Propositions, and Practice’ Process Studies 24: 58-75. Sullivan, William (1975) ‘Two Options in Modern Social Theory: Whitehead and Habermas’ International Philosophic Quarterly 15: 83-98. Whitehead, Alfred North (1958) The Function of Reason. Boston: Beacon Press.

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Whitehead, Alfred North (1967) Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, Alfred North (1985a) Science and the Modern World. London: Free Association Books. Whitehead, Alfred North (1985b) Process and Reality: An Essay on Cosmology. New York: The Free Press.

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Notes 1

For a more detailed examination of Marcuse’s use of Whiteheadian notions and vocabulary please see D. Moore, “Whitehead and Marcuse: The Great Refusal, Universals, and Rational Critical Theories” in the Journal of Classical Sociology, Vol., No. 1, 83-108, 2007. 2

Please refer to Lewis Ford’s Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics especially pp. 72 ff.

VI. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Nature and Freedom Gary Herstein Before proceeding to the primary topic of this chapter, it is worth noting the appropriateness of the subject of our meeting, given this particular year. The year 2005 has been designated as the World Year of Physics. It is, of course, the centennial of Einstein's annus mirabilis; moreover, and perhaps more importantly, given our venue here at the Royal Irish Academy, it is the bicentennial of the birth of William Rowan Hamilton. Hamilton has been called the man who liberated algebra, for his revolutionary work in pushing the development of algebraic thought to a previously unimagined level of both abstraction and self-sufficiency. In particular, it was only after years of heroic, even bitter, struggle, that Hamilton finally succeeded in getting one of his most important contributions to algebra, his quaternions, to multiply in a logically consistent manner. This was a task he could only accomplish by unshackling them from the inherited, traditional dogmas of how such things were supposed to function. This work, together with his numerous invaluable contributions to physics and in conjunction with the work of Einstein provides us with an entrance into my primary subject today: Whitehead's theory of nature and extension.

1. The Problem of Freedom and Choice Here is our problem: If we take as our model of nature that which is currently most prevalent in the physical sciences, then the very possibility of human choice and freedom becomes highly problematic. This is because it is an essential characteristic of the orthodox physical model to collapse all of nature into the mathematics with which that nature is represented within the physical sciences. Another way of saying this is that, within the scheme of nature that is envisioned by the vast majority of working physicists, there is an extremely intimate correlation between nature “as it is” and the mathematics which is used to model that nature, a correlation which is so close that—for all practical purposes, and within the limits of

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error—it effectively identifies nature with those mathematical structures. This is a habit we certainly find in both Einstein and Hamilton, and which Husserl famously traced back to Galileo. (Husserl, 1970, pp. 23 ff.) However, there is nothing in mathematics which can correlate with human freedom or choice, neither as an abstract possibility nor especially as a phenomenologically experienced reality. Thus, for instance, two of the mathematical possibilities from physics that we face are between determinism and chance. But determinism leaves us stripped of everything but the mechanical interactions of particles, forces and bodies, while chance gives us not freedom but the boundedly arbitrary, but otherwise brute and irrational interactions of those self-same particles, forces and bodies. The problem of freedom and choice is ultimately a sub-category of the problem of the mental and the physical. Is there anything more to the mind—the presumptive seat of freely engaged choices in human existence—than the effluvia of purely physical processes? How are we to integrate the two of them without falsifying one or the other? A variety of solutions to this problem have been proposed. Perhaps the commonest approach within the physical sciences (besides simply ignoring the issue altogether) has been the aforementioned collapse of all that is real into the mathematical descriptions of nature found in science, followed by the declaration that choice and freedom are nothing more than the mere illusions of a limited intellect. Another approach that has generated considerable discussion has been Donald Davidson's “anomalous monism,” which sees the problem as residing in the descriptive irreducibility of mental talk to the machinery of physical science. This continues to be a live topic in analytical philosophy, and is not without its merits 1. But while a measure of formal sense can be made of Davidson's argument, it leaves us dangling in mid-air without any sort of global explanation as to why the mental and physical are descriptively irreducible, the one to the other. What is needed is a larger philosophical move, a philosophy of nature that gives us an explanatory framework for this irreducibility, rather than just a baldfaced announcement of it. At the same time, such a philosophy of nature must enable us to make sense of the enormous successes physics has enjoyed in applying mathematical tools to natural phenomena. I would like to suggest here that Whitehead's philosophy of nature is exactly the framework we need to build an effective reconciliation between these two, and thereby give natural sense to the notion of free human choice. Permit me to emphasize the fact that my argument here is predicated upon Whitehead's natural philosophy, not his metaphysics. This latter has received a great deal of attention in recent years as it applies to matters of

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interpreting micro physics 2. But this work pays scant attention to the triptych of works Whitehead published between 1919 and 1922, and which form the basis of his philosophy of nature. It is to these works that we must turn if we are to resolve our problem here, and not to his metaphysical opus. For, while I can not spend any time developing this point, the context in which I am operating is this: Process and Reality is not about the nature of time, it is about the metaphysics of becoming. In other words, Process and Reality is about the logical and relational structures from which temporal characteristics can emerge, but in which they play no essential role. Consider, for instance, the thoroughly holistic nature of the entire theory of prehensions in part III. To read this section as a description of the serial development of concretion within time is to ignore the fact that Whitehead repeatedly emphasizes that events are “hopelessly atomic”—in the Greek sense of indivisible. Whitehead repeatedly states that we must keep in mind that during concresence, the end is already present to the beginning. For instance, Whitehead says, “This is the Category of 'Subjective Unity.' This category is one expression of the general principle that the one subject is the final end which conditions each component feeling. Thus the superject is already present as a condition, determining how each feeling conducts its own process” (PR3, pg. 223, my emphasis). Elizabeth Kraus has done an admirable job of describing the non-linear nature of the theory of prehensions in Whitehead's metaphysics, even providing an exceptionally useful diagram which shows the multiple layers of forward and backwards inter-relatedness of the theory (Kraus 1998, figure 4, pg. 125). Indeed, this entire part of Whitehead's argument needs to be read more like Finnegan's Wake than like a traditional philosophical argument. Moreover, if we treat Whitehead's theory as somehow taking place within time, rather than as a pre-temporal relational system, then we have for all intents and purposes sold the pass to physics, and rendered the metaphysical project pointlessly circular. Time is one of the things our metaphysical system needs to explain; we cannot, on that account, assume it as an element within that metaphysical system. Given how little Whitehead has to say about time within the pages of Process and Reality, there is scarcely any reason to suppose he meant his readers to make such an assumption on their own. Finally, if we are to reconcile the freedom of human choice with the structures of natural science, we must find such a reconciliation within—or, at least, along the boundaries of—nature itself. So while our metaphysics must allow for the possibility of such freedom, it is our philosophy of nature which will make that freedom intelligible as an active part of the natural order. So we must take a step backwards

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historically and forwards logically into the appropriate areas of Whitehead's philosophy.

2. The ‘Standard’ Paradigm With that said, let us make explicit some of the fundamental assumptions involved in what I will refer to as the “standard paradigm” of nature, as this is found in much of physical science. The first of these is what I will call the “RNI hypothesis.” “RNI” is an abbreviation for Real Number Isomorphism. The RNI hypothesis itself is the almost (if not entirely) universal, but largely implicit belief amongst most physical scientists— and, I would venture to guess, most philosophers of science—that there is at least a local one-to-one and onto relation—an isomorphism—between the points of space and time and those of the n-dimensional real number manifold. Such an hypothesis is explicitly a part of general relativity. And even within quantum mechanics, where a considerable measure of granularity of space and time is at least a conceptual possibility, the mathematical continuities inherent to wave mechanics once again pushes matters back into the pocket of the RNI hypothesis. But clearly this is assuming a great deal about the “nature of Nature.” What kind of sense can we make of the claims, whether explicitly or implicitly held, which take it for granted that the real number line is directly related to the world in any form? What justifies us in supposing that space and time are really composed of infinitesimal points? Are the topological characteristics of those supposed points of the space and time of nature genuinely those of the real number line, at least when taken on a sufficiently local basis? The RNI hypothesis commits us to these ideas, among others. The implications of these commitments rapidly become quite extreme. Consider the nature of an Einsteinian universe. Mathematically, this is a a pseudo-Riemannian manifold of signature -1. This is a globally nonuniform space, but one which locally takes on the characteristics of euclidean geometry, such that these local properties cannot be extended to any universal claims. But this locally euclidean characteristic is exactly what I have called the RNI hypothesis. Locally, all of space and time is shoe-horned into a four-dimensional real number manifold. Furthermore, for a mathematician or a physicist, all of spacetime is already there, and nothing more is required of the formal inquirer to tease out its technical details than mathematical rigor. This formal “thereness” does not by itself serve to answer any of the empirical questions of how we mere mortals are

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to discover the physical and metrical relations which are supposedly “there” at points of space that are entirely beyond our reach. Yet that formal “thereness” does provide a rather complete theoretical picture of what the universe is like, especially given the fully deterministic nature of the mathematics underlying general relativity. Indeed, this is precisely the problem. Because the orthodox (but, again, usually implicit) theory of nature employed within the greater part of macro-physics collapses nature entirely and directly into the mathematical structures used to describe that nature, we can say that the theoretical picture of the universe is so complete, that what we have essentially amounts to a “Parmenidean block.” All of reality is already “there,” not just formally or abstractly, but really and completely. What this means for human phenomenological experience is that the appearance of change through time is an illusion due to the deficiencies of human perception. It is particularly worth noting that by making all of nature and reality— including and especially time itself—part of an ultimately unchanging “block,” time has been given an essentially spatial characterization: after all, a “block,” whether it is in three, four, or more dimensions, is a solidly spatial object. However, even here some care needs to be taken. For as I will point out at the end of my argument, this “spatialization” is rather peculiar. There is nothing particularly controversial about these assertions, although a few examples might be helpful. Thus, consider the treatment of the subject given recently by Brian Greene (Greene 2004). Speaking of the popular image of time as a flowing river, Greene says that, instead, “Every moment is. Under close scrutiny, the flowing river of time more closely resembles a giant block of ice with every moment forever frozen into place.” (Greene, pg. 141, original emphasis.) The static nature of time in Greene's description could scarcely be more manifest. It is also interesting to note the absence in Greene's text of any discussion of nature. Rather, the term (with variations) that he prefers to use is “reality.” This might seem like a rather trivial distinction to be making, but in fact a great deal turns upon making at least some kind of contrast here. Nothing significant hinges on Greene's specific use of terms, or course. What is significant is the absence of an effort to differentiate between the nature that is studied by physics and “something else,” whatever that something might be. In failing to make that distinction, Greene pushes all that is real into the mathematical framework of theoretical physics. Another voice to listen to in this regard is Einstein himself. Einstein explicitly endorses the “spatialization” of all concepts in the physical sciences. Einstein states, “it is characteristic of thought in physics, as of

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thought in natural science generally, that it endeavours in principle to make do with 'space-like' concepts alone, and strives to express with their aid all relations having the form of laws” (Einstein 1961, pg. 162, original emphasis). These statements come on the heels of a discussion of the “psychological” aspects of the experience of time. One can scarcely resist reading into this a reflection, on Einstein's part, back some thirty years earlier to the public debate with Henri Bergson. Einstein never mentions Bergson by name, so reading any such connection into his claim is purely speculative. In any event, whether the Bergson connection was in Einstein's mind when he wrote the above or not, it is clear that he has taken what Bergson viewed as a principle vice of his theory and elevated it to the position of a central virtue of all natural science. And this, in turn, simply reiterates our earlier point: if time, as science engages it, is essentially “space-like,” then all of time partakes of the “all-there-ness” of space itself. Again, we have the Parmenidean block. In line with this, we might also mention Palle Yourgrau's recent work, A World Without Time, wherein he recounts Gödel's and Einstein's conversations about just this subject, and Gödel's proof that general relativity necessitates a block universe (Yourgrau 2005). Parallel with this choice to pack all that is real into the mathematics with which physics describes nature is the tendency to denigrate if not outright dismiss, human experience per se. This is certainly a peculiar move, since science is supposed to be justified by human experience. But this justification is itself only a momentary thing, and typically serves to do little more than to damn with faint praise. Thus, for instance, Greene does address himself to the matter of human experience and “things observed by the senses.” But his interpretation of the situation—which is hardly atypical for a physicist—is that, “The overarching lesson that has emerged from scientific inquiry over the last century is that human experience is often a misleading guide to the true nature of reality. Lying just beneath the surface of the everyday is a world we'd hardly recognize. […] assessing life through the lens of everyday experience is like gazing at a van Gogh through an empty Coke bottle” (Greene, pg. 5, original emphasis). Greene is, of course, a mathematical physicist with a penchant for exposition, not someone extensively trained in philosophical subtlety. Yet it is precisely this penchant and lack which make him a voice worth noticing, for it usefully delineates our problem here. How are we to both take seriously the deliverances of experience and the successes of mathematical physics? Is it even possible to do this? The answer I wish to suggest is that, no it is not possible to do this—unless one first comes up with another theory of nature from that which dominates the

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physical sciences. In particular, so long as we accede to the naïve, and rather knee-jerk realism exhibited by the majority of physical scientists toward their mathematical symbolisms, we will be saddled with a theory of nature that renders any reconciliation between natural science and real human experience largely, if not entirely, impossible. It is my claim that Whitehead's philosophy of nature is precisely the tool we need here, and it is to this that I now turn.

3. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Nature Whitehead states quite unequivocally that, “There can be no true physical science which looks first to mathematics for the provision of a conceptual model” (R, 39). This is a powerful statement coming from a man who was trained, and spent most of his working life, as a mathematician. But because of Whitehead's background, he was especially well equipped to tackle the previously mentioned dilemma, between experience and mathematical physics. The result is that Whitehead gives us not only an alternative theory of nature, but a robust theory of abstraction as well. It is this latter which enables Whitehead to bring nature and mathematics together without collapsing the former into the latter. Whitehead's characterization of nature can be easily stated in a manner that is both simple and accurate—and which then, of course, requires a great deal of careful exposition. Nature, according to Whitehead, is, “the system of factors apprehended in sense-awareness. But sense-awareness can only be defined negatively by enumerating what it is not.” In particular, “sense-awareness is consciousness minus its apprehension of ideality,” this despite the fact that, “it is perfectly possible to hold (as Whitehead himself did) that nature is significant of ideality” (R, 20). Furthermore, since, “nature presents itself to us as essentially a becoming,” then “nature is a becomingness of events which are mutually significant so as to form a systematic structure.” As a particular consequence of the above, “space and time are abstractions from this structure” (R, 21). There are two points in the above to be noticed at once: the unreserved seriousness with which Whitehead takes the deliverances of experience, and the equally unreserved seriousness with which Whitehead takes time. On this second point, observe that what is delivered to us by senseawareness is the becomingness of nature; the natural is given to us by its event-structure, events which are systematically related, and prior to both space and time, the latter of which are abstractions from this event structure. On the other hand, with regard to the first of the above points,

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note in particular that there is an ideal element of which nature—as the deliverances of sense-awareness—is significant, without that ideality being itself something directly present to sense. This will become of particular importance when we touch on Whitehead's theory of extensive abstraction. Furthermore, when I say that Whitehead is taking experience very seriously, it must be understood that this is experience in its fullest sense. And, by “full” here, I mean we must read Whitehead as something of a Jamesian radical empiricist4. Our experience is not just of nature, it is nature, nature in its complete, relationally thick, systematic whole. Our senses deliver not merely patches of color, sounds, etc. They deliver relational structures that are themselves nature in itself. Consequently, Whitehead adamantly opposed the bifurcation of nature and experience that threw psychological time and space on one side of an abyss, and the supposedly “true” time and space of scientific “reality” on the other. (One can readily see this bifurcation in the Greene quote above.) Nature, Whitehead insisted, is “a totality including individual experiences, so that we must reject the distinction between nature as it really is and experiences of which are purely psychological. Our experiences of the apparent world are nature itself” (R, 62). I will, in a moment, outline how Whitehead's theory of extensive abstraction provides a clue to how science approaches truth(s) about nature. But these truths are themselves always a part of a larger whole. Whitehead is not collapsing all of experience into nature, and his very specific definition of nature makes it clear that, for Whitehead, nature is not all that there is. When we take experience at its fullest, then we see that, “nature is an abstraction from something more concrete than itself which must also include imagination, thought and emotion.” What distinguishes nature is its “systematic coherency.” (R, 63.) There is a great deal of Whitehead's theory of nature which I must skip over entirely here, especially those parts of his argument which deal with such things as cognizance by adjective, cognizance by relatedness, the fact/factor distinction, the uniformity of space, and so on. All of these are matters that a more complete development of my topic would necessarily have to incorporate. But the primary thing for us to notice here is Whitehead's theory of space and time. In Whitehead's account, space and time are not in any respect fundamentally constitutive of reality. Instead, what is fundamental is the relational structure of events, from which space and time can be abstracted as representative of real relations in nature, but of no ultimate reality on their own (R, 29, 39, 67—9). It is the continuum of events which is fundamentally real, and this continuum is a four-dimensional structure wherein each individual event is itself a four-dimensional hyper-volume in

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which “time is the fourth dimension” (R, 29). But we must be extremely cautious here. Time is not the fourth dimension of the global system of events, but only of some specifically identified event. As these events get nested within one another, time does not emerge as a single linear continuum, but rather as a complex system in its own right. What we get is a multi-threaded, multiply-intersecting system of times. This is emphatically plural. These times exemplify a variety of relations, depending on whether one is looking at them as they are internally related within a single “family” of “parallel” times (these are Whitehead's terms), or externally, from without as systems of alternative families of times that intersect one another in various ways. While nature contains both, our problem “naturally” (as it were) requires that we focus on the internal relations within a single family of times. Consequently, it must be born in mind that my ensuing discussion of Whitehead's theory of time is a substantial simplification of the full theory. With this in mind, Whitehead asks a simple yet absolutely essential question: “Have you ever endeavoured to capture the instantaneous present? It eludes you, because in truth there is no such entity among the crude facts of our experience” (R, 56). Once again, the appeal is not to the abstractions of mathematical ideality, but to the concrete deliverances of experience. And it is easily seen that the very idea of such an instantaneous “point” of time is a mathematical abstraction devoid of any direct correlate in human experience. One might object that this is true except, of course, for that highly intellectualized part of human experience which is mathematical speculation itself. But then again, this is an arena of experience outside of nature as Whitehead has characterized it. Mathematical points, of either time or space, are never given to us in our sense-awareness, and as such cannot ever be concrete elements of nature. Rather, what we encounter in our experience—and, in this regard, we particularly mean, “what we encounter in nature”—are finite but definite slabs of reality. These slabs of reality, in their temporal characteristics, are what Whitehead calls “durations.” Each duration is precisely that collection of (partial) events which are related as nature “at the same time.” Thus, he tells us that, “a duration is a definite natural entity. […] A duration is a concrete slab of nature limited by simultaneity which is an essential factor disclosed in sense-awareness” (CN, 53). Again, this 'at the same time-ness' is not to be understood as 'at the same instant.' Rather, it is an extended system of nature that 'travels together' through the temporal aspect(s) of the relevant events 5. Indeed, the very use of the word “time” at this stage is rather prejudicial to the subject, and Whitehead advocates speaking only of “the passage of

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nature,” until the subject can be adequately developed, particularly as “the passage of nature is exhibited equally in spatial transition as well as in temporal transition” (CN, 54). It is of the very 'nature of Nature' that it is always moving on. It is only after cognizance has distilled an appropriately stable set of characteristics which display themselves in the passage of events—as opposed to just the passage of nature—that time in something like its scientific sense comes to be recognizable as a genuine, if abstracted and ideal, relation in nature. In other words, it is only through the functionally correlated extensional structures of some finite but definite set of events, that time emerges as a real character of nature (CN, 55; R 68— 9). Durations have extension, and it is the singular character of this type of extension which endows the particular form of the passage of nature within them their peculiarly temporal, as opposed to spatial, constitution. These extensional relations are structured by their various membership and mereological relations, only some of which we can review here. A family of durations does not contain any “points” as members, although (as we will see shortly) point-like structures can be approximated with arbitrary precision. Because the family does not contain points, any intersection of non-disjoint durations—finite or infinite—within the family must be itself another duration. There can be no such thing as a “least” duration. In the opposite direction, the union of any collection of durations within the family is, again, a duration. But, in fact, Whitehead makes a stronger claim than just this: there can, in fact, be no greatest member at all. For any union of durations, it is always possible to find a greater duration than this particular union (CN, 59). Now if we abstractively focus our attention upon some appropriate property or characteristic of nature, we will discover that smaller and smaller durations, each smaller one contained within a larger in this process, will often times serve to effectively refine the scientifically important aspects of this natural property in some meaningfully quantifiable way. This converging set of ever smaller durations will never reach a smallest duration, nor will it approach a 'limit' of its convergence; there will always be smaller durations. However, the natural properties of this “abstractive set,” as Whitehead calls it, “converges to the ideal of all nature with no temporal extension, namely, to the ideal of all nature at an instant.” Whitehead immediately points out that this “is in fact the ideal of a nonentity.” However, what is important for science is that, “the quantitative expressions of these natural properties do converge to limits though the abstractive set does not converge to any limiting duration” (CN,

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61, my emphasis). The ideal of this convergence is what Whitehead calls a “moment” (CN, 62). This 'natural nonentity' of a moment is the approximation to a point mentioned above. The process of approximation is what Whitehead called the method of extensive abstraction. Real, natural durations, can be approximated with any finite, degree of accuracy using Whitehead's mereological techniques, while the highly intellectualized, mathematical representations of the scientifically significant content of those durations can be driven to a quantitative, mathematical limit. Each individual limit, in turn, can be brought into mathematical relation with others. When all of these limits are gathered together, the structure one has, though it is significant of nature, is not to be found in nature. But it certainly recognizable for all of that: it is, of course, the real number line. Once again, this real number system is one of those idealities which is not in nature, but of which nature itself is significant, and which in turn is significant for nature. Indeed, an examination of any history of mathematics will make it perfectly obvious that the real number line came into the universe of mathematical discourse as that structure which completed a systematic array of formal limits that were mathematically interesting. This idealized mirror of nature, in which the last drop of real passage has been wrung out, but where serialized order has been elevated to its own 'limit' of perfection, is the ultimate meaning of the concept of “time as a series” (CN, 64). In this respect, each moment of time is a single point on the idealized formal structure of “time as a series,” time as isomorphic to the real number line. It is this last, highly abstract and idealized representation of time that the RNI hypothesis takes as the given, actual fact of nature, rather than as an abstractively determined idealization that is significant of nature. It is the failure to mark this distinction that leads to the unsolvable problems of mind and nature, and the specific form of this problem upon which I now wish to vent some speculation regarding the nature of choice.

4. Choice as Durational And indeed, at this stage I must become overtly speculative. But let us be bold: Suppose it is the case that choice is intrinsically durational in nature? My use of terms here is neither accidental nor ironic. Now, as noted above, Whitehead does not throw all of experience into nature. Quite the contrary—Whitehead is a pan-experientialist, and as such it is the natural which is contained within experience, not the other way around. Moreover,

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since the experience of choice—or, at least, our own choices—does not come to us via our senses, there is a respect in which, for Whitehead, choice is not a “natural” phenomenon. But at the same time, Whitehead firmly resists any simplistic bifurcation of the natural and the psychological. So we can safely permit our terminology to slide a bit here, if we note that, while choice is not a subject of natural—which is to say physical—science, to the extent that choice is intrinsically durational it makes perfect Whiteheadian sense to also see choice as, in this regard, perfectly natural as well. What does it mean to say that choice is intrinsically durational? Put simply, it means that choice relates to the rest of the universe in an irreducibly extensive manner, and that these extensional relations are naturally timelike in their character, most particularly in their characters of passage. Freedom, then, would be a modality of choice, and would most likely be a reflection of the deeper relational structures of the metaphysics. But if the above hypothesis is correct, then any model or representation of reality which abstracts from the extensive, durational structures found in nature must also lose—and necessarily lose—the very possibility of representing or modeling choice—free or otherwise. This in turn means that it is impossible in principle to produce a workable model of human choice that can fit within the standard models of nature, with their inherent commitment to a punctiform reality as represented by the RNI hypothesis 6. Now, at this point in my discussion, anyone with even a general familiarity with Bergson's arguments should be having a serious bout of deja vu. After all, from his earliest published works, Bergson adamantly opposed any theory of the mind that spatialized psychological phenomena. And there is no secret to the fact that Bergson was an influence on Whitehead's thought—Whitehead himself variously acknowledged as much (See for instance PR, xii). So why even bother with this detour into Whitehead? Why not simply come out and explicitly endorse Bergson's arguments on this matter, and have done with it? The reason for not taking such a position is simple: Bergson provides the hint we need to solve our problem, but he provides neither a theory of abstraction nor a sufficiently robust theory of nature to enable us to move forward. This is what Whitehead gives us. Indeed, from a Whiteheadian perspective, the problem between conventional physical science and durational human realities such as choice and freedom, really is not to be found in the spatialization of the mind, as Bergson thought. Rather, it is a failure to understand the common extensional relations of time and space as these are found in nature, versus the “punctiform” abstractions of space and time that are employed in physical models of nature, and which

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characterize the RNI hypothesis. For it is Whitehead's argument that natural time and natural space share extension as a common quality. Whitehead tells us that, “Time and space both spring from the relation of extension” (PNK, 62). He expands on this a few pages later by saying, It is evident from the universal and uniform application of the spatiotemporal concepts that they must arise from the utilisation of the simplest characteristics without which no datum of knowledg ewould be recognized as an event belonging to the order of nature. Extension is a relation of this type (PNK, 75). It is this commonality of extensive relations that sets Whitehead's theory of extension at the center of both his theory of nature and abstraction.

5. Conclusion This is almost a good enough point at which to close my discussion. However, a little more needs to be said regarding Whitehead's theory of extension. This was the only aspect of his natural philosophy that Whitehead continued to develop. Thus, for example, part IV of Process and Reality, which is sometimes referred to as the “coordinate account” of his theory, is a refinement of the theory of extension that he had originally developed in his earlier triptych. This development was necessitated by some critiques offered by Theodore de Laguna in some articles published in the Journal of Philosophy in 1922, and which Whitehead freely acknowledged as correcting his earlier ideas (PR, 287)7. But that development did not cease with Whitehead. In the early 1980's, Bowman Clarke published a pair of articles which served to revive interest in Whitehead's mereological theories. Indeed, it turns out that Whitehead's ideas on these matters—via Clarke's presentations and corrections—are of fundamental importance to ongoing areas of research in formal spatial relations described as “mereotopology” and “mereogeometry,” and to applied artificial intelligence programs of spatial reasoning. Researchers such as Ian Pratt and David Randall, among others, explicitly identify the theory of extension in part IV of Process and Reality as the foundation of their disciplines. (See for example, Pratt and Schoop 1998, or Randall et al 1992. Citations to Clarke's original articles can be found in Clarke 1981 and Clarke 1985.) This fact does not seem to be well known amongst the process philosophy community, and it ought to be. It is important and worth knowing, for it forcefully demonstrates that Whitehead's theory of extension is more than just an interesting but irrelevant crack-pot scheme of a mathematician dabbling in philosophy. Rather, it is the explicitly

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acknowledged foundation of an active area of both formal and practical scientific research. Since extension is the center-piece of Whitehead's theories of nature and abstraction, these latter gain significantly in their credibility and importance from the ongoing vitality of that self-same theory of extension. And with any such gain in credibility, especially when that gain comes from a philosophically independent source, we have all the more reason to return to Whitehead's extensional theory of nature as found in his triptych, with an eye not merely for its historical place in Whitehead's thought but with the constructive intention of applying those works to ongoing problems. Which, at last, returns us to where we began. If choice is intrinsically extensional in nature, then only a theory of nature that takes extension seriously can possibly accommodate it. This is the thing that Whitehead gives us.

6. References Clarke, Bowman L. 1981. “A Calculus of Individuals Based on ‘Connection’,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic volume 22, number 3, pp 204—218. July. —-. 1985. “Individuals and Points,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic volume 26, number 1, pp 61—75. January. Eastman, Timothy E., and Keeton, Hank. 2004. Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process and Experience, State University of New York Press, NY. Einstein, Albert. 1961. Relativity, the Special and the General Theory, Three Rivers Press, NY. Epperson, Michael. 2004. Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Fordham University Press, NY. Greene, Brian. 2004. The Fabric of Reality, Vintage, NY. Herstein, Gary. 2005. “Davidson on the Impossibility of Psychophysical Laws,” Synthese, Volume 145, Number 1, May 2005, pp. 45—63. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL. Kraus, Elizabeth M. 1998. The Metaphysics of Experience, Fordham University Press, NY. Lowe, Victor. 1990. Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and his Work. Volume II: 1910–1947, the Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

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Pratt, Ian and Schoop, Dominik. 1998. “A Complete Axiom System for Polygonal Mereotopology of the Real Plane,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 27: 621-658. Randell, D. A., Cui, Z. and Cohn, A. G. 1992. “A spatial logic based on regions and connection,” in B. Nebel, C. Rich, and W. Swartout (eds), Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Proceedings of the Third International Conference (KR ’92), Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, 1992, pp. 165-176. Whitehead, Alfred North: —- “PNK.” An Enquiry into the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1919. (Reviewed: G. D. Hicks, Nature, vol. 105, June 10 1920, pp. 446-448.) ——. “CN.” The Concept of Nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, (1920) 1971. (Reviewed: G. D. Birkhoff, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 28, 1922, pp. 219-221.) —-. “R.” The Principle of Relativity with applications to Physical Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1922. (Reviewed: Unsigned, Nature, vol 111, May 26, 1923, pp. 697-699.) —-. “SMW.” Science in the Modern World, The Free Press, NY, (1925) 1967. —-. “PR.” Process and Reality (corrected edition), The Free Press, NY, (1929) 1978. Yourgrau, Palle. 2004. A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy Of Gödel And Einstein, Basic Books.

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Notes 1

See, for instance, (Herstein, 2005).

2

See, for instance, (Eastman and Keeton, 2004), (Epperson, 2004) and (Jungerman, 2000). 3

Throughout this essay, I will use the following somewhat standardized abbreviations for Whitehead's work: “PR” for Process and Reality, “PNK” for Enquiry into the Principles of Natural Knowledge, “CN” for The Concept of Nature, and “R” for The Principle of Relativity with Applications to Physical Science., and “SMW” for Science and the Modern World. See the list of references at the end for details. 4

I am scarcely the first person to have made this observation. Victor Lowe states that “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. And from this perspective it is clear that his early empiricism is more radical than atomistic” (Lowe 1990, pg. 105). However, Whitehead does not mention James in the triptych. James's name does come up in Science and the Modern World, where Whitehead refers to him as “that adorable genius (SMW, 2). Finally, in Process and Reality, Whitehead cites James as one of the persons to whom he was “richly indebted” (PR, xii). 5

The previous phrases in single quotes are my own.

6

A similar line of reasoning for psychological phenomena in general might well serve to actually provide an explanation for Davidson's “anomalous monism,” that does not amount to a kind of transcendental argument. See (Herstein, 2005) pp. 58 ff. for some discussion of the peculiarities of Davidson's claims. 7

This is also a further argument that Whitehead's metaphysics does not supplant his philosophy of nature or his theory of time. For we can see that Whitehead is perfectly willing to tell us when he believed that his earlier work was mistaken. Yet nowhere does he repudiate the philosophy of nature found in PNK, CN or R. In fact, when he has cause to refer to matters of nature and natural science, he simply directs his readers to those entire books. See, for instance, (PR, footnotes pp. 287, 297, 333.)

VII. A Whiteheadian Metaphysics of Light Bogdan Ogrodnik This chapter is an attempt to show that Whitehead’s process philosophy leads to a modern version of a metaphysics of light. The metaphysics of light is usually connected with medieval philosophical and theological systems, which culminate in St. Bonaventura’s and Robert Grosseteste’s systems, great Franciscan masters of theology, philosophy and as far as Grosseteste is concerned—science1. The term metaphysics of light is understood here as just such a theory of reality, which it explains by formal or material features of light. Light as a metaphysical principle is a type of dynamic entity, which possesses both immanent and transcendent aspects. The immanent aspect is vibration and the transcendent one is incessant emanation or propagation. Moreover, light can be split up (not decomposed) into other units of light but is not divisable by itself. This effect is the result of the ‘immanently creative’ nature of the world. The form of light is determined minimally, and is connected strictly with its metaphysical status as a border entity. The border status of light means that it is placed between corporeal and incorporeal entities 2. The chapter is divided into three parts. First, we review Whitehead’s own route to a metaphysics of becoming. From this, we re-examine Process and Reality in terms of the genesis of Whitehead’s metaphysics in the theory of light. We then consider whether, given recent advances in the physics of light, we need a modern, or contemporary metaphysics of light at all. Lastly, we shall argue that recent discoveries in the physics of light may allow new applications of process metaphysics that may help ‘re-connect’ it with the reality of the phenomenon that Whitehead used as his starting point.

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1. Whitehead’s Journey to a ‘Metaphysics of Becoming’ In a well-known passage from Process and Reality Whitehead asserts: In the first place, the construction must have its origin in the generalisation of particular factors discerned in particular topics of human interest; for example, in physics, or in physiology, or in psychology, (…) or in languages conceived as storehouses of human experience. In this way the prime requisite, that anyhow there shall be some important implications, is secured.3

We may ask what Whitehead’s basic experience of reality was. As we know, the scope of Whitehead’s inspiration was very wide and many scholars have researched it4. In order to understand fully a philosopher’s metaphysics, an appreciation of the kind of experience that provided the basic intuition of reality to the philosopher is key. It is necessary for a metaphysician to be in ‘close contact’ with reality for many reasons, not least because it is the source of any ability to modify rational speculation. No route to metaphysics is closed, but a necessary condition of the journey is the exhaustive exploration of matters of facts, which we know best thanks to our education, experience or predispositions. By ‘exhaustive exploration’, we mean a rational and as far as possible thorough (or complete) analysis of reality. Whitehead had two sources of basic intuition into reality. The first was an image of electromagnetic waves, which propagate through the world. This image comes from the very beginning of Whitehead’s scientific studies5 and in the last part of his life was enriched by both James’s idea of experience and quantum mechanics. According to Whitehead, electromagnetic waves consist of quanta of electromagnetic occasions. Whitehead’s terms actual occasion, actual entity, drop of experience, microprocess, Res Verae, quantum of becoming and so on all express the same intuition of quantum reality. The metaphysical structure of the quantum and the physical structure of the world should agree with each other and complement each other. However, at the same time, the metaphysical description should preserve completeness both of an actual entity and of the world process. Of course, a metaphysical description needs many categories, which reflect many areas of human experience such as psychological, aesthetic, religious and mathematical, or just ‘every-day’ and so forth. Nevertheless, ‘agreement and complementarity’ is both a

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starting-point and an end-point in Whitehead’s metaphysical train of thought. In his own doctortal dissertation, Whitehead investigated the mathematical structure of Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory and recognised it as a universal structure. His intuition of reality as a propagating society of electromagnetic occasions remained his main point of reference during his work on Process and Reality even although he had already written Science and the Modern World: “If we go below the quanta of time which are the successive vibratory periods of the primate, we find a succession of vibratory electromagnetic fields, each stationary in the space-time of its own duration. Each of these fields exhibits a single complete period of the electromagnetic vibration which constitutes the primate. This vibration is not to be thought of as becoming of reality; it is what the primate is in one of the discontinuous realisations. Also the successive duration in which the primate is realised are contiguous; it follows that the life history of the primate can be exhibited as being the continuous development of occurrences in electromagnetic field.6 […] Thus the primate is realised atomically in a succession of durations, each duration to be measured from one maximum to another.7

The above-quoted descriptions are examples of the same cosmological view as we meet in Process and Reality. Moreover, the development of the simplest electromagnetic organism is measured by the full period of becoming from one maximum to another. Such a division of the propagated wave is natural if we limit it to the classical point of view. Even then, we can ask why do we not determine the range of this organism in other ways, for instance from one minimum to another? In so doing, we grapple with an ambiguity regarding the determination of such a metaphysical organism. The next problem occurs when we try to interpret displacement between a magnetic vector and an electric vector. This displacement is exactly
. It is impossible to state which of the vectors is more important in the determination of the electromagnetic occasion. Of course, we can defend Whitehead’s position by pointing out the more general nature of metaphysical notions than physical ones. The argument is broadly correct, because one can prove easily that physics and metaphysics differ as to their subjects and methods. Unfortunately, there is one exception. Namely that the electromagnetic occasion is identical from the point of view of both physics and metaphysics; it is one entity. In other words, the smallest unit

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of reality has to be the same independent of any kind of abstraction used in its description.

2. Process and Reality in the light of a Metaphysics of Light Let us leave these problems for a moment to consider Process and Reality briefly, from the point of view of the metaphysics of light. As we know Whitehead confirms, even more emphatically than in Science and the Modern World, the electromagnetic nature of our cosmic epoch. He says: “Our present cosmic epoch is formed by an ‘electromagnetic’ society, which is more special society contained within the geometric society” or farther on “It is sufficient for our purposes to indicate the presumed character of this law by naming the members of the society ‘electromagnetic occasions’. Thus our epoch is dominated by a society of electromagnetic occasions.”8 But among many types of order, electromagnetic society possesses a special one, in that: “[…] generally speaking, whenever we are concerned with occupied space, we are dealing with this restricted type of corpuscular societies; and whenever we are thinking of the physical field in empty space, we are dealing with societies of the wider type. It seems as if the careers of waves of light illustrate the transition from the more restricted type to the wider type.”9

The conclusion is as follows: “Thus our cosmic epoch is to be conceived primarily as a society of electromagnetic occasions, including electronic and protonic occasions, and only occasionally—for the sake of brevity—as a society of electrons and protons.”10 In this way, although Whitehead speaks about our cosmic epoch, he tries to build a more general metaphysic which is independent of our epoch, being without a principle of continuity; “[…] the ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism.”11 At the same time, however, Whitehead admits that there is a balance between atomicity and continuity in our cosmic epoch. This fact makes a physical description of our world possible by means of differential equations. What is more, Whitehead then admits that one can equally and generally accept the second principle—the principle of becoming continuity. In other words, the becoming of continuity would be complementary to the becoming of an atomic actual entity. Such a situation

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is known in quantum mechanics, which combines the corpuscular nature of elementary particles with their wave nature. Nevertheless, the balance between atomicity and continuity is not necessary and the idea closer to Whitehead’s intuition is that the more general notions such as complexity and universal relativity can replace the notion of continuity. In this way, the complementarity between a particle and a wave can be explained as different types of social order. We should add, however, that the transition between these two orders may be gradual. An electromagnetic society can possess the type of order which is intermediate between a personal order of particles and the type of order characteristic of a physical field. A bit of physical field expressing one way in which actual world involves the potentiality for new creation, acquires the unity of an actual entity. The physical field is, in this way, atomised with definite division: it becomes a ‘nexus’ of actualities. Such a quantum (i.e., each actual division) of the extensive continuum is the primary phase of a creature.12 If the emerging of electromagnetic occasions from the physical field is the first phase of such a creature, then such a type of occasion arises through a principle of individualization. According to Whitehead, this is an aspect of The Ultimate Principle, namely the transforming of many into a new unity. The first phase in the constitution of an actual entity has a receptive character. It has to provide enough room or ‘width’ for existing contrasts in the next phases. Contrasts are necessary for syntheses of feelings into one final satisfaction. This width is provided by a pulsation of emotions. The pulsation taken in the aspect of coordinative division has its own length and frequency. Each beat or ‘pulse’ of this pulsation is one actual occasion. Emotions as basic subjective forms determine a minimal extension and give it its own character. Subjective forms have to correspond with the range of actual entities and vice versa: In any particular cosmic epoch, the order of nature has secured the necessary differentiation on function, so as to avoid incompatibilities, by shepherding the sensa characteristic of that epoch each into association with a definite pulse. Thus, the transmission of each sensum is associated with its own wavelength. In physics, such transmission can be conceived as corpuscular or undulatory, according to the special importance of particular features in the instance considered. The higher phases of experience increase of dimension of width, and elicit contrasts of higher types.13

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It is in the context of the constitution of the primary characteristic of an actual occasion that we can return to the problems concerning our understanding the smallest unit of light’s actuality, mentioned above. Emotions as basic subjective forms determine successive actual occasions in such a way that something in them has to induce the next pulse. But, what is it? Whitehead examined various possibilities for the constitution of enduring objects. Importantly, he rejected a simple, uniform transition from one actual occasion to another, because “[t]his is an absolute extreme of undifferentiated endurance, of which we have no direct evidence.”14 In short, such experiences are impossible in Whitehead’s Universe. The reasons for this are a) the presence of The Principle of the Ultimate, which is the source of a novelty in each new actual occasion, and b). because prehensions of an increasing nexus of occasions differentiate the next becoming occasions. In this way, no becoming occasion can be a duplicate of any past occasion. We may draw an analogy between the situation described above and memory, thanks to which we can remember something unchanging: recollection changes succeeding conscious occasions. There is an infinite number of possible nexus of actual occasions between exact heredity of the past and chaos. Why does Nature prefer the simplest type of order that appears as a vibration? In which way does the past actual occasion cause a new actual occasion so that the next period of vibration appears? Whitehead claimed: The second species of physical purposes is due to the origination of reversions in the mental pole. It is due to this second species that vibration and rhythm have a dominating importance in the physical world. Reversions are the conceptions which arise by reason of the lure of contrast, as a condition for intensity of experience.15

It is very interesting that reversions lead to the appearance of such conceptual novelty, which is proximate to these eternal objects that are prehended as data at the beginning of the second phase of concrescence. The proximity requirement expresses the intuition that a reversal feeling penetrates the nearest domain of eternal objects. Because of this penetration, many similar eternal objects can be recognised and used by an actual entity. It thereby gives new perspectives for synthesis in subsequent phases. The reversion is an operation similar to a reflection, and hence it is a type of a discontinuous transformation of something into something else. As an opposite type of operation, one can point to the continuous increase in intensity of a property or the increase of its importance.

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As a physical example of a reversion, we may consider an electromagnetic wave. The reversion takes place between the electric and magnetic aspects of an electromagnetic occasion. The maximum intensity one aspect does not coincide (neither in time nor in space) with the maximum of the intensity of other. These aspects are interconnected strictly in virtue of Maxwell’s laws. This is the simplest case of a reversion, and leads to the vibration existence in our Universe. As we shall see later, the simplicity is important from a metaphysical point of view. Therefore, the answer to the question ‘why does Nature exhibit vibration as the dynamic ground of duration?’ is as follows: Thus an enduring object gains the enhanced intensity of feeling arising from contrast between inheritance and novel effect, and also gains the enhanced intensity arising from combined inheritance of its stable rhythmic character throughout its life-style. It has the weight of repetition, the intensity of contrast, and the balance between the two factors of the contrast. In this way, the association of endurance with rhythm and physical vibration is to be explained. They arise out of conditions for intensity and stability.16

3. Do we Need a Metaphysics of Light? At this point we shall return for a moment to the founding fathers of light metaphysics, such as St. Bonaventura and Grosseteste, and try to show the structural similarity of their systems to Whitehead’s metaphysics. For St. Bonaventura light plays two roles. The first is that light, as a subtle dynamic matter, mediates between Divine lux aeterna and mundane inert dark matter. The second is that light possesses the simplest form called forma communis or forma corporealis. This form causes corporeality of all beings. A hierarchy of other forms modifies the basic form of being in such a way that determines it in respect of both species and all accidents. Similarly, in Whitehead’s system a pulse of vibration is the simplest mode of becoming, which can be enriched by a pattern of eternal objects. A good example is a violin string; its ability to produce simple vibration is a necessary condition of producing the most sophisticated sounds. Grosseteste’s category of self-multiplication of light also has an equivalent, in Whitehead’s factor of creativity. This is a universal factor and it causes permanent emerging and vanishing of actual occasions. Self-multiplication and creation of new generations of actual entities leads to the increase and

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the development of the Universe. Grosseteste expressed this beautifully as sfera lucis. Despite the connection we may draw between Whitehead and the founding fathers of light metaphysics, we can still ask whether we need a contemporary metaphysical category of light. The answer depends partially on the modern concept of light and the presence of a metaphysics that is able to incorporate some aspects of this concept, alongside the historical aspects. Why is the modern concept of light so interesting from a metaphysical point of view? Beyond the use of the term ‘light’ instead of the more common term ‘electromagnetic field’ (there are many more types of massless particles than photons involved), we will try to describe the features of physical light which may be important for a hypothetical metaphysics of light, as follows. Within the scope of the classical standpoint, the speed of light is a maximal velocity of transmission of information. The velocity is independent of a frame of reference. The space-time structure of the Universe is derivative of this fact, so it depends on a frame of reference as well. We can say there is an absolute (in the above sense of the word) process and it is the propagation of light. One of the consequences of this absoluteness is that the so-called ‘proper time’ of light equals zero. This means that from the point of view of an external observer the interior of light is unmovable. On the other hand, it is a well known fact that light has its own inner dynamic. We have to accept two kinds of dynamic, an inner dynamic which is not space-time determined, and an outer dynamic, the simplest example of which is the ordinary movement of a massive body. The inner dynamic seems to be connected with Whitehead’s notion of microprocess, the outer one with macroprocess. The sphere of light delimits the range of the Universe and in this sense resembles us Grosseteste’s sfera lucis. Simultaneously the sphere separates the two above mentioned types of dynamic. One of the solutions of Maxwell’s equations is a propagation of the electromagnetic wave. Its basic characteristics are the wavelength and its frequency. Whitehead’s treatment of the wave as a society of electromagnetic occasions is a very natural metaphysical interpretation. It has some problems, which we have mentioned above, but in general it is adequate for the classic case. However, the contemporary theory of light has its basis in quantum electrodynamics. This claims that a monochromatic electromagnetic field is equivalent to a set of photons of the same energy. The general

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characteristics of an electromagnetic wave, such as frequency and wavelength, belong to each photon but in a quantum way. It therefore suggests that a photon has its own inner dynamic, which is different in nature from the classical interpretation. Furthermore, if the photon is described in terms of wave processes in the sense of Schrödinger's wave mechanics, a very sharply concentrated wave packet appears at the stated position. In an investigation of this packet by Fourier analysis—a technique that analyses a function into its sinusoidal components—then wave components of quite different wavelengths occur. Thus a photon in this condition has no definite value for its wavelength. It is now possible to approximate the inner quantum dynamic of a photon according to its particular series of vibrations. What position should a process philosophy at the turn of the twentieth and twenty first century take, in a situation whereby physics now supplies more precise descriptions than the electromagnetic descriptions which Whitehead used as the basis for his description of the becoming occasion? If we want to remain faithful to a Whiteheadian understanding of metaphysics there is no other way but to check incessantly the adequacy of accepted earlier categories, worked out in Process and Reality. If their adequacy changes or diminishes, we shall try to modify them or in some way adjust them to suit contemporary explanations; a new metaphysics may need new categories.

4. Applying the New Physics of Light to Whitehead’s Metaphysics The above short description of the quantum electromagnetic field requires us to rethink the basic meaning of an actual occasion. The problem is whether a photon as a quantum particle is simply an ordered society of electromagnetic occasions or whether it has a stronger metaphysical position? We shall now examine briefly a few of the possibilities in regards to such a modification. Light as a particle can be regarded as a special kind of nexus of a determined number of electromagnetic occasions. The particularity of such a nexus consists of a higher level co-presence of all the electromagnetic occasions which constitute it, than Whitehead’s original conceptualisation allows. The past and present occasions have to co-exist within the wider presence which comprises the whole single photon. The oscillation is determined in a particular way and the particularity is connected with the realization of a certain border possibility—oscillation is the simplest type

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of stable dynamic. By ‘the simplest’, we mean the one that all other kinds of dynamic are ultimately reducible to. The definiteness resulting from the vibration is now limited to the minimum (cf. above), to simple interchangeable becoming and vanishing of the two interdependent quality characteristics. It seems though, that the situation can be described alternatively as an inner differentiation of the dynamic of the wholeness resulting in the characteristic rhythm that a photon constitutes. Maintaining the unity and completeness of a particle is now connected with the series of oscillations that it undergoes, and each pulse of this oscillation is an actual occasion. We should add the contemporary theory of light indicates that becoming within a quantum of light has a proper time equal to zero. From this point of view, the area that zero interval covers is the area where a microprocess takes place. This indicates the inherent non-relational state-event ontology underpinning the contemporary physical theory of light, but in a sense is close to a Whiteheadian internal dynamic of an actual entity.

5. Conclusion Increasingly, deeper and more thorough knowledge about complementarity between local and global things present in the modern physical worldview forces us to pose our questions from the grounds of a metaphysics of process. From the global point of view a quantum of light can be regarded as a realized entanglement of possible electromagnetic histories or paths, which are very similar to Whitehead’s prehensions or feelings. Each of them is partially potential and partially real. They are partially potential, because they have their own definite character and can determine a localized entity. They are partially real because they interfere with each other and an actual entity in part consists of them. All the histories or paths compose the particular tissue of reality from which experiential becoming arises. In other words they constitute the real potentiality of the quantum electromagnetic field in its so-called ground state. We can know the patterns of the tissue only by experience of a realized nexus. These nexuses build our world of experience17. The above discussion is an attempt to consider the nature of light with the use of a category which seems most suitable as a description that renders it in the structurally simplest atomic terms while at the same time not only preserving but also emphasising its processual nature. From this standpoint, since metaphysics of light is only a part of a metaphysics of process important new questions arise as to the nature of higher levels of reality in

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the context of a modified thesis of the metaphysics of process. Such questions would essentially concern the examination of a hypothesis that light as a quantum particle is a germ of three forms: the form of an event, the form of a process and the form of an enduring entity. To be a germ means that none of the forms which are known to us from experience is fully developed in light18. In sum, we may make some remarks on the duration of other types of elementary particles such as electrons and protons, etc. It seems that these can be derived both from the special type of order inherent in electromagnetic occasions and from an additional factor. What might the additional factor be, depends on what type of facts we try to reconcile with our metaphysics. For example, we may suggest that elementary particles are an excitation of a primordial field of activity where the excitation may or may not be stable, but the particles have their own inner dynamic. Alternatively, elementary particles are a result of light ‘confinement’ consisting of a coupling of two or more particles of light.19 Lastly, the particle is a realized entanglement of possible quantum paths or histories.20 Each of the above proposals complies with the general Whiteheadean theses regarding the world as a macroprocess and a quantum unit of the world as a microprocess. Crucially, the proposals let metaphysics face the reality which modern physics has recently revealed recently. Modern physics’ wave packets, particle world lines, entanglements, quantum fields, quantum vacuums provide new and interesting metaphysical challenges. Once they are explored, we may try to apply them to increase the applicability and adequacy of process metaphysical descriptions of our world. In this way, physical notions can be the ground for a re-emergence of legitimate metaphysical hypotheses grounded in reality.

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Notes 1

For general information see for example: F. Copleston: A History of Philosophy, vol. 2. 2

The general view on one version of modern metaphysics of light see B. Ogrodnik: Treatise on the Pure Activity. Hipotheses 9. Torun, Mikolow, 1998 (in Polish; forthcoming in Process Studies Supplements). 3

A. N. Whitehead: Process and Reality. En Essay in Cosmology. (P&R), New York, London 1978, (Corrected Edition), p. 5. 4

See for instance: L.S. Ford: Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics. Albany 1984. 5

According to V. Lowe: Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work vol.1: 1861-1910. Baltimore 1985. 6

A.N. Whitehead: Science and the Modern World (SMW), New York 1925, p. 137/8. 7

SMW p. 137.

8

P&R p. 98.

9

P&R p. 92.

10

Ibidem.

11

P&R p. 35.

12

P&R p. 80. P&R p. 163.

13 14

P&R p. 187.

15

P&R p. 277.

16

P&R p. 279.

17

Similar ideas are developed by G.F. Chew. See: A Historical Reality That Includes Big Bang, Free Will, and Elementary Particles. In: Physics and Whitehead. Quantum, Process and Experience. Eds. T.E. Eastman, H. Keeton: Albany 2004. He wrote in a ‘Note Added in Proof’ that “The major development has been to associate Whiteheadian pre-events with Feynman paths, rather then Hilbert space. […] Feynman paths embrace the nonenduring process. […] In my model, path space is hugely larger than Hilbert space.” p. 90.

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18

Roman Ingarden (Husserl’s follower and co-worker)—Polish leading ontologist elaborated a very interesting typology of forms of real beings in his main work entitled Dispute over World Existence (three volumes). He distinguished three main forms of real things: form of events, form of processes and form of enduring objects. 19

This possibility was examined in the context of the metaphysics of the Pure Activity. See Ogrodnik: Treatise…, Hypothesis 9. 20

I gave a sketch of such a possibility in the following e-paper: The Metaphysical Dimension of Optimizing Principles. In: Concrescence: The Australasian Journal for Process Thought. Vol 5. 2004.

VIII. Water as a Metaphoric Model in Process Thought Jan B.F.N. Engberts If we contemplate the world around us and we like to attain at least some rudimentary understanding, we need a metaphysical model in which we have confidence. Metaphysics is the philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution, and structure of reality. It is broader in scope than science and even cosmology (which considers the nature, structure and origin of the universe as a whole), since one of its traditional concerns is the existence of nonphysical entities, e.g. God. In a recent essay, Clayton1a has suggested the term “event metaphysics” for the application of Whitehead’s metaphysics for the interpretation of contemporary physics. This general theory of physical reality has to be understood by putting emphasis on processes rather than on stabilities and fixities of material substances. A process may be defined2 as a coordinated group of changes in the complexion of reality, an organized family of occurrences systematically linked to one another either causally or functionally.

1. Whitehead’s Metaphysics and ‘Matter’ Constructive applications are, however, open to all human experience. As Whitehead intimated, metaphysics must operate at the greatest possible level of abstraction. This is because it not only represents but also integrates all human reflections on science, the arts, ethics, politics and religion. A key concept of Whitehead’s ultimate ‘abstraction from abstractions’ is that reality consists of processive events of harmonization. Lakoff and Johnson3 have argued that truth is based on understanding. Truth can be viewed as how the complex togetherness of actual occasions finds a natural representation in the creative advance that we experience in everyday life. But understanding hinges on the method you have chosen for investigation. My preference is to combine objectivism and subjectivism in what has been called the (pan)experientalist method, which opens perspectives from which both concerns can be met at once4.

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Since my first confrontation with Whitehead’s Process and Reality in my student days5a, I liked to view the world as an interrelated unity: nature participates in us and we participate in nature. I became convinced that process is metaphysically prior to substance and that there is no being without becoming. It is now recognised that matter is, in fact, to an overwhelming extent empty space, but empty space filled with birthing and dying of particle pairs and virtual photons, gluons, bosons and gravitons acting as force carriers. It is clear that matter is a process rather than substance. These basic ideas constitute essential features of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and my article will be largely based upon his process thought. I was enchanted to find strong parallels in traditional Chinese philosophy, which, from very early times, seriously looked at the world in progress and was guided by a holistic and inclusive view that exhibited unity and continuity for every living being in the world. Based upon a sublime ancient tradition, starting with the Yi Jing and followed by thinkers as Kongzi (Confucius), Laozi and Zhuangzi, and further enriched by the introduction of Buddhist thought in China, it was particularly the neoconfucianist Zhu Xi (1130-1200)6 who developed a metaphysical system that had much in common with crucial characteristics of Whitehead’s thought despite the enormous time gap of about nine centuries. Thome Fang was the first Chinese philosopher who embraced Whitehead’s process thinking and who showed the striking similarities between process thought and Chinese metaphysics7a. I will not elaborate on this issue but rather refer to Julia Ching7b who has published in-depth comparative studies of Whitehead and Zhu Xi. Whitehead’s categorial scheme, layed down in the first part of Process and Reality5 is the groundwork of his metaphysics. The first and most basic one is the category of the ultimate, which provides the general principles presupposed in the more specialised categories. This category involves the two ultimate notions creativity, and the many become one and are increased by one. These ideas stimulate us to look at the creative and continuous advances in nature (both dead and alive), with humans not being irrelevant spectators, but being part of it.

2. Metaphors as Expressions of Experience In this category of the ultimate, there are no premises. The general principles are just derived from reflections of lived experiences. This is an important notion. In experiencing the complexity of the events around us,

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we are constituted by our experiences, which contain elements which convince us to accept and cherish the category of the ultimate. We express part of these experiences in the form of metaphors3. A metaphor is a matter of imaginative rationality, permitting understanding of one kind of experience in terms of another. And more than that. Metaphors are capable of creating new understandings, throwing intenser light on reality. In everyday life we frequently think in metaphors and our perception of things around us is often expressed in metaphoric structures. Often metaphors are poetic, using language as the medium through which new conceptual metaphors are created. But metaphors are not merely a matter of language, they are matters of conceptual structure involving all the natural dimensions of our experience. They are conceptual footsteps on the road to understanding and truth.

3. Whitehead, Water and Zhu Xi I shall here present some ideas showing why water can be viewed as a relevant root metaphor in Whitehead’s and Zhu Xi’s philosophies as seen in terms of Whitehead’s first category of the ultimate. These metaphors do not support the first category, they are just images, involving real physical observations which, after considering them, give us aesthetic satisfaction, thereby shining light on the relevance and truth of the first category. Whitehead liked water. On July 17, 1939, Lucien Price8 wrote about the view from Whitehead’s dining room: […] on its outer side the room opens to a lawn, a garden with a round pool under elms, and a peaceful vista of pastures sloping to the placid current of the river, which Whitehead said he was never tired of contemplating […].

It is most likely that he—in the footsteps of Heraclitus—enjoyed the endless flux of water and not so much the river as an object. Perhaps Whitehead found particular inspiration in the poetry of William Wordsworth, a poet who he admired: Hence in a season of calm wheather Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea.

And Zhu Xi6 said:

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Jan B.F.N. Engberts The mind is like water, nature is like the tranquility of still water, emotions are like the flow of moving water, and human desires are the waves. Just as there are good and bad waves, so too there are good and bad desires, and bad passions that rush out like wild and violent waves […].

In these statements we may recognise the two different types of process thought with different basic concerns. Whereas Whitehead had a particular interest in the natural world, Zhu Xi’s thought was focussed on human life and behavior. Whitehead noted that Process and Reality has been written to state “a condensed scheme of cosmological ideas, to develop their meaning by confrontation with the various topics of experience, and finally to elaborate an adequate cosmology in terms of which all particular topics find their intercommunications”. Zhu Xi has written his Chin-ssu lu (“Reflections on Things at Hand”)9 “to systematically unfold ideas on cosmology, and their relevance to personal and social life and, indeed, to the highest ideals and values of human fulfillment”. But both philosophers stress the “permanences amid the inescapable flux”. Whitehead has written about this notion in noble prose and illustrated his ideas by citing the famous hymn5b: Abide with me; Fast falls the eventide.

For Zhu Xi I cite the first two sentences of a poem that I found in the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an and which express the same emphasis on permanence and flux: My permanent home is in the ancient pagoda, where every puff of existence is tenderly renewed at dawn in the glorious sunrise.

The emphasis on human behavior has a long tradition in China. Key metaphysical concepts are ren and li. Ren (human heartedness) should be understood as a dynamically evolving phenomenon that cannot be objectified nor perceived or conceived in any steady, persistent way. As noted by Ching7b, the Chinese primordial creative activity is “the great pervasive power of Heaven and Earth”, with li as the great ultimate, that which is the ideal pole “above shapes” and involved in change and

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becoming. Ch’i is the real pole, “within shapes”, a dynamical principle which provides shape and actuality to li.

4. The Chemistry of Water In order to appreciate and enjoy the water metaphors in greater depth, let us now briefly turn our attention to water and its unique chemical properties. Understanding elementary aspects of the chemistry of water gives us a deeper appreciation of the rich variety of metaphors couched in terms of images of water. Therefore a brief summary of the extremely rich literature on the structure and properties of water10 . First of all, it is a very small molecule (H2O) consisting of only one modestly heavy oxygen atom (O) and two light hydrogen atoms (H). The OH bond lengths are 0.9572 Å (1 Å is 10-8 cm), the H-O-H bond angle is 104.5°, close to the angle in a tetrahedron. The contours of the total electron density in the HOH plane are known from quantum chemical calculations. The molecule appears to be close to spherical. Most important is the electric charge distribution within the molecule: there are two (partial) positive charges on the hydrogens and there is a single zone of negative charge at the oxygen atom. As a consequence the molecule has a definite dipole moment. This charge distribution allows the molecule in the liquid to participate in strong dipole interactions, called hydrogen bonds. The molecule acts twice as a hydrogen-bond donor and twice (for steric reasons) as an acceptor. The result is a highly dynamic 3-dimensional hydrogen-bond network, which contains most of the secrets of the unique solvent properties of liquid water. Each particular hydrogen bond in water lives for only a few picoseconds (pico is 10-12) and their average strength is around 20 kJ.mol-1. In a beautiful image, Ball11 has described the dynamics of the liquid as an ultrafast dance of the waters, shown as small puppets with hands representing hydrogens and feet representing negative charges on oxygen. These puppets perform a dance that involves grabbing neighbors by the ankles, rapidly going from puppet to puppet. These claps, due to hydrogen bonding, lead to a highly dynamic, terahedral arrangement around each molecule, the central motif of the structure of liquid water. Whereas the single water molecule has no peculiar properties apart from being small, it are the extremely rapid fluctuations in the hydrogen-bond network of liquid water that are unique and make the liquid a valuable vehicle for creative, metaphoric thinking in process philosophy. The extremely rapid dynamics of the huge 3-dimensional hydrogen-bond structure of water allows the water molecules to adapt themselves to any

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solute that is able to penetrate into the liquid. Now the systems will be looking for the best compromise between water-water, water-solute, and solute-solute interactions. But this is a rather general feature of any solvent: dissolution of a molecule needs solvation forces to take up the molecular particle into the particular liquid. But the unique feature of water is, that the specific hydration of an apolar particle (i.e. no charges, no dipole moment) prepares such particles for an efficient interaction process that is of crucial importance in all life processes (hydrophobic interactions)12. Aggregation of the apolar particles decreases their contact area with water and allows the waters to keep the maximum number of water-water hydrogen bonds intact. Of course, the ultimate possibility is phase separation. There appears to be teleologic behavior in this situation: water prepares the dissolved molecules for chemical processes on which life crucially depends, such as enzymic reactions and the formation and fusion of cell membranes. A few more details demonstrate how this works. First of all, one can ask the question whether interactions between apolar species in water solely depend on energy. The answer is no. Binding between two molecules is governed by both enthalpy (close to energy) and by entropy. Entropy (S) is an important property for processes in aqueous solutions. It is related to the number of microscopic states of the system (N), which is the number of different ways the inside of the system can be rearranged without changing the macroscopic properties: S = klnN (k is Boltzmann’s constant) A combination of the change in enthalpy (
H°) and in entropy (
S°) provides the Gibbs energy change (
G°) for the binding process:
G° =
H° - T
S° where T is the absolute temperature. The direction of a spontaneous (binding) process is characterized by a negative (i.e. favorable)
G°. The second law of thermodynamics states that for a spontaneous process the change in entropy is always positive. Everything that hampers a molecule in its translational, vibrational or rotational freedom reduces the entropy and is unfavorable. It was found that the hydration of apolar compounds like noble gases and hydrocarbons was governed by a large and unfavorable (negative) entropy change. In 1945 Frank and Evans13 suggested that the hydration shells of apolar solutes contained water with more and/or stronger hydrogen bonds and these shells were called microscopic “ice-bergs”. Intermolecular

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interactions above a critical concentration between such “hydrophobicallyhydrated” solutes will be accompanied by a destructive overlap of these spheres, leading to a release of water to the bulk solution and a favorable gain of entropy. Indeed, experimentally such hydrophobic interactions were found to be entropy-driven, providing support for the “ice-berg theory”. This theory survived many years. It was elegant, easy to understand and consistent with the entropy-driven interaction. In fact, the whole idea remained for many years in a dogmatic slumber. But, as appropriately expressed by Alan Soper during a lecture at a meeting in Castelvecchio, Italy (2003): “Beware of explanations based solely on thermodynamics”. Using Whitehead’s phraseology, “the chief danger to [long-standing] theories is narrowness in the selection of evidence”. With the development of sophisticated and powerful experimental (neutron diffraction) and computational (molecular dynamics computer simulations) techniques compelling evidence was obtained during the last two decades that the “ice-berg” theory was largely fallacious. On one hand it was found that water, in its attempts to retain as many hydrogen bonds as possible upon dissolution of a not too big apolar molecule, has a preference for tangential orientation of its O-H groups relative to the apolar surface area. Secondly it was argued that water, characterised by its smallness, has only very little open space (i.e.cavities) in its liquid structure to provide a sufficiently large cavity for a hydrophobic solute. Both the tangential O-H orientation and the difficult cavity formation are associated with a substantial loss of entropy, as experimentally observed. Thus hydrophobic hydration shells do not involve “ice-bergs”. And the formation of these shells aid the dissolution of apolar solutes in water, in contrast to previous beliefs. Destructive overlap of these large hydrophobic hydration shells results in a dominant gain in entropy (Figure 1), providing the driving force for hydrophobic interactions between apolar solutes14. If the building-up of a hydrophobic hydration shell around an apolar molecule is viewed as a productive process, the overlap of two hydrophobic hydration shells is then clearly a destructive process. However, in full accord with process thinking, we see that both types of dynamic processes are purposeful developments and lead to novel and improved conditions for the system under consideration. These novel insights had important consequences for many phenomena in aqueous media, as exemplified by the amazing and fully counterintuitive physiosorption of hydroxide ions to hydrophobic surfaces 15.

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Figure 1—Pairwise Hydrophobic Interactions Figure 1 depicts a cartoon of the mechanism of pairwise hydrophobic interactions. The black dots represent apolar molecules, the striped areas are hydrophobic hydration shells with a preference for water O-H bonds oriented tangentially relative to the molecular surface. Hydrophobic interaction brings both molecules into contact, leading to the release of waters from the hydrophobic hydration shells and driven by a favorable gain in entropy.

5. The Chemistry of Water as the Metaphor of Process It looks as if these amazing properties of water, adapting itself to the visitor (solute) so that it can comfortably nestle itself into the hydrogen-bond network, have been envisaged some 2500 years ago by two great Chinese thinkers who expressed their joy, just like Whitehead, in looking at water. For example, Kongzi said: […] the intelligent find joy in water […] and, standing by a river: […] what passes is perhaps like this: day and night it never lets up […]

A gentleman (junzi), never finding enjoyment or satisfaction in perversity of purpose, studies water because all of the principles to which he aspires are embodied in its many manifestations… And Mengzi said: […] there is an art in looking at water […]

Or, in more detail: Water, which provides life, gurgles up unbidden from the earth and moves of its own accord, becomes perfectly level and clears itself of sediment when still, takes the shape of any container, penetrates the tiniest opening, yields to pressure but wears down the hardest stone,

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becomes hard as ice and disperses as steam, was the model for philosophical ideas about the nature of the cosmos. Let us now apply these insights to the binding of substrate and inhibitor molecules to the enzym trypsin, a process of enormous biochemical relevance. Trypsin is a representative of a class of proteins called serine proteinases16, important enzymes for digestion (trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase), blood coagulation (thrombin) and fertilisation (plasmin). Specific hydrolysis of peptide bonds is very efficiently catalysed by trypsin. The enzyme is a globular protein, strongly folded in water which is in part driven by intramolecular hydrophobic interactions. Recently, a detailed quantitative study17 has been performed of the binding of 4alkylbenzamidinium inhibitors to the active site of the enzyme. These types of inhibitors are structurally related to the natural substrates for the enzyme and bind strongly to the active site but are not decomposed. To obtain both thermodynamic and microscopic molecular information on the binding details, two techniques have been employed: titration microcalorimetry and molecular dynamics computer simulations. The combined results gave rather detailed information on the binding interactions with the protein, not only interesting from a fundamental point of view, but also of immediate relevance for the development of new drugs. A large series of inhibitors was examined, with small and gradual changes in their hydrophobicity. The main conclusions are the following. The two most important enzyme-inhibitor interactions are (1) hydrogen bonding between hydrogen-bond acceptor sites at the enzyme and the positively charged hydrogen-bond donor amidinium functionality and (2) hydrophobic interactions between apolar sites at trypsin with the 4alkylphenyl group in the inhibitor. Evidence for hydrophobic interactions was found in the strongly positive and favorable changes in entropies of binding and the large and strongly negative heat capacities of binding. But—and most importantly—a penalty for binding was encountered, namely shielding of the active site from water by the most strongly hydrophobic 4-alkyl groups in the inhibitor. But this release of water has an important function: it leads to activation of the so-called catalytic triad whereby the enzyme is prepared for active catalytic functioning! And— overlooking the whole binding process—it is the highly dynamic hydrogenbond structure of liquid water that makes it possible during the formation of the enzyme-inhibitor complex that the many tiny water molecules around the enzyme and inhibitor rearrange themselves in a concerted process to provide maximal stability for the complex and its resulting hydration sphere.

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In a sense it is a metaphor for the advance from disjunction to conjunction. The water molecules are disjunctively in progress to a novel togetherness, the concrescence of the enzyme-inhibitor complex. For the comparable case of the formation of the enzyme-substrate complex, the new entity is then ready and preorganised for the enzymic catalytic step leading to the product of the enzyme-catalysed reaction. In sum, it is the water that drives three crucial processes in the enzymic reaction: folding of the protein to create the active site, specific binding of the substrate to the active site and, finally, formation of the organised catalytic machinery (catalytic triad) necessary for rapid hydrolysis of the peptide bond in the substrate. Many centuries ago, the Chinese thinker Laozi 18 said: […] the highest good is like water. Water’s goodness is that it benefits the myriad living things, yet does not contend and dwells in places which the multitude detest. This approximates the Way (Dao).

We have seen that the ultrafast translational and reorientational processes of water molecules, inherent in the 3-dimensional hydrogen-bond structure of water, play a quintessential role in enzymic catalysis. These highly dynamic hydration changes rather than the dynamic properties of the larger molecules, determine the efficiency of many reactions in our bodies. Of course, Lau-tzu, Zhu Xi and probably Whitehead were not aware of this chemical background knowledge. But their intuition and wisdom lead them to employ water in metaphors for creativity and understanding of nature and, when confronted with modern scientific insights, this was fully justified.

6. Differentiating Inanimate from Living Systems Whitehead’s metaphysics has been coined as “the philosophy of organism”, and indeed, he argues that all processes and bundles of orderly coordinated processes are lawfully growing and developing and having their own perspective, either conscious or unconscious. Both the Chinese and Whitehead’s metaphysical systems are philosophies of organism, that grew out of deep and immediate experiences of the real process of life. Recently Pross19 made a strong endeavor to define the basic difference between inanimate and living systems, using chemical and physical insights. He argues that “stability within the biological world derives from the nature of the replicating process: things that can make more of themselves will tend to abound and therefore replicating systems

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reflect a stability that is kinetic in nature, a dynamic kinetic stability of the kind we find in a flowing river or a water fountain. By contrast, stability in the “regular” chemical world of non-replicating entities derives from a lack of reactivity: things that do not react will persist and possess thermodynamic stability”. Looking from a different perspective, Stein20 has argued that evolution should be viewed as creative molecular advance and has given an in-depth analysis of catalytic enzymic transformations in terms of process thought. In the first chapter of “Nature and Life”21 Whitehead wrote: “science can find no individual enjoyment in nature, science can find no aim in nature, science can find no creativity in nature; it finds mere rules of succession. These negations are true of natural science. They are inherent in its methodology […].” These considerations, including the notion that “none of the laws of nature gives the slightest evidence of necessity”, are, according to Whitehead, “the result of the disastrous separation of body and mind which has been fixed on European thought by Descartes and has lead to this blindness of science”. But this sharp division between mentality and science has no ground in our fundamental observations. The philosophy of organism can resolve these inadequate visions as wisely explained in the last part of the first chapter in “Nature and Life”. Mental operations should be conceived as among the factors which make up the constitution of matter. In Whitehead’s words: “we have to construe the world in terms of the bodily society, and the bodily society in terms of the general functionings of the world”. Of course, the joy of discovery leads to satisfaction and the desire to be engaged in further adventures of thought and experimentation. But I like to emphasize that an effective metaphorical model for scientific knowledge may induce an intense aesthetic experience. The fact that the complicated process of digestion, made possible by the enormous catalytic efficiency of enzyme-catalysed transformations, strongly depends on the action of many tiny water molecules adopting their relative orientations to the needs of the enzyme and substrate, is amazing and beautiful. In his recent book, Penrose22 made the remarkable statement that “the more deeply we probe the fundamentals of physical behavior, the more we find that it is very precisely controlled by mathematics. Moreover, the mathematics that we find is not just of a direct calculational nature, it is of a profoundly sophisticated character, where there is subtlety and beauty of a kind that is not to be seen in the mathematics that is relevant to physics at a less fundamental level.”

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However, it seems clear that, from the standpoint of process thinking, beauty is not only found in mathematics, physics and biology, but that chemistry and, in fact, any in-depth scientific inquiery, provides potential sources of aesthetic experience. These aesthetic experiences, while looking at the nature of things around us, bring us happiness and peace of mind. I wonder whether there is more to expect during our stay on this planet. The outcome of a cooperative rearrangement of many waters contains an element of creativity and this confirms the notion that nature is a process. Modern biochemical science appears to be in accord with process thought. Useful metaphorical methods allow us to enjoy the beauty of these life processes in aqueous solution. And, expressed in Whiteheadian phraseology, aesthetic values possess a metaphysical primacy in deciding and experiencing what is of ultimate importance.

7. Conclusion It can be envisaged that both scientists and natural philosophers will remain fascinated by the amazing and unique properties of that dynamic collection of so many tiny molecules, called water. This continuing interest is expected to produce further productive metaphors in process philosophising. Let me finish by two quotes, one from a book by Sarah Allan 23: Water, with its multiplicity of forms and extraordinary capacity for generating imagery, provides the primary model for conceptualizing general cosmic principles which apply to the behavior of people, as well as to the forces of nature […].

And the final one, I think particularly appropriate for this inspiring conference in Ireland, by the great novelist James Joyce (1882-1941): […] water […] its universality […] its vastness in the ocean […] the restlessness of its waves […] its hydrostatic quiescence in calm […] its sterility in the circumpolar ice-cap […] its preponderance in 3:1 over the dry land of the globe […] its slow erosions in peninsulas […] the simplicity of its composition […] its metamorphosis as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail […] its submarine fauna and flora, numerically if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe […] its ubiquity as constituting 90 per cent of the human body […]

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8. References (1a) P. Clayton in Physics and Whitehead. Quantum, Process and Experience, T.E. Eastman and H.Keeton, Eds., State University of New York Press, Albany, N.Y., 2004, Ch.1, p.3-13. (1b) J.A.Jungerman, ibid. Ch.4, p.52-53. (2) N. Rescher, Process Metaphysics, SUNY Press, New York, 1996. (3) G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980, p.179. (4) D.R. Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001, Ch.3, p.94. (5a) A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, Corrected Edition, D.R.Griffin and D.W.Sherburne, Eds., The Free Press, New York, 1978. (5b) ibid., Chapter 10, section 1, p.208-209. (6) Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism, Wing-tsit Chan, Ed., University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1986. (7a) The May 2005 issue of J.Chin.Phil. is completely devoted to a comparison of process thought and Chinese philosophy. (7b) See, for example, Julia Ching, The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi, Oxford University Press, 2000. (8) Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, Nonpareil Books, Jaffrey, 2001. (9) Chu Hsi and Lü Tsu-Ch’ien, Reflections on Things at Hand, Translated by Wing-tsit Chan, Columbia University Press, New York, 1967. (10) J.L. Finney, Phil.Trans.Royal Soc.London, B 2004, 359, 1145-1166. (11) P. Ball, A Biography of Water, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1999, p.159. (12) Review: W. Blokzijl and J.B.F.N. Engberts, Angew.Chem., Int.Ed.Engl. 1993, 32, 1545-1579. (13) H.S. Frank and M.W. Evans, J.Chem.Phys. 1945,13, 507. (14) See ref. 12 and K. Lum, D. Chandler and J.D. Weeks, J.Phys.Chem. B 1999, 103, 4570-4577; N.T. Southall, K.A. Dill and A.D.J. Haymet, J.Phys.Chem. B 2002, 106, 521-533. (15) R. Zangi and J.B.F.N. Engberts, J.Am.Chem.Soc. 2005, 127, 22722276.

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(16) Proteases, Potential Role in Health and Disease, W.H. Hörl and A. Heidland, Eds., Plenum Press, New York, 1984. (17) R. Talhout, A. Villa, A.E. Mark and J.B.F.N. Engberts, J.Am.Chem. Soc. 2003, 125, 10570-10579. (18) Lau Tzu, Tau-teh Ching, D.C.Lau, Transl., Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, Chicago, 1963. (19) A. Pross, Pure Appl.Chem. 2005, 77, 1905-1921. (20) R.L. Stein, HYLE, Int. J.Phil.Chem. 2004, 10, 5-22. (21) A.N. Whitehead, Nature and Life, University of Chicago Press, 1934. (22) R. Penrose, The Road to Reality. A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, Jonathane Cape, London, p.1026, 2004. (23) S. Allan, The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue, State University of New York Press, Albany, N.Y., 1997.

IX. Explaining the Processual Behaviour of a Cell Jonathan T. Delafield-Butt What has to be explained is originality of response to stimulus. This amounts to the doctrine that an organism is ‘alive’ when in some measure its reactions are inexplicable by any tradition of pure physical inheritance. A.N Whitehead, 1929: 104

Process Philosophy, as inspired by the works of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, has provided a radical re-interpretation of our understanding of the natural world in terms of the doctrine of panexperientialism (Griffin, 1998: 78), the theory according to which experience is not merely an emergent phenomenon, which can be entirely explained in terms of relationships between bits of insentient matter, but a fundamental feature of what there is. While still believing in the reality of “building blocks” of reality, process philosophy modifies the materialistic understanding of atomism in more than one respect. The ultimate constituents of reality are not conceived as enduring substances but as events, micro-processes generating and influencing one another. Moreover, such constituents are not insentient but are centres of experience capable of perceiving the other centres constituting their surrounding environment and of reacting to the changes occurring therein with self-determination. Three main ideas are involved in process philosophy’s re-interpretation of atomism: 1) the idea that processes are ontologically more fundamental than enduring things; 2) the idea that experience is a basic aspect of such processes, which are processes of perception of the surrounding environment; 3) the idea that such processes embody a primitive, though sometimes perhaps negligible quantum of freedom and spontaneity, which enables them to react in original ways to novel situations. Process philosophy also requires a principle of organisational duality, in order to account for the different ways in which centres of experiences

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come together into larger wholes. To this end, compound individuals are groupings of occasions in which a centre has acquired dominance upon the other: in virtue of such a central control, the whole group is capable of acting as an individual and to actively engage with the external world. Further, aggregates are wholes devoid of any controlling unity and therefore of initiative and sentience. Human beings and the higher animals are straightforward examples of compound individuals, rocks and tables of mere aggregates. This chapter discusses the behaviour and underlying molecular physiology of a single-celled organism, with an eye to a process interpretation of the natural world. Specifically, it will be argued that the scientific literature explains robust behavioural responses by examining biochemical and physiological mechanisms, yet when it comes to the more subtle changes in the organism, no mechanistic explanation seems to be available. The question arises as to whether panexperientialism could supply the missing explanatory principle for diverse behavioural phenomena in this animal.

1. The Single-celled Organism Paramecium caudatum The free-living, single-celled protozoan Paramecium is a readily accessible animal in which to observe the actions of molecules in a living system. The qualities of the molecules—their size, shape, mechanical, chemical, electromagnetic, and subatomic properties—and their particular biological arrangement gives rise to behaviour, without the additional complexity of multicellularity. The smallest of these elements are the free ions and atoms that form the internal cytoplasmic solutions of the cell. Larger molecules such as free amino acids and nucleotides also exist in the cytoplasm, and larger molecules consisting of dozens to hundreds of arranged amino acids make up the proteins that begin to make up the substantial complexes of subcellular structures: mitochondria, Golgi bodies, cytoskeletal structures, and the nuclear envelope, for instance. These materials and more are brought together and bounded, as in all cell types, by a plasma membrane that forms the ‘skin’ of the animal, and divides the cell from its environment, providing it with a recognisable individual identity. In this chapter, we will focus our attention on the cell’s plasma membrane, the cell membrane, and the motor organelles there, because this is where the cell interfaces and interacts with its world. The animal does not appear to have any specialised sensory organelles comparable to the

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specificity of our sense organs. Rather, it appears that distributed molecular components in the cell membrane fulfil the dual capacity of sensory as well as motor control functions. We will examine these components—the motor apparatus of the cell and the known molecular physiology that underlies motor control—to provide an understanding of the outward displacement behaviours one can observe with a microscope.

2. An Introduction to the Biology of the Paramecium Paramecia are animals that exist far from our experience of the world. Each one is just noticeable to the human eye as a white speck of swimming dust in water, measuring some 200
m in length and 50
m in width. Under the microscope, its form can be recognised as slipper-shaped where the head (anterior end) of the animal is at the heel; its mouth (peristrom) is represented by the hole for the foot, and the tail (posterior) lies at the toe end (Figure 1). They are found in still waters around the globe, feeding on the yeast and bacteria around decomposing animal and plant matter. Paramecia are a member of a large subkingdom of unicellular Animals, the Protozoa (from the Greek for ‘first animals’), of which amoeba and other ciliates are also members. All animals are thought to have evolved from a primordial, single-celled organism (Dreamer, 1997) and thus through deep time (ca. 600 million years ago) we are thought to share a common unicellular ancestor. The Protozoa have evolved and retained their unicellular form, while other animals have evolved cellular interdependency to form multicellular organisms with intimate multicellular structures such as skin, bone, and brain that work in concert with each other for the overall benefit of the animal. Throughout evolution, the Protozoa have maintained their unicellular niche.

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Figure 1. Visible anatomy of a Paramecium. Left, photomicrograph; right, sketch (after Jennings, 1906); showing the major anatomical features. In vivo, a vortex is produced by the strong oral cilia of the oral groove and peristrom, bringing water-borne particles into the vestibulum where they are injested into food vaculoles. The food vaculoes circulate inside the animal as digestive enzymes decompose the organic food-stuffs; waste materials are excreted at the anus. Displacements forming animal behaviour are performed by the motile cilia that cover the body of the animal, seen clearly here at the cell’s border. Metachronal waves of beating cilia, visible in the photomicrograph, but not represented in the sketch, are responsible for propelling displacements.

In behaviour they can be compared to grazing animals such as sheep or cows, leisurely ‘chewing’ their way through pastures of bacteria. Like other grazing animals, Paramecia will occasionally have to travel long distances to arrive at their next pasture, or they will have to move quickly out of the way of a predator or dangerous situation (c.f. condition). They must therefore have sophisticated sensorimotor control enabling them to move from one place to another with ease.

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Paramecia collect in groups and are able to swim together without adversely affecting one another, that is they will happily bump into each other without exhibiting an avoiding reaction. They are social in the sense that they will mate in an elaborate process of conjugation. The same principles of sexual reproduction apply to these animals when they mate, though sexual reproduction is infrequent and normally they reproduce by simple cell division where one cell divides to produce two identical daughter cells. A Paramecium responds to a variety of ‘stimuli’, or changes in its environment (Jennings, 1906). For example, it will move forward more quickly if touched on its posterior end, or will move backward if touched on its anterior end. It will respond to changes in gravity, swimming upwards (negative geotaxis) presumably to remain in close proximity of the water’s surface. It does not respond to visible light, but does to ultraviolet wavelengths (phototaxis). It responds to electric fields by moving towards the positive pole (galvanotaxis), and will migrate towards an environment of 26˚C if temperature is variable. Finally, Paramecia respond to a wide range of chemical conditions (chemotaxis) including changes in acidity and concentration of organic and inorganic molecules (Van Houten and Preston, 1988). Chemotaxis is the most widely studied modality and for simplicity will be the focus of this chapter.

3. Comparable Living Systems: Paramecia and Humans It is worth noting that Paramecia, like all autonomous living systems perform the basic biological process for life. Whitehead writes: “another characteristic of a living society [a living being] is that it requires food […] all societies require interplay with the environment” (Whitehead, 1929). Paramecia perform the following processes for survival: (a) appropriation of energy and materials from the environment, (b) integration of these materials and energy into the fabric of its material structure, (c) expulsion of unassimilated and waste materials, and (d) actions to achieve these. We recognise these same processes in us, though the materials that we use to enact them with are different (see Table 1). As large Homo sapiens, we inhale air and ingest solid materials through specialised apparatus, the nose, mouth, throat, lungs, and digestive tract. Gaseous oxygen in the lungs is integrated into red blood cells and foodstuffs are integrated through digestion in the gastro-intestinal tract and subsequent metabolism in the many cells of the body. We expel waste products straightforwardly through

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defecation of unwanted solid materials and exhalation of unwanted and waste gaseous materials. Biochemical waste from metabolic reactions in the cells of the body are deposited into the bloodstream, filtered by the kidneys, and excreted through the urinary tract. In the small unicellular Paramecium, solid materials are ingested through the vestibulum and cytostom and held in vacuoles that circulate through the cell as the food is digested and nutrients are absorbed into the cytoplasm. Oxygen required for metabolism is absorbed from the external aqueous environment through the cell membrane. Undigested materials from the food vacuoles are egested at the anus, waste metabolites are actively transported across the membrane, and excess water is secreted through the contractile vacuoles. We perform comparable fundamental processes for life. Table 1. The very basic biological process are common to all organisms. In this table the core processes, their ‘function’, and their corresponding anatomical structures are illustrated for Humans and for Paramecia. basic process

function

Humans

Paramecia

Appropriation

injestion

mouth/throat

peristrom/vestibulum

Integration

digestion

digestive tract

food vacuoles

Expulsion

egestion

Anus

anus

Movement

displacement

skeletomusculature

cilia

The process of displacement actions, or behaviours becomes more interesting because it forms the ‘expressive’ component of living behaviour. Action by the whole organism is readily observable as displacements of the body or body parts through space-time. In action we move our arms and legs a great deal every day. A Paramecium keeps its three thousand cilia, its motor apparatus in constant motion, adjusting only speed, direction, and form of the ciliary beat, which moves its body variably through the liquid medium of its environment. Bodily displacements are clearly actions, but so too are the other movements that contribute to the processes of appropriation, integration, and expulsion. In this chapter, we focus specifically on the bodily displacements of the cell and the molecular action systems that power these movements.

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4. Explaining Behaviour There is a considerable difference between the many manifestations of motile behaviour observed under the microscope and the types of movements described in the scientific literature. In vivo, the animal exhibits a great variety and complexity of displacing actions, including rapid stops and starts, curving changes in direction, transient stationary pauses, repeated ‘probing’ forward-reverse-forward motions, circumnavigation of objects, body shape changes, and refined displacements during asexual division and sexual pairing. A scholar of biology would not attribute this great variety of motions to the Paramecia without studying them directly, or referring back one hundred years to Jennings seminal work, “Behavior of the Lower Organisms” (1906). Since this early descriptive account of behaviour, the research on cell motility has reduced the behavioural complexity of the animal to single set actions. This reductive approach has worked to define a mechanical model of the physiology the single set actions, but over time has lead one to perceive that the model is exclusively and singularly correct. To understand the behaviour of the animal and the material components that give rise to it, we will first examine the biochemistry and physiology underlying cell motility using the data and models available in the literature. We will then refer back to the living, observed behaviours of the organism to draw on some specific behaviours unaccounted for in the contemporary literature. We will finally show very recent data that could address this discrepancy, and show that while stimulus-response mechanical models are becoming more refined, a more fitting philosophical foundation might be one based on Whitehead’s process account of mind as action.

5. The Stimulus-Response Biology of Cell Migration Long swimming trajectories marked by sudden changes in direction are the most prominent movements made by Paramecium. They are the focus of research on the molecular physiology underlying migration and movement, and due to their prominence have overshadowed the other, more subtle movements Paramecium make regularly. Sudden direction changes were first characterised by Jennings (1906) who coined the term ‘avoiding

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reactions’ (Figure 2) to show that they perform essential navigational purposes. Wichterman (1986, p. 223) summed up the behaviour loosely, “In its daily life in the pond, Paramecium is able to sample a region of its environment directly in front of it by the vortex of current created by the strong oral cilia. If the organism finds the stimulus to be favourable, as in the case of bacterial food, it may react positively by swimming more closely to the food mass and begin feeding. On the other hand, if the stimulus be of an injurous or deleterious nature, such as water of considerably varying degrees of temperature, a strong chemical, or even a piece of impassable vegetation blocking its path, Paramecium simply swims backward in a right spiral by reversing its ciliary action, thereby reacting negatively to the stimulus.”

The avoiding reaction keeps the animals in favourable areas and away from unfavourable ones. In seminal experiments, Jennings tested Paramecium response to different chemical conditions by administering a drop of test solution into a cell culture. The drop, initially free of cells, would accumulate cells if the test solution was attractive, or would remain free of cells if it was repulsive. He noted that a strongly attractant solution would trap the cells within the confines of the drop; the cells that were about to leave its confines would perform an avoiding reaction and remain within the drop. With these studies Jennings laid the behavioural foundations for work on Paramecium, but it was not until Dryl (1958) introduced the technique of dark-field photography that the study of taxis in Paramecium began to make significant steps forward. Dryl’s technique enabled the quantification of behavioural responses to chemicals and other environmental stimuli. The animals trace a helix as they swim, so that a long-exposure twodimensional photograph of their swimming path appears as an undulating white line against a dark background, much as an aeroplane leaves a vapour trail across the sky. By measuring the distance travelled and the length of the photographic exposure, velocity was calculated and the number of avoiding responses counted. The response of a population of Paramecia to different environmental conditions, namely to chemicals of varying concentrations, could be gauged and the degree of attractive or aversive effect on the cells quantitated (for example, see Dryl and Grebecki 1966).

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Figure 2. The avoiding reaction is a major component of Parmaecium behaviour. Illustrated here (a) an avoiding reaction is elicited on contact with an obstacle (1) and is composed of: a shortlasting ciliary reversal and reverse displacement (1-3); followed by aboral turning, pivoting, or circling (3-5); and a resumption of forward swimming (6) in a new direction. The physiology of the avoiding reaction is understood. During normal forward swimming (b’) the transmembrane electric potential rests at about -40mV with a normal balance of positively-charge ions (cations) resting on the outside and inside of the cell maintaining normal ciliary beat and forward swimming. On elicitation of an avoiding reaction (b’’), an action potential of transmembrane depolarisation traverses the cell body leading to a transient influx of Ca2+ ions causing transient ciliary reversal and backward swimming. Figure adopted from Jennings (1906) and Machemer (1986).

Further analyses of the cell’s motile response to chemicals led to a generalised navigational model, the ‘biased random walk’ (Berg 1986; Van Houten and Preston, 1988) to account for its movements toward a food source in a ‘run-and-tumble’ manner, where long migrations are marked by sudden shifts in direction produced by the avoiding reaction. The random

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biased walk model explains how a Paramecium migrates long distances through its environment to find areas beneficial to its survival. When an animal is swimming through areas of different chemical compositions, the theory can be summed up as follows (Van Houten and Preston, 1988): (i) if an animal is swimming down a favourable chemical concentration gradient (i.e. away from the source of a favourable substance), then it will make more avoiding responses and swim slower; (ii) if an animal is swimming up a favourable chemical concentration gradient (i.e. towards the source of a favourable substance) then it will make fewer avoiding reactions and swim more quickly. (iii) The converse of (i) and (ii) holds true for aversive chemicals. In this way the animal happens upon a favourable location, probably a food-source emitting chemo-attractants, in a stochastic ‘biased random’ manner. The model remains simple: the animal swims forward and occasionally changes direction by performing an avoiding reaction, doing so with a periodicity based on an aversive or attractive environment. The avoiding reaction and biased random walk model fit together well to establish a mechanical paradigm that can readily incorporate biochemical and physiological data on the mechanism of ciliary beat control and therefore propulsion, discussed next.

6. Molecular Physiology of Cilia Beat Propulsion A Paramecium navigates its aqueous environment by beating three thousand little hairs that cover the surface of its body (Figure 3). These hairs, or cilia (from the Latin for ‘eyelashes’) move continuously at a rate between 12 to 28 strokes per second (Kinosita and Murakami, 1967). They beat in concert with each other forming synchronous metachronal waves that travel the length of the animal, analogous in form to continuous Mexican waves as they travel through the crowds of a stadium. In this manner, the movements of the beating cilia determine the displacements the animal makes through space-time. The different manners of cilia beat, such as differences in speed, angle, and direction, like the different manners of the stroke of an oar on a boat or the different manners of muscular movements in the legs of a sprinter, determine the different movements the animal makes as a whole. The beating cilia are the motor effectors of the Paramecium. It is this system of the cell that forms the outward expression of behaviour.

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Figure 3. Cilia are the motor effectors of Paramecium. (a) Scanning electron micrograph showing superior resolution of the cilia covering, in this case the anterior dorsal surface of a Paramecium fixed during forward swimming. Note the conical metachronal waves that were travelling from posterior left to anterior right (MW arrow). The phases of the cilia beat can be discerned: the effective stroke (ES) of the cilia takes place from left anterior to right posterior; the end of the effective stroke (eES) marks the beginning of the recovery stroke (RS); and the end of the recovery stroke (eRS) marks the beginning of the effective stroke (ES). (b) The beat cycle is shown diagrammatically. The end of the effective stroke (1) marks the beginning of the recovery stroke (24) to the beginning of the effective stroke (1). From Tamm (1972); reproduced by permission.

Paramecium is an excitable cell electronegative in relation to its external environment. Its internal chemistry is held at a negative electric charge by a steady displacement of positively charged ions to the outside (Figure 2(b); Figure 4). This creates a constant force pressing in on the cell by positively charged ions and molecules on the outside, a force that plays an intimate role in the coordination, signal transduction, and general receptivity of the cell to a changing environment. The inward current of positively charged ions, namely the Calcium cation (Ca2+), is controlled by ion channels that restrict the flow of ions. Their activity is dependent on external or internal environmental variables such as touch, chemical concentration, or electrostatic charge.

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Figure 4. Schematic of the motor system in Paramecium. (1) A greater concentration of positively charged ions in the exterior environment of the cell than in the interior environment creates an electric potential across the cell membrane. (2) Ion channels spanning the cell membrane control the influx of positively charged ions by opening to allow an influx of ions or closing to prevent ion influx. (3) Calcium ion concentration at the axonemal component of the cilium determines the speed, direction, and form of ciliary beat. (4) Positively charged ions are actively transported across the cell and cilium membranes, maintaining the cell’s electric transmembrane potential.

When the cell is moving forward, the transmembrane potential rests at 40mV, depending on the ionic compositions of the external and internal environments. When the cell performs an avoiding reaction, the transmembrane potential depolarises from -40mV to +5mV in a swift sweeping action that travels from one end of the cell to the other. At the site of depolarisation, ion channels embedded in the cell and cilia membranes open, allowing positively charged ions on the outside inside, which creates a reversed polarisation before the action of ion pumps returns these agents to the outside again. Many ion channels in the cell’s membrane are voltage-sensitive, a local depolarisation will trigger neighbouring channels to open, creating a domino-type cascade that quickly travels the length of the cell (Ogura and Takahashi, 1976; Dunlap, 1977).

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Local depolarisation is intimately tied to the control of cilia beat; cilia beat itself is dependent on the concentration of positively charged Ca2+ present on the interior of the cilia and adjacent to the machinery that forms the thrust of the beat. The effect of the depolarising wave is a reversal of the cilia beat caused by an increase in Ca2+ concentration in the cilia. The depolarising wave spreads across the animal quickly, producing a transient reverse swim that changes the forward direction of the animal, an avoiding reaction (Eckert, 1972; Kinosita and Murakami, 1967). The relationship between ciliary beat and transmembrane potential works both ways, with hyperpolarisations leading to an increase in beat frequency and increased forward swimming speed and depolarisation resulting in a reversal of the beat (Machemer, 1988). Ca2+ performs the dominant regulatory mechanism of ciliary beat control, exerting its effect along the length of the cilia by interacting with the axonemal component, the molecular motor of the cilium (Iwadate, 2003). Internal Ca2+ concentration and transmembrane electric potential are interdependent since Ca2+ contributes significantly to the electric charge. Therefore, a polarised cell with a negative transmembrane potential will swim forward due to a low Ca2+ concentration along the ciliary axonemal motor. The greater the polarisation, the lower the concentration of Ca2+, the greater the speed of the cilia beat and therefore the greater the forward propulsion. On receiving a stimulus of sufficient magnitude, a depolarising wave of Ca2+ entry will be triggered that will rapidly cascade over the surface of the animal causing a reversal of the cilia beat, and a reverse of swimming direction. Internal Ca2+ is quickly pumped out of the cell by active transmembrane ion pumps, returning the cell to its previous polarised state and causing a resumption of forward cilia beat and forward propulsion. The electrophysiology and biochemistry of the control of ciliary beat is well defined (Eckert and Brehm, 1979; Kung and Saimi, 1982; Machemer, 1988; Plattner and Klauke, 2001), as are the chemical conditions that promote a change in swim speed and avoiding response frequency (Van Houten and Preston 1988; Van Houten 1998). Together, these data form the core of the biased random walk model of Paramecium movement. Other systems also play important roles in the detection and response to environmental stimuli. For instance, potassium ions, cyclic nucleotides, and second messenger systems are also known to affect ciliary motility. These issues will be addressed. There are two important questions that remain unanswered and have only received cursory attention in the literature (Van Houten, 1998): (1) How are the chemical changes ‘sensed’; and (2) what is the ‘signal’ transduction ‘machinery’? These are significant research questions and form a field of

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study in their own right: sensorimotor control. The fields of neuroscience, neuropsychology, and psychology are attempts at tackling these very questions in humans. In research on Paramecium, the conditions for behaviour and the mechanisms of motility have been investigated, but the ‘sensory transduction’ machinery that connects the ‘sensory’ apparatus with the ‘motor’ apparatus is not well known. In fact, it is not yet clear what the sensory apparatus are—conventional cell surface receptors are thought to act as chemodetectors, but only one has been discovered in Paramecium (Van Houten, 1998), not enough to explain the range of chemicals responded to. There is a considerable gap in our understanding of motor control in Paramecium: the mechanisms of sensing and responding that exist between the change in environmental variables and the motoric changes in cilia beat.

7. Limitations of the Mechanical Models Moreover, a crucial layer of the mechanical explanation of Paramecium movements is missing from the literature: how do these robust stimulusresponse mechanisms produce the very many subtle movements the animal makes continuously? As mentioned previously, there is a discrepancy between the crude stimulus-response type movements reported in the literature, which centre on the avoiding reaction and its underlying mechanisms of action, and the many refined, subtle, and coordinated displacements the Paramecium can be seen to make regularly under the microscope. The solution employed by biological scientists to address problems of the complexities of movement is to map more complex physiological mechanisms onto those already established using the existing mechanical framework, for example by postulating and exploring so-called second messenger systems. Alternative philosophical positions such as the one explored here have not been given consideration, yet such lines of enquiry may provide answers to questions of movement spontaneity, complexity, coordination, and refinement.

8. Behaviours Observed But Not Reported A Paramecium exhibits many complex behaviours of which the long migrations and avoiding reactions are only a part. Here I report my personal observations with reference to some primary data for support.

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Figure 5. Spontaneous displacement. Series of micrographs to illustrate a spontaneous (unprovoked) coordinated displacement by Paramecium cultured in standard conditions. In this series, the cell remains stationary (a-d: arrows,