Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought 9783110333299, 9783110333084

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Michel Weber and Will Desmond (Eds.) Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Volume 1

PROCESS THOUGHT Edited by Nicholas Rescher • Johanna Seibt • Michel Weber Advisory Board Mark Bickhard • Jaime Nubiola • Roberto Poli Volume X / 1

Michel Weber Will Desmond (Eds.)

Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Volume 1

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

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2008 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 978-3-938793-92-3 2008 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper ISO-Norm 970-6 FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard Printed in Germany by buch bücher dd ag

Contents Abbreviations..............................................................................................................10 Preface — Jan Van der Veken ...................................................................................11 I. Introduction — Michel Weber ................................................................................15

Volume I—Thematic Entries II. Aesthetics...............................................................................................................41 George Allan Cosmological and Civilized Harmonies .......................................................................................41

III. Anthropology .......................................................................................................55 Donna Bowman Communities and Destinies ...........................................................................................................55

IV. Ecology.................................................................................................................69 Barbara Muraca Ecology Between Natural Science and Environmental Ethics....................................................69 Carol P. Christ Ecofeminism ...................................................................................................................................87 Works Cited and Further Readings..................................................................................................98

V. Economy ..............................................................................................................101 Carol F. Johnston Whitehead on Economics ............................................................................................................101 John B. Cobb, Jr. Further Commentary on the Work of Economist Herman Daly ...............................................115 Julie A. Nelson Contemporary Schools of Economic Thought ...........................................................................119 Mark R. Dibben Management and Organization Studies ......................................................................................127 Elias L. Khalil Action, Entrepreneurship and Evolution.....................................................................................145 Arran Gare Ecological Economics and Human Ecology...............................................................................161 Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................177

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VI. Education ...........................................................................................................185 Adam Scarfe and Howard Woodhouse Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education........................................................................................185 Mary Elizabeth Moore Education as Creative Power.......................................................................................................199 Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................210

VII. Ethics ................................................................................................................215 Brian G. Henning Process and Morality....................................................................................................................215 Daniel A. Dombrowski Nonhuman Animal Rights ...........................................................................................................225 Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................235

VIII. History .............................................................................................................237 George Allan Process Interpretations of History ...............................................................................................237

IX. Metaphysics ........................................................................................................255 Jorge Luis Nobo Metaphysics and Cosmology.......................................................................................................255 William Jay Garland The Mystery of Creativity ...........................................................................................................265 Judith Jones Intensity and Subjectivity ............................................................................................................279 Leemon McHenry Extension and the Theory of the Physical Universe ..................................................................291 Peter Simons Speculative Metaphysics with Applications...............................................................................303 Craig Eisendrath The Unifying Moment: Toward a Theory of Complexity.........................................................315 George Allan Pragmatism and Process ..............................................................................................................325 William S. Hamrick Phenomenology and Metaphysics...............................................................................................339 Gottfried Heinemann Whitehead’s Interpretation of Zeno ............................................................................................349 Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................356

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X. Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind ..............................................................363 John H. Buchanan Process Metapsychology..............................................................................................................363 Max Velmans Consciousness and the Physical World.......................................................................................371 Pierfrancesco Basile Mind-Body Problem and Panpsychism ......................................................................................383 Michel Weber Hypnosis: Panpsychism in Action...............................................................................................395 Gudmund Smith The Experimental Examination of Process.................................................................................415 Maria Pachalska and Bruce Duncan MacQueen Process Neuropsychology, Microgenetic Theory and Brain Science .......................................423 Claude de Jonckheere Ethnopsychoanalysis ....................................................................................................................437 Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................452

XI. Public Policy and Natural Law...........................................................................459 Leslie A. Muray Political Theory ............................................................................................................................459 John Quiring Whiteheadian Public Policy.........................................................................................................471 Mark C. Modak-Truran Process Theory of Natural Law ...................................................................................................507 David Ray Griffin Saving Civilization.......................................................................................................................521 Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................533

XII. Sociology of Science..........................................................................................537 Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas Kuhn and Whitehead ....................................................................................................................537

XIII. Theology and Religion.....................................................................................549 Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. Whitehead’s Rethinking of the Problem of Evil ........................................................................549 Thomas E. Hosinski, C.S.C. The Implications of Order and Novelty ......................................................................................561

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Michel Weber Contact Made Vision ...................................................................................................................573 Mustafa Ruzgar Islam and Process Theology ........................................................................................................601 Vincent Shen Whitehead and Chinese Philosophy............................................................................................613 Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................628

XIV. Theory of Knowledge .......................................................................................633 Murray Code Symbolism: The Organic Functioning of Reason......................................................................633 Guillaume Durand The Method of Extensive Abstraction ........................................................................................645 John W. Lango Time and Experience ...................................................................................................................653 Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................664

XV. Urbanism and Architecture ...............................................................................667 Joseph Grange Cosmological and Urban Spaces.................................................................................................667

Analytic Table of Contents .......................................................................................679

Volume II—Thematic Entries; Biographical Entries; Critical Apparatus XVI. Language ............................................................................................................ 5 Stephen T. Franklin Theory of Language ......................................................................................................................... 5 David G. Butt Whiteheadian and Functional Linguistics .................................................................................... 21 Michael Fortescue Pattern and Process ........................................................................................................................ 33 Patrick J. Coppock Pragmaticism and Semiotics.......................................................................................................... 41 Sylviane R. Schwer Whitehead's Construction of Time: A Linguistic Approach ....................................................... 55

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XVII. Mathematics and Logic ....................................................................................67 Andrew Dawson Whitehead’s Universal Algebra ....................................................................................................67 Robert Valenza Vector Mathematics: Symbol versus Form ..................................................................................87 Ivor Grattan-Guinness Foundations of Mathematics and Logicism..................................................................................97 Luca Gaeta Order and Change: The Memoir “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World”..........105 Giangiacomo Gerla and Annamaria Miranda Mathematical Features of Whitehead’s Point-free Geometry ...................................................119 Claus Michael Ringel Extension in PR Part IV...............................................................................................................131

XVIII. Sciences ........................................................................................................157 Biology Jonathan Delafield-Butt ...............................................................................................................157 Chemistry.........................................................................................................................................171 Ross L. Stein On Molecules and Their Chemical Transformation ..........................................................................171 Joseph E. Earley, Sr. Ontologically Significant Aggregation: Process Structural Realism ...............................................179

Computer Science Granville C. Henry and Robert J.Valenza ..................................................................................193 Quantum Mechanics .......................................................................................................................205 Michael Epperson, Quantum Theory and Process Metaphysics .........................................................205 Shan Gao, Quantum Mechanics and Panpsychism ..............................................................................223

Relativity Physics............................................................................................................................235 Ronny Desmet and Timothy E. Eastman, Physics and Relativity.......................................................235 Elie During, Relativistic Time in Whitehead and Bergson .................................................................259

XIX. Biographical entries.........................................................................................283 Whitehead’s Historico-Speculative Context .................................................................................283 Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 540–c. 480 BCE)—Bruce G. Epperly........................................................283 Plato (427–347 BCE)—John W. Lango ...............................................................................................289 Leibniz (1646–1716)—Jean-Pascal Alcantara .....................................................................................297 David Hume (1711–1776)—Pierfrancesco Basile ...............................................................................305 Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)—Beth Lord ...........................................................................................313 Hegel (1770–1832)—Kipton E. Jensen ................................................................................................324

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Hamilton (1805–1865)—Volker Peckhaus ..........................................................................................332 Hermann Günther Grassmann (1809–1877)—Albert C. Lewis..........................................................339

Whitehead’s Contemporaries .........................................................................................................345 Samuel Alexander (1859–1938)—George Allan .................................................................................345 Niels Bohr (1885–1962)—Manuel Bächtold .......................................................................................353 Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924)—Pierfrancesco Basile ............................................................362 Franz Brentano (1838–1917)—Liliana Albertazzi ..............................................................................371 Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970)—Lieven Decock ....................................................................................377 Herbert Wildon Carr (1857–1931)—Pierfrancesco Basile..................................................................383 John Dewey (1859–1952)—William T. Myers....................................................................................388 Albert Einstein (1879–1955)—Robert J. Valenza ...............................................................................400 L. J. Henderson (1878–1942)—Rudolf Windeln .................................................................................409 William James (1842–1910)—Graham Bird........................................................................................416 John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1866–1925)—Richard Feist ........................................................427 George Herbert Mead (1863–1931)—Gary A. Cook ..........................................................................449 George Edward Moore (1873–1958)—Pierfrancesco Basile..............................................................457 Christiana Morgan (1897–1967)—Michel Weber ...............................................................................465 Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801–1890)—Thomas A. F. Kelly ..................................................469 Émile Meyerson (1859–1933)—F. Fruteau de Laclos.........................................................................473 Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914)—Jaime Nubiola..................................................................................481 Jean Piaget (1896–1980)—Dominic J. Balestra...................................................................................488 Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000)—Lieven Decock.................................................................498 Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)—Graham Bird.....................................................................................505 G. Santayana (1863–1952)—T. L. S. Sprigge......................................................................................517 Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)—Peter H. Hare .......................................................................................524 James Ward (1843–1925)—Pierfrancesco Basile................................................................................527 Hermann Weyl (1885–1955)—Norman Sieroka .................................................................................537

Whitehead’s Scholarly Legacy: American Pioneers ....................................................................547 Mili apek (1909–1997)—Berit Brogaard .........................................................................................547 Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) & Suzanne K. Langer (1895–1985)—Randall E. Auxier.....................552 John B. Cobb, Jr. (1925–)—Paul Custodio Bube ................................................................................571 Frederic B. Fitch (1908–1987)—John W. Lango.................................................................................580 David Ray Griffin (1939–)—Bruce G. Epperly ...................................................................................583 Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000)—Donald Wayne Viney ..................................................................589 William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966)—Douglas R. Anderson..........................................................597 Bernard M. Loomer (1912–1985)—Bruce G. Epperly........................................................................604 Victor Augustus Lowe (1907–1988)—Leemon McHenry..................................................................609 Nicholas Rescher (1928–)—Johanna Seibt ..........................................................................................613 Paul Weiss (1901–2002)—Robert Castiglione ....................................................................................619

Whitehead’s Scholarly Legacy: European Pioneers.....................................................................627 Antonio Banfi (1886–1957)—Luca Vanzago ......................................................................................627

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R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943)—James Connelly ............................................................................630 Jean Wahl (1888–1974)—Michel Weber .............................................................................................640 Philippe Devaux (1902–1979)—Paul Gochet ......................................................................................643 Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)—James Williams ...................................................................................645 Dorothy M. Emmet (1904–2000)—Leemon McHenry .......................................................................649 Jean Ladrière (1921–2007)—Marc Maesschalck.................................................................................654 Wolfe Mays (1912–2005)—Mike Garfield ..........................................................................................664 Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)—Franck Robert.......................................................................667 Enzo Paci (1911–1976)—Alessandro Sardi .........................................................................................676 Alix Parmentier (1933–)—a Sister of Saint-John ................................................................................682

XX. Critical Apparatus .............................................................................................687 General Bibliography......................................................................................................................687 Index of Subjects.............................................................................................................................688 Index of Names ...............................................................................................................................705 Analytic Table of Contents of Volume II ......................................................................................716

Abbreviations AE

The Aims of Education, 1929 (Free Press, 1967).

AI

Adventures of Ideas, 1933 (Free Press, 1967).

CN

The Concept of Nature, 1920 (Cambridge University Press, 1964).

D

Lucien Price, Dialogues, 1954 (Mentor Book, 1956).

ESP

Essays in Science and Philosophy, 1947.

FR

The Function of Reason, 1929 (Beacon Press, 1958).

IM

An Introduction to Mathematics, 1911.

IS

The Interpretation of Science, 1961.

MCMW

“On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World”, 1906.

MT

Modes of Thought, 1938 (Free Press, 1968).

OT

The Organisation of Thought, 1917.

PM

Principia Mathematica, 1910-1913 (Cambridge U. P., 1925-1927).

PNK

Principles of Natural Knowledge, 1919/1925 (Dover, 1982).

PR

Process and Reality, 1929 (Corrected edition, 1978).

R

The Principle of Relativity, 1922.

RM

Religion in the Making, 1926.

S

Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect, 1927.

SMW

Science and the Modern World, 1925 (Free Press, 1967).

TSM

“Time, Space, and Material”, 1919.

UA

A Treatise on Universal Algebra, 1898.

Preface Jan Van der Veken

i

This book is truly a tribute to the universal applicability of Whiteheadian thought. One of the criteria for accepting a philosopher as a spiritual guide is the fruitfulness of his insights to illuminate every aspect of our experience. Whitehead indeed tells us that a philosophical system should take into account every experience: Nothing can be omitted, experience drunk and experience sober, experience waking, experience drowsy and experience wide-awake, experience self-conscious and experience self-forgetful, experience intellectual and experience physical, experience religious and experience sceptical, experience anxious and experience care-free, experience anticipatory and experience retrospective, experience happy and experience grieving, experience dominated by emotion and experience under self-restraint, experience in the light and experience in the dark, experience normal and experience abnormal (AI 290-1). Many people discovered Whitehead because he “made sense” of what they were experiencing and studying, whether it was logic or mathematics, religion or philosophy of nature, politics or ecology. Whitehead’s conceptual scheme indeed helps us to interpret the world in which we live: Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of ‘interpretation’ I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme (PR 3). The requirements of coherence and of logical structure are especially tackled in this Handbook in a section on Mathematics and Logic. These rather difficult questions are often overlooked in introductions to Whitehead's philosophy. The “empirical side” is expressed by the terms “applicable” and “adequate”. “Applicable” means that “the texture of observed experience, as illustrating the philosophic scheme, is such that all related experience must exhibit the same texture”. I think that “style” is another rendering of the same requirement. “Style” was an idea put forward by Merleau-Ponty, and as is made evident in two of the contributions, the relationship between Whitehead and the later Merleau-Ponty is worth studying. There is indeed a certain style to approach the different domains of our experience, and that “style” accounts for the deep unity of the Handbook that is offered to us. That “Whiteheadian style” is easily recognizable. Whitehead himself always puts a problem in a broader perspective:

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President of the European Society for Process Thought 1978–1998; Emeritus professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Leuven; [email protected].

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there is not something like an isolated discipline which has absolutely no connections with the overall scheme of things. In this sense there is a deeper unity of this Handbook, in spite of its obvious diversity: in any domain of human experience, we are confronted with an aspect which illumines the whole. Deep inside we surmise that everything is related to everything, and that everything somehow exists together, is related to the whole. Philosophy looks for that essence of the universe which ensures that nothing exists in isolation. Whitehead's conceptual scheme is a tool, not a doctrine. As a mathematician Whitehead does not shy away from the constructive part of the philosophical enterprise. He knows that a philosophical system does not pre-exist. It cannot be found “ready made,” waiting for its discovery. It is rather the result of the endeavour to grasp the general in the particular: a philosophical system has to be created, the best one can. Whitehead has the extraordinary gift of being at ease as much in logic and mathematics as in the world of civilisation, religion and art. He may not be a specialist in all these domains, and “real” experts will always be capable of finding objections about the details. The same applies when we situate Whitehead in the history of philosophy. He knew how to draw insights from his preferred authors, like Plato, Locke, Spinoza and also from scientists such as J.C. Maxwell and A. Einstein. But he was hardly interested in the exact phrasing or historically correct interpretations of their insights. He was reading and meditating on those authors, asking himself what he could do with them. The Biographical entries in this Handbook contain an impressive array of contemporary and historical figures. This section is quite illuminating for getting an inkling of the extraordinary scope of the Whiteheadian conceptuality. Do not expect an answer to the question whether Whitehead “had it right”. Rather, learn to capture the Whiteheadian “style.” This Handbook is a landmark in Whiteheadian scholarship. In the sixties and seventies of last century Whitehead has been introduced to a new generation of philosophy students by scholars such as Ivor Leclerc, John B. Cobb Jr. and Schubert Ogden. Not to forget Charles Hartshorne, who himself was the teacher of a whole generation. He was also a philosopher in his own right. He has done more than anyone else to introduce Whitehead's metaphysics. The collection of articles that Hartshorne wrote about Whitehead's Philosophy (Selected Essays, 1935–1970, published in 1972) are even today an introduction to Whitehead “without pain.” Yet, the fact that Hartshorne was teaching mainly philosophical theology accounts for the fact that the process movement caught fire above all at Theology Faculties (Chicago, Claremont). The extraordinary fruitfulness of the Whiteheadian conceptuality in elaborating a relational theology has somehow influenced the “reception” of Whitehead. Although Whitehead as such is not a professional theologian, his insights proved to be extremely helpful. Whitehead has offered a conceptual scheme which is at least congenial with a contemporary Christian incarnational understanding of God. The bibliography published by Barry Woodbridge gives an ideal idea of Whitehedian scholarship until 1977.1 The Claremont School of Theology, mainly due to the efforts of John B. Cobb Jr., has been during several decades “the den of the process lion.” An impressive number of conferences took place in Claremont and elsewhere. Remember the Silver Anniversary Conference in Claremont in 1998. Contacts with Buddhists and Chinese scholars made possible a conference in Beijing in 2001 entitled Whitehead, China and the New Millenium, which attracted 120 scholars. Much of

Preface

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the work done in process thought found its way to the journal Process Studies (with working bees such as Lewis Ford, B. Whitney, and many others). In the meantime the home journal Process Perspectives and the journal Creative Transformation (by the Process and Faith group) have informed the international community of the extreme usefulness of the Whiteheadian outlook on reality for tackling questions concerning the common Good, the sustainability of the planet, human rights issues, etc. In 1978, Charles Hartshorne was conferred an honorary degree at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven where he was also teaching a one-semester course in Philosophical Theology. At that occasion, there came together, for the first time in Europe, a number of process thinkers, including Norman Pittenger, H.G. Hubbeling, David Pailin, Michael Welker, Wim Welten, Jean-Marie Breuvart. A European Society for Process Thought was established. When the degree was conferred, a conference was organized around the theme of Whitehead's Legacy. Somehow “Whitehead” caught fire in Europe, and important conferences were organized in Köln, Bad Homburg, Sigriswil and other places. The focus was now on relating Whitehead to other philosophers, and important studies have been published in the volumes relating to those conferences.2 In 1998 the ESPT organized a conference in Lille-Kortrijk about The Future of Process Thought in Europe. Given the new possibilities offered by internet, we decided that from now on members of the ESPT should send their papers by e-mail. Helmut Maassen set up a web-site and, together with James Bradley, André Cloots and Michel Weber, launched a series European Studies in Process Thought and edited the first Volume In Memoriam. Dorothy Emmet (1904–2000), including Dorothy Emmet’s Notes on Whitehead’s Harvard Lectures, 1928–29 (see www.espt.de). At that moment it was completely unforeseeable what the third wave of Whiteheadian scholarship would be like. An International Process Network has been created to coordinate the many process initiatives all over the world (see www.processnetwork.org). A new generation of scholars, such as Michel Weber, Palmyre Oomen, Ronny Desmet, Pierfrancesco Basile e.o. came to the fore. Several doctoral dissertations were written in Leuven, Louvain-la-Neuve and the Netherlands, so much so that at one of these defences the Dean of the Faculty said “that Whitehead was becoming fashionable.” Isabelle Stengers became deeply interested in Whitehead and gathered around her a whole group of philosophy students. Isabelle Stengers has published an impressive book Penser avec Whitehead. Une libre et sauvage creation de concepts.3 She sees strong connections with Gilles Deleuze, and this theme has been the topic of a number of doctoral seminars with Keith Robinson and of a conference organized by André Cloots and Keith Robinson in Brussels.4 Mainly due to the inexhaustible energy and the publishing skills of Michel Weber, two whole series of books are being published by Ontos Verlag, under the title Chromatiques Whiteheadiennes and Process Thought (see www.chromatika.org and www.ontos-verlag.de). “Chromatiques” expresses well the broad scope of the topics under discussion, both at a weekly seminar at the Sorbonne and at the different Whitehead conferences. This Handbook serves as an apogee of this third wave of Whiteheadian scholarship. Never has the extraordinary scope of the Whiteheadian conceptuality been brought to the fore in a more impressive way. The clear structure of the book makes the wealth of material a little less

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bewildering. Everyone can easily find his/her field of expertise, and the bibliographies allow for easy in-depth study of the topics touched upon. As “emeritus” of the second wave, I can only wholeheartedly welcome this upsurge of creative dynamism. It was of course unexpected, but it is certainly a new step of the flight of the spirit of the Whiteheadian adventure.

Notes 1

2

3

4

Alfred North Whitehead. A primary-secondary Bibliography, Barry A. Woodbridge, Editor. Jay McDaniel and Marjorie Suchocki, Associate Editors, Philosophy Documenation Center Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403, U.S.A. Whitehead und der Prozessbegriff. Whitehead and the Idea of Process. Beiträge zur Philosophie Alfred North Whitehead-Symposium 1981. Proceedings of the First International WhiteheadSymposium 1981, Harald Holz and Ernest Wolf-Gazo, eds., Freiburg/München, Karl Alber 1984. Whiteheads Metaphysik der Kreativität, Friedrich Rapp and Reiner Wiehl, eds., Freiburg/München, Karl Alber 1986. Isabelle Stengers, Penser avec Whitehead. Une libre et sauvage création de concepts, Paris, Seuil 2002. Deleuze, Whitehead and the Transformation of Metaphysics, May 23-25 2005, André Cloots & Keith A. Robinson (eds.), Brussel, Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van Belgiê voor wetenschappen en kunsten, 2005.

I. Introduction Michel Weber

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The present Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought is the product of three years of collective labor. Gathering 113 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, it aims at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary development. There is indeed an urgent need to interpret Whitehead secundum Whitehead and to read him from the vantage point of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research. As Felix Frankfurter claimed in his tribute to the philosopher some sixty years ago, the “need for breaking down sterilizing departmentalization has been widely felt. Unfortunately, however, a too frequent way of doing it has been, wittily but not too unfairly, described as the cross-sterilization of the social sciences.”1 This misplaced concreteness is precisely what we seek to avoid here. Needless to say, the Whiteheadian legacy is exceptionally rich, both because of the various expertises and character of A.N. Whitehead (1861–1947) himself, who worked in most scientific areas of his time, and also because of the contemporary challenges in philosophy, techno-science and politics. According to Hilary Putnam, scientists acknowledge nowadays the contribution of only three “philosophers”: I. Kant (in astronomy with his 1755 Nebular Hypothesis), C.S. Peirce (in geodesy, gravimetry and Photometry in 1878) and Whitehead (in relativity with his 1922 Principle). Of course this list would be very long if one were to take account of all actual philosopher-scientists: we would have to go as far back in the Western tradition as the Presocratics, and give much attention to Descartes, whose influence (especially in the cognitive sciences) has been lasting and remarkable and who could be seen as Whitehead’s arch-enemy—even though he fostered the modern “subjectivist bias” and anticipated the merging of space and matter.2 However, given the state-of-the-art in the sciences and the humanities, Whiteheadian process thought remains the most promising, both from a synthetic perspective (because of its capacity to bring together, i.e., coherently articulate, all gnoseological fields both within and without philosophy) and from an analytic one (because of its potentiality for contributing to—if not solving—topical conundrums). Last but not least, Whiteheadian processism is intrinsically critical, both in the transcendental and pragmatic senses (it is fully aware of the limitations of intuition, sense-perception, language and rationality) and in the fallibilist one (applicability matters as much as coherence while adequacy

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Centre de philosophie pratique “Chromatiques whiteheadiennes,” Brussels; Visiting Professor at the New Bulgarian University (Sofia); www.chromatika.org; [email protected].

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remains out of reach): hence, new light is cast on the crucial arguments of Kant, Peirce and Popper. This introduction will sketch Whitehead’s life and works, present his legacy, and offer some remarks about the Handbook’s general policy and on its entries.

1. Brief Vita Born on 15 February 1861 at Ramsgate (Kent, United Kingdom) and deceased 30 December 1947 at Cambridge (Massachusetts, United States), Whitehead attended the Sherborne public school (Dorsetshire) where “classical studies were interspersed with mathematics” (ESP 6) before entering Trinity College in 1880 with a scholarship in mathematics. In 1884, he was elected Fellow in Mathematics with a dissertation (now lost) on Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) and started teaching mathematics and mathematical physics. In 1905, he received a Doctor of Science degree on the basis of his Universal Algebra (1898) and of his four American Journal of Mathematics papers (1901–1904). In 1910 he resigned his Lectureship and moved unexpectedly to London, where he was an independent scholar for a year, then taught at University College London for three years and moved finally to the Imperial College of Science and Technology (London), where he taught the same subjects until 1924. According to the chronology Victor Lowe masterfully established, President A. Lawrence Lowell wrote formally to Whitehead on February 6, 1924 to invite him to teach philosophy at Harvard University.3 Although the matter was in the air—at least within Harvard’s “Royce Club”—since 1920 and an informal inquiry took place in January 1924, it seems that the formal invitation was a “complete surprise” for Whitehead and that he was immediately very enthusiastic: “I would rather do that than anything in the world,” he said to his wife.4 The Whiteheads left on August 15 and reached Boston on August 27. He started to lecture on September 23 at the Department of Philosophy, which was probably expecting only classes and new publications in logic and the philosophy of natural sciences. Whitehead, however, immediately embraced a far more speculative standpoint that became straightforwardly metaphysical one year later when he published the course of lectures he had given at the Lowell Institute (upon the invitation of A. L. Lowell, who was then the sole trustee of the Institute). Emeritus in 1937, Whitehead continued to work at a slower pace until his death. Upon his request, all his unpublished papers, letters and notes were burned either by Weiss or by Hartshorne.5 He was cremated and his ashes scattered in the graveyard of Harvard's Memorial Church where a service was held for him on 6 January 1948. Whitehead’s lasting philosophical outlook is characterized by a constant desire to question the meanings of “simple obvious statements” (R 40) and to reorganise general ideas in order to attain higher orders of abstractions—while being critically aware of the limitations of language. This twofold tension nourishing his speculations can be specified as follows: towards a radical empiricism on one hand, and a complete formalism on the other.6 One can see, in other words, that the so-called Analytic-Continental divide has always already been obsolete for Whitehead.

Introduction

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His turn towards a radical empiricism is informed essentially by a pluralism and an attention to the interconnectedness of events. Of course, it is somewhat daring to speak of a Whiteheadian radical empiricism before 1924, but this becomes nevertheless possible because of the importance of relations in all his writings. In order to understand what is at stake, a short Jamesean digression would be needed: this can be found in the introduction to the “Consciousness in Process” section of our “Panpsychism in Action” entry in this volume. The other trend in Whitehead, towards a complete formalism, took on various guises during his career. His formalizations remained indeed open to the conceptual revolutions of his time: the early Whitehead is particularly sensitive to the recent foundational developments in algebra and geometry; his middle period particularly tackles electromagnetism (including the nascent quantum mechanics, as in Planck, Einstein, and Bohr) and Einstein’s theories of relativity (including Poincaré and Minkowski); the late Whitehead also shows the influence of contemporary thinkers like S. Alexander, H. Bergson, F. H. Bradley, C. D. Broad, J. Dewey, L. J. Henderson, W. James, J. McTaggart, G. H. Mead, G. Santayana, and, of course, B. Russell.7 In the background, the systems of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Galileo, Hume, Kant, Leibniz, Locke and Newton stand out as well. Needless to say, both lists are not exhaustive, especially because Whitehead was an introvert by temperament and does not always reveal his influences, because his library was dispersed on the occasion of his several moves, because of the change of orientation of his research program and, finally, because of the clauses of his will. Unfortunately, a treasure chest such as the one his good friend Keynes discovered in 1936 with all Newton’s unpublished manuscripts does not seem to be available.8 The development of his thought can be divided into three periods which exemplify his lasting outlook in different ways, placing emphasis respectively on logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. An examination of these three “canonical” epochs reveals that Whitehead respectively contemplates (i) the logico-mathematical field sub specie totalitatis, where he aims at the ultimate generalities (for which reason the logicist program was once appealing to him) and at disclosing reality’s fundamental pattern (for which reason we can speak of his formal ontology9); (ii) geometry as a physical science, both in the sense that geometry frames common sensical perception and science and that it can be extracted from them; and (iii) metaphysics under the category of creativity for, prima facie, Process and Reality indeed offers a genetic calculus of creative intension (for which reason one can speak of an existential ontology10) but it works hand-in-hand with a morphological calculus of created extension. There is thus a common double thread or root-metaphor to these three dimensions—the assessment of the questions of uniform (spatial) extension and of relationality—that boils down to one single character, broadly understood: relativism. Formalism is always only a tool (an organon) to come to terms with reality understood from the standpoint of a relationist theory of extension. More precisely, one finds the same Fregean pattern throughout Whitehead’s development: a primitive polyadic relation operating upon a field of relata or domains.11 Polyadic is used here in the sense that the basic dyadic relation (of the type aKb) is activated in a web of relationship (it is the case that aKb, but also that aKc, aKd…). Besides, the relation is sometimes generalized, as in the case of MCMW’s pentadic relations. The three emblematic works are UA,

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PNK and PR (MCMW’s 1905 “Theory of Interpoints” providing the continuity seemingly interrupted by PM). In UA, rules of equivalence and of derivation (such as addition or multiplication) operate on a Grassmannian-Riemannian manifold of regions. The immediate goal is to elucidate the ontological weight of Maxwell’s equations. Uniformity is treated with the concept of equivalence grounded in linear strains. In PNK, the (mereological) relation of extension operates on the continuous field of events. The goal is to supply the foundations of sense-perception, as it is exploited by common-sense and by the sciences: hence the “method of extensive abstraction” using the notions of “convergence” and “equivalence class” (directly imported from the Principia Mathematica, probably under the influence of Frege’s works). Uniformity is treated with the concept of congruence that provides the framework for understanding coincidence, recognition and measurement.12 PR introduces the relation of extensive connection operating on regions. Its purpose is to display the gearing of actuality per se or existence (which is subjective and qualitative) and of the various layers of potentiality or being (basically objective and quantitative). PR thus transcends Whitehead’s previous formal ontological standpoint with a proper existential ontological standpoint. Uniformity is again treated with congruence, which is conditioned by ovateness.13 Furthermore, whereas previous systematic attempts bore the obvious seal of other mathematicians and physicists, Whitehead is here tapping his own resources (besides the reference he makes to Th. de Laguna) and drawing the metaphysical consequences of his adoption of an epochal theory of time. Yet another way of sketching the developmental trajectory would be as follows: in Cambridge, Whitehead focused on the a priori knowledge that can be extracted from the knower; in London, on the a posteriori knowledge imposed by the known; while in Harvard, he attempted a synthesis of the knower and the known.14 Let us now peruse the main publications of the philosopher; we lay particular emphasis on the works that are somehow less extensively treated later in this Handbook.

1.1. Cambridge, U.K. (1880–1909) A Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898) was Whitehead’s first book. It is largely based on a thorough investigation of Grassmann’s calculus of extension (Ausdehnungslehre, 1844), Hamilton’s Quaternions (1853), Boole’s algebra of logic (Symbolic Logic, 1859), Benjamin Peirce’s Linear Associative Algebra (1870) and Riemann’s Manifold (“Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen,” 1867). Furthermore, as its title displays, Leibniz’s shadow (under the guise of the “Ars combinatoria”) leads him to the quest of a “universal calculus to facilitate reasoning in connection with every province of thought, or of external experience.” (One should note that Russell’s and Couturat’s Leibnizian inquiries are yet to appear.) His thesis is that mathematics (in its widest signification) is not simply the science of number and quantity, but a highly efficient universal engine of investigation of the possibilities of thought and reasoning: Whitehead's algebra avoids the restriction of variables to symbols for particular numbers (cf. his interest in projective geometry) to elaborate a fully-fledged logic of

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propositions (“the sole concern of mathematics is the inference of proposition from proposition”). The planned second volume never appeared, being factually replaced by the coauthorship of the Principia Mathematica. On UA, see especially Dawson’s and Valenza’s entries in Part XVII, Volume II. “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World” (1905) is a cautious comparative study of five logical constructs describing the possible ways of conceiving a priori the structure of the physical world. It is written with the reformed symbolism of the forthcoming Principia (itself based on Peano’s conventions, which were inspired by Frege’s). Whitehead looks for nothing less than the “fundamental relations” acting between “ultimate existents.” The monograph launches the trenchant criticism of Newtonian materialism that will mainly occupy his next periods, and introduces various other forthcoming features as well, such as the “theory of interpoints,” which clearly anticipates his “method of extensive abstraction.” The background to this work is James Clerk Maxwell's thought and the natural philosophy (in the loose sense of the word) of John Henry Poynting, Joseph John Thomson and Joseph Larmor, as well as the work of George Gabriel Stokes, William Thomson (later known as Lord Kelvin) and Peter Guthrie Tait. On MCMW, see especially the entries by Gaeta, Gerla and Miranda in Part XVII, Volume II. Russell came up to Trinity in 1890 and followed Whitehead's and J. Ward’s lectures. In 1897 appeared his Foundations of Geometry; in 1903, he published The Principles of Mathematics and soon discovered the possibility of a synergy between his planned second volume and the second volume of the Universal Algebra that was still in the air. As a result, the authors decided to unite their efforts. Principia Mathematica’s bold program of deducing mathematics from a set of logical axioms stems from the above mentioned works plus Peano’s theory of natural numbers (Arithmetices principia nova methodo exposita, 1889; Formulario di mathematico, 1895), Cantor’s transfinite arithmetics (Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannichfaltigkeitslehre, 1883) and Frege’s foundational inquiries (Grundlagen der Arithmetik, 1884). According to Russell, Whitehead especially contributed the treatment of “apparent variables” (PM IB), “identity” (IB), “cardinal arithmetic” (Parts II & III), “convergence and limit of functions” (VC), and “quantity” (VIB & C). He concludes: “In most parts of the book, there was, in the end, very little for which either had sole responsibility.”15 On the whole, Whitehead was especially active in Parts II (where he was responsible for the blunder on the nature and number of individuals), V, and VI. On PM, see especially Grattan-Guinness’ entry in Part XVII, Volume II. Thanks to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, it is now accepted that logicism—the understanding of arithmetic (and much more of mathematics) as an extension of deductive logic—is mistaken. However, Principia Mathematica remains an intellectual landmark of the twentieth century, not only for its famous Theory of Types, but also as the final (though not the first) break with the Aristotelian subject-predicate logic. An Introduction to Mathematics (1911) is a popularizing work laying stress on the empirical basis of mathematics. It constitutes a straightforward introduction to the methods and applications of mathematics (broadly understood). Written for the layman, it is nevertheless quite illuminating regarding Whitehead's lasting philosophical outlook.

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The fourth volume of the Principia was supposed to be written by Whitehead alone. In order to be able to properly discuss the geometry of the world, around 1905 he launched a series of new inquiries, that would culminate in a personal reassessment of Einsteinian relativity (i.e., the replacement of the real curvature of space-time by multiple time-systems constituting a flat or pseudo-Euclidean space-time). In other words, the completion of the Principia is simply postponed and he begins his journey in epistemology. The genesis of non-Euclidean geometries (Gauss, Lobachewsky, Bolyai, Riemann, Helmholtz) had occupied Whitehead during his entire life; now he went on to exploit philosophically the concepts of “field” and “vector” as well.

1.2. London (1911–1924) The London years saw the publication of three books of similar inspiration: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919, 2nd. ed., 1925), The Concept of Nature (1920), and The Principle of Relativity. With application to Physical Science (1922). Their goal is to be useful for mathematicians, scientists and philosophers. Throughout their respective developments, the basic questions remain: what is “Nature” (i.e., the object of perceptual knowledge); how are time and space rooted in direct experience; and what shape could (should) the simplest generalization take from immediate evidence? The answer takes the form of a careful study of the presuppositions of modern science, with special attention given to Newton, Maxwell, Larmor, Lorentz, Minkowski and Einstein. Whitehead insists on the necessity of satisfying both science and common sense. Hence the two main features of his epistemology: the systematization of the concepts of event and object, and their instrumentalization by the “Method of Extensive Abstraction,” which constitutes a skilled generalization of the instinctive procedure of habitual experience in the light of the Fregean definition of cardinal numbers with equinumerical classes. Both features result from his denunciation of the “bifurcation of nature,” i.e., of the Galilean dichotomization between nature as sensed and nature as postulated by science and of the subsidiary Lockean bifurcation between primary and secondary qualities. The substance-oriented physics, dualistic in essence, is utterly replaced by a physics of events, at three complementary levels: extension no longer expresses disconnection between substances but connectedness between events; instants are replaced by durations; and absolute space is replaced by a relational/connectionist account of spatio-temporality. On the works of the London period, see especially the entries of Part XVIII, Volume II. In the Preface to the second edition of the Principles of Natural Knowledge (dated August, 1924—remember the Whiteheads left London for Liverpool on August 15 and reached Boston on August 27)—Whitehead was already stating that he hoped “in the immediate future” to embody the standpoint of his epistemological inquiries “in a more complete metaphysical study.” And he did so in a rather revolutionary way. What begins to matter indeed is the intelligence of the ontological conditions of possibility of the “creative advance of nature.” The full systematic—or rather, heuristic—answer will be given by Process and Reality; but three other works particularly matter: the pre-systematic Science and the Modern World and Religion in the Making, and the post-systematic Adventures of Ideas.16

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1.3. Harvard (1924–1947) Science and the Modern World (being the Lowell Lectures of 1925) embodies perhaps the first critical historico-conceptual study of the development of modern science ever, starting with the Greeks, surveying 2500 years of techno-scientific struggles with “stubborn facts,” and devoting special attention to the Einsteinian upheaval and the nascent quantum mechanics. These lectures ran from February to March 1925 and were published—“with some slight expansion” according to SMW’s Preface—in October 1925. The added material consists of two generalist chapters that were delivered as lectures in other circumstances (Chapter II on Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought and Chapter XII on Religion and Science) and two brand new chapters (Chapter X on Abstraction and Chapter XI on God), both especially reflective of an ontological orientation. Science and the Modern World constitutes Whitehead's earliest careful exploration of the everlasting ontological problem—how to understand the “coming-to-be and passing-away” of actualities? Here he underlines his special indebtedness to S. Alexander and C. L. Morgan. The pure phenomenological standpoint of his previous period is no longer satisfactory, as it leads to the deepening of the event/object polarity with the actual occasion/eternal object polarity. On the one hand, the phenomenological continuous transition is so to speak atomized in ontological units of experience (“epochs”); on the other, the quasi-Platonic notion of eternal object embodies general potentialities. Moreover, the axiomatization of the process of actualization asks for a threefold immanent “principle of limitation” working together with a transcendentimmanent “Principle of Concretion”—God—grounding value and order in an eventful universe. The discussion of the concept of God occurs thus in a totally dispassionate context, independently of religious or even ethical concerns. What matters more is the “ontological priority” of flux over permanence and the grounding of actuality in a “sea” of potentiality. In any case, SMW constitutes without doubt a major step (not a leap) in Whitehead's conceptual development. 17 Religion in the Making (being the Lowell Lectures of 1926, delivered in King’s Chapel, Boston, and published in Sept. 1926) resumes the systematic task by naming the three “formative elements” implicit in Science and the Modern World: creativity or substantial activity, eternal objects or pure possibilities, and God or the Principle of Concretion. The Timaeus’ categories are obviously still haunting his mind. In any case, it is the concept of religion that is in the hot seat here, both from the perspective of the relativity of first-hand and second-hand experiences (cf. James' Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902) and of the correlation between the history of religion and the general history of knowledge. Science and the Modern World—and, to a lesser extent, Religion in the Making—were (and still are) well-sold books. Due to the topics they address and the treatment they accord them, they have usually been acclaimed by critics and welcomed by the general public as well as scholars. Partly historical and partly common-sensical, they could easily find an open-minded audience in Boston. Nevertheless, it is fair to recognize that, in comparison to Process and Reality (1929), these works were conceptually timid, simply because Whitehead had not yet thought his way to a coherent system. The main damper impeding his speculations was his

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atavistic Platonism, itself induced by his Logicism and his Anglicanism. In other words, both because of his algebraic training and his Christian education, he was heavily subjected to the creed of the time: creationism (not in the contemporary meaning of the word). Creation is a making not a happening; it is poietic, not praxic.18 It remains however of the highest importance to assess that conceptual reticence in order to understand Process and Reality's drive. All the more so if one does not accept the thesis of the uttermost importance of the Gifford Lectures to understand what is at stake for their author: SMW (together with AI) become then the loci of the revelation of his late worldview. An excellent introduction to Whitehead's Weltanschauung in general, and his epistemology in particular, can be found in his Barbour-Page Lectures of 1927, published under the title of Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect.19 Symbolism is noteworthy mainly for its introduction of Whitehead’s mature analysis of sense-perception. Our experience, he claims, has three main modes, “each contributing its share of components to our individual rise into one concrete moment of human experience” (S 17). Two of these modes are perceptive, and the third one names the interplay between the former. The goal is to save “appearance” and “being,” opinion and science. In respect to “pure (sense-)perception”20 or “direct recognition,”21 the philosopher distinguishes “causal efficacy” and “presentational immediacy,” both constituting an objectification of the mundane tissue. On the one hand, in “perception in the mode of causal efficacy,” we “conform to our bodily organs and to the vague world which lies beyond them” (S 43). In other words, we undergo the pressure of an external world which is both determined and past (S 44, 50, 55 and PR 178). That heavy and primitive experience (S 44) brings to the fore the meaning of our embodiment (the “withness of the body,” as he will later call it), which is to root us deeply in the World. On the other hand, “perception in the mode of presentational immediacy” delivers a clear and distinct image of the contemporary world. An instantaneous cut-out presentifies (i.e. renders present) reality as an extensive pattern: determined items localized in a spatio-temporal continuum. This projection, in our present, is achieved with the (past) data delivered by causal efficacy. Its paradigm is sight and the coldness of its objectification: to locate is the act of sight itself. The intrinsic natural processuality is here obliterated; the World becomes stiff and lifeless, a mosaic of qualities spread out in front of an acosmic subject.22 None of the two pure modes can be judged true or false, only their confrontation could: Aristotle saw it already, truth and falsehood are not “in” things, but in the synthesis made by the mind. In order to explain perceptual errors and other, more positive, degrees of freedom humans can enjoy with facts, Whitehead introduces “symbolic reference,” which is the conscious synthetic activity whereby the two pure modes are “fused into one perception” (S 18). To mistake a square tower for a round one is to misinterpret what is actually given to us: although what is seen is undoubtedly a roundish object, the tower is indeed square and this fact cannot but be conveyed by causal efficacy. “Direct experience is infallible. What you have experienced, you have experienced” (S 6). The mistake lies in the conscious judgment claiming that this tower is round. His answer to Hume (and Descartes) is thus the following. Although it is with good reason that the Scot criticizes perception in the mode of presentational immediacy, his reduction of all possible perception to sensory perception (restricted to the five

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senses) is mistaken. In sum: conscious perception is understood as “the symbolic interplay between two distinct modes of direct perception of the external world.”23 The Aims of Education (1929) gathers addresses given between 1912 and 1928 (it actually recaptures most of the essays published in The Organisation of Thought, Educational and Scientific, 1917). The Preface summarizes the stakes: “The whole book is a protest against dead knowledge, that is to say, against inert ideas.” According to Whitehead, “education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge” and such an art necessarily involves the uncompromising awareness of duty (that “arises from our potential control over the course of events”) and reverence (which is “this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity”24). Accordingly, he spells the rhythm of education in three phases: wild Romance, efficacious Precision and visionary Generalisation. On this, see especially the entries of Part VI, Volume I. Process and Reality (being the Gifford Lectures of 1927–1928, published in December 1929)25 disrupts RM’s threefold Platonic framework by reorienting it around the concept of “creativity.” Although Process and Reality constitutes Whitehead's most imposing work, undoubtedly the acme of his speculations, it was—and is still—badly received and drastically misunderstood. Actually, Whitehead wrote to his son North: “I do not expect a good reception from professional philosophers.”26 As a matter of fact, the Lectures were a debacle, and the book itself is usually fragmented in order to make it sizeable for hurried readers. It constitutes of five strictly interdependent parts: I. “The Speculative Scheme;” II. “Discussions and Applications;” III. “The Theory of Prehensions;” IV. “The Theory of Extension;” and V. “Final Interpretation.” Part One includes the famous “categoreal scheme” that is “practically unintelligible” unless studied along with the rest of the book. Part Two (which is the weakest) mainly studies the Classics and Kant from the perspective of its reformed subjectivism. Part Three analyses “genetically” the coming into existence of new actualities. Part Four analyses “coordinately” the being of actualities (and defines straight lines without reference to measurement). Part Five reinterprets the ontological system so far adumbrated, starting with the rebalancing of the God/World relationship. The ill-success of Process and Reality seems to have suggested a renewal of the expository style of Science and the Modern World. Adventures of Ideas (1933) elucidates the main categories of Process and Reality with the help of a vast picture of the major ideas haunting civilizations. We have here not only a philosophy of history emphasizing the concept of persuasion, but also an assessment of the impact of the scientific worldview on European culture and a renewed exposition of the ontology of process. According to the philosopher, a civilized society is to exhibit the qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, and Peace. See especially on this Allan and Henning entries, respectively in Parts II and VII of this volume. The Function of Reason—being the Louis Clark Vanuxem Foundation Lectures delivered at Princeton University, March 1929—constitutes Whitehead’s most valuable meditation on the complementary topics of Darwinian evolution and Jamesean Pragmatism. It is structured in a remarkably dialectic way: it first introduces the pragmatic function of reason, then its theoretical function, and lastly its (hyperdialectical 27) theoretico-pragmatic one. The first definition

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Whitehead gives of the function of Reason is “to promote the art of life” (FR 4). Although this is promptly reformulated as “the direction of the attack on the environment,”28 the philosopher remarks that life should not be equated with survival as such: mere persistence is nothing but death.29 Life should be approximated by three concepts that will be evoked again with the introduction of the “creative advance of nature”: self-enjoyment, creativity and aim. But there is a second, equally important, function of reason: the speculative one, which is far less focused on immediate issues and attempts to grasp the overall picture. It is a “godlike faculty which surveys, judges and understands” (FR 9). The pragmatic function is rooted in our animal life (this being not a derogative statement), the speculative one in civilization. The former promotes life in all its dimensions; the latter, science and its disinterested quest. However, neither life nor science has the last word in Whitehead’s Victorian optimism: Ulysses and Plato pave together the way for James Watts’ (1736–1819) techno-science. With technoscience, a synergy is established between the archaeological propensity of speculative systematization and the consequentialism of pragmatic thought. In a somewhat Kantian manner, Whitehead insists on the complementarity of the two functions: methodology and direct observation derive from the practical side30 while the global imaginative standpoint needed to pilot it and the emphasis upon novelty31 are theoretical. On pragmatism and process, see especially Allan’s entry in Part IX of this volume. Modes of Thought (1938) gathers together Whitehead’s last lectures, spread over the years 1924–1938. Their main object is to bring to the fore the presuppositions and oversimplifications that underlie abstractions, whether they be everyday, commonsensical patterns of thought or elaborate scientific systematizations. Whitehead shows, with the help of the concepts of importance, interest, discrimination and perspective, that there is a continuous gradient from the infinite unity or connexity of all events to the individual, finite, selectiveness of enjoyment of conscious actualities. By the same token, he insists on the difference between intuition, thought, and language and contrasts the sheer, vibrant disclosure of stubborn facts with their symbolization in science, philosophy, poetry and mysticism. Ideals can mask the concrete, well placed abstractions never. “Autobiographical Notes,” “Immortality,” and “Mathematics and the Good,” first published in the Schilpp volume devoted to The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1941; reprinted in his 1947 Essays in Science and Philosophy), constitute his last major publications. All three make the same plea for relativism in PR’s reformed sense of the term and for its direct correlates pattern and rhythm. First of all, Whitehead makes clear that his thought has always been anchored in his vivid knowledge of history and in plain conversation, both commonsensical and technical, with colleagues, students and friends. Second, the Uni-verse is understood as the interplay between two “Worlds,” the World of Active Creativity and the World of Timeless Value. The former is the World of origination of patterns of assemblage that nevertheless develops Enduring Personal Identity. The latter is timeless and immortal, but it nevertheless seeks Realization. In sum: neither finitude nor infinitude are self-supporting; fact and value require each other—and “exactness is a fake.”32

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2. Whitehead’s Legacy It is well known that until recently Whitehead has kept a fair visibility only in Protestant natural theology and mainly in the United States. There is however nowadays a (re-)discovery of Whitehead in philosophical and scientific circles: below, we propose a brief overview of the Whiteheadian legacy and list a few of the most recent promising development in Europe, Asia and Africa.

2.1. United States The propagation of Whiteheadian organic philosophy outside Harvard was first due to Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975), who did not study under Whitehead but introduced, as early as 1926, the standpoint of Religion in the Making to Chicago’s Divinity School, whose tradition was, from its founding in 1890 by William Rainey Harper (1856–1906) until the early 1950s, empirical (or natural) theology. There has been, as a result, a steady interest in Whitehead among theologians, first at the University of Chicago, later at the Claremont School of Theology (Claremont, California). Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), Daniel Day Williams (1910–1971), Bernard MacDougall Loomer (1912–1985)—who is likely to have coined, for better or for worse, the term “process thought”—and Bernard Eugene Meland (1899–1993) rank among the first wave of these impressive Whitehead-inspired scholars. In the sixties emerged John B. Cobb, Jr. (1925–) and Schubert M. Ogden (1928–). Cobb’s Christian Natural Theology (1965/2007) remains a landmark in the field. The journal Process Studies was created in 1971 by Cobb and Lewis S. Ford (1933–); the Center for Process Studies was established in 1973 by Cobb and David Ray Griffin (1939–) in Claremont. The result of these developments was that Whiteheadian process scholarship has acquired, and kept, a fair visibility only in NorthAmerican natural theology. Whitehead’s philosophical legacy was far less unified, though it too was a lively one. Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000), the most famous of Whitehead’s students with Bertrand Russell—and who belongs after all to the formative phase of a new (analytical) ontology—did not follow the speculative path of his mentor. Neither did Paul Weiss (1901–2002), who apparently finally repudiated completely the philosophy of organism. Other past students like William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966), Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop (1893–1992), Suzanne Katherina (Knauth) Langer (1895–1985), Victor Augustus Lowe (1907–1988), Joseph Gerard Brennan (1910–1977), Max Harold Fisch (1901–1995) or Allison Heartz Johnson (1910–1973) never kept the argumentative pressure high enough—or federated their efforts enough—to promote the ideas of their teacher the way theologians did. Neither did prominent philosophers like Wilbur Marshal Urban (1873–1952), Sydney Ernest Hooper (1880–1966), Lizzie Susan Stebbing (1885–1943), William Armistead Christian (1905–1997), Mili apek (1909–1997), Ivor Leclerc (1915–1999), William Norris Clarke (1915–), Nathaniel Morris Lawrence (1917– 1986), George Louis Kline (1921–), Walter Eliott Stokes, S.J. (1923–1969) or Robert Monroe Palter (1924–). Founded in 1966, the Society for the Study of Process Philosophies (http://www.processphilosophies.org) was one of the first satellite organizations of the

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American Philosophical Association. The SSPP holds periodic meetings in conjunction with each of the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association, as well as at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The SSPP is presently coordinated by Jude Jones with the associate director Brian G. Henning.

2.2. Europe From a European perspective, there was a very significant and often early Whiteheadian influence on the works of outstanding scholars like Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Émile Meyerson (1859–1933), Louis Couturat (1868–1914), Jean Wahl (1888–1974), Robin George Collingwood (1889–1943), Philippe Devaux (1902–1979), Hans Jonas (1903–1993), Dorothy M. Emmet (1904–2000), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), Enzo Paci (1911–1976), Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971), Wolfe Mays (1912–2005), Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003), Jules Vuillemin (1920–2001), Jean Ladrière (1921–2007), Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995), Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–) and Reiner Wiehl (1929–), but all have kept their own speculative trajectory. (Russell’s case is again too complex to be addressed here.) Louvain’s Center for Metaphysics maintains Whiteheadian archives, established by Jan Van der Veken (1932–) in 1977 with the help of Claremont’s Center for Process Studies and now directed by André Cloots (1948–); it is also the host of the European Society for Process Thought, created November 10th 1978, on the occasion of the bestowal of a honorary doctorate on Charles Hartshorne.33

2.3. Recent Evolution Recent years have seen the revival of the interest in Whitehead’s philosophy, either directly (through the interpretation of Whitehead secundum Whitehead) or indirectly, because of debates around problematic epistemological knots (such as interpretational problems in quantum mechanics or in relativity, and chronic difficulties such as the so-called mind-body problem), on the occasion of the reassessment of “great classics” such as Locke, Hume and Kant, or because of some currently fashionable work, e.g. in France, through Gabriel (de) Tarde (1843–1904), Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989) and Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995). Furthermore, Whitehead’s anticipating insights on the convergence of fields like “gender studies” and “sociology of science” remain fascinating: Except for plain, overmastering reasons connected with the necessary efficiency of Government, it is a crime against Liberty deliberately to deprive any portion of the population of possibilities of political action. That such overmastering reasons for limitation of political functions do exist in many states, perhaps in all states, I am not concerned to deny. They may arise when there is a cleavage in the population produced by inferiority of race, inferiority of civilization, or by deficiency of goodwill.34 Here is a brief sketch of the recent major international initiatives. The Japan Society for Process Studies was established on December 8, 1979. Its current president is Haruo Murata (Aomori Public College). The secretariat of JSPS is located at Hitoshi Hongo's office at Tokyo Denki University. Tokiyuki Nobuhara (who is also chairing the East-West Process Studies Project since 1985) acts as project director. The JSPS fosters three study groups—in Tokyo (leader: Chuichiro Hirose, Canon University), in Kyoto (leader: Eiko

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Hanaoka, Nara Industrial University), and in Nagoya (leader: Yasuto Murata, Nagoya Ryujo Junior College)—and a journal, Process Thought (editor: Yutaka Tanaka, Sophia University), that has just published its 13th issue last fall. On September 2007 JSPS had its 29th Annual Convention at Doho University, Nagoya with a special symposium on “Whitehead and Peace” as its focus. Isami Nagami (Nagoya Ryujo Junior College), Tsugiko Sakai (Tokushima Bunri University), Shigeyuki Itoh (Kyushu Industrial University) were speakers, with Tokiyuki Nobuhra (Keiwa College) and Masaharu Hishiki (Doho University) playing the roles of comentator and presider. Hiroshi Endo (Waseda University emeritus) delivered a keynote lecture on “Whitehead's Metaphysics.” The Australasian Association for Process Thought (www.processthought.org) was formed in 1996 by process philosopher and theologian Greg Moses and computer scientist Peter Farleigh, with support from biologist and writer Charles Birch and humanities professor Wayne Hudson. The aim of the organisation is to promote the study of the process-relational thought of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne in the Antipodes. Membership consists of philosophers, scientists, medics, psychologists, clergy, students, and other interested scholars from all over Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. In June 2000 the AAPT launched an on-line peer-reviewed journal called Concrescence (www.concrescence.org) and in 2005 members of AAPT created a new peer reviewed on-line journal: Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy (http://www.cosmosandhistory.org). Learned papers are invited on all subjects addressing the problems and issues in process-relational metaphysics. The journals provide a forum for exploring a broad range of issues in this speculative or revisionist field, but not ignoring critical and analytical methods: from the philosophy of science to theology, from environmental ethics to politics, from historical analyses to contemporary issues. The Whitehead Society of Korea (http://whitehead.or.kr/) was created in 1997 after a research stay of Wang Shik Jang in Claremont. The WSK held its first conference at Yonsei University in Seoul on March 29, 1997. It is currently chaired by Chang-Ok Mun. The Whitehead Psychology Nexus scholarly society was created in October 2000 by Michel Weber. It is an international open forum dedicated to the cross-examination of Whitehead's “organic” or “process” philosophy and the various facets of the contemporary psychological field. It seeks to encourage psychology in a Whiteheadian atmosphere and Whiteheadian scholarship informed by psychology. Bold speculations balanced by “complete humility before logic, and before fact” are especially valued. “It is a disease of philosophy—stresses Whitehead—when it is neither bold nor humble, but merely a reflection of the temperamental presuppositions of exceptional personalities” (PR 17). Openness means here—at the very least—two things. With regard to the focus of the evoked cross-elucidation: no philosophical or psychological system of thought is a priori excluded, provided that they allow discussion in a Whiteheadian spirit. With regard to the membership: ideologies and other forms of dogmatism are the only approaches which are not welcomed at the present. See www.chromatika.org. The International Process Network (IPN) was created in Claremont in January 2001. It is a global network for process-relational philosophies governed by a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary board. IPN’s purpose, as stated in its bylaws, is “to support, generate and

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disseminate an international discourse on the meaning and implications of process thought across academic disciplines and conflicting truth-claims, and in relation to the entire community of life and the cosmos.” Membership in IPN is available to individuals and organizations who are interested in understanding, teaching, developing, applying, promoting or supporting process. See www.processstudies.org. The Chromatiques whiteheadiennes scholarly society was created in January 2001 by Michel Weber. It has since been incorporated as a non-profit organization that regroups the Chromatiques, the Whitehead Psychology Nexus and the European William James Project. The Chromatiques network itself intends to bring together research on the different aspects, nuances and implications of Whitehead's thought. Since 2002, the network has fostered in Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne research seminars on Whitehead’s organic philosophy. The Chromatikon Yearbook publishes the main results of this work and also offers critical studies and reviews in Whiteheadian and related fields. It complements the monographs and proceedings published in Ontos' “Chromatiques whiteheadiennes” and “Process Thought” series. Since December 2007, the society has activated its own publishing company—Les Éditions Chromatika / Chromatika Editions—with two volumes presently available. See www.chromatika.org. A Research Chapter for Applied Process Thought was created in 2002 in the University of St. Andrews by Mark Dibben. The Chapter has since then moved to the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, under the leadership of Thomas A. F. Kelly. Thanks to Zhihe Wang's intercession, no less than fourteen centers devoted to process thought were open recently in the People's Republic of China: Beijing Center for Process Philosophy (2002), Wuhan Center (Process Philosophy, 2002), Xian Center (Process Philosophy, 2003), Beijing Center for Process Thinking (2004), Yancheng Center (Process Education, 2005), Suzhou Center (Process Philosophy, 2005), Zhanjiang Center (Process Education, 2005), Hangzhou Center (Process Theology, 2005), Shangdong Center (Process Psychology, 2005), Tianjin Center (Process Education, 2005), Shenyang Center (Process Ecology, 2007), Heilongjiang Center (Process Philosophy, 2007), Guilin Center (Constructive Postmodern Culture, 2006), and Shanghai Center (Sustainable Urbanization, 2007). Some of them were open on the occasion of a conference co-organized with Claremont’s China Project and the Institute for Postmodern Development of China. The topics included, e.g., philosophy, Sustainable Urbanization, education reform, the dialogue between Science and spirituality, social responsibility in business, land and Social Justice, and postmodern law, management.35 The Polish Whitehead Metaphysical Society was founded in 2003 and registered in October 2005. It was founded by a group of twenty Polish philosophers in order to support the development of Whiteheadian metaphysics. The Society organizes an annual conference in May (usually in Polish)36 and publishes the Studia Whiteheadiana (issue 1, 2003; 2, 2006; 3, 2008). The contact person is: Bogdan M. Ogrodnik (Silesian University), [email protected]. The Hungarian and Central European Whitehead Society (Budapest) was established in 2003. It organizes monthly discussions, inviting not only philosophers, but also experts from areas like theology, informatics, psychology, sociology, history, art etc. Two members of the society translated Process and Reality (published by Typotex, 2001): László Fórizs and Gábor Karsai. In 2007 the Concept of Nature was published in Hungarian (Typotex, 2007, translated by

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Levente Szabados) and Studies on process philosophy were published (Process and Adventure, Veszprém, 2006, edited by Ella Csikós and Gábor Karsai). Every summer a “Whiteheadian camp” takes place at lake Balaton, with lessons and cultural programs. Web site: http://whitehead.fw.hu/; e-mail: [email protected]. The Whitehead Research Project (WRP), established by Roland Faber in 2007, heralds the forthcoming Whitehead Research Institute. It is dedicated to the research of, and scholarship on, the texts, philosophy and life of Alfred North Whitehead. It explores and analyzes the relevance of Whitehead’s thought in dialogue with contemporary philosophies in order to unfold his philosophy of organism and its consequences for our time and in relation to emerging philosophical thought. Of particular interest is the investigation of the emergence of Whitehead’s philosophy in the context of British and American pragmatism, its relation to Continental philosophy and the analytic tradition, the relevance of his thought in the discourse of post-modern paradigms of deconstruction and post-structuralism, and its creative impulse for developing process philosophies. Additionally, following Whitehead’s own inclination to reach beyond European modes of thought, WRP seeks to extend its horizon of research by fostering similar conversations with strains of Indian and East Asian thought, thereby exhibiting de facto mutual influence—e.g., with the Kyoto School of Buddhist philosophy. The Bulgarian Center for Process Studies was established officially on November 2007 with the help of Claremont’s CPS. It is a branch of the Bulgarian Ontological Society. Its president is Vesselin Petrov (who is also the head of the Bulgarian Ontological Society), and its secretary is Stefan Dimitrov. It is currently establishing synergies with its Romanian Hungarian counterparts. E-mail: [email protected]. In April 2008 a Whiteheadian research center was opened in the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences of the “Constantin Brancusi University” (Romania). Its Honorary President is Bertrand de Saint-Sernin, professor emeritus of Paris IV–Sorbonne. Its President is Prof. Adrian Gorun, Ph.D., President of CBU and secretary general of the Romanian Department of Education. The research center will have a globalist approach in the field of research and will focus on strengthening the academic relations with the other Whiteheadian centers in Europe and USA. E-mail: [email protected]. In Africa, there has been a constant interest in Whitehead since the seventies with the works of Mgr Tshishiku [Tharcisse] Tshibangu, who found his main inspiration in Whitehead, Yves Congar and Jean Ladrière.37 Joseph Mabika Nkata,38 Alphonse Ngindu Mushete39 and David Ongombe Talhuata40 are continuing Tshibangu’s initial exploration of the bridges between organic/process philosophy and African theologies and worldviews. A Centre Monseigneur Tshibangu. Métaphysiques—Sciences—Théologies was planned back in 2005 in the Université de Lubumbashi, R.D. Congo but, sadly, ethnic problems apparently make its opening currently impossible. Given all these developments across the globe, the current optimism in the process field is more understandable. Although this is not the time to denounce that optimism, one should place it within a larger context. There are indeed conceptual rhythms that frame the history of ideas and Whitehead would have insisted that there are still novel conceptual epochs to come. The contrast between pluralistic empiricism and dualistic rationalism is well-known (see for instance

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the opening chapter of James’ Pluralistic Universe) but is a bit too broad to allow the manipulation of an applicable picture. If we consider the last centuries of human thought, we have the following dialectical movement displaying a shift of epicentre from Italy to Germany and later to the Anglo-Saxon world (the latter constituting a far more diffuse entity because of its world-wide cultural hegemony). Whereas the Renaissance lauded the perfection of static proportions, Baroque art and thought, heir to the Counter-Reformation of 1630–1750, stressed movement, change and growth. The reaction of the Aufklärung was swift: secularization with its requirements of rationality, optimism and progress spread its dogmatic wings over the entire social landscape (remember Foucault’s grand renfermement). With Romanticism, the emphasis returned to feeling, becoming and opacity (or inexhaustibleness: cf. R 15), sometimes even irrationality. Then the positivism of A. Comte and later the Wiener Kreis (soon to be exported to the USA) constituted a new Kehre, promptly counter-balanced by the first process publications of F. Nietzsche and É. Boutroux, but also of C. S. Peirce, W. James and A. N. Whitehead. In conclusion, process thinkers can be optimistic because their mode of thought has not yet developed all its potentialities or become generally recognized (although science is nowadays totally processual). But they should not be dazzled either: “in its turn every philosophy will suffer a deposition” (PR 7).

3. Handbook’s Framework We now specify the general policy followed by the Handbook and make explicit the nature of its thematic and biographical entries.

3.1 General Policy Planning a Handbook covering the whole spectrum of Whitehead’s œuvre required a very broad and ambitious framework. Given the complexity of the task—perusing all available Whiteheadian material as well as most of its roots and fruits—and the constraints lying upon it (such as the unavoidable obsolescence of the entries and the managerial decisions of the publisher), it makes no claim to completeness or objectivity: the editors only believe it to have reached a standard that should retain its authoritativeness for a good few years. To achieve this aim, two main types of entries are proposed: thematic (Volume I, Parts II to XV and Volume II, Parts XVI to XVIII) and biographical (Volume II, Part XIX). It is wellknown that much compromise is needed to balance the two requirements common to all collective works: first, the enforcement of clear criteria of convergence on all entries; second, the necessity to respect the creativity of all authors involved and thus to grant reasonable freedom of operation within the proposed structure. There is no contradiction here, however, for as Whitehead wrote concisely: “Each task of creation is a social effort” (PR 223). These boundaries, combined with the necessity to welcome not only confirmed Whiteheadians but “closet” Whiteheadians as well as scholars who were willing to contribute specialized entries, while so to speak on their way towards process thought, were especially restricting in the case of the biographical entries.

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Finally, let us mention that this work will be furthermore complemented in the near future by the publication of Creativity and its Discontents. The Response to Whitehead's Process and Reality, edited by Alan Van Wyk and Michel Weber (Ontos, 2008), a book gathering and contextualizing all the major reviews (translated where need be) of Process and Reality: its original 1929 edition, its 1978 corrected edition and its various translations (some of which are still on-going).

3.2. Thematic Entries Each thematic entry provides (i) a broad contextualisation of the issue at stake; (ii) a focus on Whitehead's treatment (if any) or of a possible Whiteheadian treatment of the issue; (iii) a history of relevant scholarship; (iv) a personal assessment by the Author; (v) a section with further essential readings. In some cases, it was expedient to propose two complementary approaches: an analytic entry following closely the above five steps, and a synthetic entry, focusing on the personal assessment of an important issue in the field. Growing fields, such as “process economy” (6 entries), “philosophy of language” (5 entries), “public policy” (4 entries) and “psychology and the philosophy of mind” (7 entries) receive here close attention while well-established ones, such as “process theology” and “process metaphysics” are comparatively smaller. The reason is two-fold: precisely for these two fields, it proved quite difficult to gather innovative papers while novel publications such as the Handbook of Process Theology and the first volume of Applied Process Thought41 provide fair recent syntheses. Special attention has also been given to the evolution of the concept of extension in Whitehead’s writings. For one thing, his treatment of extension is important in itself; for another, it is arguable that the core of Process and Reality lies in the togetherness of Parts III and IV. Since subjectivity and intensity require objectivity and extensity,42 both Parts need to be read together to recreate Whitehead’s vision. This foundational synergy has largely informed the argument of our recent monograph—Whitehead’s Pancreativism (2006)—while it underlines Kraus’, Nobo’s and Jones’ earlier analyses.43 With the articulation of PR’s intuition through the knower/known dialectic, Whitehead regroups two fields that were separated after the Principia Mathematica: one is the process legacy of thinkers such as Peirce, Bergson, James and Dewey; the other is the logical empiricism of Carnap and Quine (Frege being more a maverick). Fitch in 1957 was probably the first to understand this; Dumoncel, Shields, Lango, Lucas, Rescher and Seibt are recent exemplifications of the growing importance of formal process ontology.44 Bibliographies are gathered at the end of each Part under the title “Works Cited and Further Readings.” This helps to avoid redundancy, to provide synthetic data and to optimize the use of space.

3.3. Biographical Entries Biographical entries are of a rather obvious relevance in the context of a philosophical Handbook. There are, in addition, three specific Whiteheadian reasons to feature them: first,

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they constitute a major avenue to unearth the presuppositions of our author and of his Zeitgeist. With regard to this, Whitehead wittily remarks: When you are criticising the philosophy of an epoch, do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions which its exponents feel it necessary explicitly to defend. There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them (SMW 48).45 To become aware of such a set of (possibly unconsciously) presupposed fundamental assumptions constitutes a necessary hermeneutical step. In philosophical parlance, this is the question of doxa, whose study reveals mainly two types of data: contingent and necessary ones, the latter leading straight to our second reason. Second, insights of past authors are of exceptional interest: Plato's contribution to the basic notions connecting Science and Philosophy, as finally settled in the later portion of his life, has virtues entirely different from that of Aristotle, although of equal use for the progress of thought. It is to be found by reading together the Theætetus, the Sophist, the Timæus, and the fifth and tenth books of the Laws; and then by recurrence to his earlier work, the Symposium. He is never entirely self-consistent, and rarely explicit and devoid of ambiguity. He feels the difficulties, and expresses his perplexities. No one could be perplexed over Aristotle’s classifications; whereas Plato moves about amid a fragmentary system like a man dazed by his own penetration (AI 146-147). Third, past architectonic attempts themselves constitute an important source of inspiration for a system-builder such as Whitehead. So when he claims that “the systematic thought of ancient writers is now nearly worthless; but their detached insights are priceless” (ESP 84), he is not to be taken prima facie. There is no contradiction here: his fascination for the fragile coherence of past ontologies (such as Plato’s or Newton’s) does not obliterate the requirement of applicability, that justifies his quoted claim. In sum, it is possible to gain a good grasp of Whitehead’s roots by studying the presuppositions he shares with his peers, the insights he reclaims and the systems he criticizes more or less subjectively. These routes of approximations should be illuminated by biographical entries providing (with the exception of some shorter notes) (i) a brief vita of the targeted thinker; (ii) a sketch of his/her categories relevant to Whiteheadian scholarship; (iii) a personal assessment of the possible Whiteheadian semantic transfer to or from the thinker; and (iv) a section with further essential readings. The biographical entries are arranged in the following historical manner: Whitehead’s Historico-Speculative Context, his Contemporaries, and his Scholarly Legacy (American and European). Among the missing entries that were initially planned and should be provided in a second edition, we have essentially (i) Aristotle, Galileo (1564–1642), Descartes (1596–1650), Locke (1632–1704), Newton (1642–1727), Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880), George Boole (1815–1864), George Gabriel Stokes (1819–1903), Georg Friedrich Bernard Riemann (1826–1866), Peter Guthrie Tait (1831–1901), William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824–1907), James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900), Gottlob Frege (1848–1925); (ii) Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936), Max Planck (1858–1947), Henri

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Bergson (1859–1941), Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864–1937), Étienne Gilson (1884– 1978), Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971), Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop (1893–1992), Hans Jonas (1903–1993); (iii) Ian Graeme Barbour (1923–), Reiner Wiehl (1929–). The massive scale of a project that attempted to match all the facets of Whitehead’s legacy within the constraints discussed above is the main reason for the inability to provide these entries on time.46 The Critical Apparatus is featured in Volume II; it consists of a General Bibliography, an Index of Subjects, an Index of Names and a Detailed Table of Contents.

In the same way that the Culture-Bound Syndromes have cast doubts on the comprehensiveness and objectivity of Western psychiatry, one could question the objectivity of a philosophical Handbook that leaves so little room to traditions that do not belong to the West. No doubt figures like Leonardo Boff (1938–), Nishida Kitarô (1870–1945) and Cheikh Anta Diop (1923– 1986) were in the mind of many of the authors who have contributed, but actual allusions are scarce. Through that bias also, this Handbook embodies the current state of affairs in Whiteheadian scholarship. Provided that we remain fully conscious (not simply aware) of it, the adventure of thought will continue. Is panic of error not “the death of progress; and love of truth is its safeguard” (MT 16)?

“Denken ist Danken.” All the scholars involved in this long project have to be wholeheartedly thanked for their important input and for their generous collaboration. To Timothy L. S. Sprigge, Jean Ladrière, Peter H. Hare and Thomas A. F. Kelly, who have departed before seeing the Handbook published, I owe a very special thanks for their unflinching support in this as well as many other projects.

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Notes 1

Felix Frankfurter, in a Letter to the New York Times on January 8, 1948, reprinted as a Preface to the Mentor Book edition of Whitehead’s Aims of Education (1929). 2 Cf., e.g., R 38 and PR 73 sq. 3 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. See also William Ernest Hocking’s testimony in “Whitehead as I Knew Him,” Journal of Philosophy, 58, 1961, pp. 505-516, reprinted in George Louis Kline (Edited and with an Introduction by), A. N. Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy, Englewood-Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963, pp. 7-17 (Corrected reprint: University Press of America, 1989). 4 According to Lucien Price's Dialogues of A. N. Whitehead. Introduction by Sir David Ross, Boston/London, Little, Brown & Company/Max Reinhardt Ltd., 1954. We quote the reprint in Mentor Book, 1956, p. 14. 5 Very few letters and papers escaped, mainly thanks to V. Lowe and B. Russell: they can be consulted in the Milton S. Eisenhower Library (Johns Hopkins University), in the Mills Memorial Library (McMaster University), and in the Haldane Archives (National Library of Scotland). 6 This is also testified by Andrew Dawson (see his entry in Vol. II) and scholars such as Emmet (see her “A. N. Whitehead: The Last Phase,” Mind, 57, 1948, pp. 265-274), Hocking (see his “Whitehead as I Knew Him,” op. cit.), Allison Heartz Johnson (“Whitehead as Teacher and Philosopher,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 29, 1968-1969, pp. 351-376), and Joseph Gerard Brennan (“Alfred North Whitehead: Plato's Lost Dialogue”, The American Scholar, 47, 4, 1978, pp. 515-524). 7 Here the interplay between the speculations and personal lives of Russell and Whitehead is a subject unto itself, and one made all the more difficult because Whitehead left very few clues while Russell’s numerous testimonies are often unreliable. 8 John Maynard Keynes, “Newton, the man,” in The Royal Society Newton Tercentenary Celebrations, 15-19 July 1946, Cambridge University Press, 1947, pp. 27-34. Cf. Loup Verlet, La malle de Newton, Paris, Gallimard, 1993. 9 The well-known contrast between formal logic and formal ontology is Husserlian (see his Logische Untersuchungen III, 1900–1901, that, incidentally, also sketches a theory of part and whole), but it can be traced back to Aristotle and Grassmann, the later being extremely important to Whitehead. 10 The contrast between formal and existential ontology is exploited in M. Weber’s “PNK's Creative Advance from Formal to Existential Ontology,” in Guillaume Durand et Michel Weber (éditeurs), Les principes de la connaissance naturelle d’Alfred North Whitehead—Alfred North Whitehead’s Principles of Natural Knowledge, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2007, pp. 259-273. 11 The predicate Fregean is used loosely, especially since it is not clear to what extent Whitehead knew Gottlob Frege’s works (esp. Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Eine logischemathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl, Breslau, Verlag von Wilhelm Koebner, 1884; “Funktion und Begriff,” Vortrag, gehalten in der Sitzung vom 9. Januar 1891 der Jenaischen Gesellschaft für Medecin und Naturwissenschaft, Jena, 1891; “Über Sinn und Bedeutung,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, Vol. 100, 1892, pp. 25-50) before the publication of Russell’s Principles of Mathematics in 1903. James Bradley makes a similar claim in his “The Generalization of the Mathematical Function: A Speculative Analysis,” in Guy Debrock (ed.), Process Pragmatism. Essays on a Quiet Philosophical Revolution, Amsterdam / New York, Rodopi, Value Inquiry Book Series 137, 2004, pp. 71-86. 12 As PR 328 claims: “although ‘coincidence’ is used as a test of congruence, it is not the meaning of congruence.”

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“The systematic character of a continuum depends on its possession of one or more ovate classes” (PR 307). For its part, the actual meaning of congruence requires the introduction of strain feeling (PR 330). 14 Cf. PNK vii: “We are concerned only with Nature, that is, with the object of perceptual knowledge, and not with the synthesis of the knower and the known.” 15 “Whitehead and Principia Mathematica,” Mind, Vol. LVII, N° 226, 1948, pp. 137-138; for a non-technical introduction to the Principia, see Whitehead’s Aims of Education or Russell’s Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1919. 16 Needless to say that our use of “pre-systematic” and “post-systematic” differs from Christian’s (cf. “Some Uses of Reason”, in Ivor Leclerc (ed.), The Relevance of Whitehead. Philosophical Essays in Commemoration of the Century of the Birth of Alfred North Whitehead, London/New York, George Allen and Unwin Ltd./Humanities Press Inc., 1961, pp. 47-89). 17 With that regard, it is well-known that the standard interpretation of the development of his philosophy finds its basis and its major exemplifications in two cumbersome pieces of “evidence” allegedly haunting his corpus: on the one hand, the shift to ontological atomism and, on the other, the abolition of the category of conceptual reversion. We cannot argue here in detail that neither of these two so-called shifts are actual and that to claim the contrary endangers the achievement of any coherent interpretation of his system or even of its development. They are the product of dubious premises and lead to even more misleading interpretative consequences. As Lowe says: “Whether the method of higher criticism that biblical scholars applied successfully to the Pentateuch can be applied with comparable hope to an essay in cosmology written by one old man in the 1920s must be doubted” (V. Lowe, Alfred North Whitehead, op. cit., II, p. 221). Suffice it to say that first, epochality does not amount to atomicity and that discontinuity does not replace continuity in his system (continuity is now understood in a contiguist manner); second, without reversion creativity is equivalent to substantial transformation. Both matters are transcendental: at one point, Whitehead left the question of the conditions of possibility of genuine eventfulness in brackets; later on, he made them explicit. See “Créativité et réversion conceptuelle” in Michel Weber et Diane d’Eprémesnil (éditeurs), Chromatikon. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès—Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2005, pp. 159174. 18 See Michel Weber, “Concepts of Creation and Pragmatic of Creativity,” Wenyu Xie, Zhihe Wang, George Derfer (eds.), Whitehead and China, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2005, pp. 137-149. 19 The conclusions of S are synthetized in PR, mainly on pp. 117-125 and 168-183. Although PR contains the key to Whitehead’s conceptual revolution, its study will probably be fruitful only if it comes after the contemplation of less technically dense material. Besides S, FR, AE and MT, Price’s Dialogues are highly recommended (and it is a very interesting question, indeed, to determine why exactly some scholars have ridiculed that work). 20 See, e.g., S 5, 40 and cf. also 17, 20, 53-56 and PR 168. 21 S 7 and passim; PR 65, etc. 22 “Une mosaïque de qualités étalée devant un sujet acosmique” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris, NRF Éditions Gallimard, 1945, p. 359). Cf. Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays. From Ancient Creed to Technological Man, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1974. 23 “There are, in this way, two sources of information about the external world, closely connected but distinct. These modes do not repeat each other; and there is a real diversity of information. Where one is vague, the other is precise: where one is important, the other is trivial. But the two schemes of presentation have structural elements in common, which identify them as schemes of presentation of the same world. There are gaps, however, in the determination of the correspondence between the two morphologies. The schemes only partially intersect, and their true fusion is left indeterminate. The symbolic reference leads to a transference of emotion, purpose, and belief, which cannot be justified by an intellectual comparison of the direct

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information derived from the two schemes and their elements of intersection” (S 30-31; see PR 122-123). On all this, see especially Code’s entry in Part XIV of this volume. 24 Cf. OT 9-10 and 28 or AE 4 and 14. 25 Whitehead sent the last proofs to Macmillan on Aug. 13, 1929. On Nov. 4 he wrote to his son North that he didn't expect a good reception from philosophers. We infer that since it was published in 1929, it had to be Nov. or Dec., together with FR. (See Lowe’s bibliography, Vol. II, 252 and 339.) 26 See Lowe's A.N. Whitehead, op. cit., II, p. 252. 27 “La mauvaise dialectique commence presque avec la dialectique, et il n’est de bonne dialectique que celle qui se critique elle-même et se dépasse comme énoncé séparé; il n’est de bonne dialectique que l’hyperdialectique” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'Invisible. Suivi de Notes de travail. Texte établi par Claude Lefort, accompagné d'un avertissement et d'une postface, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1964, p. 129). 28 “The primary function of Reason is the direction of the attack on the environment” (FR 8). 29 “The art of persistence is to be dead” (FR 4). 30 “Each methodology has its own life history. It starts as a dodge facilitating the accomplishment of some nascent urge of life. […] The birth of a methodology is in its essence the discovery of a dodge to live” (FR 18). 31 “Reason is the organ of emphasis upon novelty. It provides the judgment by which it passes into realization in purpose, and thence its realization in fact” (FR 20). “Fatigue is the antithesis of Reason” (FR 23). 32 “Immortality,” p. 19; reprinted in ESP 96 and in IS 267; cf. D 176 and ESP 104. Elsewhere he advised “seek simplicity and distrust it” (CN 163; cf. PNK 76). 33 Contact address: Centrum voor Metafysica en Wijsgerige Antropologie, Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kardinal Mercierplein 2, 3000 Leuven, Belgium; see www.espt.de. 34 Alfred North Whitehead, “Liberty and the Enfranchisement of Women” [Cambridge, Cambridge Women’s Suffrage Association, 1906], reprinted in Process Studies 7/1, 1977, pp. 37-39, p. 38. 35 “Whitehead and China in the New Millennium,” Beijing, June 17-20, 2002; “Marxism and constructive Postmodernism,” Wuhan, June 21-22, 2002; “Educational Reform,” Claremont, November 1-4, 2003; “Marx and Whitehead,” Beijing, April 4-6, 2004; “Theoretical Innovation,” Beijing, May 30-31, 2004; “Philosophy of Culture,” Harbin, May 30-31, 2004; “Science and Faith in Global Context,” Beijing, December 28-29, 2004; “Higher Education Reform,” Yancheng, April 6-10, 2005; “Faith, Science and Environment,” Beijing, August 7-8, 2005; “Science and Spirituality in the Postmodern World,” Wuhan, October 11-13, 2005; “Toward a Sustainable Urbanization,” Suzhou, October 14-17, 2005; “Sustainable Urbanization and Ecological Civilization,” Shanghai, October 18-19, 2005; “Land and Social Justice,” Beijing, October 21-22, 2005; “Philosophy and Management,” Beijing, October 22-23, 2005; “China’s Modernization,” Claremont, California, December 16-18, 2006; “Postmodern and Enlightenment,” Beijing, April 7-8, 2007; “Law, Morality, and Politics from a Constructive Postmodern Perspective,” Beijing, July 8-9; “Social Responsibility in Business and Harmonious Society,” Tianjin, July 14-15; “Science & Technology Ethics and Business Ethics,” Dalian, July 16-18; “Process Thinking and Curriculum Reform,” Yantai, Shandong, July 19-20; “Philosophy: its Basic theory and problems,” Jilin, July 25-29; “Constructive postmodernism, Marxism and Ecological Civilization,” Claremont, October 26-28, 2007. 36 “Polish Studies of Whitehead's Philosophy,” 2003; “Process Philosophy in the Past and Today,” 2004; “The Dynamism and Order of the Real World,” 2005; “On the Nature of Human Time” (co-organized with the Whitehead Psychology Nexus), 2005; “Problems Concerning Process Categories,” 2006; “Problem of God from Process Perspective,” 2007. 37 See Mgr Tshishiku [Tharcisse] Tshibangu, Théologie positive et théologie spéculative, position traditionnelle et nouvelle problématique, Louvain, Publications universitaires, 1965; La théologie comme science au XXe siècle. Préface par Marie-Dominique Chenu. Postface par J. Ladrière, Kinshasa, Presses Universitaires du Zaire, 1980.

Introduction

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Joseph N. Mabika, “La résurrection de la métaphysique en Afrique noire,” in Dimandja Eluy’a Kondo et Mbonyinkebe Sebahire (éditeurs), Théologie et cultures. Mélanges offerts à Mgr Alfred Vanneste, Louvain-la-Neuve, Nouvelles Rationalités Africaines, 1988, pp. 401-427. 39 Alphonse Ngindu Mushete, Les thèmes majeurs de la théologie africaine, Paris, Éditions L’Harmattan, 1989. 40 B. Bourgine, D. Ongombe et M. Weber (éditeurs), Regards croisés sur Alfred North Whitehead. Religions, sciences, politiques, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2007. 41 Jay McDaniel and Donna Bowman (eds.), Handbook Process Theology, St. Louis, Missouri, Chalice Press, 2006; Mark Dibben and Thomas Kelly (eds.), Applied Process Thought I: Initial Explorations in Theory and Research, Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2008. Cf. Michael Hampe und Helmut Maaßen (hrsg. von), Materialen zur Whiteheads Prozess und Realität. Band I, Prozeß, Gefühl und Raum-Zeit; Band II, Die Gifford Lectures und ihre Deutung, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991. 42 See “extensity and intensity” (PNK 69). 43 Elizabeth M. Kraus, The Metaphysics of Experience: A Companion to Whitehead's Process and Reality, New York, Fordham University Press, 1979; Jorge Luis Nobo, Whitehead's Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1986; Judith A. Jones, Intensity. An Essay in Whiteheadian Ontology, Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, 1998. 44 George W. Shields, Process and Analysis. Whitehead, Hartshorne, and the Analytic Tradition, New York, State University of New York Press, 2002; Johanna Seibt, Process Theories: Crossdisciplinary Studies in Dynamic Categories, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2003; Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, Process Thought I, 2004. 45 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World. The Lowell Lectures, 1925, New York, The MacMillan Company, 1925; Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1926. Reprint: New York, The Free Press, 1967, p. 48. 46 Besides the specific studies that can be found in the well-known Woodbridge (A. N. Whitehead. A Primary-Secondary Bibliography. Jay MacDaniel and Marjorie Suchocki, Associate Editors, Bowling Green, Ohio, Philosophy Documentation Center. Bowling Green State University, 1977) and in its CPS update (http://www.ctr4process.org), a few historico-speculative works can be recommended to compensate for some of the missing entries: Antonio Banfi, Galileo Galilei [1930], published posthumously in 1949 and reprinted in 1961 (Milano, Ambrosiana, 1949; Il Saggiatore, 1961); François Beets, Michel Dupuis et Michel Weber (éditeurs), Alfred North Whitehead. De l’algèbre universelle à la théologie naturelle, Frankfurt/Paris, ontos verlag, 2004; François Beets, Michel Dupuis et Michel Weber (éditeurs), La science et le monde moderne d’Alfred North Whitehead—Alfred North Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World, Frankfurt/Paris, ontos verlag, 2006; Mili apek, New Aspects of Time. Its Continuity and Novelties. Selected Papers in the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991; Philippe Devaux, De Thalès à Bergson. Introduction historique à la Philosophie européenne. [1949] Réédition augmentée et ill., Liège, Sciences et Lettres, 1955; Philippe Devaux, La cosmologie de Whitehead. Tome I, L'Épistémologie whiteheadienne, Louvain-la-Neuve, Les Éditions Chromatika, 2007; Reto Luzius Fetz, Whitehead. Prozeßdenken und Substanzmetaphysik, Freiburg und München, Verlag Karl Alber, 1981; Ferdinand Gonseth, Les fondements des mathématiques. De la géométrie d'Euclide à la relativité générale et à l'intuitionisme. Préface de M. Jacques Hadamard, Paris, Librairie scientifique Albert Blanchard, 1926; Gary L. Herstein, Whitehead and the Measurement Problem of Cosmology, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought V, 2006; Michael Hampe und Helmut Maaßen (hrsg. von), Materialen zur Whiteheads Prozess und Realität., op. cit.; Helmut Holzhey, Alois Rust, Reiner Wiehl (Herausgegeben von), Natur, Subjektivität, Gott. Zur Prozessphilosophie Alfred N. Whiteheads, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990; Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence, London & New York, George Allen and Unwin Ltd. & Humanities Press Inc., 1972; George Ramsdell Lucas, Jr., The Rehabilitation of Whitehead. An Analytic and Historical Assesment of Process Philosophy, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1989. Ernst Mach, Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung Historish-Kritisch Dargestellt,

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Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1883 (The Science of Mechanics. A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development. Translated by Thomas J. McCormack; New Introduction by Karl Menger. Sixth edition, With revisions through the ninth German Edition, La Salle, Illinois, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1960); Robert John Russell (ed.), Fifty Years In Science and Religion. Ian G. Barbour and His Legacy, Aldershot, Hampshire, Ashgate, 2004; Jean Wahl, Le Rôle de l'Idée de l'Instant dans la Philosophie de Descartes, Paris, Alcan, 1920; Jean Wahl, Traité de métaphysique. I. Le Devenir. Genèse des permanences. Les essences qualitatives. Vers l'Homme. II. Les Mondes ouverts à l'Homme. Immanence et Transcendance. Cours professés en Sorbonne, Paris, Éditions Payot, 1953; Michel Weber and Pierfrancesco Basile (eds.), Subjectivity, Process, and Rationality, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2006; Ernest WolfGazo (Herausgegeben von), Whitehead. Einführung in seine Kosmologie, Freiburg und München, Verlag Karl Alber, 1980.

Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Thematic Entries I

II. Aesthetics Cosmological and Civilized Harmonies George Allan

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1. Overview Modern understandings of aesthetics usually identify it as one of the two branches of axiology (value theory), the other being ethics. Aesthetic values have to do with beauty; ethical values with goodness. The aesthetic worth of an object or experience is intrinsic to it rather than instrumental, something that makes it valuable for its own sake. An aesthetic object or event can be natural—a delicate rose petal, a beautiful sunset, a graceful gesture—or it can be artificial, something created by a human being for the purpose of evoking an aesthetic response—a Michelangelo sculpture, a Turner landscape, a pas-de-deux from the Nutcracker. Art is the field of human endeavor dedicated to the creation of aesthetic objects. Traditionally, aesthetics is the last section of a metaphysical system that begins with foundational principles, moves through logic, cosmology, and physical science, then on to psychology, sociology, and history, before concluding with religion, ethics, and aesthetics. The Platonic influence is obvious. Metaphysics begins with the most real things—those that are universal, abstract, and timeless—and ends with those things that are least real—that are concrete, contingent, and fleeting. It starts with what can be known only by reason and concludes with what is known by the senses, by what is felt rather than thought. Whitehead inverts this hierarchy. Momentary concrete achievements—actual occasions—are the most real features of the cosmos and all else is derivative. The first principles of metaphysics and the fundamental laws of nature are abstractive generalizations, interpretive hypotheses about the recurrent patterns that characterize the becoming and perishing of actual occasions and enduring objects. Aesthetics is foundational for Whitehead because the character of an actual occasion, its reality as a process of determinate realization, is aesthetic. The foundation of the world lies in activities of making that have inherent value. To be is to be beautiful. Whitehead wrote extensively about aesthetics in a metaphysical sense, and he cites the arts as one of the specific forms of endeavor from which a metaphysical theory might take its departure. His comments about art and aesthetics as human activities, however, about the i

Philosophy Department, Dickinson College, Carlisle PA 17013; www.dickinson.edu; [email protected].

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artist’s crafting of aesthetic objects that evoke aesthetic experiences, are informal, illustrative, and episodic. Whitehead wrote no book on aesthetics, not even a collection of articles. The one exception is the fourth Part of Adventures of Ideas. The remainder of this entry is organized as follows. I have attempted in Section 2 to pull together Whitehead’s scattered ideas in a systematic way, beginning with his notion of aesthetic harmony as it applies specifically to works of art, expanding this notion to an exploration of the distinction between aesthetic and logical harmony, then expanding it further to a consideration of the cosmological foundation for the aesthetic. The implications of this understanding of aesthetics for epistemology and education are then explored. I conclude by discussing Whitehead’s culminating vision of the aesthetic: his sustained account of how civilized existence depends on an effective expression of the interrelated virtues of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, and Peace. Thus the movement of Section 2 follows the “airplane” trajectory that Whitehead says any metaphysical theory must take: from concrete experience to abstract systems and then back to concrete applications. Section 3 offers a sketch of the ways in which Whitehead’s aesthetic theory has been interpreted by his commentators, and how it has been used to interpret the character of works of art and the artistic act of creation. In Section 4, I offer a few evaluative comments on what I find to be the most profitable direction in which philosophers have taken Whitehead’s aesthetic ideas. Section 5 contains suggestions for further reading.

2. Whitehead’s Aesthetics 2.1. Art and the Principles of Harmony Whitehead defines art as “any selection by which the concrete facts are so arranged as to elicit attention to particular values which are realisable by them” (SMW 200). The vividness of the value is key, not the content. The dramatic sweep of a thunderstorm or a epic poem, the delicate subtlety of a butterfly wing or a sonnet, the well-ordered efficiency of a factory or a political campaign, are all works of art because they have a complex unity that captures our attention. We appreciate them not primarily for their usefulness but for the vivid reality they make manifest. The intrinsic value of an art object is a function of the “strength” of the harmony it exhibits. The stronger the harmony, the more vivid the value. Whitehead identifies two dimensions of strength—”massiveness” and “intensity” (AI 253). Massiveness has to do with the number of elements included in the harmony, intensity with how coherently they have been integrated. Integration is the more readily achieved the more the cohering elements are similar, which can be accomplished by “narrowness” in what is included or by “vagueness” concerning their specific character. Integration is easier when the requirements for inclusion are minimal, a disorderly “width” or one that suffers from “triviality” (PR 111-12). Both the massiveness and intensity are increased when “contrasts” (PR 128) are utilized. The elements of a harmony are more effectively unified by contrasting rather than blurring their differences, when relationships are constructed in which conflicting details express rather than deny more general harmonies.

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Thus there are degrees of aesthetic value, for although all art objects have achieved equally determinate results, they differ with respect to the strength of that achievement—the massiveness of its complexity and the intensity of its integration. Whitehead offers the Cathedral at Chartres as his paradigm. The details of its architecture, such as the nearly four thousand statues along its facades, all with their own “vigorous characters,” are tightly integrated into the unity of the cathedral as a whole. The whole exhibits not merely an abstract “pattern of qualitative beauty” but “a beautiful system of objects,” its components rendered systemically compatible without loss of their contrasting differences (AI 264). “Strength of experience, in massiveness and in intensity, depends upon the substratum of detail being composed of significant individuals” (AI 263). A work of art can achieve considerable value, however, at a far remove from this paradigm, flirting with the extremes of maximal inclusiveness with minimal intensity or minimal inclusiveness with maximal intensity. A Brancusi bird daringly eliminates detail and difference in order to intensify unity, as does a Schubert lieder or a Japanese haiku. Obversely, in a Míro painting disparate elements brashly destabilize but do not destroy the integrity of the whole. This same journey to the edge of chaos characterizes a Mahler symphony or a sprawling picaresque novel such as Don Quixote. Aesthetic excellence, however, usually lies around a Chartres-like golden mean: as much massiveness as possible combined with as much intensity as possible. There is no formula, however, for achieving such optima of value. Creating great art is an art.

2.2. More General Kinds of Harmony Whitehead distinguishes two kinds of harmony: harmonies are not only aesthetic but also logical. A logical harmony begins with diverse primitive elements and then synthesizes them into a harmonic whole, whereas an aesthetic harmony begins with the harmonic whole and then discloses its constituent elements. Logical creation moves from the many to the one. Aesthetic creation moves from the one to the many, “from the delight in the whole to appreciation of the details” (MT 61). Logical harmonies are constructions, the fruit of organizing separate individual entities into a system. Scientists are concerned with logical harmony, with quantitative systems in which the elements are integrated by means of mathematical relationships. The laws of physics and of axiomatized logics such Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica exemplify this kind of harmony. Aesthetic harmonies are qualitative rather than quantitative. The importance of this difference is suggested by what Whitehead calls the “haunting charm” of early medieval art. As with any art object, we are attracted to these works by their intrinsic quality, but they also manage to convey a sense of a reality stretching far beyond what is directly perceived. Our direct aesthetic experience suggests that there is more than this experience can encompass, connections that, however dim and fragmentary they might be, “sound the utmost depths of reality.” The medieval faith in an order of nature, which the opening chapter of Science and the Modern World shows to have been crucial to the emergence of modern science, finds expression in its art. It is a faith that particular things are part of a greater whole, that “in being ourselves we are more than ourselves” (SMW 18).

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Aesthetic artistry involves developing a new perspective on familiar things, a novel way of organizing them so as to bring into the foreground what has previously been lurking in the background—to transcend the obvious. Because there is always a periphery beyond every focus, depths not fathomed by any formulation of what is the case, artistic genius involves reaching into these depths in order to devise a novel synthesis that carries us out a bit further than before into the unknown. Thus Whitehead closes Modes of Thought by likening philosophy to poetry. The one uses mathematical pattern, the other meter, but both refer to “form beyond the direct meaning of words” (MT 174). Philosophy seeks to rationalize mysticism, to offer in precise linguistic and mathematical symbols a rational interpretation of the depths that necessarily escape our finite understanding. Art (including poetry) discloses those depths non-linguistically, evoking our vaguely felt sense of the ways the here and now relates to an environing more. Even when words are the medium of artistic expression, the aesthetic experience carries us beyond the dictionary meanings of the words. Our enjoyment of Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy is not found in his apparent exploration of a series of logical dichotomies (PR 185). Among the arts, the kinaesthetic ones are the most ancient because, says Whitehead, their symbols are easier to produce than pots, pictures, or poetry (RM 20-23). Ritual emerges as a way for humans to relive in tranquility what was initially experienced as a struggle for survival. Gathered in the security of their cave around a fire, cooking the meat from an animal killed earlier in that day’s hunt, someone reenacts in bodily movements and facial gestures the cleverness of the search, the caution of the stalking, the danger of the kill, the fatigue of the return, the delight in the meal. The emotions of the hunt are in the foreground; rekindling them is the point of the reenactment. Eventually, verbal symbols are added, permitting both greater economy and greater subtlety in the emotions invoked. Odysseus, dwelling among the shades in Hades, listening to Homer chant his heroic exploits, is able to enjoy them free from the perils that were so salient when they occurred (AI 272). Thus art satisfies “this simple craving to enjoy freely the vividness of life which first arises in moments of necessity” (AI 272). But it also makes judgment possible. The heroes become role models for their successors, their courage and craftiness generalized as normative measures for assessing the value of a person or an undertaking. Self-consciousness emerges as ritual and mythic speech makes it possible to step back from immediate practical concerns, to compare present conditions and future opportunities with a remembered past, to imagine a creatively embellished ideal located in that past and to be judged and guided by it. “The souls of men are the gift of language to mankind” (MT 41).

2.3. Cosmological Harmonies The Function of Reason maps the contrast between logical and aesthetic harmony onto the cosmos. It does so by explicating “two main tendencies in the course of events”: an entropic element involving a steady degradation in the quality of achievement and an originative element involving improvement in quality. Unless disciplined by Reason, however, the originative element is a fast track to degradation, introducing more novelty than can be effectively integrated by established techniques, forcing a retreat to some lesser quality in achieved harmony. Speculative Reason, the reason of Plato, emphasizes massiveness by increasing the

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scope of what is relevant and then fashioning new schemes for their integration. Practical Reason, the reason of Ulysses, emphasizes the intensity of the scheme’s integration by insisting that its scope be kept within manageable limits. Either mode of reasoning by itself merely echoes one of the two cosmic tendencies that need disciplining. Together, however, they “embody in us the disciplined counter-agency which saves the world” (FR 34). Whitehead calls this interweaving of both the speculative and the practical “The Greek Discovery.” His discussion of it is completely in terms of science, the fashioning of “logical harmonies,” the imaginative elaboration of empirically testable schemes of thought. Aesthetic harmonies are equally important interweavings, however, in their way also a counter-agency to cultural and cosmic decay. Artistic creations expand the scope of relevance not by schematizing closed systems but by adumbrating the open-ended totality that encompasses but always escapes systemic formulation. Art discloses the “solemnity of the world,” the world as always stretching indefinitely beyond all finite facts and the finite systems integrating them. Aesthetic experience, as it leads us toward greater depths of feeling, becomes religious experience, an “intuition of holiness” (MT 120). If logical harmony invokes a sense of the “iron necessity” of law, aesthetic harmony invokes “a living ideal moulding the general flux in its broken progress toward finer, subtler issues” (SMW 18). The cosmos needs both the power to achieve stable order and the power to transform it into some better order. It is a realm of adjusted values mutually intensifying and destroying what has been achieved, a dynamic interplay of established law and rebellious innovation. It follows from these considerations that harmony needs to be a fundamental feature of the categoreal scheme that sets the metaphysical parameters of Whitehead’s cosmology (PR Chapter 2). The details of the categoreal scheme and its metaphysical implications are discussed elsewhere in this Handbook. We need only underscore the aesthetic character of the reality for which the metaphysics proposes an interpretation. Concrescence, says Whitehead, is “aesthetic synthesis” (PR 212). It begins with the nascent occasion’s physical prehensions of the given world, prehensions that are as richly varied as the world. The challenge is for the concrescence to make from this multitude of prehensions a new well-ordered distinctive unity, to reconcile a many, to synthesize a one. The Categoreal Obligations explain how such a synthesis is possible (PR 26-28, 247-55). The first, the Category of Subjective Unity, stipulates the logical condition for harmony: that the diverse, as-yet unintegrated prehensions belonging to incomplete phases of the process of concrescence are nonetheless “compatible for integration by reason of the unity of their subject” (PR 26). The fourth and fifth categories, Conceptual Valuation and Conceptual Reversion, are concerned with the origination of the novel possibilities needed to effect the concrete harmony promised by the logical condition set forth in the first category. The sixth and seventh categories, Transmutation and Subjective Harmony, stipulate the conditions governing how that promise can be realized, how incompatibilities can be modulated into contrasts and an actual harmony produced. When Whitehead elaborates on the categoreal obligations later on in Process and Reality, he refers at one point to the seventh category as the Category of Aesthetic (rather than Subjective) Harmony, and rightly so, for it has to do with “aesthetic adaptation” (PR 255). Precisely

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because the concrescence of an actual occasion is constrained initially by the condition that its prehensions have a logically harmonious content, and because it is guided in its determinative trajectory by conditions that make for aesthetic harmony, the process issues is a definite result, one that departs from its inheritance sufficiently enough to effect that result. Whitehead says these categories create a “pre-established harmony” (PR 255). What is pre-established, however, is not the specific outcome but the conditions guaranteeing that there will be an outcome of some sort, and that it will be a fully integrated whole, a unique new actual occasion, come to be in addition to the many from which it emerged. Each actual occasion is, in this sense, a work of art.

2.4. Practical Harmonies Whitehead’s epistemology, developed in Symbolism and in Process and Reality, echoes the structure of concrescence. The world is first experienced in the mode of causal efficacy as a circumambient vague presence demanding to be taken account of. These feelings of influence from beyond oneself are transformed into the sensa that characterize experience in the mode of presentational immediacy. By means of symbolic reference, these sensa are projected onto the spatio-temporal region from which the feelings were felt to originate. This interpretation of the causally efficacious then guides the perceiver’s actions, and guides them fruitfully insofar as the sensa focus attention on aspects of the world relevant to the perceiver’s purposes, to matters of survival and betterment. The “immense aesthetic importance” we give to sensa is because they are derived from these vague feelings of influence (AI 245). The affective tone of our experience in the mode of causal efficacy is reproduced in the subjective form of their transformation into sense data. Secondary qualities are transmutations of how we feel the impinging world; the adjectives of our languages derive from the adverbs. Whitehead’s example is of the “strong aesthetic emotion” associated with colors: we see the red cloth angrily, the green fields serenely (AI 246, 250). The abstracting of sensa from their affective origins is an invaluably practical ability. By means of it, we develop clear precise information about the world, which we then use to guide our actions. The practical utility of presentational immediacy can tempt us to forget its dependence on causal efficacy. We ignore or even denigrate the vague unquantifiable feelings upon which our sense data depend, identifying feelings as features of our subjective responses rather than as objective features of the external world, as irrational rather than rational. The fallacies Whitehead famously identifies—”misplaced concreteness” (SMW 51) and “the perfect dictionary” (MT 173)—result from neglecting the dependence of sensationalist and rationalist forms of knowledge on aesthetic experience. A similar mistake plagues education. In the second and third chapters of The Aims of Education, Whitehead argues that there is a rhythm to the learning process, one that cycles through three stages: romance, precision, and generalization. He chastises educators for beginning—and ending—with precision, prizing only what is clear and distinct, what is capable of being organized systematically. Before students can be expected to find the discipline of careful analysis worthwhile, they need to have an opportunity to exercise their imagination and curiosity, to follow out “unexplored connexions with possibilities half-disclosed by glimpses

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and half-concealed by the wealth of material” (AE 17). This stage of romance is an aesthetic stage, because it emphasizes direct experience and interconnection. We must begin with what is concrete and therefore open-ended. Experiencing things for the first time—looking through a telescope, going to an opera, attending a town meeting—is vividly thrilling because these experiences are overflowing with import, their content as yet unbounded by the requirements of disciplined understanding. Students are better served reading Plato’s dialogues, even in translation, than by reading a textbook in which someone systematically explicates at secondhand what Plato said or meant (AE 74). Romance should lead naturally to precision as students, wanting to know more about what they find important, willingly acquire the methodological tools of analytic inquiry and learn to relate their growing knowledge to established theories and other bodies of fact. Star-gazing motivates a student to study astronomy; opera going, to take voice lessons or enroll in a music course; experiencing local politics, to stand for political office; reading Meno in English, to become competent in classical Greek. Generalization, Whitehead’s third stage of education, returns students from the abstractions of the disciplinary competence they have achieved to the immediacy of the romantic. Now they come equipped, however, with the tools of their disciplines. The innovative thinker, the creative artist, and the effective leader are all able to transcend established routines—pushing beyond normal science, acceptable styles, and practical good sense. They can do so because they have not only mastered the established techniques but are aware of the limitations of those techniques, aware of the unrealized alternatives and unexplored possibilities they necessarily exclude. Education, Whitehead argues, is “the guidance of the individual towards a comprehension of the art of life,” by which he means “the most complete achievement of varied activities expressing the potentialities of that living creature in the face of its actual environment” (AE 39). It requires an “artistic sense”: knowing how best to subordinate our lower to our higher possibilities. The practice of the art of life begins with wonder, curiosity, and reverence, progresses to the development of self-discipline, and finds its fruition in effecting through our own initiative an outcome better than what we had previously achieved. The habit of this way of responding to circumstances allows us to achieve in our lives “the sense of beauty, the aesthetic sense of realised perfection” that is our fulfillment as persons (AE 40). As with all great artistic creation, such an individual life always points beyond itself, to possibilities it has not realized, to values that transcend even as they inform its own finite accomplishments. The art of life is to make of one’s life a work of art.

2.5. Civilized Harmonies In the concluding five chapters of Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead offers his only sustained discussion of what are otherwise scattered comments on aesthetics and the arts. He defines “civilization” as the quality of any society that exhibits the characteristics epitomized in five notions—Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, and Peace. Truth and Beauty are the two “regulative principles in virtue of which Appearance justifies itself to the immediate decision of the experient subject” (AI 241). That is, they are the factors by which the subjective form of a prehension is modified so as to emphasize or attenuate its

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content, thereby prolonging or undermining some heritage of achieved value. Reality, experienced in the mode of causal efficacy, is transformed by the modality of presentational immediacy into an Appearance. Truth is the relation of that Appearance to the Reality it purports to represent. Art creates a truth relation in which the objective content of the Reality to which its symbols point is subordinated to the subjective form of that relation. The symbols bring the vague emotional tonalities of an experience into prominence. These tonalities provide “an emotional clothing which changes the dim objective reality into a clear Appearance matching the subjective form provided for its prehension.” The “delicate inner truth of Art” is this power it has to express truths about the nature of things that elude discursive language (AI 249). Whitehead distinguishes Beauty from the Beautiful. Beauty is the quality of a concretely exhibited harmony. Some of the elements available for incorporation into that harmony are Beautiful because of their potential to contribute positively to it, whether or not they actually do. They would enhance its Beauty were they included, “by a fortunate exercise” of the artist’s creativity. Such elements are ideals, beautiful because of their “inherent capacity for the promotion of Beauty” (AI 255). The quality of being beautiful is a contextual feature, the resourcefulness of a physical or cultural heritage to encourage efforts that aspire to create higher harmonies and to provide opportunity for realizing those aspirations. A society’s artists in particular, its cultivated elites more generally, all its citizens ideally, are agents of hope insofar as they fashion, preserve, and celebrate the beautiful potencies of their world. The things that not only possess beauty but are also beautiful are always concrete particulars: this granddaughter smiling up at us, this vista we observe at the end of an arduous climb, this haunting melody played by the oboist in the symphony’s second movement. They are beautiful, however, because the emotional intensities found in experiences of this sort have been remembered, generalized, and then focused on that specific individual or object. Our love for our family, for parents and children, for ancestors long dead and descendants not yet born, an emotion distilled from all our particular interactions with them and about them, is invested in the smiling grandchild. This child is distinctively herself, born of a particular mother on a particular day and in a particular place, already having a biography to recount and expectations to pursue. But through these particular features that constitute her Beauty, we see her as Beautiful also, as embodying a familial love that existed before she was born and that will endure long after she has grown old and died. These generalized feelings adhere in what Whitehead calls an “It”: an apparent enduring object with its permanent character, transcending the immediate moment and yet evoked by and through such moments. We prize a cenotaph carved under the watchful eyes of Sennacherib (AI 262) because its historical uniqueness, its having come into existence at that very particular time and place, evokes an emotional engagement with this powerful monarch, and through him with an ancient empire that once flourished, with a sense of glorious achievements won and lost, with an ontological sense of the hard truth that all things come to be and perish. The cenotaph is Beautiful because it frees us from our parochial concerns, prods us to imagine other times, other successes and failures, and so lures us to dream of what we might do to improve upon the Beauty in which yesterday’s efforts found their resolution.

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Thus great Art lures us from the Beauty of what the artist has made to a sense of the Beautiful that we too can make. It lures a civilization away from an idolatry of its distinctive value achievements toward the innovations necessary for its adaptive survival. Art is an engine of instability, and therefore it is the soul of a civilization. For “civilization is nothing other than the unremitting aim at the major perfections of harmony” that the achievements of the past have made possible (AI 271). Whitehead calls the pursuit of this “unremitting aim” Adventure because the end sought is always at risk. The pursuit is destabilizing, and so the new level of harmony is a possibility that might not be achieved, that might result in a lesser rather than a higher harmony. Even where there is local success in achieving higher and then yet higher harmonies, no final ultimate harmony is possible. There is an “intrinsic incompatibility” in things: incommensurable ideals struggling for realization, always and everywhere the violence of strength against strength (AI 279). What a great work of art exhibits, however, is an ideal of “the harmony of all perfections” (AI 276). The last of the five qualities Whitehead says a society must possess to qualify as a civilization is Peace, which is our sense of the ideal harmony just mentioned. Peace involves no utopian vision, but is rather “a trust in the efficacy of Beauty” (AI 285), in its capacity to lure us beyond established boundaries, toward stronger higher harmonies. The fruit of Peace is the love of humankind as such, the “zest of self-forgetful transcendence” (AI 296), a “living urge toward all possibilities, claiming the goodness of their realization” (AI 295). The dream of actualizing such ideals is bound to fail, in whole or in part. The harvest is always tragic. The ideals remain, however; for our failure to actualize an ideal has its own beauty. Tragic Beauty is therefore Beautiful, for it has the power to revive hope, to encourage our effort to find new ways by which the failed ideal might be realized. A sense of Peace is thus akin to a work of art. It means perceiving the cosmos as a complexly dynamic and enduring totality, composed of creative individuals succeeding or failing in diverse ways in their effort to achieve some sort of finite harmony, each individual redolent with the beauty of its achievements and beautiful in its aspirations, and the whole cosmos therefore beautiful. Peace is our sense of taking part in an adventure we share with all entities past, present, and future, with all things that have perished, that are concrescing, and that might someday be possible. As a work of art reveals a depth and scope of relevance far exceeding what it explicitly exhibits, so Peace reveals the Final Fact of an ideal unity, a Harmony of Harmonies, that is its own justification. Peace is thus the way the world is persuaded “towards such perfections as are possible for its diverse individual occasions” (AI 296).

3. Secondary Sources The standard general commentaries on Whitehead’s philosophy mention art or aesthetics only in passing, and then mainly to note, but not to explicate, his recurrent use of aesthetic terms. Bertram Morris, in his 1941 contribution to the Library of Living Philosophers volume on Whitehead, provides the first sustained exposition of Whitehead’s aesthetic theory, which he does in terms of its centrality in the genetic analysis of actual occasions. Charles Hartshorne on

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a number of occasions explicates the hierarchical character of aesthetic value in Whitehead’s metaphysics. David Martin, in a 1955 essay on the “Unrealized Possibility […] immanent in the ‘given’ of works of art” (1955, 394), uses Whitehead’s categoreal obligations to explicate the difference between merely hearing a Beethoven symphony and listening to it, experiencing the “infinity and transcendence” it reveals. Two years later, John Cobb, Jr. argues that the aesthetic is a feature of objects, not of one’s subjective response to them. An object is aesthetic to the extent that it is “determinative of the subjective form” of its prehension in the mode of causal efficacy, and that prehensive experience is “aesthetically satisfactory” (1957, 179). The work of art is beautiful and so it causes the viewer’s experience of its beauty. Donald Sherburne rejects Cobb’s definition of the aesthetic. In the first book-length development of an aesthetic theory based on Whitehead’s thought, Sherburne argues that a work of art is a proposition rather than an object. An art object, such as a painting in a museum exhibit, is an “objectification” of an aesthetic proposition. Aesthetic experience is “aesthetic recreation”: our emotional response to the painting includes the subjective aim of recreating in our own immediate experience the proposition objectified in that painting. Any experienced object has some modicum of propositional lure, but an art object exerts “commanding control over an overpowering percentage of subjective aims that encounter it” (114). The creativity that effects this commanding control involves fashioning what Sherburne calls a “horizontally transmuted intellectual feeling” (165). Subsequent essays on Whitehead’s aesthetics split into two camps: those that agree with Sherburne’s “rationalistic aesthetic” with its emphasis on the propositional character of art and those that advocate an “empiricist aesthetic” in which art is said to involve an “immediate, physical, emotional, and nonconscious response to the world” (Dean 1983, 107). Stephen David Ross belongs to the rationalistic camp, weaving a theory of the inexhaustibility of art out of Justus Buchler’s ordinal metaphysics and Whitehead’s theory of contrasts. Robert Valenza extends Sherburne’s thesis in an essay that demonstrates through well-chosen examples how with respect to “an experiential flow from the outside world […] science condenses this experience, thus sharply defining truth, [whereas] art expands it” (2002, 72). Unlike a scientific proposition, an aesthetic proposition “distances” us from “ordinary reality” through not only horizontal transmutation but also what he calls “dissociative reversion.” William Dean, in an essay on Whitehead’s “other” aesthetic, rejects this over-intellectualization of art, arguing that an aesthetic experience is nonpropositional: an “intimate concourse of the body with the aesthetic worth of the world” (1983, 108). Similarly, David Martin’s book on sculpture explains how “perceiving bodily” creates an “enlivened space” around the physical sculpture; the art object is propositional, but it is felt, not thought. David Hall (1973) wrote the only book that deals with art in the context of Whitehead’s theory of culture as found in Adventures of Ideas, and so his book provides a thorough account of the role of human society in the nurture of aesthetic appreciation and artistic creativity. Hall interprets Whitehead as distinguishing art, understood as one of the five “aims” that define civilized societies, from art understood as a cultural “interest.” Truth, beauty, art, adventure, and peace are ideals, but they “can be made a part of a social order only if the theoretical and practical energies are directed toward their realization” (1973, 110). Art—along with morality,

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religion, science, and philosophy—are the cultural interests in the West that have predominately served this role. Hall laments the decline of our cultural ideals and imagines the emergence of a “new sensibility” based on a Whiteheadian understanding of finitude that “prevents cynicism and overcomes despair,” a “new religious vision” it is the function of art to proclaim (1973, 195). Hall agrees with the empiricist approach to aesthetics, criticizing Sherburne for paying insufficient attention to the physical—realist—aspects of art. A genuine “naturalism” needs not only to appreciate the inventive “artificiality” of aesthetic creation, the strategies of transmutation that result in intensities of experience not otherwise available, but also to appreciate how art is rooted in the concretely practical everyday necessities of life, in circumstances having to do with individual and group survival and well-being (92-94). No writer has taken this sense of aesthetic naturalism more seriously than Susanne Langer. Her distinction in Philosophy in a New Key between “presentational” and “discursive” symbols is a superbly inventive application of Whitehead’s distinction between causal efficacy and presentational immediacy. Her account of the shift over time away from presentational symbols toward the dominance of discursive symbols elaborates Whitehead’s comments, primarily in the first chapter of Religion in the Making, on the emergence of rational thought from religious ritual and myth. Leonard Wessell’s book on the function of aesthetics in Whitehead’s cosmology seeks to use the aesthetic as the key to an interpretation of the philosophy of organism. A number of essays use Whitehead’s aesthetic theory to interpret the work of a particular artist, usually a poet. His theory has also been applied to areas other than the arts, mainly by emphasizing the nonlinear inter-relational character of his notion of aesthetic harmony. For instance, William Dean, in his book Coming To, affirms aesthetic categories as theologically more fundamental than those having to do with goodness or truth. Barry Whitney offers an aesthetic alternative to traditional forms of theodicy. Robert Mesle develops a theory of personhood based on an ideal of aesthetically grounded “relational power.” Pete Gunter proposes an “aesthetic of nature” focused on forests, in which beauty and ecological diversity are linked, in which the destruction of wilderness and the development of monocultures “wrong the aesthetic telos of nature itself” (2004, 322). The neurologist Jason Brown uses Whitehead’s epistemology to develop a “microgenetic” theory of mental processes rooted in “aesthetic perception.” Steve Odin uses Whitehead extensively in developing a “comparative aesthetics” approach to Japanese and Western art.

4. Concluding Remarks Whiteheadian commentators offer no explanation for why Whitehead never developed an explicit aesthetic theory. Equally perplexing is why none of the commentators have remedied this neglect on Whitehead’s part. Sherburne is the exception, but his book is essentially a Ph.D. thesis. Although he subsequently wrote a number of essays on Whitehead’s aesthetics, he never followed up with a further book-length study. David Martin’s books are the best example of

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sustained examinations of actual works of art using Whitehead to help frame one’s interpretive categories. The total number of essays on Whitehead’s aesthetic theory, and those that use his theory in discussing aesthetic topics are relatively small, and except for some that relate to Sherburne’s propositional interpretation, in support or critique, these essays are lonely ventures, disconnected from one another. Whiteheadian aesthetic scholarship, ironically, lacks massiveness, and what diversity there is has not been transmuted into contrasts leading to strong harmonic satisfactions. This weakness is partially offset, however, by philosophers whose metaphysical creations have been inspired at least in part by Whitehead’s aesthetic theory. Whitehead’s contemporary, John Dewey, and his student, Susanne Langer, are the best known English-language exemplars of this sort of metaphysical adventuring. The influences of Whitehead’s aesthetics in German philosophy can be found in the writings of Nicholaï Hartmann and of Reiner Wiehl. Two current metaphysicians deserve special mention—Robert Neville and Frederick Ferré. Neville develops an axiological ontology in which each and every entity is a harmony of “conditional features” marking its dependence on other entities and the “essential features” by which those conditional features are integrated, constituting the entity’s absolute uniqueness. Every harmony is also a conditional or essential feature for other harmonies, and how these harmonies are harmonized temporally in the durations of entities, especially of “discursive individuals,” generates an ethic based on “normative measures” of self-fulfillment and selftranscendence. Ferré argues that the basic factual entities of the universe are self-fashioning processes involving the integration of diverse elements into a definite unity, a harmony. To achieve any sort of harmony is to generate beauty, so a cosmos composed of beauty-fashioning entities is “inherently kalogenic.” Given such a universe, an ethic obviously follows in which not only persons but other organisms, indeed entities of every sort, should be treasured for the value achieved in their existing and for their relevance to possibilities for future value realization. These creative re-formations of Whitehead’s ideas are fitting homages, more so than the secondary scholarship. Lured by the ideal of the aesthetically grounded metaphysics that Whitehead’s work reveals even in its failure to actualize it, these “post-Whiteheadian” metaphysicians express the “Unity of Adventure” which Whitehead says is the height of civilized existence.

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5. Works Cited and Further Readings Brown, Jason W. 2000. “On Aesthetic Perception,” in Mind and Nature: Essays on Time and Subjectivity (London and Philadelphia, Whurr), Chapter 9. Buchler, Justus. 1990 [1966]. The Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, 2nd Edition, edited by Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian, with Robert S. Corrington. Introduction by Kathleen Wallace (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Cobb, John B., Jr. 1957. “Toward Clarity in Aesthetics,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 18, 97-105. Dean, William. 1972. Coming To: A Theology of Beauty (Philadelphia, Westminster Press). Dean, William. 1983. “Whitehead’s Other Aesthetic,” Process Studies 13.1, 104-112. Dewey, John. 1959 [1934]. Art as Experience (New York, Capricorn). Ferré, Frederick. 1996. Being and Value (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Gunter, Pete A. Y. 2004. “A Whiteheadian Aesthetics of Nature: Beauty and the Forest,” Process Studies 33.2, 314-22. [Translated from “Une esthétique whiteheadienne de la nature : la beauté et la forêt”, in François Beets, Michel Dupuis et Michel Weber (éditeurs), Alfred North Whitehead. De l’algèbre universelle à la théologie naturelle, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2004.] Hall, David L. 1973. The Civilization of Experience: A Whiteheadian Theory of Culture (New York, Fordham University Press). Hartmann, Nichoaï. 1953. Ästhetik (Berlin, de Gruyter). Hartshorne, Charles. 1970. “The Aesthetic Matrix of Value,” in Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (La Salle IL, Open Court), 303-22. Hartshorne, Charles. 1997. “The Kinds and Levels of Aesthetic Value,” in The Zero Fallacy and Other Essays in Neoclassical Philosophy, edited by Mohammad Valady (La Salle IL, Open Court), 203-214. Langer, Susanne K. 1957 [1942]. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3rd Edition (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). Martin, F. David. 1955. “Unrealized Possibility in the Aesthetic Experience,” Journal of Philosophy 52.15, 393-400. Martin, F. David. 1981. Sculpture and Enlivened Space: Aesthetics and History (Lexington, University of Kentucky Press). Mesle, C. Robert. 1983. “Aesthetic Value and Relational Power: An Essay on Personhood,” Process Studies 13.1, 59-70. Morris, Bertram. 1951 [1942]. “The Art-process and the Aesthetic Fact in Whitehead’s Philosophy,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, 2nd edition, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (New York, Tudor), 463-86. Neville, Robert Cummings. 1989. Recovery of the Measure: Interpretation and Nature (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Odin, Steve. 2001. Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West: Psychic Distance in Comparative Aesthetics (Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press). Ross, Stephen David. 1982. A Theory of Art: Inexhaustibility by Contrast (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Sherburne, Donald W. 1961. A Whiteheadian Aesthetic (New Haven, Yale University Press). Sherburne, Donald W. (ed.). 1983. “The Arts, Aesthetics, and Process Philosophy,” Special Issue: Process Studies 13.1. Valenza, Robert J. 2002. “Aesthetic Priority in Science and Religion,” Process Studies 31.1, 4976. Wessel, Leonard P. 1990. Zur Function des Asthetischen in der Kosmologie Alfred North Whiteheads (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe 20, Philosophie 309).

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Whitney, Barry L. 1994. “An Aesthetic Solution to the Problem of Evil,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 35.1, 27-37. Wiehl, Reiner. 1971. “Einleitung in die Philosophie A. N. Whitehead,” in Alfred North Whitehead, Abenteuer des Ideen, translated by Eberhard Bubser (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp), 7-71. Wiehl, Reiner and Horst-Jürgen Gerigk. 2004. Philosophische Ästhetik zwischen Immanuel Kant und Arthur Danto (Göttingen, Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht).

III. Anthropology Communities and Destinies Donna Bowman

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Anthropology is a key discipline in any philosophical or theological system. Some approaches, such as those of Kant or Descartes, necessarily begin with the human being, because experience as produced and/or filtered by human consciousness must be the starting point for all reflection. Other approaches, like those of Aquinas or Barth, attempt to begin with divinity, discovering the nature of the human being through a combination of revealed truth from above and the activity of reason from below. Still others, such as existentialism or postmodernism, reject systematic metaphysics as a goal, and attempt a dialectical phenomenology to describe, but not delineate, human existence in the world. Whitehead’s metaphysical goal was undeniably systematic and began “from below,” thus placing him in the first camp. Yet while Whitehead accepts that our discovery of reality begins with “the order of dawning,” that is, with the appearance of experience in consciousness, he rejects the notion that this is where metaphysics itself must begin (PR 162). Instead, he follows a more classical approach, asking questions with a much larger scope than the anthropological, and attempting to create a system that encompasses anthropology as a particular case (whether special or ordinary, it is yet to be seen). The question of the human being, then, appears in Whitehead’s philosophy as the beginning of the empirical method, but only as a subheading of the system in general. And in fact, in the systematic (as opposed to the methodological and historical) chapters of Process and Reality, the human being appears as a quite remote subcategory, being overshadowed by the more general topics of societies and nexs, and the more crucial specialized case of the divine entity. In his less systematic works, such as Science and the Modern World, Adventures of Ideas, and Modes of Thought, human society, history, and mind are always to the forefront, as Whitehead adopts the Enlightenment approach to metaphysics through systematic (human) thought. The nature and destiny of man, as Reinhold Niebuhr once put it in a book title, are among the most urgent preoccupations of philosophy. Indeed, one might argue that the bulk of the philosophical enterprise has as its precipitating aim the need to know the human self. Even as philosophers explored the nature of reality as such and investigated the preconditions for such knowledge, the question of human nature and purpose remains central, as the motivation for the larger investigation and, for many, as its ultimate goal. If such a complex investigation is i

Honors College, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR 72035; www.honors.uca.edu; [email protected].

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needed to discover the nature and significance of human existence, it would not be surprising if the answer turned out to be far from simple. And so it is, according to Whitehead. Because process thought posits a kind of atomism of experience that exhibits emergent properties when structured into higher-order organisms, human beings fall closer to the far end of a continuum that extends from very simple realities to complex ones like consciousness. There is a real possibility of further evolutionary development along these lines, as well as the existence of even more complex or advanced creatures in other parts of the universe currently inaccessible to us. Their future or contemporaneous existence may even be assumed—an assumption consistent with Whitehead’s metaphysical turn away from anthropocentrism. In order to address the topic of anthropology, then, we shall need to work both downward and upward from the human being, considering the components of which a human being is constituted, as well as the possibilities for evolution or alternate forms that illuminate her particularity.

1. The Lessons of Direct Experience Like all reality, human beings consist of actual occasions—droplets of existence that come into being out of their pasts and perish upon achieving “satisfaction,” or the completion of their becoming. Process philosophy often focuses on analyzing these individual, momentary entities. But it quickly becomes obvious that the task of understanding the realities which most concern us at the human level (i.e. between the sub-microscopic scale of actual entities and the macroscopic scale of the entire universe or multiverse) is not limited to such an analysis. Human beings, along with other living and non-living enduring objects, exhibit properties and capacities that cannot be accounted for by reference to the properties and capacities of actual occasions. (For a definition of “enduring object,” see PR 34.) However, comprehension of the “life cycle” of an actual entity does lead to several conclusions that are important to a processbased anthropology. (1) We are made out of our pasts. First, process anthropology gives metaphysical weight to the humanistic and even relativistic discoveries of modernism (the historical consciousness) and post-modernism (the absence of any neutral territory from which to observe). What a human being is, as well as who he is, depends on the context in which he arises. Since all contexts are unique spatiotemporal and social locations, and all historical routes leading to emerging entities are different, opportunities to generalize about human nature are extremely limited. The hallmark of humanity is variety, not similarity. This widely recognized fact is consistent with process thought’s analysis of the temporal entity in terms of the data of its past. (2) We bear responsibility for what we become. The inevitable consequence of an uncontrollable past is a solitary present. While none of us can choose our ancestors or birthplace (and this lack of choice continues for several years, until some measure of independence can be attained), each moment brings us a choice about how we will respond to the facts of our past. Whitehead speaks of the actual entity’s “decision” to value its constituting data in a certain way. While the term “decision” must be used in a strictly technical sense about non-conscious

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entities, it certainly can be used in its common-sense meaning with reference to human beings (although, using the term in a Whiteheadian way, only a minority of human “decisions” are conscious ones: cf. PR 28, 43-47). Naturally not every moment of becoming from infancy onward is an act of conscious decision, and the range of possibilities from which to choose, as well as the ability to weigh the nuances of the decision, increases with maturity. Nevertheless, the fact that we are constrained by the facticity of our past, yet free in the moment to decide how to arrange that facticity into a life, makes human beings both profoundly contextual and profoundly responsible for themselves. (3) We cannot hold on—we must let go. The final lesson that can be derived from process of an actual occasion is that no part of us is permanent. Perpetual perishing is the way of all reality. As one occasion passes out of its “living” phase and into its “dead” phase, another arises. And the unchanging brute facts of the past are “resurrected” as data in a new occasion. Human beings have been concerned about death from time immemorial; some of the earliest artifacts of our species have been preserved because they were a part of burial rituals. Yet reality continually frustrates our attempts to stop time and preserve ourselves unchanged. We recognize that each moment is a slipping away of what matters to us, but we nevertheless murmur (like Goethe’s Faust), “Verweile doch, du bist so schön.” The perishing of the actual occasion means that we perish, too—and not just moment by moment, but also in a final relinquishing of our enduring life. We are creatures that arise, persist through change, and die—overlapping and being succeeded by others who will “immortalize” us by remembering and utilizing our facticity. With these building blocks from the atomic level of experience in mind, let us examine how actual occasions organize themselves into living creatures, including human beings.

2. Humans as Communities The relationship of the human being to her constituent actual occasions can be described by three Whiteheadian terms. The first, “multiplicity,” is also the simplest; it refers to a collection of actual occasions considered only as the data that an emerging entity will unify. Since the human being does exhibit a more robust unity than this mere “collectedness” into a set of data— a unity that endures over time and provides an immediate, bounded “microverse” that strongly contextualizes all entities emerging in it—the description of the human being as a multiplicity is not as apt as the other terms about to be explicated. However, it is important not to let the multiple nature of the human being slip away entirely from our view. To mention only a few considerations, I am undoubtedly prehended as just this sort of collection—the set of actual entities that are collectively called “me”—by other human beings, gathered therefore as a multiplicity in their experience. Furthermore, the boundary between me (mind and body) and everything that is not me is far less defined than we tend to assume. We are constantly exchanging matter and energy with our surroundings: the body takes in and sheds molecules; we eat, process and excrete foodstuffs; we even retain a thin layer of atmosphere and gravity of our own as we move through the world. Our minds, too, are in such intimate interaction with the

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environment through the medium of our senses (which themselves gather in matter and energy, be it molecules of scent or photons of light), that the question of where the mind begins and the environment ends, or whether the two are completely disconnected (since no simple point of intersection is apparent) continues to occupy philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychological specialists. Whatever may be the final answer to the puzzle of consciousness, the fact remains that it is impossible at any given moment to delineate the set consisting of all the parts of the human being, and only those parts. To that extent, then, it is crucial for the process anthropologist to remember that there is a multiplicity to the human being that resists reification and organic definition. Moving closer to the human being as we directly experience it, we come upon the Whiteheadian concept of nexus. A nexus is “a public matter of fact,” a “set of actual entities in the unity of the relatedness constituted by their prehensions of each other” (PR 22, 24). Unlike a multiplicity, whose only unity is found in the actual occasion that prehends all its members in terms of an ascribed quality or common feeling, a nexus is mutually interconnected prior to and outside of the prehensions of another. Its members prehend each other and thereby enter into the kind of internal relations that are the hallmarks of Whitehead’s system. Here we run headfirst into a difficulty that Whitehead scholars have long acknowledged: the problem of mutual contemporary prehensions. The data for each emerging actual occasion consists of the entities in its immediate past world. In order to be prehended, entities must be past—satisfied, dead, brute fact, no longer becoming, only being. How, then, are we to understand the concept of a nexus with its members prehending each other? A past entity prehends nothing; it is only prehended. A presently-unfolding entity, conversely, only prehends; it is not (yet) prehended. Whitehead insists, however, on speaking of mutual immanence among the members of a nexus, even though “[i]t is the definition of contemporary events that they happen in causal independence of each other” (AI 195). He is able to do so because the prehensions of each other that the members enjoy are not direct and contemporaneous, but mediated through the elements in their past that they prehend in common, as well as through the common future in which they will be objective elements: “Thus indirectly, via the immanence of the past and the immanence of the future [in the occasions’ presents], the occasions are connected” (AI 195). It is also that case that a nexus is not merely a momentary, immediatepresent connection between entities: it is one that extends through time. For that reason, the mutual relationship of which Whitehead writes takes on the dual form of aspiration and constraint. The constraint arises from the asymmetry of the relationship between a past occasion (which is immanent in a following occasion as an efficient cause) and a present occasion (which is immanent, much less restrictively, in the past occasion as an anticipated outcome of the past occasion’s becoming) (AI 197). The aspiration of the relationship arises from the genesis of the nexus in a proposition, or “complex eternal object”—a potentiality for unity that is concretely embodied in this set of actualities aiming, to the extent that they both aim at the creation of a common reality. Finally, human beings are most fully described by the Whiteheadian term “society.” A society is “a nexus with social order,” meaning that the members (a) share a common element of form, (b) prehend each other, and (c) reproduce the form in their own actualities as a result of

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prehending it positively in each other (PR 34). This form (a complex eternal object, like the one out of which a nexus arises) propagates throughout the society through positive prehensions that result in a genetic relationship; it is “inherited throughout the nexus, each member deriving it from those other members of the nexus which are antecedent to its own concrescence” (PR 34). Human societies also exhibit personal order, meaning that their constituent entities inherit their common form serially—that the society’s “defining characteristic” has a “single line of inheritance” (PR 34). Thus all members of the society participate in the identity of the society, although they are not all identical with each other. It is all too easy when discussing the nature of the human being to read the language in use as referring to substances that endure over some period of time. To get into the process mode of thought, however, one must remember that in a so-called enduring object, what endures is the identity that unites the society, not any single member of the society, nor any group of its members. Whitehead underlines this point when he points out that “there is no one nexus which can claim to be the society, so long as that society is in existence” (AI 204). In other words, as long as the society is growing by adding members serially that inherit its common form genetically, no definitive group of the members of that society can be delineated. But once the enduring object has ceased to live (once the human being is dead, for example), then a nexus can be identified that is fully identical to the society, because no further members of that society are being added. Such a description implies a definition of “life,” “death,” and “existence” that calls immediately to mind the philosophical point of view of existentialism. And indeed, the existentialists, especially as they have informed theology by way of Heidegger and Bultmann, contribute much to the process view of humankind (Cobb and Griffin 1976, 80-82). The oscillating emphasis on constraint and responsibility, on determinism and freedom, resonates perfectly with an existential analysis. We cannot escape the determining facts of our past, but we are free in each moment to respond to them—and then constrained anew in the next moment by what we have chosen, yet free to respond to that new set of facts in a novel way if we can muster the strength. To that incipient understanding of existence as a series of moments, a gradual “filling up” of one’s life with choices, process thought adds the metaphysical claim that all of reality is constituted by a series of connected moments. In each moment there is a “decision”—not a conscious decision in the vast majority of cases, but instead a move toward completion that “cuts off” (note the connection to the Latin root of “decision”) all other possibilities than the one in fact actualized. And then the newly created (and now dead and completed) fact becomes a factor in the material with which the next moment must deal. We recognize this model of existence in human life, but may overlook it in the non-human world because existentialist descriptions focus so heavily on the role of consciousness in this process. The “decisions” of the non-human world may not be as fraught with anxiety and nausea (to borrow Sartre’s language) as our own, but they are no less effective at creating facts, which then must be assembled anew as the next moment balances briefly between the past and the future.

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3. The Nature of the Human Individual Before moving further along the continuum towards entities on a macroscale and considering how the larger community affects the human being, we must first pause at the level of the human being to ask how the community of actual occasions becomes an individual human being. Are we justified in calling the human being a single self? And if so, how does this singular self emerge from the multiplicity, nexus, and society of actual occasions that composes it at every moment? Whitehead posits a “dominant occasion” or, to add the temporal dimension, a “thread of personal order” within complex (especially living) societies. This dominant occasion gathers data from the entire society, originates significant novelty that affects the entire society, and coordinates the activity of the entire society (PR 102, 107). The notion of a dominant occasion solves two problems in the process system. On the one hand, it explains the subjective feeling of self-identity. Normally we do not feel ourselves to be a collection of experiences and decisions all happening at once and then bundled over time, but a single strand of experiences happening to “me” and a single plotline of decisions made by “me.” On the other hand, it allows for significant linguistic reference to individual selves. The commonsense notion that I can point to my friend Jane and positively identify her as a single person is validated by the concept of a dominant thread of actual occasions to which I am really referring with the name “Jane.” Yet another advantage, particularly for theologians interested in using process categories for religious interpretation, is that the dominant occasion may prove a satisfactory substitution for the concept of the soul. Some process theologians have even speculated that this dominant temporally-ordered society could continue its life after the death of the human body; namely, an immortal soul and life after death become real possibilities (Griffin 1971). Although Whitehead too speaks of the “personal living society of high-grade occasions” as “the man defined as a person […] the soul of which Plato spoke,” and even speculated about whether this soul “finds a support for its existence beyond the body” (AI 208), there are some reasons why we might refrain from rushing too quickly to embrace this possibility. First, for Whitehead, the dominant occasion is a completely evolutionary notion. That is, in the natural history of the development of complex living things, creatures procured an evolutionary advantage by being able to coordinate and direct their sensation and activity through a central processor, so to speak. While it is certainly within the realm of possibility that this mental function might become more or less independent of its physical environment, this would require further evolutionary development that we cannot say for certain has already occurred. Second, the Greek concept of the soul is by no means identical with the Hebrew Bible’s notion of the self as the animating force in the body, and the history of the development of this idea toward Platonic dualism is a checkered one. An attempt to confirm what is naively taken to be the New Testament concept of the soul by reference to Whitehead’s dominant occasion may well end in confusion, based on the diversity and variety inherent in the former, and too simplistic a notion of the latter. On a philosophical level, it is probably safest to assume that the connection between the dominant

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occasion in a human being and the actual occasions making up the body are crucial to the life of the human being as a whole. However, the readily available correlation between the Whiteheadian concept of a dominant occasion and the Christian concept of a soul, no matter how many differences of detail separate them, is enough to cast some doubt on Whitehead’s concept, at least when it is simplistically appropriated for the purpose of positively identifying the seat of the human self. Can a single strand of occasions, strung together like pearls on a fragile thread, sufficiently house the complex experience of consciousness, even if the occasions are highly developed and specialized? Is the normal human experience of self truly as unitary as this concept would presume? How would other experiences of self (as fragmented, non-continuous, multiple, socially constructed, etc.) be subsumed under this theory? What is the relationship of this temporally-ordered dominant society to the actual occasions that make up the physical brain, or the chemical events occurring within it? Some thinkers find Whitehead’s thinking too hierarchical on this matter, since he sees the dominant occasion as the “monarch” that governs all the individuals and societies that make up the human being (Cobb and Griffin 1976, 87). In fact, the notion of a “monarchical society” of dominant occasions is the result of Whitehead’s famous “ontological principle”—that whenever one points to a cause or a reason explaining an effect, one is pointing to an actual occasion (PR 19). The coordination of actual occasions in all kinds of societies and sub-societies in the human being, from the gene to the cell to the tissue to the organ to the self—can only be explained by reference to an actual occasion “doing” the coordinating. And so Whitehead posits other strands of dominant occasions coordinating the work of each sub-society at each level, all ruled by the dominant personal society that we call the human self. He writes: “The only strictly personal society of which we have direct discriminative intuition is the society of our own personal experiences,” the dominant society (AI 206). Yet this sentence immediately illustrates the existential problem of the systematic elusiveness of consciousness. How is it possible that “we” can “have […] intuition” of our own dominant societies, when it is only those societies that are supposed to be the intuiting, knowing, thinking, and perceiving selves? What is this further “I” that is conscious of its own consciousness? Perhaps Whitehead refers only to the present member of the society prehending the society of entities in its past; nevertheless, if we are never conscious of the society in its upto-the-moment form, that is, including its present incarnation, then we do not seem to be conscious of our selves, in the strictest sense of the word. Joseph Bracken, S.J., of Xavier University has proposed a field concept of the self, using Michael Polanyi’s theory of a morphogenetic field, in order to provide a more nuanced and less hierarchical account of how coordination among entities and societies is achieved (Bracken 1981). Does this field concept build a bridge between Whitehead’s atomistic actual occasions and the sophisticated, enduring aggregates exhibiting coordination and common form that we routinely experience? Are there other possibilities for filling this gap, or is the gap itself only illusory? I have neither the expertise nor the space to delve into the many possible answers here, and can only invite the reader to explore the suggestions for further research at the end of the chapter. Suffice it to say that the constitution of the human self remains a key area for Whiteheadian thinkers to research, make proposals, and elaborate or revise the structure found

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in Whitehead’s writings. About the nature of the human being, however, and its relationship to its constituent actual occasions and societies, we must conclude for now that consciousness, whatever it is and wherever it resides, does not have a God’s-eye view of the human being. It is unaware of some actualities that comprise it (such as lost memories or areas of the body that lack nerves), only dimly or intermittently aware of others (such as the ordinary activities of respiratory and digestive systems), and highly aware of others (such as inputs from the sensory organs). Its operation is, moreover, regularly interrupted by sleep, in which even the areas of high awareness are partially or completely shut down. It is vulnerable to many upsets, physical, mental, and environmental. And it is evident that consciousness’s intuition of nearly all it perceives is indirect—that is, mediated through the activity of other actualities that help bring the percipient to the awareness of the human consciousness. Whether the directing and coordinating force in a human being turns out to be a dominant personal society or some less monarchical arrangement, we are talking about a flexible, robust, and specialized function in human existence that also turns out to be enormously fragile and limited in important ways. Such an observation restores the premium on intricate, resourceful cooperation among the many parts of the human organism, and mitigates the danger of reducing the human being to its “soul.”

4. The Human in Community Process thinkers are also indebted to the existentialists for help in expressing the contribution of larger communities to the nature of the individual human being. Existentialists rightly insist that the human being cannot be discussed in isolation from her environment. In fact, the only human being is human being-in-the-world, with the hyphens indicating that the elements of the phrase are neither distinguishable nor separable. However, for thinkers such as Camus, Sartre, and even Heidegger, there is no true community, in the sense of intimate participation with one another in mutual relationship. We recognize the Other as one trapped in the same structures of constraint and freedom as ourselves; we may resolve to act in moral solidarity according to that recognition, but we do not participate in each other or truly meet “man to man.” Whitehead’s thought has engendered a set of approaches to various fields that have been felicitously termed “relational” theologies, philosophies, psychologies and so on. His system provides for real internal relations—the interpenetration of actual occasions with each other, or to put it another way, the immanence of actual occasions in each other. The relationship of the larger community (or communities) to the human being is not an accidental matter, then, to use the language of Aristotelian philosophy. In a very real sense, those larger communities create the human being, even as, in just as real a sense, the human being creates herself. Let us examine the modes by which various communities are immanent in the human being.

4.1. Human Communities Humans are social animals, and so our most immediately intimate communities, on first glance, are those consisting of our own kind. It is obvious that these communities engender us by providing the genetic code that guides our development, and the social norms and folkways that

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structure our experience. About the former we have no choice. About the latter we have no choice, either, when one considers our socialization as children. Both are simply “givens,” aspects of the individual’s unique spatiotemporal and social location. As we mature, we gradually gain the ability to respond in more flexible and innovative ways to those givens. Their inherence in us, however, as part of our background and training—their facticity as parts of ourselves, remains permanent. Process philosophy is able to describe this phenomenon at a metaphysical level. As the human self grows from moment to moment, all occasions in its “world”—the subset of occasions with which the self has direct contact—contribute data to the emerging human being. The human being moves forward in life by setting all that data into a fixed pattern—a valuation of feeling. Each bit of data is felt in a certain way, with a particular tone and flavor to the experience. And as those feelings coalesce into a determinate feeling of the human being’s world, the individual moves past that moment and on to the next one, carrying with it, as the starting point of its own continuing life, that moment of its immediate past in the form of a complete and unalterable fact. Our existential experience, then, is that we are trailed by the ever-lengthening train of our past. Naturally as we move farther and farther along in our lives, we find it difficult to turn on a dime and do or become something new, as we might have done when we were young. Our ability to maneuver is restrained by the inescapable past that is a part of us. The more “filled up” our lives become with our facticity, the more difficult novelty becomes. But it is never impossible. To understand why this is the case, let us turn to the non-human realm, and first of all, to the divine community of which we are a part.

4.2. The Divine Community For Whitehead, order and progress in the universe require an explanation, and according to his ontological principle, the explanation must be sought in the activity of an actual entity. God, although not qualitatively different from other actual entities, does have special properties that correspond to God’s special function. At least two of these special properties are particularly relevant to our discussion of anthropology. First, God is in the immediate “world” of every emerging actual occasion. And second, God primordially orders and values all possibilities, then presents relevant possibilities to each emerging actual occasion as part of its world of data. In combination, these two properties describe how novelty enters and persists in the world. An analysis of how human beings conceive and respond to the truly novel is an essential feature of philosophical anthropology in the twenty-first century. We now have several centuries of experience with an increasing pace of change in human societies and the impact of completely new realities (technologies, moral situations, experiences with human and non-human others, and experience of increased knowledge and specialization). Any anthropology that does not pay attention to that historical record and contemporary way of being in the world will be obsolete before it begins. Novelty, for Whitehead, is the actualization in the world of a possibility that has never been actualized before. It does not spring into existence ex nihilo, but begins as a feeling of that possibility (termed an eternal object) by an actual occasion. Human beings can prehend

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possibilities both directly (unmediated by another actual occasion) or indirectly (through the feeling of that possibility by an occasion in the immediate past, transmitted as part of the data contributed by that occasion to the emerging moment). But the particular contribution of God to the human being is to present relevant possibilities for novelty. These are possibilities that can be actualized, aimed at goals that humans and God can share, coordinated with the values being presented to the myriad other actual occasions coming to be at the same moment, and with the achievements and failures of the past. Without God’s presence in the world of all becoming occasions and God’s primordial ordering of possibilities allowing for specific, targeted propositions tailored to each occasion, the actualization of novel possibilities could only be haphazard and non-progressive. At the level of the individual, membership in the divine community means the opportunity, moment by moment, to experience God’s intimate closeness and respond to God’s will. Note that in the process system human beings are always responsible for their responses (to make conscious use of a felicitous etymological kinship). In this view, the role of the human being in her own growth is to make decisions, while taking into account a wide and bewildering array of inputs. God’s guidance is crucial in seeing what sense can be made of those inputs, as well as what previously unimagined possibilities might fit into that landscape. This brief discussion of the divine community to which the human being belongs raises one of the ultimate anthropological questions, one anticipated in the first pages of this essay: What is the purpose of human existence? We have been occupied with human nature, but not, so far, human destiny or telos. One more community must be quickly surveyed, and then I will end by proposing a process-inspired answer to that question.

4.3. The Non-Human Community While God is certainly a part of the non-human community in which human beings come to be, God’s special activity and properties justify treating the divine as a separate category. Here we are considering what is sometimes termed the “environment”—the universe of non-human entities that surrounds the individual. We would not be stretching the truth too much to say that we are also considering the non-self entities that form the human body in its psychophysical functions. As we noted above, the human being is a multiplicity, and therefore it proves impossible to distinguish categorically the set of all occasions that make up the human being from the set of all occasions that do not. The human self persists in an “environment” of its own organs, tissues, cells, and subcellular structures; thus, entities that are not tightly integrated with the self, consciousness, or the dominant occasion (however one prefers to put it) might correctly be considered an environment for the human self. And indeed, parts of the extra-corporal environment are ingested or otherwise brought into the body (food and air being the premier examples). Some of these (formerly) non-human entities become parts of the body: oxygen in the air binds to hemoglobin in the red blood cell, for example. Others pass through the body. Of course, given enough time, all the parts of a human individual eventually cease to be parts of that particular living individual, and become parts of some other community, whether it be the matter of my flesh decomposing (becoming part of some other living creature using me for food) or the ideational content of my thoughts

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(becoming conceptual material for another’s thoughts, if I have communicated them, or being preserved at the very least in God’s inclusion of all realities). The caveats that accompany the mere idea of distinguishing human from non-human demonstrate perfectly the process contention that the human being is a community, rather than merely belonging to one or more. As we think about how occasions that we do not identify with the human being are related to that human being, we cannot escape this deep interconnectivity, these internal relations. Whenever we try to extricate the human being from its environs, we find ourselves enmeshed by the linkages that reach into the very soul of the human being, and, conversely, into the experiences of the occasions that constitute its world. Nevertheless, we may adopt some approximation of this concept of the non-human environment long enough to make a few observations. First, one of the strengths of Whitehead’s system is its lack of qualitative difference between higher-order organisms (such as human beings) and lower-order organisms (such as, for instance, the animal and plant kingdoms). A metaphysics that does not primarily focus on defining human beings as unique, but instead on their continuity with other creatures, lends much support to ecological and evolutionary worldviews. (See for example McDaniel 1989, among many other extensive treatments of the compatibility between process thought and ecological ethics.) Second, our relationship to the non-human world is not exclusively defined by our genetic kinship with a primate ancestor. It is ongoing and far-reaching, because we are internally related to the occasions of matter and energy in our immediate world—and through them, to all occasions everywhere and everywhen. However, and as a final point, the process view is not egalitarian with respect to the different types and complexities of organisms. Humans do differ from their non-living environment in being personally ordered instead of being merely enduring. They differ from their vegetable environment in having significant mental processes that structure their experiences. They differ from (perhaps most of) their animal environment in having consciousness and language, and therefore in being able to ruminate on and communicate the value they place on their experiences. These differences represent important advances in the ability of the human being to carry out its role in the universal process. This is the final topic to which we now turn.

5. Aims, Purposes, Destinies The existentialists, on whose insights I have relied heavily in this chapter, proclaimed that the human being has no purpose other than the one he gives himself. Process thought agrees. In the final analysis, the only human purposes that have actual existence are the ones that have been effective in shaping human lives. And it should be evident to everyone that these purposes differ greatly historically, culturally, and even at an individual level. It is misleading to search for the (singular) purpose of human life, because such a search consigns to illusion the myriad diverse purposes that humans have adopted and actualized. Such actualizations are, as Whitehead points out, the only real things in the universe (cf. PR 18). However, process philosophy’s endorsement of this fundamental tenet of existentialism does not preclude the reality of another dimension of purpose in which humans participate. We might

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call this dimension divine, or we might call it universal. The ambiguity over where this dimension of purpose is housed arises from Whitehead’s ambiguity over God’s primordial aim. God works toward what Whitehead calls “intensity” for all occasions, as instrumental to achieving intensity in the divine becoming (PR 105). But is this aim something God chooses from a variety of possibilities for the divine purpose? Or is it the aim of the universal process itself, organic and eternal, as it were, with God playing only one role, albeit a key one, in achieving it? Process thinkers differ, but I lean toward comparing this purpose to the religious statement that God is love. Could God have chosen not to be love, or could God have chosen a different aim? The answer may be philosophically interesting; it may even be theologically crucial. However, the practical way to go forward is to take this purpose as inherent in the system that actually exists, and to focus instead on how God goes about trying to achieve it. By “intensity” Whitehead means the achievement of both harmony and contrast held together in a synthesis. Because harmony (or, to use other Whiteheadian terms, repetition, identity, or permanence) is the prevailing feature of a universe of enduring objects, Whitehead focuses on contrast as the agent by which intensity is achieved. As an actual occasion emerges, the enactment of some creative disjunction with its past is needed to create this contrast. When unified, ordered, and valued along with the occasion’s (repeated) past in the newly-formed fact, this contrast represents what Whitehead calls “intensity of feeling” (PR 249; cf. 27). When considered at the human scale, intensity might come into focus in several ways. First, we could use the word “growth” as an approximation of one of intensity’s facets. We are encouraged to embrace our past while seeking new challenges and new ways of finding a place in the world. Total harmony is stagnation; total contrast is chaos. As we move into each new moment, we can seek continuity with the past at the same time as we invent creatively in the present. The result is a human life that existentialists would call “authentic,” accepting of its limitations and resolute in facing its challenges. Second, Whitehead’s formulation of purpose avoids moral overtones in favor of aesthetic ones. We are not urged to do good works or be good people so much as to create good art out of our lives—quite a different meaning for the word “good”! Whitehead saw this turn away from moral categories in defining life’s purpose as consistent with the use of the term “love” as an approximation of “intensity.” He famously remarked that love is “a little oblivious as to morals” (PR 343), meaning that the question when one loves is not one of duty or utility, right or wrong, but union or separation—a question about form, balance, and intensity, a question, we might even say, of the beauty of the dance. Finally, Whitehead is careful to distinguish between the aim or purpose proffered by God (or by the universe through God), and the aim or purpose that the human being chooses, moment by moment. The former is the “initial aim” (PR 244-245) and the latter is the “subjective aim.” (PR 244) The two are never identical, even in the hypothetical case in which the human being completely accepts God’s aim for him, without a hint of dissent or modification. Because the subjective aim is precisely the goal that the human being has chosen for himself, regardless of its origin or content, it is distinct from God’s proposal, experienced and felt differently than the initial aim, and effective as actual only in its subjective incarnation. I will end this sketch of process anthropology with some speculative thoughts about human purposes so construed. The key dilemma for the process humanist, it seems to me, is the

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effective marriage of the human responsibility to choose one’s own purpose and destiny, to whatever extent possible, with the notion of a divine being who suggests to the individual relevant steps toward achieving a purpose consonant with that of the whole universe. It seems important to the process spirit not to construe God as a “smother mother,” as Robert Neville once critiqued, constantly attempting to sign us up for God’s projects rather than empowering us to pursue our own (Neville 1980, 9-10). Thus, the danger in overemphasizing the metaphysical advantages of internal relations over ontologies of substance is that the former can seem to leave precious little room for the human being to develop a plotline that is definitively hers. One clue to the answer, I suspect, lies in rethinking how human beings respond to the initial aim provided by God (Bowman 2002, 191-214). On the one hand, the image of response tends to picture the human being answering “yes” or “no” to God’s proposal. The human reaction, then, becomes an acceptance of “God’s will,” or of some other inferior pathway. In this view, the question becomes whether one will be obedient to God or not, whether one will whisper with Jesus in Gethsemane, “Not my will, but thine be done.” But if, instead, the initial aim is seen as a starting point for the self-causation that belongs entirely and properly to the human individual (a view consistent with Whitehead’s explication), then it may be possible to see the projects of individual human beings as unavoidably (and even positively) conditioned by the way those around them, including God, are carrying out their own projects, without subsuming the individual’s project to those of her communities. Clearly, cooperation among members of communities can result in more progress, and different kinds of progress, than is possible with individuals working alone. Yet individual genius, leadership, charisma, and creative spark also contribute to making lives and communities richer and more beautiful. For process thinkers, human nature and destiny is bound up with the endlessly rich variety of an unfolding universe in the midst of its becoming. We are medium-scale examples of that becoming, talented and capable of special contributions, yet far from the universe’s crowing achievement. As we create our lives by choice, creativity and constraint, we may respond to God and the universe in relationships founded on the trust that no beauty we foster will go unremarked or die without progeny.

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6. Works Cited and Further Readings Allan, George. 1971. “The Aims of Societies and the Aims of God.” In Delwin Brown, ed., Process Philosophy and Christian Thought (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill), 464-74. Birch, Charles and John B. Cobb, Jr. 1981. The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Bowman, Donna. 2002. The Divine Decision: A Process Doctrine of Election (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press). Bracken, Joseph. 1989. “Energy-Events and Fields,” Process Studies 18, 3, 153-165. Cobb, John B., Jr., and David Ray Griffin. 1976. Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia, Westminster Press). Griffin, David. 1971. “The Possibility of Subjective Immortality in Whitehead’s Philosophy.” University of Dayton Review 8, 43-56. Heidegger, Martin. 1962 [1927]. Being and Time. Translated by John McQuarrie and Edward Robinson (London, SCM Press). Janusz, Sharon and Glenn Webster. 1991. “The Problem of Persons,” Process Studies 20, 3, 151-61. Keller, Catherine. 1986. From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (Boston, Beacon Press). McDaniel, Jay. 1989. Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press). Mellert, Robert B. 1975. What Is Process Theology? (St. Paul, Paulist Press). Neville, Robert C. 1980. Creativity and God: A Challenge to Process Theology (New York, Seaburg). Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956 [1943]. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Hazel Barnes (New York, Philosophical Library). Stinson, Linda L. 1986. Process and Conscience: Toward a Theology of Human Emergence (Lanham, MD, University Press of America). Williams, Daniel Day. 1971. “God and Man,” in Process Theology, edited by Ewert H. Cousins (New York, Newman Press), 173-187.

IV. Ecology Ecology Between Natural Science and Environmental Ethics Barbara Muraca

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In his works Whitehead never directly addresses the topic of ecology, so we must first explain the fundamental relevance of this term for process thought as well as the essential contribution of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism for an ecological approach. It is no overstatement to assert that Whitehead’s metaphysic can provide a coherent and adequate theoretical support for a hard-core ecological worldview. Whitehead offers a challenging framework for ecology as both a science and an ethical and spiritual vision. In the following article, I will first discuss this twofold nature of ecology, before turning to the relevant elements of Whitehead’s philosophy and sketching the main developments offered by process scholarship.

1. Ecology In the face of the urgent challenge posed by the environmental crisis in the last decades, ecology has come to be seen as inseparable from fundamental ethical issues. However, ecology is not synonymous with environmental ethics or environmental politics tout court. Since its emergence, ecology has increasingly developed as a science of nature, and in the second half of the last century it eventually became a discipline clearly situated within the framework of modern sciences and their methodology.1 Yet, due to its own multilayered history, ecology cannot avoid facing up to the expectation that it represents a counter-tendency to the line of natural sciences. Ecology is suspended in a difficult balance between its newly achieved role as a biological “hard” science and the mission of being a sort of “leading science” that offers an overarching perspective intimately connected with normative and metaphysical claims (Trepl 1994, 17).2

1.1. Between Predictability and Complexity Contemporary ecology has to maintain a balancing act between the exactness and predictability demanded by scientific methodology, and the need to resist narrow reductionism, which cannot grasp the high complexity achieved by the interactions between living organisms. For many i

University of Greifswald, Department of Philosophy/ Institute for Botanic and Landscape Ecology, Grimmer Strasse, 88, D-17487 Greifswald; [email protected].

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contemporary scientists, ecology’s scientific status remains questionable since it cannot count on a stable ground of certainty for its own claims. The complexity it has to deal with does not allow for precise predictions and strictly verifiable assertions. Within a strict neo-positivistic framework there is little place for a science confined to cautious assumptions and less willing to run risks about nature and its experimental modeling (Ott 1994, 33ff). Although ecology has adapted itself to be accepted among the exact sciences, it remains a discipline on the edge: the tight connection between descriptive tasks and normative questions throws ecology back onto the so-called naturalistic fallacy and underpins suspicions about its scientific claims. On the other hand, precisely because of its ambiguity, ecology challenges the natural sciences to question their established approaches.

1.2. Between Holism and Individualism Due to its inherent affiliation both with the natural sciences and value-laden worldviews, ecology has always been extremely permeable to dominant paradigm in different epochs. During the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the United States, ecology became increasingly important as an overarching science providing support for the holistic paradigm that was then moving into the mainstream. In 1916 Clements proposed the concept of superorganism to designate a community of living beings; this would be to ecology what a single organism is to biology. Communities of living beings were thus considered as organic parts of a whole comparable to the parts of a living body that depend on it and serve its ends. The priority of the whole to its components met the needs of a specific epochal worldview and ran the risk of being misused to support the totalitarian and deterministic reduction of the individual to the whole (McIntosh 1985, 43ff). The counter-position to the holistic approach was developed by Gleason, who showed that no scientific proof of superorganisms as stable units could be given. On Gleason’s account, a concept of community of living beings could be developed that reinforced the relevance of individuals in their interaction with external conditions (Trepl 1994, 154ff). Both the holistic and the individualistic tendencies are still alive in current ecological science and shape the ongoing struggle within many environmental theories.3 It is very important to keep in mind this historical polarization and its risks when one calls for a holistic framework in opposition to the reductionistic tendency of contemporary science.4

2. Whitehead and Ecology Although Whitehead did not directly write on ecology, either as a science or as worldview, his main philosophical works reflects the contemporaneous discourse of holism, as well as the debate between materialistic and organic approaches. Whitehead’s contribution to the ecological debate addresses the following aspects: (1) Philosophy, considered as critique of science, reveals reductionism to be the outcome of a specific worldview with very particular presuppositions.

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(2) Whitehead’s own philosophy of organism allows for both efficient and final causation in nature. (3) Whitehead’s concept of organism as a relational structure not identical with the animal body opens a path for an integral approach while avoiding the risk of slipping into the totalitarian consequences of holism. (4) His concept of life anticipates the application of chaos theory and complexity theory to ecology and biology and supports them with a philosophical system. (5) His concepts of value and internal relations offer environmental ethics a strong theoretical underpinning. Process scholars have focused on this particular aspect and developed it much further in the formulation of their environmental philosophies.

2.1. Philosophy as “the Survey of Sciences” We might be tempted simply to equate Whitehead’s philosophy, which he terms a “philosophy of organism,” with ecology tout court and assert that Whitehead’s philosophy is in the end a new ecology intended as a holistic system of thought. According to Whitehead, however, philosophy has a wider task than does any holistic ecology: it must offer constant criticism of the abstractions that science needs in order to shape a coherent system of thought. The task of philosophy is precisely to recover what abstractions leave out (PR 15), by questioning them and constantly re-opening the process of delimitation. Philosophy and ecology are not the same, since “philosophy is not one among the sciences […]. It is the survey of sciences […]. It confronts the sciences with concrete fact” (SMW 87). Philosophy as “the critic of cosmologies” (SMW vii) can scrutinize the concept of nature that classical mechanics has assumed. This concept is the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread throughout space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call ‘scientific materialism’ (SMW 17). In order to support its assumptions, materialism relies on immediate empirical facts collected by induction. However, if we consider experience as wider than mere sense perception constrained within the narrow borders of laboratory experimentation (SMW 17, 53), it seems at least dubious that we may find any immediate empirical givenness of bare matter.5 The modern concept of nature, far than being the obvious outcome of empirical observation, results from a restricted focus on measurable qualities, like weight, size, speed, and the exclusion of other aspects like color, smell, taste. By abstracting from all non-measurable aspects, science accomplished a bifurcation of nature between a subjective and an objective world and excluded experience from the latter (SMW 146), with the further consequence that the percipient (human) subject had to be excluded from nature and posited in opposition to it (Hampe 1990, 39). Therefore subjectivity and teleological activity were thrown out of nature and attributed to the separate sphere of the human. However, the materialistic-mechanic theory of nature, with all its reductionism, encounters insurmountable difficulties when it tries to describe life in its dynamic and unpredictable complexity.

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2.2. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism Neither evolution nor any kind of advance into novelty can be explained simply by external mechanic relations among bits of matter blindly running in empty space and entirely devoid of subjectivity.6 The philosophy of organism claims that however far the sphere of efficient causation be pushed in the determination of components of a concrescence—its data, its emotions, its appreciations, its purposes, its phases of subjective aim—beyond the determination of these components there always remains the final reaction of the self-creative unity of the universe (PR 47). Since pure deterministic relations of efficient causation can by no means account for the counter-tendency observable in the universe that resists decaying into mere repetition and dissipation (FR 27ff), Whitehead develops a concept of organism intended primarily as the outcome of “a selective activity which is akin to purpose” (SMW 107).7 What is intended here is not a monistic principle that holds the universe together and leads it to a specific general aim. Rather, nature is considered as an evolving process brought about by fundamental self-creative events that are each an “individual act of immediate self-enjoyment” (MT 151). Whitehead’s cosmology is essentially pluralistic. Moreover, Whitehead distinguishes between two meanings of the term organism, one microscopic and the other macroscopic. The former is intended as the fundamental activity of actualization into an individual unity of experience (PR 129), whereas the latter refers to complex enduring structures like the ones we find as “stubborn facts” in our world of experience.

2.2.1. Microcosmic Organisms—Actuality between Determination and Teleology Anything that emerges into actuality from a background of potentialities for realization requires a process of valuation, selection and choice among all relevant possibilities, one which is not simply given by mechanic external relations (SMW 93). Therefore, the ultimate realities of nature must be thought of as actual entities that shape themselves anew arising out of the determining effects of their relevant past and attaining an end for themselves (FR 30). No form can grow automatically from an infinite range of possibilities because of the “crosscurrents of incompatibility” (PR 247). Determination as such would lead to great incompatibility without an activity of ordering and shaping, which implies a free decision among all given possibilities: causation (intended as internal, in-flowing relation) and concrete freedom (intended as self-realization) in this case coincide (Muraca 2005, 237ff). Each actual entity, which Whitehead also terms an actual occasion of experience,8 is a complex node of freedom and causation: past entities “act” as vectors of efficient causation upon the new becoming entity; however, they cannot fully determine its shape, since the way in which the influences of the past are bound together to give birth to a new entity depend on the decision made by the new entity itself (PR 86). This process is termed by Whitehead “concrescence” and refers both to the growing together (cum-crescere) of past influences into a new shape, and to the becoming concrete of potentialities for realization. While bits of matter are devoid of experience and subjectivity and are connected merely through external relations, organisms in their microcosmic meaning are loci of experience9

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understood as active graspings of causally efficacious influences in a new form of realization. Accordingly, each actual entity takes account of, or prehends, other entities as constitutive components of its becoming and is internally related to them.10 As such it is a prehensive unity of past influences, a new togetherness achieved by means of valuation among the high range of possibilities for realization (SMW 105). Hence, each actuality is a value and, as long as it becomes by growing from its past into a new self-attained shape, it is a subject: “‘value’ is the word I use for the intrinsic reality of an event” (SMW 93).

2.2.2. Macrocosmic Organisms—Wholes and Parts in Dynamic Fields of Relations Actual entities arise, become and perish; they never occur twice and never change (AI 204). Therefore, each actuality is absolutely unique and unrepeatable. However, permanent structures are not simply an illusion. So-called enduring objects like stones, planets, plants, and animals result from different modes of organization and relations among actual entities, which incorporate, manifest and reproduce common patterns. Permanence is thus the result of the repetition and positive valuation of patterns entertained by actual occasions of experience. This suggests that permanence has, with respect to its being actual, a derivative status due to the internal relatedness of all actual entities and their tendency to conformity.11 This kind of process, which Whitehead terms macroscopic, refers to the transition “from attained actuality to actuality in attainment” (PR 214), in which past realizations are constituents by means of repetition of a new becoming actuality. Macrocosmic organisms are organized enduring structures, in which patterns are relatively stably repeated: “the community of actual things is an organism” (PR 214). This definition might remind us of Clements’ concept of superorganism, yet Whitehead distinguishes different kinds of grouping of occasions depending on different modes of organization and does not equate organism with the organizational structure of an animal body (Hampe 1990, 174) as Clements seems to imply: (1) A general connectedness due only to the mutual immanence of actual occasions without common relevance is termed a “nexus” (AI 201). Any kind of togetherness can be a nexus, included mathematical concepts of class. (2) A nexus of actual entities reciprocally “ordered” is termed a “society” and requires that its members are alike because they “impose on other members of the society the conditions which lead to that likeness” (PR 89). A society presents a common element of form entertained by all its members by means of their internal relations and reproduced by future members of that society. Most enduring objects are structured societies, like molecules or crystals. (3) A society with a serial or temporal order is termed “personal” and presents a route of occasions “which in a marked degree […] inherit from each other” (PR 89). A personal ordered society does not necessarily imply being living; nor does it require consciousness. It mainly refers to the temporal series of occasions, connected by a strong relevance to each other. (4) Structured societies are also termed “corpuscular” and do not present any dominant route of actual occasions of experience. They can be mainly living or non-living according to their degree of novelty, although there is no sharp line to be drawn. A corpuscular society does not have an aim as a whole, although its members do constitute, even if almost negligibly, a fringe

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of teleological self-realization. Aggregates like stones result from the average effects of their members: even if some kind of novelty arose in some of the members this would not have a significant effect on the general structure, repeating itself over long lapses of time: “For lifeless matter these functionings thwart each other, and average out so as to produce a negligible total effect” (AI 207). Living structures instead aim at novelty and let it emerge as relevant for the whole society instead of evening it out for the sake of stability. Therefore, they have to constantly maintain a balance between dismembering novelty and steadiness. Moreover, living structures have a better coordination among the members than non-living ones, even if they do not have a superceding personal society assigned to this task. A complex society like an animal or a human being is constituted by both ordered societies and nexs as well as by a subordinate personally ordered society, which seems to dominate their social system (AI 205). While the animal body is a complex non-personal society, yet very strictly structured and self-sustaining, a serially ordered society presents a dominant route of occasions eminently connected and is termed by Whitehead a “psyche” or a “soul”: “The soul is nothing else than the succession of my occasions of experience, extending from birth to the present moment” (MT 163). As David Griffin points out, the dominant occasions constituting a soul do not differ in kind from other personally ordered societies like for example living cells; yet, “they are enormously different in degree” (Griffin 2001, 120). 12

2.2.3. Life on the Edge of Chaos When actual occasions largely conform to the givenness of the past world relevant for them, we find order and stability,13 but also negligible novelty and somewhat less complexity. In fact, in order to reproduce the patterns, incompatibilities need to be either excluded or integrated in a way that does not dismember the common element of form and the community of actual things, i.e. the organism achieved. Exclusion by means of abstraction allows for endurance and a conforming stability.14 Yet, in a constant process stabilization is never simply a neutral state: in the long run it leads to relapse. The universe bears a tendency to degradation, which is exhibited for example by entropic decay. If this were the whole story, life would have never made its appearance on the scene, since “a high grade of complexity will in general be deficient in survival value” (PR 101). The counteragency operating throughout the universe arises as the urge to “live, to live well, to live better” (FR 8). Whitehead calls the place of anarchy, in which radical novelty can arise, an “entirely living nexus,” which is characterized by a high degree of originality in all its members. 15 Accordingly, an “entirely living nexus” is with respect to its life non-social (PR 107), i.e. it is not strongly determined by other occasions or nexs. Its degree of freedom is extremely high and thus the risk of falling into sheer chaos with no conformity at all to the environment is dramatic. Whitehead seems to imply here that the quintessence of life is tied to the risk of chaos intended as loss of conformity and of repetition of patterns. If this chaotic non-social activity were absolutely released from any tie to the environment, this would indeed hinder the formation of organisms and structures. However, as Whitehead points out, “though life in its essence is the gain of intensity through freedom, yet it can also submit to canalization and so gain the massiveness of order” (PR 107), i.e. the possibility of a certain provisional stability. A

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living society is constantly swinging on the edge of equilibrium between conformity and loose novelty, engaging in a steady effort of coordination of the anarchic spontaneities throughout the occasions forming a society.16 Accordingly, life is the solution that structured societies have found in order to develop complexity, allowing at the same time for a high degree of novelty without being fated to instability. The power of living societies consists in their capability to canalize the several influences of the actualized world into new complex forms, instead of eliminating incompatibilities: “Apart from canalization, depth of originality would spell disaster for the animal body. With it, personal mentality can be evolved, so as to combine its individual originality with the safety of the material organism on which it depends” (PR 107).17 Due to their unsteadiness, living societies are reliant on a much tighter interplay with the environment and undergo a constant process of re-storing and self-sustaining activity, which we call metabolism: “the structure is breaking down and being repaired. The food is that supply of highly complex societies from the outside which, under the influence of life, will enter in to necessary associations to repair the waste. Thus life acts as though it were a catalytic agent” (PR 106).18

2.2.4. Whitehead’s Relevance for Ecology: First Conclusions Whitehead’s philosophy of organism offers to ecology a supporting scheme of systematic thought in many ways. First, Clements’ concept of super-organism seems to be more of a sort of a larger individual constituted by its subordinated parts. If this is true, holism and individualism are less in opposition than it might look like. It is more a matter of which unity plays the major role: either the whole is prior to its parts or the individual parts are prior to their whole. According to Whitehead, there are no isolated societies. Each society is inseparable from its environment, which must contribute as well to its self-sustaining process: “the environment, together with the society in question, must form a larger society” (PR 90). Societies and nexs for Whitehead extend over each other and are continuous in the sense that there is no strict isolation of any society from the relevant relations constituting it. Considering this dynamic interconnection among societies (i.e. macrocosmic organisms), we can refer to them as wholes, yet only in the specific sense of relative and provisional wholes, depending on the perspective from which they are looked at: “I shall use the terms ‘whole’ and ‘parts’ exclusively in this sense, that the ‘parts’ is an event which is extended over by the other event which is the ‘whole’. […] Every event extends over other events, and every event is extended over by other events” (CN 58-59). Moreover, depending on the kind of society we address, we have different kinds of relations between dynamic and provisional wholes and its components. Some “wholes” correspond more closely to what we understand as an animal body, a structured society endowed with a certain hierarchical order and tight reciprocal dependency. This would be an organism in the common sense of the term. Even in this case, in which mostly the part serves the whole, the relation between wholes and parts is reciprocal.19

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Other “wholes,” however, are much looser and less structured. They look more like fields of relevant relations, characterized by common elements of form and dependent on each other by means of internal relations in a less hierarchical sense. These are also termed organisms, but they are quite different from the first ones. Whitehead’s philosophy of organism allows for a concept of constitutive relationality and intimate interconnectedness between wholes and parts, including a certain kind of priority of the wholes to their components: “In a society the members can only exist by reason of the laws which dominate the society” (PR 91). Yet, this does not lead to a one-sided subordination, in which the members are reduced to mere parts. In fact, societies as macroscopic organisms are derivative in their being actual and efficacious from the actual entities that actualize them: “The society is only efficient through its individual members” (PR 91). The relation between “wholes” and “parts” can only be a dynamic interdependency. Accordingly, the “whole” is more than the sum of its parts and presents characteristics that cannot be simply found in the parts.20 Since relations are internally constituting the subordinate organisms are intrinsically different according to the relational field or the larger organism in which they are located. The plan of the larger whole goes down to the smallest organisms and has effects on them. That is to say that an electron within a living body is qualitatively different from one in a different structure or state. Reductionism is rendered impossible by the ontological priority entertained by internal relations in Whitehead’s philosophy. Second, Whitehead’s theory of life is incredibly close to the recent application of chaos and complexity theory to biology and ecology. According to complexity theory, “nonlinearity and collective behavior are characteristic features of complexity” (Solé & Goodwin 2000, 58). Hence, predictability is rendered impossible by the fact that collectives break symmetry and instead of reproducing sameness tend to repeat patterns in the mode of similarity; eventually they might choose a highly improbable path with respect to the given conditions and their standard settings. Whitehead’s organisms are embedded in and constituted by a web of patterns, most of which tend to be repeated in a similar way, with a certain degree of difference and novelty. Chaos is understood by most chaos-theories as non-conformity to general rules (sheer chaos would be the condition in which all possible states are realized with no regularity and no repetition), whereas order represents conformity (the maximal conformity would be that only one status is realized by all entities at stake). Complexity is located at the unsteady edge between order and chaos, i.e. where a high variety of patterns emerge with some similarity and dynamic regularity over time. This dynamics takes the form of fluctuation.21 For Whitehead, complexity is the fringe where causal efficacy of the past (conformity and order) encounters the teleological self-shaping activity of the becoming occasions to bring about enduring structures. By considering teleology as an element in nature, Whitehead ventures much further than the new approaches in natural sciences, which often remain caught within a deterministic framework even if it is non-linear (Muraca 2007).22 In this framework, life represents the most improbable organization of patterns suspended on the edge of disorder. It only takes place out of a state of equilibrium and constantly needs to re-

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establish its unsteady balance through self-organization and metabolism. Therefore, life is an extremely fragile status, constantly exposed to the risk of collapsing.

3. Environmental Ethics and Process Thought According to Whitehead each “fact” in the world is the outcome of valuation and therefore bears aesthetic as well as normative aspects. On this account science cannot avoid the ethical questions that are enmeshed in most descriptive claims. Ecology and environmental ethics are intimately linked up, as several process thinkers have shown. In this section I will briefly outline the main positions on this topic within process scholarship. As Whiteheads maintains, actualization results from a process of evaluating self-realization and is therefore an intrinsic value. However, not all intrinsic values are the same: actual occasions in their process of becoming according to their inner complexity and breadth can achieve higher or lower degrees of novelty: “Each occasion exhibits its measure of creative emphasis in proportion to its measure of subjective intensity” (PR 47). Whitehead’s theory of value opens a path for relevant contributions to environmental ethics. Although Whitehead himself never addressed environmental issues directly, his philosophy of organism has served as the main source for the development of a rich tradition within process thought in the field of ecology as a normative worldview.

3.1. The Ecological Model The Liberation of Life by John Cobb and Charles Birch represents a milestone for process environmental ethics and has been the object of animated discussion among process scholars for years. The book aims at offering a new paradigm called “the ecological model” for ethics, spirituality as well as politics. Strictly speaking it is therefore not only a contribution to the environmental debate, but also to the wider context of sustainability and social justice. The ecological model draws on Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and like it challenges materialistic mechanism with its metaphysics of substance and Cartesian dualism. Cobb and Birch propose Whitehead’s “event-thinking” as a radical alternative to substance thinking.23 Following Whitehead they draw attention to the interconnectedness based on internal relations that constitute every event and every complex structure. According to Birch and Cobb value is intimately connected to experience and subjectivity, although neither term necessarily implies consciousness and sense perception. All events are considered actual occasions of experience and “since experience is always valuable, events have intrinsic value. All things therefore have some intrinsic value either in themselves or in their constituent parts” (Birch and Cobb 1990, 141).24 Intrinsic value is to be found at all levels in the universe, although this does not imply that everything that exists has intrinsic value as a whole. Referring to Whitehead’s distinction among different types of organizational structure, aggregates do not bear intrinsic value as a whole, while organisms with a dominant route of occasions (e.g. something resembling a central nervous system) do. However, the constituent parts25 of any aggregate do have some degree of subjectivity and therefore they are not completely bare of all value.

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The ecological model is not egalitarian with respect to the moral standing of intrinsic values. In fact, intrinsic values can be differentiated and ranked according to the criterion of richness of experience or, as Cobb maintains, “strength of beauty.” Therefore organisms with a richer and more intense degree of experience bear a clearly higher intrinsic value.26

3.2. The Ecological Model Discussed While Birch and Cobb acknowledge that life is a value and that animals, having a high degree of intrinsic value, “are not mere means to human ends” (1990, 157), they do not agree that animals have an absolute right to life. They emphasize the comparatively low degree of anticipation, which entails that most animals do not fear death as humans do. They consider, for instance, the relatively low significance of singularity in the experience that one particular chicken might have compared to the possibility of experience of another chicken. Therefore they accept the replaceability argument for there being lesser degrees of intrinsic value, although they acknowledge vegetarianism as a vital ethical choice, given the conditions in which animals are in fact treated today. This argument has provoked a fierce reaction among several process and non-process thinkers, who see in Cobb and Birch’s position a reworking of the utilitarian concept of individuals as mere receptacles of value (Palmer 1998, 22). Palmer draws mainly on this aspect to show the inadequacy of process thought for environmental issues,27 since it cannot do justice to individuals. However, one can reject Palmer’s argument recalling the importance of singularity within a Whiteheadian framework (Muraca 2005a, 103) and the fine distinctions between so-called “democracies” (e.g. plants) and “monarchies” endowed with a central nervous system and therefore with a high-grade singularity (e.g. animals and humans). Menta, referring to Hartshorne, points out that while democratic organisms, including ecosystems, bear intrinsic value in a more aesthetic sense, monarchic organisms have moral standing tout court, since they show interests and needs as a whole (Menta 2004, 26-27). As such their intrinsic value is not something that can be simply “bargained” over in terms of quantity and intensity independently of the singular individual that achieves it. John Cobb himself has clearly pointed out that the main differences between process thought and Deep Ecology are both the consideration of individuals as non-reducible to the whole of which they are parts, and the nonegalitarian conception of intrinsic values (Cobb 2001).

3.3. Animal Rights As Daniel Dombrowski has shown, process thought can be extremely fecund also for the animal rights debate. Criticizing Birch and Cobb as well, Dombrowski rejects the replaceability argument as a “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” According to him, species are only abstract concepts and cannot be considered as a bank of replacements for individuals. Moreover, given the uncertainty about the future it does not seem very convincing to support any argument in favor of an elimination of present value in the name of a possible future value to replace it (Dombrowski 2001, 27ff; cfr. Deckers 2004). Dombrowski distinguishes between a “microscopic sentiency” S1, by which he refers to the subjective activity that can be found in less complex organisms like cells, and a sentiency per se S2 “found in human beings and other

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animals that are metaphysical monarchies by virtue of their central nervous system” (2001, 26). Given the binary choice between saving a human life and the life of, say, a bird, the human life ought to be saved; but in most non-extreme cases acknowledging different degrees of intrinsic value does not automatically entail that birds do not value their lives or do not have a right to live. Dombrowski refers to the argument from marginal cases to show that if we were to extend the concept of anticipation of death and the distinction between mentally developed and mentally undeveloped animals in order to justify taking animal life, we would inevitably fall into counterintuitive contradictions. Regardless of animals’ state of development, it is their sentience and hence their capacity to suffer that plays the major role in ethical decisions.

3.4. Life-centered Ethics Similarly, Jay McDaniel draws on the distinction between democracies and monarchies (McDaniel 1989, 77ff) and allows for distinguishing different degrees of intrinsic value, although no a priori ranking can be made once and for all. By acknowledging that it is humans who rank other creatures, McDaniel stresses that when a decision is inevitable humans need to rely cautiously on their own experience, while avoiding arrogance: “the need for judgment on the basis of degrees of value must be complemented by reverence for life,” knowing that God loves each creature on its own term and for its own sake (1989, 84). To say that intrinsic value is to be found everywhere does not imply automatically that everything has a moral standing. Intrinsic value involves prima facie an aesthetic consideration, which plays an important role for any reverent attitude towards life. However, not every organism or entity endowed with intrinsic value automatically deserves moral consideration, since “many more things have intrinsic value than have rights” (1989, 69). Animals are moral patients and therefore have rights, even though these rights are not absolute. Yet, the burden of proof for violating animals’ interests lies with human, who are not only moral patients but also moral agents (1989, 68).

3.5. Extrinsic Values Process scholars are actively involved in the current discussion within environmental ethics about the attribution of intrinsic value only to individuals, and even here only to humans or to humans and animals endowed with higher forms of mentality and sentience, or to extend this attribution to other categories like the ecosystem or biosphere (see Moses 2000). Most environmental ethicists tend to focus on intrinsic and inherent values as the basis of moral consideration; they thus risk the pitfall of moral impasses 28 connected with too wide an enlargement of intrinsic value in nature. However, one specific contribution that process thought can offer to the contemporary debate is precisely the emphasis on the ethical relevance of values other than intrinsic ones. Given that relations in a process framework are internal, intrinsic values cannot be considered in isolation. In fact, entities in virtue of the constitutive interrelatedness of all beings also bear so-called instrumental values. As Griffin points out, there are at least three ways of understanding value in Whitehead: “value of an individual for itself; value of the diverse individuals of the world for each other; value of the objective world which is a community derivative from the interrelations of its

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component individuals, and also necessary for the existence of each of these individuals” (RM 48; see Griffin 2001, 89). While the first refers to what we call intrinsic value, for the second concept Griffin prefers the term “extrinsic” over the more usual instrumental value. He defines extrinsic value follows: “While it is a subject enjoying experience, an actual occasion has intrinsic value, value for itself. When it becomes an object for others, it has extrinsic value, value for others” (Griffin 1993, 198). The extrinsic value cannot be considered as a mere external mean or instrument, which can be taken in possession, used or enjoyed by humans. Rather, an extrinsic value is the value for other things, “be they plants, animals, humans, or God” (2001, 202). According to Griffin, extrinsic values include companion value, instrumental value (in the narrow sense, such as a stick’s value to a bird in ferreting out bugs from a tree limb), aesthetic value, and medicinal value. Some forms of extrinsic value are such only to human beings, such as scientific value, monetary value, and symbolic (including moral and religious) value (2001, 193). Aesthetic value and medicinal value are not exclusive to humans, since animals as well seem to enjoy beauty in nature and at times use medicinal qualities of plants and roots for their wellbeing. This is a typical process assumption, which is all too often neglected by other approaches.29 Moreover, to the extrinsic value of anything belongs, according to Griffin, its ecological value, i.e. “its value for sustainability of other parts of the earth’s ecosystem” (Griffin 1992, 18). Ecological value and intrinsic value are often inversely related: Those species whose (individual) members have the least intrinsic value, such as bacteria, worms, trees, and plankton, have the greatest ecological value: without them, the whole ecosystem would collapse. By contrast, those species whose members have the greatest intrinsic value (meaning the richest experience and thereby the most value for themselves), such as whales, dolphins, and primates, have the least ecological value (Griffin 1993, 203). As a consequence, not only the intrinsic value of each single individual for itself ought to be taken into account, but also the relational factors as constitutive of its total value (Griffin 1992, 18). This conception allows for a high moral consideration of relational structures like ecosystems without considering them endowed with intrinsic value. Moreover, by focusing on the essential interrelatedness of all things it calls attention to the moral relevance of relations as prior to individuals, without risking a reduction of individuals to mere functional parts of wider wholes.

3.6. The Kalogenic Model In his work dedicated to postmodern process ontology, Frederick Ferré holds that, since the process of becoming of each actual entity gives rise to beauty, it can be termed a kalogenic process (literally “giving birth to beauty”) (Ferré 1996, 340). Like all process thinkers, Ferré emphasizes the essential importance of relations and explains the difference between internal and external relations in terms of degree of responsiveness to influences.30 On this account he maintains that instrumental values play a major role in any environmental ethics. Accordingly, Ferré proposes a more precise distinction between the different types of organizational structures with respect to the question of value in an ecological framework.

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Things like stones and mountains can be considered aggregate entities. These structures result from the aggregation of many different elements, which are for the main part externally related among them and to their surrounding (1996, 326). They do not have an aim as a whole, i.e. no aggregate as a whole has either experience or value, or is endowed with subjectivity of any sort. Nevertheless aggregates are not completely bare of intrinsic value, which can be found in their constituent parts, and can very well bear dramatically relevant instrumental values. Systematic entities, like ecosystems, are entities that bear a much higher internal coherence than mere aggregates. A system is intended as having “a whole relative (stochastic) stability over time;” it has an intrinsic property of resiliency that “is not simply attributed, but found” (1996, 327). Systems are wholes with internally related parts (1996, 331). Referring to Golley, Ferré asserts that an ecosystem can be considered as a “weak whole,” which is responsive both to its environments and to the delicate interactions among its own components. Moreover, it is a dynamic structure endowed with a reciprocal relation to its environment and not merely responding to it (1996, 314). Systematic entities are somehow teleological since they have a tendency to “continuous self-correction toward the maintenance of a central value” (1996, 328). Ecosystems are therefore “stochastically self-determining resilient systematic entities.” Species do not seem to be entities at first, since they do not act in any sense, not even in the sense in which we might say that an ecosystem is “active.” Neither do they have interests of their own. Ferré argues that species seem to be more mental than empirical. He calls them formal entities with a temporal development. Species are temporal entities and can therefore be endangered or disappear. Species are ultimately the result of (and seem to be as well the condition for) historical processes of growing complexity: “all individuals carry more ‘load’ (more possibilities for genetic expression) than is needed for the individual” (1996, 330). As some ecologists maintain, species can be considered as “historical individuals” and therefore have a moral standing. Organic entities are living systems “capable of novelty, improvisation, evolution, growth—in a word, creativity” (1996, 331) and are constituted by tight internal relations among one another. However, the degrees of novelty and tightness of bond between the parts are very different depending on the level of complexity achieved. Persons are intended by Ferré not in Whitehead’s technical sense of a serially ordered society, which could as well be a cell or even a molecule. While the latter are termed by Ferré compound entities, the term person refers only to higher organisms, endowed with the capacity of thought and symbolism. As he writes, “on Earth only humans are persons” (Ferré 2001, 141). From this account of the differentiation among various structures Ferré deduces the ethical significance for axiology as well as for deontology. While organisms and persons possess intrinsic value, aggregates and systemic entities as well as species are ethically relevant for their instrumental values, which does not imply that they have a lower moral standing. Addressing biodiversity Ferré argues that in spite of its lack of intrinsic value, “it can be a compelling instrumental value which, multiplied by indefinitely large numbers of kalogenic individuals, can outweigh the intrinsic value of individual organisms” (1996, 138). Ferré therefore proposes three maxims of ethical behavior ranked according to the different values that are at stake. (1) First, do no harm. For, all other things being equal, there is no

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reason for destroying even an aggregate; it does not have intrinsic value as a whole, but is constituted by processes endowed with intrinsic value and deserves at least our appreciation. (2) Second, protect existing good. This maxim applies particularly to the natural world threatened by our behavior. (3) Third, create new good. This maxim applies to the human cultural world and its great value with respect to the possibility of richness of experience.31

3.7. Ecofeminist Process Theologies Although it is impossible to do justice here to this complex field, I will briefly outline three main approaches that are complemented by Carol P. Christ’s own entry in this volume. Whitehead’s thought can offer a remarkable basis for the development of ecofeminist’s perspectives and, as Nancy Howell clearly shows, especially “for a feminist theory of relations” (Howell 1988, 78), provided that the hierarchical aspects of his philosophy are criticized and modified according to feminist post-patriarchal concerns. Howell’s criticisms address the interpretation of Whitehead’s cosmology offered by the “ecological model,” which allows for hierarchy among different degrees of intrinsic values and therefore introduces a ranking among creatures. According to Howell, “from the perspective of feminist consciousness, this hierarchy seems unlikely to effect the liberation of life that Cobb and Birch envision for nature,” since it risks reproducing the patriarchal pyramid of domination (1988, 85-86).32 Moreover Howell emphasizes Whitehead’s refusal to draw sharp lines of distinction between living and non-living, and among living beings. On this account she claims the relevant contribution of process thought for a framework that takes primate culture seriously, also in a theological perspective. Referring to the debate between holism and reductionism, Sallie Mcfague maintains that reductionism does not do justice to individuals and their difference. In fact, the reduction of the world as “obviously rich, diverse, intricate, interrelated and interdependent” to its smallest constituents does not take differences into account and seems to be heavily opposite to our common sense (Mcfague 1993, 93). While reductionism can by no means include any holistic perspective, a holistic metaphysics based on process thought can account for both the reductionistic methods of research and the recognition of “wholes” as complex interrelated dynamic structures. A holistic approach does not necessarily have to be a denial of difference. Rather, as is the case in a process feminist approach, holism refers essentially to differences and plurality. The philosophy of organism can respond to the need of a holistic metaphysic without underestimating the individuals, as Mcfague points out: “the organic model […] acknowledges the well-being of both the whole and the parts” (1993, 96). Moreover, Mcfague draws on the epistemological criticism developed by Kuhn as well as by Sandra Harding about the historicity of worldviews and their connection to mainstream dominant models, in order to develop viable frameworks for a theology aware of the environmental crisis. Since all attempts to speak of reality are in the end metaphorical and performative in their intimate connection to power, the metaphors we choose do have a dramatic impact on our visions and behavior. Referring to Whitehead’s and Hartshorne’s theology, she proposes the metaphor of the world as the Body of God.

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Among process feminist scholars, Catherine Keller is one of the few who have drawn on Whitehead’s philosophy of organism stressing its connection with chaos theory and showing its relevance for ecology as well as theology (Keller 2003). By focusing on Whitehead’s concept of an “entirely living nexus” as a non-social nexus, Keller shows the importance of the chaotic element as the origin of life, a vibrating pulsation that interrupts continuity while at the same time re-building it (Keller 2001).33 On the edge of encounter between process thought and poststructuralism, Keller reconstructs the increasing phobia of chaos rooted in Western tradition, the fear of the “tehomic” as it is called in Genesis, a “deep” that has to be mastered and put under control, since “chaos or tehom is that which resists a status quo order.” Life on the edge of chaos becomes for Keller a locus not only for ecological claims but also for a complex criticism of power and structures of domination.

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Notes 1

While this tendency can be observed along the whole history of the discipline, a quite decisive move in this direction occurred, according to McIntosh, after World War II, with the attempt to base ecology on stronger mathematical methods as well as on higher theoretical generalizations (McIntosh 1985, 242ff.). 2 According to Ott, ecology in a strict sense refers only to a subfield of biology and is therefore one of the sciences. Ecology is concerned with “the identification of matters of fact and ecosystemic relations as well as with mathematical modeling of ecosystems and the elaboration of theories” (Ott 1999, 2; my translation). Hence it is wrong to consider environmental claims as belonging to the specific field of ecology. Ott aims at a more precise differentiation of the two fields. However, it seems hard to deny that the historical discourse about ecology has been enmeshed with ethical consideration. In this article I will not engage in this particular debate but will refer simply to the historically established discourse and the contribution of Process philosophy and theology to it. 3 The application of system theory to ecosystem analysis offers a good example of this on-going debate. 4 For a detailed presentation of this debate see McIntosh 1985, especially Chapter 7. 5 For Whitehead this is a narrow, overly abstract perspective: “For us the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon” (CN 29). 6 Whitehead writes: “The aboriginal stuff, or material, from which a materialistic philosophy starts is incapable of evolution. […] There is nothing to evolve, because one set of external relations is as good as any other set of external relations” (SMW 107). 7 Whitehead’s “organism” is not identical with a biological body even if it includes it among its forms. For an animal body presents a specific organizational structure endowed with hierarchical functions that are not necessary characteristics of an “organism” tout court. 8 According to Whitehead’s definition, all actual entities are actual occasions of experience, except God. But keeping this exception in mind, one can take both term as synonyms. 9 Experience refers here to the grasping of a plurality of elements into a new creative unity, and not merely to sense perception. Hence experience does not necessarily require any cognitive or conscious activity, and achieves both only at very high level of complexity. 10 As David Griffin points out, “the causal influence of the past upon the present is in-fluence, a real in-flowing, which affects the present experience internally” (Griffin 1993, 197). 11 Whitehead writes: “every particular actual thing lays upon the universe the obligation of conforming to it” (S 39). 12 Griffin suggests considering Whitehead’s system as a panexperientialism with organizational duality: for while Whitehead does overcome Cartesian dualism, he still differentiates between body and soul, due to their different degrees of freedom and their different organizational structure (Griffin 2001, 6). 13 Assertions such as “[i]t seems as though a certain similarity were a favourable condition for endurance” (SMW 109) brings Whitehead even closer to contemporary work that applies chaos theory to biology and ecology. 14 Cf. The Function of Reason: if survival in the sense of enduring through time were the only aim attained by organisms, then a rock would be a champion in the struggle (5). 15 A route of entirely living nexus is a “living person.” 16 Life is neither a defining characteristic of a whole society nor can it apply to a single occasion (AI 207). Only a nexus can be living or non-living according to the degree of novelty available to it. Accordingly, a whole society can be termed “living” only if among the nexus constituting it are ‘regnant’ (PR 103).

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Therefore, life is the necessary condition for the development of a higher degree of mentality (e.g. consciousness) endowed with even more capacity for novelty: “Mental experience is the organ of novelty, the urge beyond” (FR 33). While in the lowest forms mental activity is extremely irrelevant and tends to the conformal reproduction of stable order, more complex forms contain “a factor of anarchy” (FR 33) that lets novelty emerge. 18 In living societies, “this interplay takes the form of robbery. […] It is at this point that with life moral acute. The robber requires justification” (PR 105). 19 “The parts of the body are really portions of the environment of the total bodily event, but so related that their mutual aspects, each in the other, are peculiarly effective in modifying the pattern of either. […] Thus the body is a portion of the environment for the part and the part is a portion of the environment for the body” (SMW 149) 20 “The concrete enduring entities are organisms, so that the plan of the whole influences the very characters of the various subordinate organisms which enter into it” (SMW 79). 21 “Self-organization processes in far-from-equilibrium conditions correspond to a delicate interplay between chance and necessity, between fluctuations and deterministic laws” (Prigogine and Stengers 1984, 176). Cf. Whitehead: “we shall conceive each primordial element as a vibratory ebb and low of an underlying energy, or activity” (SMW 35). 22 The principle of novelty does not emerge all of a sudden at a certain level of complexity without being at all present before. On the contrary, according to Whitehead, novelty, self-realization and a flicker of freedom are present all the way down, even if in a nearly negligible form below the threshold of relevance. 23 “Event thinking must recognize the existence of relatively enduring ‘substantial objects’ and undertake to explain them in terms of patterns of interconnectedness among events” (Birch and Cobb 1990, 86). 24 However, it is important to notice that each actual entity is a value because it is the outcome of a process of valuation, which alone can properly explain the advance into novelty. Indeed this process of valuation is describable in terms of experience in the mode of causal efficacy as a taking account of (SMW 69): experience is “always valuable” precisely because it is this process of valuation itself, i.e. the grasping of past influences, the (evaluative) selection among them, the (evaluative) consideration of new possibilities charged with value by means of God’s envisagement and the final self-realization in a new subjective form. 25 Whitehead’s term “members” suggests more precisely an acknowledgement of their being active self-shaping entities. In a strict sense of the term actual entities are not parts, into which a whole could be divided. This would reproduce the materialistic framework of divisible matter spatially extended. 26 As David Griffin points out: “We can and should think in terms of degrees of intrinsic value: bacteria have more intrinsic value than molecules, cats have more than bacteria, humans and apes have more than cats” (Griffin 1992, 17). 27 Palmer asserts that process ethics is a maximizing ethical system, and that “the ultimate aim of ethical behavior is to produce the greatest possible value for the consequent nature of God” (Palmer 1998, 15). She writes: “What matters is the generation of rich experience for God. It is not the source of value which is significant, but the quality and quantity” (1998, 25). For a criticism of Palmer and a more detailed discussion of the topic, see the Forum on PS 2004. 28 Considering instrumental values as secondary with respect to the moral relevance of intrinsic values leads to the extreme consequence that if we acknowledge moral standing to collective entities like biosphere or ecosystems, we must consider them as endowed with intrinsic value as well. This seems to be counterintuitive, unless we find a definition of intrinsic value different from the concept of being an end in oneself, valuing for oneself, being a valuer. How can an ecosystem “value” itself and for itself? To assert that ecosystems have value independently of human valuation does not necessarily require the attribution of intrinsic value to them, if one develops a complex concept of instrumental value that goes beyond the idea of a mere mean to (human) ends. 29 Referring to Naess’ Deep Ecology, Griffin calls attention to the difference between his use of the term intrinsic value and Naess’ use of the term inherent value. For Griffin intrinsic value is

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to be contrasted with the value for others; for Deep Ecologists “the inherent value of something […] stands in contrast solely with its (perceived) value for human beings” and their purposes (Griffin, 1993, 202). In this narrow understanding, one respects or saves something either for its own sake or for our sake as human beings. 30 A pencil and the desk on which its lies can be said to have mainly external relations because their reciprocal influence is relatively low, even though not absent. 31 The latter serves Ferré as an argument against the universal claim of ethical vegetarianism (Ferré 2001, 277). 32 Howell proposes to assess the value referring not to the consequent nature of God, as Birch and Cobb do, but from the perspective of the primordial nature. This implies that the value of each being does not depend on the actually achieved intensity and richness of experience that is prehended by God in the consequent nature. Rather, in the primordial nature, “God’s aim is toward the richest possible experience for each moment. At that moment, each event is related to God as a unique instance of value” (Howell 1988, 86). 33 “Chaos does not display mere disorder. Rather, it reveals an order in nature too complex to have been understood in terms of modern deterministic materialism. Probabilistic chaos refers to nonlinear patterns of unpredictable, asymmetrical dynamics in nature” (Keller 2001).

Ecofeminism: Women, Nature, Dualism and Process-Relational Philosophy Carol P. Christ

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Rachel Carson whose book The Silent Spring (1962),1 inspired the environmental movement, has been embraced by ecofeminists for her conviction that it is necessary to love the natural world as well as to understand it. According to Carolyn Merchant, author of The Death of Nature, the “term ecofeminisme was coined by the French writer Francoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 to represent women’s potential for bringing about an ecological revolution to ensure human survival on the planet.”2 In her dedication to the ecofeminist anthology Reweaving the World, Grace Paley spoke of a “revolutionary understanding we call feminist and ecological, in which we share the world with all creatures and all living things and know their stories as our own.”3 Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein define ecofeminism as encompassing “both the diverse range of women’s efforts to save the Earth and the transformations of feminism in the West that have resulted from the new view of women and nature.”4 I define ecofeminism as desire and activism based on an alternative worldview in which women and nature are re-valued in a renewed vision of humanity embodied and embedded in the web of life. Ecofeminism overlaps to a great degree with the spiritual movement known as Goddess feminism, a widespread grassroots movement that re-values women and nature using symbols of Goddesses. Most Goddess feminists are ecofeminists, but not all ecofeminists are Goddess feminists. Starhawk, Charlene Spretnak, Carol P. Christ, Mary Daly, and Alice Walker are Goddess ecofeminists.5 Carol Adams, Sallie Mcfague, and Rosemary Radford Ruether have articulated a Christian ecofeminism, while Lynn Gottlieb has explored Jewish ecofeminism.6 Secular ecofeminists include Carolyn Merchant, Ynestra King, Petra Kelly, and Grace Paley.7 Vandana Shiva speaks for growing numbers of women in Africa and Asia whose lives have been negatively affected by Western “maldevelopment” projects.8 In the introduction to Reweaving the World, Diamond and Orenstein identify two philosophical insights that have inspired ecofeminists. The first is that “the Earth is sacred unto itself, that her forests, rivers, and different creatures have intrinsic value.” The second is that “because human life is dependent on the Earth, our fates are intertwined.” They suggest that these insights come together in “the perspective of indigenous peoples, whose connection to native lands is essential to their being and identity” leading to the conclusion that “it is both true that the Earth has intrinsic value and that we are also dependent on her.”9 Ecofeminists arrived independently at many elements of the worldview developed by processrelational10 philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. From the standpoint

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Adjunct Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies and Director of Ariadne Institute; www.goddessariadne.org; [email protected].

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of ecology, the most important of these is the insight that all individuals including human beings are interdependent in the web of life.

1. Ecofeminism: Roots and Stakes Many ecofeminists trace the roots of the ecological crisis to habits of dualistic thinking that arose in classical Greece.11 Platonic dualism separated mind and matter, spirit and nature, soul and body, reason and emotion, changelessness and change. It asserted that mind, spirit, soul, and reason were transcendent and unchanging, while matter, nature, body, and emotion were immanent and changing. It was stated that the rational soul of “man” could rise above the changing world of body and nature in order to commune with timeless and unchanging truth. As feminists noticed, Platonic dualism identified “man” with mind, spirit, soul, reason, and transcendence, while “woman” was identified with matter, nature, body, emotion, and change. Thus it seemed logical that “man” should rule over “woman” and “nature.” This view was expressed in Christian and Jewish theologies that proposed that man’s true home was not the changing world of body and nature but a transcendent realm called heaven. It was articulated in a different way in the so-called modern scientific worldview which stated that nature was “mere matter” to be shaped by the rational will of technological man. The view that nature was mere matter to be controlled by man was fundamental in the development of both capitalism and socialism. Modern feminism began with the radical assertion that the “rights of man” should be extended to women.12 Since the “rights of man” were said to include right to control nature, this “right” could logically be claimed to be woman’s as well. Asserting that female intelligence was fully equal to male intelligence, some liberal and socialist feminists argued or assumed that women are just as capable as men of “rising above” the “limitations” of the body and nature and looked to science and technology to “free” women from the “bonds” of motherhood. Others— ecofeminists and Goddess feminists among them—questioned the terms in which the debate had been framed. They asked whether the goal of human life—male or female—should be to rise above the body or to separate from and control nature. In questioning entrenched dualisms, ecofeminists were challenging the foundations of Western thought. In her ground-breaking visionary ecofeminist prose poem and philosophical treatise Woman and Nature,13 Susan Griffin documents the ways in which woman and nature have been viewed together as “other” to the rational male ego. Arguments for the subordination and control of women and nature by theologians, philosophers, witch-hunters, scientists, and technocrats are couched in chillingly similar language. While agreeing with other feminists that women are as intelligent as men, Griffin asks us to consider what both women and men have lost in denying the human connection to the natural world. She suggests that the notion that man can rise above the body and the natural world is a fiction that can only be maintained by denying his own body and mortality. In the context of denial, man’s attitudes toward woman and nature become tinged with fear and anger, producing violence. As Griffin shows, women, defined as closer to nature,

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retain a greater sense of their connection to it than men, but at the same time are taught to view their connection to nature as a sign of their inferiority. In an astonishing reversal, Griffin suggests that women can turn dualistic traditions against themselves, by re-imagining “this earth” as “my sister” in suffering, survival, and resistance. This earth is my sister; I love her daily grace, her silent daring, and how loved I am how we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty, and I do not forget: what she is to me, what I am to her (Griffin 1978, 219). Griffin’s prose becomes a love poem between woman and earth, articulating deep feelings for the earth that women have been taught to suppress because all adults know that the earth is dead matter. Rejecting this, Griffin proposes that women can gain strength by affirming their deep feelings of connection to nature, because nature, like women, is not only victim, but also survivor. Griffin is drawn to images of long-suppressed Goddesses as she searches for words to express her sense of the sacredness of the female body and the earth body, but for the most part hers is a mysticism celebrating the connection of body and earth. In her words written in prose poetry that evokes experience, Griffin re-embodies and reconfigures Western philosophy. We know ourselves to be made from this earth. We know this earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. Nature weeping. Nature speaking of nature to nature (Griffin 1978, 226). She challenges the clear separation between humanity and nature that has been fundamental in Western thought, writing instead: “we are nature.” We might think that these words make no sense, because nature and humans are different things. Or on the other hand, we might think that Griffin is simply repeating the widely held belief that women are less rational and therefore closer to nature than men. But this would be to misread, for she continues, “We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature.” Here she is saying that the capacities for scientific (and other forms of) observation and philosophical thinking (and its categories) arise within nature. Yet, she suggests, scientific and philosophical thinking without emotion or feeling are partial, for we are also “Nature weeping.” Should we dismiss her words as poetic excess, or should we read them as they are intended: as a serious and embodied philosophical statement? Griffin and other ecofeminists are sometimes accused of inscribing a “new essentialism” in which women and nature are valued, while men are not. But this is to misread, for ecofeminism understands that men too are part of nature. If nature is made unfit for human life, no man will survive. Thus it is incumbent on men to criticize dualistic traditions from which they have benefited at the cost of denying their emotions, their bodies, and their own connections to nature. Yet even if it is made clear that the ecofeminist view includes men, some would object that ecofeminism presents a “totalizing” (universal or ontological) view that is unwarranted; they might argue that women and men should be free to deny the body if they wish or to choose culture over nature. Ultimately these differences are differences in worldviews, though this is not always recognized. If we really are embodied and interdependent in the web of life, then to

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“choose” to ignore our bodies and our connection to nature is to choose alienation and selfdestruction.

2. Ecofeminism and Process-Relational Philosophy I have found process-relational philosophy extremely helpful in the articulation, clarification, and extension of the ecofeminist worldview.14 All too often ecofeminist ideas are dismissed as misguided, confused, or overly emotional without being fully understood. Process-relational philosophy can help to show that ecofeminist insights cohere in worldview that provides a compelling alternative to traditional and modern Western worldviews. Greater familiarity with ecofeminist work could help process-relational philosophers to recognize the roles played by androcentrism and misogyny in the development of the dualisms at the root of Western philosophies. Understanding this could provide impetus for process-relational philosophers to articulate the feminist implications of their own efforts to transform dualistic thinking. However, for this change to occur, traditional process-relational thinkers also must reflect upon the ways in which the dualism of mind and body, reason and emotion, have affected the (sometimes disembodied, emotionless) form in which process-relational philosophy is written. From the standpoint of ecology, the most important insights shared by ecofeminists and process-relational philosophers are the following: (1) all individuals are both intelligent and embodied; (2) all individuals are internally related to other individuals; (3) all individuals are interdependent in the web of life; (4) life in a finite and interdependent world is inherently ambiguous and thus there is no guarantee that everything will work out for the best; (5) ethics arise out of the web of life, out of deep feelings of connection to other individuals. Each of these ideas can be found in both ecofeminism and process-relational philosophy. Rather than comparing and contrasting them, I will instead address their shared concerns from the perspective of a synthesis of the two that I call a feminist process-relational paradigm. All individuals are intelligent and embodied. From a feminist process-relational point of view all individuals in the universe from the smallest particle of an atom to Goddess/God15 are both intelligent and embodied.16 This is not to say that the particles of an atom have the same degree of consciousness or awareness as dogs, human beings, or Goddess/God. All individuals are intelligent in the more limited sense of having (in vastly different degrees) the ability to respond to and thus to change their environment. From a feminist process-relational point of view, the world is filled with intelligence, and the evolutionary process is testimony to the intelligence of all the individuals that have co-created the universe as we know it. Consider the ants and anthills. While creationism attributes the creation of anthills to divine plan and modern science attributes it to blind “instinct,” a feminist process-relational perspective insists that at some point in time the ancestors of contemporary ants exercised their intelligence and learned to work together to create anthills. Today this ability may be partly or completely encoded in their genes, but at some point, it was not. When we think of all living beings as in some sense intelligent, it is no longer possible to think of intelligence and embodiment or intellect and nature as polar opposites as we have been taught to do since the time of Plato. Intelligence is

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found throughout all of nature and in every body. Intelligence is the way bodies relate to each other and co-create the world. If all individuals in the world are intelligent and embodied, then when we must recognize that when we spray a pesticide on an ant colony, we are taking the lives of intelligent beings. As we develop greater respect for other-than-human forms of life, it becomes more and more difficult to treat them as mere means to our ends. While Whitehead did not speak of the divinity as having a body, Hartshorne (following Plato in the Timaeus) boldly insisted that the world is the body of God. This insight is shared by many Goddess ecofeminists who experience the presence of the divine in human and other-thanhuman bodies and in the earth or cosmos as a whole. The notion that the world is the divine body is often understood in terms of monism. Monism asserts that there is only one real individual in the world—the divinity. All other individuals are simply enactments of a divine drama or dance. Process-relational philosophy rejects this understanding, insisting that the individuals that make up the divine body have real existence. That is to say, human beings, ants, cells, and particles of atoms are real individuals with real choices to make; they are not simply the manifestation of the divine will. How can we be real individuals and part of the divine body? Hartshorne uses the analogy of the human body. Although the human body functions as a unit, it is also made up of discrete individuals. We do not tell the cells in our stomachs how to digest our food, nor do we tell the cells of our blood how to fight infection. The cells of our body exist both as individuals and as parts of a larger whole. It must be something like this with the individuals in the world that make up the body of Goddess/God. Though Hartshorne does not use the metaphor of birth to explicate his understanding of the world as the body of God, I find it appropriate. A child carries aspects of its parents’ and other ancestors’ genetic code in its DNA and cells from its mother’s body in its blood. It is nurtured in its mother’s body and is born through it, yet it becomes an individual. Neither is exact but together the analogies of cell to body and child to mother are suggestive of the relation of the world to Goddess/God. The philosophical concept used to explain the relation of the divinity to the world in processrelational philosophy is panentheism. From pan, meaning all, en, meaning in, and theos, referring to divinity, panentheism means that “all” is “in” “Goddess/God.” For Whitehead this meant that the divinity relates internally (i.e. in a way that adds to and changes divinity) to the world and every individual in it with perfect understanding, remembering it for ever. Everything in the world enters into the eternal memory of divinity. But if the world is the body of Goddess/God, then panentheism can also be understood to mean that Goddess/God is in the world, for all bodies are part of the divine body. As we begin to see the world as the body of Goddess/God, teeming with intelligent life, then we must question western culture’s dominant view that nature is mere matter to be manipulated to human ends. All individuals are internally related to other individuals. We are constituted by our relationships. We are not billiard balls bumping into each other without really affecting each other. Nor are we separate individuals who are best off contemplating God or eternal truths in splendid isolation. We take the other into ourselves and we are changed. This is not to say that we are nothing but the sum of our relationships. We are shaped and changed by every individual with whom we enter into relationship, consciously or unconsciously. Yet we also change every individual who enters into relationship with us consciously or unconsciously. We know that

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children’s lives are shaped by the love they are given and the cruelty that is visited upon them. But parents too are changed by their children, as every parent knows. Internal relationships are shaped by the dance of give and take and give again. It is sometimes feared that a philosophy that focuses on relationship makes us all into nurturers and thus dependent upon others to give meaning to our lives. But this is to distort the meaning of relationship. If relationship is fundamental, then nurturing is of course fundamental to life, for we all need help to grow and thrive. But to be in relationship is not to be merely passive. Relationship involves both activity and passivity. Not to be active or assertive as well as passive and accepting is not to be fully in relationship. One of the ways process-relational philosophers explain the internality of relationship is through the notion of sympathy. From syn (“with”) and pathos (“passion”), sympathy is feeling with, or feeling the feelings of others—both joy and sorrow. Because process-relational philosophy understands that we are constituted by internal relationships, it also asserts that we can feel the feelings of others, not exactly as the other person feels their own feelings, but closely enough that it makes sense to say we feel their feelings. Of course there are degrees. But if we recognize all individuals in the world as relational beings, then we must also recognize that we can enter into relationships with them—on different levels, of course. And if we begin to feel the feelings of animals and plants and even minerals,17 then we will take a very different view when contemplating their destruction. In a feminist process-relational paradigm, Goddess/God is understood to be the most relational of all relational beings. Whereas our ability to enter into the feelings of others is never complete, Goddess/God feels the feelings of every individual in the universe accurately. Goddess/God is not (only) a passive listener; Goddess/God enters deeply into our lives and by feeling our feelings and thus transforms them. Goddess/God inspires18 us to enter more deeply into life and relationship, to feel the feelings of as many others as possible, and to live in as much harmony as is possible with all beings in the web of life. Recognizing that the world is cocreated in relationship can help us to see how critical the human effort to reverse the humanlycreated ecological crisis is. All individuals are interdependent in the web of life. This follows from the notion that relationships are internal. We really are constituted by our relationships. This is true in a physical sense. We are also constituted by the food we eat. It is not only that we need to eat to live. Though we do not generally think about it, when we eat a vegetable, we not only consume the vegetable itself, but we take in the minerals of the soil and water the vegetable was grown in. If the vegetable was grown near a mountainside, then when I eat it, I am literally eating part of the mountain. If poisonous rain from the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl fell on the mountain, I (along with birds and tortoises) may also be eating radioactive particles from Chernobyl. When we live fully in our bodies and stay in one location long enough to get to know it, we can become connected to place in profound ways. For the Aboriginal Australian people, specific places in the landscape evoke specific songs that tell stories of things that happened in that place. At a particular place an Aboriginal person will sing a special song, but will not necessarily sing it in any other place because the song belongs in the landscape.19 This suggests

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that our bodies do not need to end at the edges of our flesh. When we are connected to place, our bodies expand to include the landscape. And when this is so, there is also a sense in which destruction of a familiar landscape is like cutting off an arm or a leg. If we all allowed the boundaries of our bodies to be extended into the places where we live and the places we love, we would be forced to protest their destruction. Life is inherently ambiguous and there is no guarantee that everything will turn out for the best. In an interdependent world, life is inherently ambiguous because the world is co-created by all of the individuals in it. There are many different individuals in the world and each is affected by the actions of others. While we sometimes consciously choose the effects we hope to have on our world, most of our actions are unconscious and habitual. Thus we usually do not think about all of the consequences of our actions. Even when our choices are conscious, it is impossible to know their effects on every other individual in our world. When something out of the ordinary happens in our lives, especially unexpected suffering, we are often told by wellmeaning friends that “it was meant to be” or that “everything happens for the best.” But in fact this could only be true if a single intelligent, good, and omnipotent Creator is responsible for everything that happens in the world. If the world is genuinely co-created by all of the individuals in it and if those individuals act with less than full knowledge of the consequences of their actions, then it is impossible that everything in the world is meant to be or happens for the best. Sometimes we do something knowing that it will harm others. Much of the time we don’t think but simply act in habitual ways. Yet even when we do think before we act, it is not possible to know all the consequences of the choices we make. In an interdependent world, harm is done, knowingly and unknowingly. To imagine that all that happens is somehow the will of Goddess/God is to deny that individuals actually do have the capacity to affect, to cocreate, the world. Yet there is great resistance to accepting responsibility for our own power as co-creators of the world. The great appeal of religious fundamentalisms is that they allow us to maintain the belief that someone else is in control. If a good God really is in control of everything that happens and if everything really does happen according to his plan, then we don’t have to worry too much about what we are doing. If we go to war, then war must be part of God’s plan. If we kill people in war, that too must have been part of divine plan. If we destroy the environment with bombs, that too must have happened for the best. Perhaps all this destruction is leading up to a great conflagration in which the wheat will be separated from the chaff, as Scripture tells us. Yet if we accept our power to co-create and shape the world, then we must also acknowledge our power to destroy life. When we do that, we also recognize the importance of our acts and failures to act Ethics arise out of deep feelings of connection with other individuals in the web of life. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam tell us that the source of ethics is the command of a God who exists beyond the world. In contrast, feminist process-relational philosophies suggest that the source of ethics can be found within the world. Ethics arise out of deep feelings of connection with other beings in the web of life.20 This is possible because the nature of existence is profoundly relational and social. When we feel the feelings of others in a profound way, it follows that we wish the best for them: we wish their joy to be increased and their suffering to

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be diminished. When we feel the feelings of the greatest number of other individuals as we can, we profoundly desire a world in which each of them and the largest possible number of other individuals can experience the greatest joy and satisfaction. An ethics grounded in feeling the feelings of others will always be an ethics of ambiguity. Where there is no transcendent source to tell us what to do, we must make decisions ourselves. Yet it is not possible to live in a relational and independent world without doing some harm to others. At minimum, we must eat. We do not have to eat animals, but even if we are vegans, we still must take the lives of plants in order to survive. Most of us also would choose to create some form of shelter against the cold and this too often involves destroying life. Yet we do not really need all of the things our cultures have told us we need. If we learned to take only what we need, we would live in a very different world.21 Our ethics choices are also ambiguous because it is impossible to foresee all of the consequences of our actions, as discussed above. Even if we accept that an ethics rooted in deep feelings for all individuals in the web of life must inevitably be ambiguous, we are still left with the problem of explaining why it is that so many of us make so many choices that are inconsistent with feeling the feelings of large numbers of others in a profound way. Why do we continue to consume and pollute even when we know that our so-called prosperity is predicated upon the suffering of others and the pollution of the environment? Are we inherently selfish? I believe that human nature and all of nature is fundamentally relational rather than selfishly individualistic. I agree with Elisabet Sahtouris who in her book Gaia: Human Journey from Chaos to Cosmos (1989) proposed that co-operation rather than competition is the fundamental principle of the evolutionary process. Successful species do not, she argued, for the most part succeed by wiping out the competition, but rather by finding ways to co-operate with other species in sharing the resources, that is by finding a symbiotic niche within the web of life. To say that relationality and co-operation are the fundamental building blocks of all life, is to say that human or other beings are not naturally selfish but rather are naturally relational or social. No species would survive if the tendency to care for its own young were not in some sense natural to it. Still, it is a long step from caring for one’s own young to caring for all of one’s own kind, and a much longer one to caring for all sentient beings. Yet there have been many instances of individuals from one species caring for and nurturing individuals of another. I am thinking of a dog named Tseri who lived in Mochlos, Crete, who happily nursed and groomed abandoned kittens along with her own puppies, as well as of the first human woman who took a motherless animal and nursed it at her own breast. The capacity to care for others not of one’s kind is a possibility to be found within the inherently relational and social nature of life. Still, experience tells us that most individuals are more likely to care for their own offspring and their own kind first and only if they have time or if there is something in it for them to care for others who are not like them. So how do we move from care for those near and dear to us to care for the world? I suggest that we consider the role of symbols in shaping our feelings. It may or may not be natural or necessary for us to extend our capacity to feel the feelings of others from those closest to us to all beings in the web of life, but it is a capacity that exists within the web of life. We can nurture and develop this capacity or cut it off. I believe it is the role of culture and in particular of cultural symbols to select and shape, to encourage or discourage the

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capacities that exist within us and within life. The symbol systems of modern cultures celebrate violence, destruction, and domination. We will need different symbol systems if we hope to create a different world. The five elements of the ecofeminist process-relational worldview that I have discussed here provide a foundation that can ground the environmental ethic needed if we are to preserve and enhance the possibilities of diverse and abundant life on Earth. It is my hope that ecofeminists and process-relational philosophers will learn from each other and will assist each other in transforming their related visions into a shared course of action.

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See also Rachel Carson 1965. See Irene Diamond and Gloria Orenstein 1990, 100. 3 Diamond and Orenstein, iii. 4 Diamond and Orenstein, ix. 5 See Starhawk 2004; Capra and Spretnak 1984; Christ 1998; Daly 1984; Walker 1991. 6 See Adams 1994; Mcfague 1993; Ruether 1992, 1996; and Gottlieb 1995. 7 See Merchant, 1980; King 1984; Kelly 1984. 8 See Shiva, 1988. 9 Diamond and Orenstein, xi-xii. While a great deal of ink has been spent by ecologists debating whether the value of other-than-human individuals is absolutely intrinsic or whether they are of value because of their contribution either to human life or to the whole web of life, I find it characteristic of ecofeminist thinking to consider the wisdom in embracing both positions. I would not call this “sloppy” thinking but rather would interpret it as a search for a more holistic perspective. In this case, I would argue that all individuals (human and other-than-human) do have intrinsic value and that all individuals with intrinsic value must use other individuals with intrinsic value to one degree or another in order to survive. However, when the intrinsic value of “used” individuals is recognized, ethical guidelines such as “take only what you need” and “approach the taking of life with great restraint” (see Rebirth, 167-70) are set within a context that encourages doing as little harm to other individuals in the web of life as possible and also within a context in which the possibility of being used as food for other carnivores or of being killed by a volcanic eruption can be understood as part of the give-and-take of the life process. 10 I am indebted Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki for proposing that process philosophy be renamed process-relational philosophy to call attention to the importance of relationship as well as change in it. In She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World (2003), I called for a feminist process paradigm; now I prefer to speak of a feminist process-relational paradigm. 11 See Ruether, 1979. 12 See Wollstonecraft 1975 [1792]. 13 Found in Griffin, 1978. I focus on Woman and Nature not only because it has been influential in shaping ecofeminist philosophy, but also because I view it as the most profound work of the contemporary feminist movement. 14 In my She Who Changes, I show how process-relational philosophy can be used to articulate and expand feminist theological and theological worldviews. I argue that in challenging classical dualisms and in affirming changing life, process-relational philosophies as developed by Whitehead and Hartshorne are implicitly feminist. 15 “Goddess/God” is the term I use for the divinity in order to stress that that the divinity to which I refer is neither the exclusively male “God” of the monotheistic traditions, nor the transcendent and not immanent “God” of classical theism. 16 Hartshorne (but not Whitehead) insists that the world is the body of God, as I discuss below. 17 In process thought, a plant is not an individual but a society of individuals, so our relationship is not with the plant but with the cells of the plant; our relation with minerals such as rocks or mountains is with the atoms and particles of atoms that are found within them. Still, I would argue, such relationships are not only possible but also deeply felt. 18 Whitehead speaks of the divinity as “luring” us toward greater intensity and fulfillment, while Hartshorne speaks of the divinity as “persuading” us. I prefer to speak of the divinity as “inspiring” us, because of the resonances of “inspiration” with breath, breathing, and energy exchange. I do not see the divinity as setting us a specific goal and luring us to it, nor as rationally persuading us of a certain course of action. It seems to me that the divine influence is always of a general nature, such as “you can do it,” “be more loving,” “expand your vision,” 2

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etc. I like to think of divine inspiration as a surge of energy when I am overwhelmed and as expanding my vision when I am stuck, as taking a deep breath does. 19 See Abram 1997, 163-72. 20 See Christ 1998, 165. 21 This is a Native American ethical guideline; cf. Christ 1998, 167-68.

Works Cited and Further Readings Armstrong-Buck, Susan. 1989. “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis,” in Process Studies 18.1, 1-18. ______. 1991. “What Process Philosophy Can Contribute to the Land Ethic and Deep Ecology,” in Trumpeter 8.1, 29-34. ______. 1986. “Whitehead's Metaphysical System as a Foundation for Environmental Ethics,” in Environmental Ethics 8, 241-59. Baker-Fletcher, Karen. 2002. “Dust and Spirit,” in Strike Terror No More; Theology, Ethics, and the New War, edited by Jon L. Berquist (St. Louis MS: Chalice Press), 280-286. Birch, L. Charles. 1973. “A Biological Basis for Human Purpose,” in Zygon 8.3-4, 244-60. ______, and John B. Cobb, Jr. 1990. The Liberation of Life (Denton, Environmental Ethics Books). ______, William Eakin, and Jay B. McDaniel (eds.). 1990. Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books). ______. 1990. A Purpose for Everything (Mystic CT: Twenty-Third Publications). ______. June 2001. “Environmental Ethics in Process Thought,” in Concrescence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought (Available at: http://concrescence.org - ISSN 1445-4297). Clifton, Chas and Graham Harvey, ed. 2003. The Paganism Reader (New York: Routledge). Cobb, Clifford W. and John B. Cobb Jr. 1994. The Green National Product: A Proposed Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (Lanham MD, University Press of America). Cobb, John B. Jr. 1973. “Ecology, Ethics and Theology,” in Toward a Steady-State Economy, edited by Herman Daly (San Francisco, W. H. Freeman), 307-320. ______. 1988. “A Christian View of Biodiversity,” Biodiversity, edited by E. O. Wilson (Washington DC, National Academy Press), 481-85. ______. 1988. “Ecology, Science, and Religion,” in The Reenchantment of Science, edited by David Ray Griffin (Albany, State University of New York Press), 99-113. ______. 1992. Sustainability: Economics, Ecology, and Justice (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis). ______. 1995 (1972). Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology, Revised Edition (Denton, Environmental Ethics Books). ______. 2000. “Christianity, Economics, and Ecology,” in Christianity and Ecology, edited by Dieter Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Cambridge, Harvard University Press), 497-511. ______. 2001. “Protestant Theology and Deep Ecology,” in Deep Ecology and World Religions: New Essays on Sacred Ground, editey by David Landis Barnhill and Roger S. Gottlieb (Albany, State University of New York Press Press), 213-228. ______. 2001. “Deep Ecology and Process Thought,” in Process Studies 30.1,112-131. ______. 2004. “Palmer on Whitehead: A Critical Evaluation,” in Process Studies 33.1, 4-23. Christ, Carol P. 1998. Rebirth of the Goddess (New York, Routledge). ______. 2003. She Who Changes (New York, Palgrave Macmillan). Daly, Herman E. 1999. Ecological Economics and the Ecology of Economics: Essasys in Criticism. Cheltennham (Northampton, Edward Elgar). ______ and John B. Cobb, Jr. (with contributions by Clifford W. Cobb.). 1994. For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston, Beacon Press). Deckers, Jan. 2004. “Christianity and Ecological Ethics. The Significance of Process Thought and a Panexperientialist Critique on Strong Anthropocentrism,” in Ecotheology 9, no. 3. 359-387. Dombrowski, Daniel. 1984. The Philosophy of Vegetariansim (Amherst, the University of Massachusetts Press).

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______. 1988. Hartshorne and the Metaphysics of Animal Rights (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). ______. 1997. Babies and Biests. The argument from Marginal Cases (Chicago, University of Illinois Press). ______. 2001. “The Replaceability Argument,” in Process Studies 30.1, 22-35. Ferré Frederick. 1995. “Value, Time, and Nature,” in Environmental Ethics 17, 417-431. ______. 1996. Being and Value. Towards a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). ______. 2001. Living and Value. Towards a Constructive Postmodern Ethics. (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Gare, Arran. 1991. “Environmental Ethics and Process Philosophy,” in Trumpeter 8.1, 35-38. ______. June 2001. “Human Ecology, Process Philosophy and the Global Ecological Crisis,” in Concrescence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought (Available at: http://concrescence.org - ISSN 1445-4297). ______. 2000. “Philosophy, Civilization, and the Global Ecological Crisis: The Challenge of Process Metaphysics to Scientific Materialism,” in Philosophy Today 44.3, 283-94. _____. 1995. Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (New York, Routledge). Grange, Joseph. 1977. Nature: An Environmental Cosmology (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Griffin, David Ray. 1992. “Green Spirituality: A Postmodern Convergence of Science and Religion,” in Journal of Theology. United Theological Seminary (Dayton, Ohio), 5-20. ______. 1993 “Whitehead’s Deeply Ecological Worldview,” in Worldviews and Ecology, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim (Lewisburg, P.A., Bucknell University Press), 190-206. ______. 2001. Reenchantment without Supernaturalism (New York, Cornell University Press). Griffin, Susan. 1978. Woman and Nature (New York: Harper and Row). Gunter, Pete A. Y. 2004. “A Whiteheadian Aesthetics of Nature: Beauty and the Forest,” in Process Studies 33.2, 314-322. Hampe, Michael. 1988. Die Wahrnehmung der Organismen (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Hartshorne, Charles. 1978. “Foundations for a Humane Ethics: What Human Beings Have in Common with Other Higher Animals,” in On the Fifth Day: Animal Rights and Human Ethics, edited by Richard K. Morris and Michael W. Fox (Washington DC, Acropolis Books),154-72. ______. 1979. “The Rights of the Subhuman World,” in Environmental Ethics 1.1, 49-60. Harvey, Graham. 2006. Animism: Respecting the Living World (New York: Columbia University Press). Howell, Nancy. 1988. “The Promise of a Process Feminist Theory of Relations,” in Process Studies 17.2, 78-87. Howell, Nancy. 2000. A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidarity, and Metaphysics (Amherst, Humanity Books). Kachappilly, Kurian. June 2000. “‘Holocoenotic’ Nature of Ecology: An Indian Perspective of Ecotheology and Process Thought,” in Concrescence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought (Available at http://concrescence.org - ISSN 1445-4297). Keller, Catherine. 1996. “Postmodern ‘Nature’, Feminism and Community,” in Theology for Earth Community, edited by Dieter T. Hessel (New York, Orbis Books), 93-102. ______. 2001. “The Face of the Deep: Reflections on the Ecology of Process Though,” in Concrescence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought (Available at http://concrescence.org - ISSN 1445-4297). ______. 2003. Face of the Deep. A Theology of Becoming (New York, Routledge). McDaniel, Jay B. 1986. “Christian Spirituality as Openness to Fellow Creatures,” Environmental Ethics 8, 33-46. ______. 1988. “Land Ethics, Animal Rights, and Process Theology,” in Process Studies 17.2, 88-102.

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______. 1989. Of God and Pelicans. A Theology of Reverence for Life (Kentucky, Westminster, John Knox Press). ______. 1990. Earth, Sky, Gods & Mortals: Developing an Ecological Spirituality. (Mystic CT, Twenty Third Publications). Mcfague, Sallie. 1987. Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia, Fortress Press). ______. 1993. The Body of God. En Ecological Theology (Minneapolis, Fortress Press). ______. 2001. Life Abundant (Minneapolis, Fortress Press). McIntosh, Robert, P. 1985. The Background of ecology. Concept and Theory (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Menta, Timothy. 2004. “Clare Palmer’s Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking: a Hartshornean Response,” in Process Studies 33.1, 24 - 45. Moses, Greg. 2000. “Process Ecological Ethics,” in Center for Process Studies Member Papers, 23.2 (Available from: http://www.ctr4process.org/). Muraca, Barbara. 2005. “Wie kann sich etwas, was noch nicht ist, sich aus seiner Zukunft heraus frei gestalten? Identitätsbildung zwischen Kausal- und Finalursache ausgehend von Whiteheads Kreativitätsbegriff,” in Kreativität. XX Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie. Sektionsbeiträge. Bd.1 edited by Günther Abel (Berlin, Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin). Muraca, Barbara. 2005. “Welt, Umwelt, Mitwelt. Cultural, Natural, and Social World as Complex Intertwined Field of Internal Relations,” in Process Studies, 34.1, 98-115. Muraca, Barbara. 2007. “Teleologie der Organismen: Grenzbegriff oder ontologische Notwendigkeit,” in Prozesse des Lebendigen. Zur Aktualität der Naturphilosophie A.N. Whiteheads, edited by Spyridon Koutroufinis (München, Karl Alber Verlag). Nelson, Julie A. 2001. “Value as Relationality: Feminist, Pragmatist, and Process Thought Meet Economics,” in Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15.2, 137-151. Ott, Konrad. 1994. Ökologie und Ethik (Tübingen, Attempto Verlag). ______. 1999. „Ethik und Naturschutz,“ in Handbuch Naturschutz und Landschaftspflege edited by Werner Konold, Reinhard Böckler, and Ulrich Hampicke (Landsberg, ecomed),1-17. Palmer, Clare. 1992. “Process Theology as Ecological Theology,” in Theology in Green 1:1, 31-41. ______. 2004. “Response to Cobb and Menta,” in Process Studies 33.1, 46-70. ______. 1988. Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking (Oxford, Clarendon Press). Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. 1984. Order out of chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (New York, Bantam Books). Solé, Ricard, and Brian Goodwin. 2000. Sings of Life. How Complexity pervades Biology (New York, Basic Books). Spencer, Daniel T. 1996. Gay and Gaia: Ethics, Ecology, and the Erotic (Cleveland OH, Pilgrim Press). Trepl, Ludwig. 1994. Geschichte der Ökologie (Weinheim, Beltz Athenäum Verlag). Whitehead, Alfred North. 1978 (1929). Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected Edition edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press). ______. 1967 (1925). Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press). ______. 1967 (1933). Adventures of Ideas (New York, Free Press). ______. 1985 (1927). Symbolism its Meaning and Effect (New York, Fordham University Press). ______. 1971 (1929). Function of Reason (Boston, Beacon Press). ______. 1968 (1938). Modes of Thought (New York, Free Press).

V. Economy Whitehead on Economics Carol F. Johnston

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Alfred North Whitehead did not spend much time in his writing directly addressing economics—either the theory or the actual social effects. But it does come up, especially in Science and the Modern World and Adventures of Ideas. He often uses economics as an example of how too much deductive theorizing can have untoward effects, yet he also believes that “commerce” is central to the spread of the effective use of persuasion in civilization, as opposed to coercion. These comments help provide clues to Whitehead’s views about economics. However, much more important for a critique of capitalist economics is his understanding of the usefulness and limits of deductive method, and his critique of the underlying assumptions on which Neoclassical theory (the theoretical foundation of capitalism) is based. Most useful of all is his ontology, which can provide a new foundation upon which to develop a more adequate economics. A review of what Whitehead did actually write about economics, then, is useful even when it does not go as far as one would wish in directly addressing economic issues. Accordingly, the bulk of this article will examine closely Whitehead’s comments about economics, particularly in Science and the Modern World and Adventures of Ideas. Then we will consider some further implications before presenting the work of Herman Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr. as the most important example of Whitehead’s influence on economic thinking.

1. Whiteheadian Economics 1.1. Whitehead’s Observations on Economics and Commerce We will look at Science and the Modern World, which Whitehead presented as the Lowell Lectures in 1925, before moving on to Adventures of Ideas, first published in 1933. What is probably Whitehead’s longest commentary on economics comes in Chapter XIII of Science and the Modern World, “Requisites for Social Progress.” He begins by observing that the influence of Descartes led to “the assumption of bodies and minds as independent individual substances, each existing in its own right apart from any necessary reference to each other” (SMW 194). This idea soon “degenerated into a mechanism entirely valueless” (SMW 195). According to

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Whitehead, this was not all bad, because it led to an efficient method for scientific research “within those limited regions which were then best suited for exploration” (SMW 195). The problems inherent in this approach became most apparent in the nineteenth century, “when society was undergoing transformation into the manufacturing system” (SMW 195). Here, “the bad effects of these doctrines have been very fatal” (SMW 195). There are two reasons given for this. First, this individualism led to understanding ethics as a private matter, leading to a deficient moral outlook that was taken up by “the leaders among the industrialists of that period” (SMW 196). Whitehead does not go on to spell this out, but he seems to be referring to the massive suffering caused by the nineteenth-century factory system, particularly as experienced by children; and to the justification of subsistence (and lower) wages and mistreatment of workers by the application of Malthus’ Iron Law of population1 and by Spencer’s Social Darwinism. A privatized ethics, which focuses only on the personal behavior of individuals, is blind to social injustice. The second reason for the fatal effects of Cartesian thought is that it led to the “assumption of the bare valuelessness of mere matter” which in turn was used to justify environmental abuse and to discount the importance of “artistic beauty.” At that time urbanization was reaching a stage of rapid development. Here Whitehead gives examples that are not as relevant to us today, but the point is that many cities were filled with tenement blocks with no trees or anything green whatsoever. Too often, such basic amenities as parks and good architecture, so necessary for personal, social and environmental well-being, were left out of development. And where they already existed they were often destroyed. In this, Whitehead sees two evils, both of which are now embedded in economics (both capitalist and Marxian). The first is “the ignoration of the true relation of each organism to its environment,” and the second is “the habit of ignoring the intrinsic worth of the environment which must be allowed its weight in any consideration of final ends” (SMW 196). A third problem, which exacerbates the two evils just named, is the result of “the professionalizing of knowledge.” This has produced great efficiency in a limited sphere, but also “produces minds in a groove”: Each profession makes progress, but it is progress in its own groove. Now to be mentally in a groove is to live in contemplating a given set of abstractions. The groove prevents straying across country, and the abstraction abstracts from something to which no further attention is paid. But there is no groove of abstractions which is adequate for the comprehension of human life (SMW 197). At this point, Whitehead goes into an examination of the more general consequences of this kind of professionalism. But we can readily see how it applies to Neoclassical economic theory. The theory is based on a set of abstractions from the complexities of human economic activity, as it must be. Whitehead has no quarrel with this. All theories are. The problem comes in when they are rigidified into dogma and applied beyond the limited sphere where the abstractions hold. Even worse, they are enshrined as “value-free science” now freed from any need to return even once a century to examine whether the basic assumptions still hold.2 Whitehead returns to this a few pages later, when he gives a modern factory as an example of a complex “organism” which should be apprehended in its completeness: “with its machinery, its community of operatives, its social service to the general population, its dependence upon organizing and

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designing genius, its potentialities as a source of wealth to the holders of the stock […]” (SMW 200). Whitehead goes on to contrast this holistic approach with the consequences of excessive abstraction in economics: It is very arguable that the science of political economy, as studied in the first period after the death of Adam Smith (1790), did more harm than good. It destroyed many economic fallacies, and taught how to think about the economic revolution then in progress. But it riveted on men a certain set of abstractions which were disastrous in their influence on modern mentality. It dehumanised industry. […Modern science] fixes attention on a definite group of abstractions, neglects everything else, and elicits every scrap of information and theory which is relevant to what it has retained. This method is triumphant, provided that the abstractions are judicious. But, however triumphant, the triumph is within limits. The neglect of these limits leads to disastrous oversights (SMW 200). These oversights, according to Whitehead, have led to a “materialistic philosophy” that “directed almost exclusive attention to the aspect of struggle for existence in a fixed environment” (SMW 205). Whitehead does not seem to be aware of the argument of economists that improved productivity is a way out of the struggle because it changes the “fixed” nature of the environment, but he likely would have approved of that aspect of economics. After the litany of nineteenth-century industrial evils, he remarks that the “full conclusion to be drawn from a philosophy of evolution is fortunately of a more balanced character. Successful organisms modify their environment. Those organisms are successful which modify their environments so as to assist each other” (SMW 205). He does not reject competition, but insists that it be balanced with cooperation, and gives as an example the contrast between a single tree trying to survive on its own, and the intricacy of mutual flourishing that takes place in the Brazilian rain forest (SMW 206), where competition and cooperation are in balance. And he never forgets to return to the necessity of re-examining theoretical assumptions and changing them as knowledge and circumstances change. That aspect of Neoclassical economic theory that celebrates itself as “value-free” science would appall him. We see this concern with the relation of competition and cooperation continued in Adventures of Ideas (1933). He states that “the problem of social life is the problem of the coordination of activities, including the limits of such coordination” (AI 28). He goes on later to assert that “in the immediate present, economic organization constitutes the most massive problem of human relationships” (AI 62). This is as close as he comes to acknowledging the Great Depression, which he does not mention. In a survey of Western history, he points out that slavery was finally abolished while at the same time such ideas as Malthus’ law of population were providing excuses for neglecting the plight of masses of people. Working to counter this, according to Whitehead, were the Wesleyans3 promoting the “brotherhood of man.” So industrialization and economics developed in a swirl of social change and counter-pressures, but the age was clearly dominated by the focus on competition, which seemed to exist “wherever men looked” (AI 31). The response to this, worked out by Adam Smith and other liberal thinkers, was to assert a faith that “the strife of individuals issued in the progressive realization of a harmonious society (AI 33). This seemed to make it possible to continue to affirm “the brotherhood of man” while unleashing “relentless competition with all individual men” (AI 33). The problem was that it did

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not work well. According to Whitehead, “after two generations of such industrial development, the widespread misery […] aroused the public conscience” (AI 33). Something very like “industrial slavery” had been produced. In response to this manifest failure of “the pure doctrine of nineteenth-century liberalism” (which came to be called laissez-faire economics, and ironically is now championed by those calling themselves “conservatives”), England moved to admitting the “necessity for coordination and the failure of free competition” (AI 35). Whitehead concludes that “no one now holds [in 1932] that, apart from some further directive agency, mere individualistic competition, of itself and by its own self-righting character, will produce a satisfactory society” (AI 35). He notes that various ways of doing the “coordination” have been tried and are still fiercely debated, but that is as far as he goes. Nevertheless, based on his views thus far stated, it seems clear that Whitehead would favor seeking out a “balance” of competition and cooperation in an economy, and thus might prefer a “mixed” economy to the extremes of laissez-faire free markets with no government coordination and regulation, on the one hand, and central control of the economy by either government or monopolistic corporations, on the other. We can see hints of this latter view in his chapter on Freedom. In that chapter, Whitehead makes some comments about the doctrine of “person” that are relevant to economic issues, though, once again, he does not develop their implications. He thinks that one of the reasons the individualistic liberalism of the nineteenth century, which worked for “the trading middle classes” (AI 62), works no longer, is the introduction of the idea that a corporation can be a legal “person” with limited liability. According to Whitehead, “the introduction into the arena of this new type of ‘person’ has considerably modified the effective meaning of the characteristic liberal doctrine of contractual freedom” (AI 62). This makes private property a legal fiction, and plays havoc with concepts of individual rights. The whole idea that social relations are merely contractual, therefore only consciously entered into, is, as far as Whitehead is concerned, nonsense: “The human being is inseparable from its environment […]” (AI 63). What Whitehead calls “custom,” or the whole inherited complex of social relations, is far more important. Personal freedom is an aspect of this social context: “The environment which the occasion inherits is immanent in it, and conversely it is immanent in the environment which it helps to transmit” (AI 63). This embedded character of human individuals is the main reason that unemployment is not only a question of social justice, but is actually a denial of individual freedom. Human beings cannot develop their very individuality apart from a social context. What would Mozart be without an audience to nurture and encourage his vast talent? Whitehead writes: “The essence of freedom is the practicability of purpose. […] Prometheus did not bring to mankind freedom of the press. He procured fire, which obediently to human purpose cooks and gives warmth” (AI 66). Because of this embeddedness of individuals, neither the laissezfaire ideology that assumes individuals should be left “free” to do what they want with their money, nor social equity policies that substitute cash welfare payments for meaningful participation in society (thus leaving millions dependent on welfare and denied any meaningful role), are adequate. Both are examples of extremely individualistic thinking without regard to the role of social context in individuality.

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At the same time that individual freedom requires a social context for its exercise, so too does the larger society need individuals contributing their unique gifts. Given that “there are many types of character” (AI 67), “one general end is that these variously coordinated groups should contribute to the complex pattern of community life, each in virtue of its own peculiarity. In this way individuality gains the effectiveness which issues from coordination, and freedom obtains power necessary for its perfection” (AI 67). While Whitehead does not go beyond this, it is interesting to think about more recent developments in business with this view in mind. For example, in the early part of the twentieth century industrial production was “rationalized” by reducing the process to an assembly-line of mindless steps (known as “Taylorism”), very much in keeping with the assumption that the world is made up of individual parts, all alike, and all interchangeable—including human beings. In the latter part of the same century, a shift began that is organizing workers into teams in which each member brings unique elements to the whole, including expertise in different fields and individual talents. This illustrates, I think, the sort of thinking, and acting, that Whitehead was already advocating when Taylorism was at its height. The next chapter, “From Force to Persuasion,” is where Whitehead brings up commerce as a positive illustration of how civilizations learn to use persuasion, rather than coercive force, for the good of all. Again, Whitehead makes some observations that give some indication of his views about economics, but does not develop them. He gives a wide definition of commerce, as involving “every species of interchange which proceeds by way of mutual persuasion” (AI 70). (This makes one wonder if he would consider wages that rely on the need of people for work and a lack of other options, really part of “commerce,” since they have a coercive character.) However, despite the broad definition, Whitehead is careful to ground the discussion of commerce in actual economic activity. He is well aware of the psychological aspects of economic interchange and how that affects “value” in business, noting that the value of gold currency is entirely subjective: “so long as the generality of mankind deem gold to be wealth, then it is wealth; and as soon as this opinion passes, gold then becomes a metal of subsidiary importance” (AI 71). This understanding of the psychology of value does not mean, however, that there is no actual physical dimension to value. He claims that demand “may be closely connected with some physical necessity arising out of possession or deprivation, for example, the satisfaction of hunger or starvation” (AI 70). Whitehead seems to think that the subjective aspect of value does not come into play until and unless “there is a complete absence of any such physical necessity […] so that the sole advantages of possession depend on the possibility of renewed exchange” (AI 70). This would seem to provide a basis for considering value in economics at different levels: one level deals with basic needs, while the other comes into play when there really is a genuinely “free” market for exchange where the coercion that comes from physical need is not a factor. At present, economic theory does not allow for this idea of various kinds and levels of “value.” Value is always taken as completely individual and subjective— whatever an individual decides it is. This makes it impossible to assert, for instance, that the desire of a starving person to have something to eat is more important than the desire of a wealthy person to have steak instead of chicken. All desires are equal in economics.4 After considering these issues in value, Whitehead concludes:

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The upshot of all these considerations is that the doctrines of Commerce have to be founded upon assumptions concerning necessities, habits, technology, and prevalent knowledge. But habits, technology, and knowledge are variable from epoch to epoch, and even in any one epoch differ in different sections of humanity (AI 71-72). Whitehead criticizes the classical political economy of the nineteenth century for being limited to the aspirations of the middle classes of Northern Europe. He was not writing about the fullydeveloped Neoclassical economic theory of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, he did anticipate it when he goes on to assert that the preoccupation of the middle classes with “commercial activity as the main occupation of perfected civilization” (AI 72) did lead to “the consideration of economic laws which should hold, and to the neglect of economic procedures which in fact did hold” (AI 72). He is criticizing the choice to develop a deductive theory of economics that would insist on limiting attention to economic considerations, to the exclusion of all other issues. He correctly thinks that this was done for the sake of clarity and simplicity, and at this point he makes one of his famous statements: In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember, that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions (AI 72). Whether Whitehead had read Alfred Marshall, the great synthesizer of Neoclassical “clarity,” or not, he certainly was aware that economists at least since John Stuart Mill5 had been working to develop an increasingly abstract and deductive economic theory that could be less and less concerned with “the perplexities of fact.” As we have already seen, this is dangerous, in Whitehead’s view, because it leads to the neglect of important dimensions of society, such as the effects of economic activity on the environment. When economic theories (including Marxism) were developed, the main concern was figuring out how to organize society to maximize the production of goods. Hence, that became the driving goal of economics— accepted even by Marx, who, unlike others of his time, understood very well that the environmental affects of unlimited industrial economic growth would be extreme (e.g. Marx 1906 554-555). The second area that Whitehead criticizes in the political economy of the nineteenth century is the way the Malthusian Law of Population was used to justify exploitation. Economists thought that geometric population growth would always outrun arithmetic economic development, and consequently the labor pool would always be forced to work for bare subsistence. The fact that some businessmen, most famously the nineteenth-century factory owner Robert Owen, could and did make a good profit with fair wages and labor practices, was ignored. It was even the case, as Whitehead notes, that factories “managed on fanciful humanitarian lines” were driven out of business by those who opposed the use of fair labor practices (AI 73). In this area Whitehead does agree with the development in economics of the understanding that productivity increases can make it possible for a growing population to coincide with a growing standard of living: “History has only disclosed three ways of escape—expanding Commerce, improving Technology, and utilization of Empty Regions. […] In the wide sense of the term, Commerce covers all three conditions. […] The central factor is Commerce; and more

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than that, it is Commerce developed adventurously” (AI 77). Whitehead agrees with Neoclassical theory in seeing nature as “plastic;” furthermore, he asserts that human beings are “that factor in Nature which exhibits in its most intense form the plasticity of nature” (AI 78). So economic growth and development that utilize non-coercive Commerce and Technology are a great boon to civilization, in Whitehead’s view. But notice the caveats: he assumes (and would insist) that Commerce is non-coercive. And he firmly and consistently places humankind in Nature, not above and apart from it. Insofar as economic practices operate coercively, as when traditional peoples are forced to lose their lands and go to “work” in the cities, they are wrong and should be changed. The same is true for economic practices that ignore the inherent embeddedness in and dependence of human beings on the rest of nature to live, so that nonsustainable and environmentally damaging practices are justified as necessary for “jobs” and economic “growth.” These failures of economics are not just wrong; they endanger the Earth and everything in it, including human life. Given these views on the plasticity of nature and human embeddedness in it, Whitehead might agree with the proposition that we should affirm the genius of capitalism in overcoming the perceived limits to nature, but—and this is a very important “but”—we must learn how to move those boundaries (by finding sustainable and non-polluting sources of energy, for example), rather than crossing them by destroying species, using up resources non-sustainably, and disrupting crucial natural cycles (see e.g. Johnston 1998 114). Whitehead would applaud the element of mainstream capitalist economics that allows for what he calls “adventure” and creativity; in fact, he would likely see that as the best feature of free markets. And he would certainly insist that any improved economics must take this into account, because he sees this as a basic human need. The “intrinsic energies” of cultures are sustained by “physical and spiritual adventure” (AI 82). One of the most important failures of Marxian economies has been the squeezing out of creativity by centralized control. So one of the most important challenges for an economics that is sustainable and just is that it not fall prey to the same problem, but figure out how to retain the creativity unleashed in capitalism and direct it to more socially responsible, sustainable ends. While stressing creativity and adventure, Whitehead at the same time points to the underlying necessity of “routine” as the basis that makes creative advance possible: Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. […] When the routine is perfect, understanding can be eliminated (AI 90). This is the reason that Taylorism was so effective in its day—and, indeed, at the time that Whitehead was writing these sentences. Faced with floods of immigrant labor in American factories speaking a diversity of languages, Taylorism was a way to rationalize factory production to eliminate “understanding” and make it easy for anyone to do the needed tasks. It was a leap from highly skilled but labor-intensive, slow and expensive hand-work to completely unskilled, fast and cheap assembly-line production. The problem was that the work became too routine; in fact, it was mind-numbingly boring. In recent decades manufacturers have been learning how to balance routine with more input from workers—more allowance for enough creativity to make the work interesting and therefore allowing for gains in productivity brought by enlisting practical intelligence. Whitehead appreciates both routine and creativity, each in its

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right balance. Without routine, the wheel has to be re-invented every day. With too much routine, nothing is invented at all, and society stagnates. Interestingly, Whitehead thinks that most people of his day are still conditioned to think in terms of a background of social stability, while change is accelerating all around them. He thinks that this “assumption subtly pervades the premises of political economy, and has permitted it to confine attention to a simplified edition of human nature” (AI 93). As happens frustratingly often, he does not elaborate the point, but I would venture to guess that he has in mind John Stuart Mill’s homo economicus (which he does refer to here), and perhaps also Adam Smith’s assumption that it is safe to allow individuals to act in their own wealth-maximizing self-interest in the market, because the social context is intact and ensures that they do not act against the interests of their own larger societies. It can certainly be argued that both capitalism and Marxism actually erode this social context. In many nations in the “globalized” economy, there is now less and less social cohesion to prevent self-interested “utility maximizing” from going against the common good of the society. Whitehead goes on to remark that the “law” of supply and demand, developed in terms of a stable society, provides for “healthy competition” and “is beautifully simple and with proper elaboration is obviously true” (AI 94). But Whitehead believes that society was now changing so fast that the basic premises of this way of thinking about economics needed to be changed in light of changing circumstances. Unfortunately, once again he does not elaborate. But he does insist that what is needed is not a new set of “laws” so much as a different mentality: “an unspecified aptitude for eliciting generalizations from particulars and for seeing the divergent illustration of generalities in diverse circumstances” (AI 97). In other words, a fully elaborated “model” that can then be applied without further recourse to actual effects will not be adequate. Rather, what is needed is an inductive method that can elicit useful generalities from a constantly shifting welter of events. In a context of constant change and the irruption of unpredictable creativity, it is not safe to base decisions on seeming “trends” in past events; rather Whitehead calls for “forecasting” that is more sensitive to the possibilities emerging from novelties. Who would have predicted the economic impact of computers thirty years ago? It is the quite unexpected uses of inventions that are having the most economic impact now, not the predictable uses of the past. Nevertheless, there must be a balance. According to Whitehead, the business manager of the future would need both the ability to manage routine, and “a philosophic power of understanding the complex flux of the varieties of human societies […] such instinctive grasp of the relevant features of social currents is of supreme importance” (AI 97). Finally, Whitehead insists that “the motive of success is not enough,” because it “produces a short-sighted world which destroys the sources of its own prosperity” (AI 98). Whitehead blames the cycles of economic depressions on this “disease of short-sighted motives.” Since the larger community depends on business, it is important that business people have a larger view of their function than profit: “A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions (AI 98).” This is fundamental to civilization, because every epoch “has its character determined by the way its populations react to the material events which they encounter” (AI 99). These reactions are shaped by basic beliefs. Consequently, philosophy has

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as much to do with economics as with social character, and is much too important to be left to “irritable professors” (AI 98). Business, economics—and the character of civilization itself—all need and indeed are shaped by “those fundamental beliefs” that philosophy must attempt to clarify.

1.2. Underlying “Laws of Nature” It is in his attention to the underlying “laws of nature” that Whitehead is most useful for those interested in rethinking economics and economic theory. In Adventures of Ideas Whitehead devotes a whole section, entitled “Cosmology,” to this endeavor. He develops these most fully in his masterwork of metaphysics, Process and Reality. But a review of the basics set out in “Cosmology” is sufficient here. First, Whitehead draws on twentieth-century physics, especially the conclusions of quantum physics, to reconceive the basis on which “laws” of nature can be determined. Physics shows that everything is related to everything else, and that “laws” are based on patterns in those relations that emerge from them. This means that as the patterns of relations change, the “laws” change (AI 112). This is quite different from the viewpoint of Newtonian mechanics (and the Cartesian philosophy) and generally presupposed by economics, that self-existent entities are only related externally and non-essentially, rather than internally and inherently. It is also assumed that “laws,” once “discovered,” can be enshrined in the theory and henceforth depended on to stay the same. So, for example, since Newtonian physics was based on the belief that the world is made up of self-existent individuals, this belief, since “scientific,” was taken up in economics and enshrined at the center of capitalist economics systems. Then economics was widely proclaimed to be scientific and “value-free,” thereby ignoring its implicit commitment to self-existent individuality above all aspects of human life. Similarly, Newtonian mechanics was enshrined as the foundation of the economic theory with no further revisions, and in the process the revolution that science itself has undergone with respect to these very so-called foundations was ignored. Second, we have already seen how Whitehead repeatedly criticizes the deductive method that abstracts too much from actual events and then ignores changing contexts. In one passage, he calls this the “Dogmatic Fallacy”: The error consists in the persuasion that we are capable of producing notions which are adequately defined in respect to the complexity of relationship required for their illustration in the real world (AI 145). One area he thinks is particularly prone to this fallacy is Political Economy, in which “there is hardly a question to be asked which should not be fenced round with qualifications as to how much, and as to what pattern of circumstances” (AI 153). The use of mathematics, he thinks, “is too narrow” because “the essential connectedness of things can never be safely omitted” (AI 153). He seems to be aware that using mathematics in areas like economics can provide a “sharp tool,” as economist Alfred Marshall called it, but what it cuts may too easily go wrong. One reason is that what works perfectly in one context, when shifted to another, may be all wrong. Whitehead remarks that “all science suffers from the vice that it may be combining various propositions which tacitly presuppose inconsistent backgrounds” (AI 154). It is important to keep reminding ourselves that Whitehead does not object to using deductive methods and

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mathematics: he is only constantly reminding us that the basic assumptions and context much be repeatedly re-tested. In fact, he is more aware than most that “mentality is an agent of simplification” (AI 213) and all theory has to be based on high levels of abstraction: “every method is a happy simplification” (AI 221). What is crucial is “noting its scope of useful application and its failure beyond that scope” (AI 221). Whitehead was right to worry about this. In the actual development of both capitalist and Marxian models of economics, their social policy advocates were (and in capitalism still are) far more interested in implementing the model as already elaborated than in adjusting and rethinking the model as circumstances change. The price for this has been high in both economic systems. Where societies have refused to modify the pragmatic working of the economic theory to fit social needs and changing circumstances, the economies have failed or the societies have experienced violent and costly revolutions. It is widely acknowledged that capitalism survived the excessive exploitation brought on by zealous implementation of the economic theory in its most individualistic form only where social policies were modified to mitigate its worst effects on the working masses. The same is true of Marxism, which has failed all over the world, and still hangs on in China mostly because the Chinese government has abandoned the disastrous attempt to implement purely Marxian economic theory. The Marxian ideologues who still believe that Marxian economics should be implemented are now few and quite discredited, but there are still many capitalist ideologues who retain a blind faith in pure laissez-faire economics.

1.3. Adventure Before we finish this survey of Whitehead’s explicit statements on economics in Adventures of Ideas, we need to say a word about his category of “Adventure.” Because reality is essentially always “becoming,” change is inevitable. There can be no static perfection, only many “perfections” that are realized and then pass away. Civilizations must pursue the perfections that are possible to them, or stagnate. But the perfections, once achieved, do inevitably pass. When civilizations pass, there can be varying periods of chaos. Interestingly, Whitehead believes that it is possible to have “quick transitions,” but only when “thought has run ahead of realization” (AI 278). Through “adventures of the imagination,” it is possible to prepare for a new civilization and help it to happen: “The world dreams of things to come, and then in due season arouses itself to their realization” (AI 279). We can only hope that by working to develop a more adequate economic theory, we can contribute to such a new civilization—one that is sustainable and just, and better exemplifies what Whitehead calls the five qualities of civilization, Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, and Peace (AI 274). Unfortunately, despite the pragmatic changes that have taken place with actual economies, the theoretical work of re-examining and re-thinking economic theories in light of the changing understandings of the world and of human nature, that took place in the twentieth century, has barely begun. And the constructive work of transforming our actual societies to move in the direction of more sustainable, more just, and more participatory economies, is in urgent need of this theoretical work. The good news is that this really is an adventure worthy of our best energies and imaginations, and that more people are discovering the satisfaction that comes from working for these changes.

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2. Rethinking Economics In response to the looming environmental and social crises—crises exacerbated by both capitalist and Marxian economic policies—the work of rethinking economics is indeed being done, and “thought” is running “ahead of implementation” in the hope that when societies are ready to change, the needed thinking will already be in place. To date, the most important theoretical work in the tradition of Whitehead has been that of Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., and, most notably, their 1989 book, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Another book that was strongly influenced by Whitehead is my The Wealth or Health of Nations: Transforming Capitalism from Within (1998). For the most part, economists have shown little interest in either feminism or ecology, and even less in Whitehead. But there is also some evidence that this is changing, in some circles. For instance, Julie Nelson is one U.S. economist who has been influenced both by Whitehead and feminist analysis; she has contributed an article to this volume. Although the book by Cobb and Daly was published first, the Wealth or Health of Nations is more historical and has less-developed proposals for a new economic theory. Hence, I will summarize it first. Economic theories, both capitalist and Marxian, have been developed in a long historical process that really began with the seventeenth-century French Physiocrats and with the work of Adam Smith in the eighteenth century. Along the way, a number of crucial value choices and assumptions were embedded in the theories that have become dominant. In the process of refining and sharpening the deductive power of the theories, some crucial aspects of reality got lost, ultimately with severe repercussions. To summarize, the central goal of both capitalist and Marxist economic policies was growth in the production of goods, to the exclusion of all other considerations. This brought rampant industrialization in both systems; the cost to families, communities, and the environment were all but ignored. Furthermore, economists have always asserted that there are three factors of production—land, labor, and capital. The Physiocrats emphasized the importance of land as foundational to the support of labor and capital, but John Locke’s argument for the labor theory of value, and some contemporary political issues persuaded Adam Smith to shift the emphasis to labor as the main source of value. Marx too developed the labor theory to the exclusion of both land and capital. The political economists who developed capitalism gradually shifted to emphasize capital—treating both land and labor as different forms of capital. Consequently, in both capitalism and Marxism, “land” as a unique factor with unique issues, was swept aside, at great cost to the environment. In addition, both economies have also ignored human communities, and dealt with human beings as interchangeable individuals who can be moved around to suit the needs of industrialization—or in the present, globalization—without regard to the consequences to families and communities, which are defined out of consideration. There can be no denying that Capitalism has achieved its goal supremely well: sustained growth in the production of economic goods is now taken for granted. However, while many Western nations have learned to manage the costs well enough to sustain their populations, the

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problems keep mounting. Human and natural communities continue to pay a high price for the largely unrestrained use of natural and human resources needed to sustain high levels of economic growth in production. These problems are a by-product built into the way capitalism is structured, and will not be solved until and unless there is a thorough re-structuring, from basic theoretical assumptions to the actual implementation of better policies. In the last chapter, I offer a Whiteheadian approach to some fundamental aspects of such a re-structuring. First and most importantly, economics should recur to the proposal of economist Alfred Marshall that the goal of economics should be increase in the production of “health” rather than of “wealth” (1925, 139). Rather than building an economic theory around John Stuart Mill’s homo economicus, we need to build one around homo salutaris—the healthy person. Healthy human beings need healthy families, communities, and ecosystems to sustain them, and they also need healthy, meaningful ways to contribute their individual gifts to others. Daly and Cobb discuss this at much more length, describing human beings as “persons-in-community.” A second proposal of Alfred Marshall was to acknowledge the unique aspects of each of the three factors of production and find better ways to take these into account. This would make it easier to pay more attention to the consequences of economic policies on human and natural communities—and stop treating them as if they are “extra” and “external” issues that someone else (not economists and economic policy-makers) can deal with. Behind these recommendations is a Whiteheadian ontology rather than a Newtonian one: every entity is internally related to every other, so that individuality arises out of and contributes to a relational context; and, consequently, every entity has some degree of intrinsic value that must not be discounted. Most importantly, no theory is final or “value-free,” but must be re-examined frequently and re-framed as circumstances change. Now we can turn to the book by Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Much more extensive than The Wealth or Health of Nations, this work includes a thorough critique of economics as a discipline and suggests foundations for a new economic theory, an extensive section on specific policy issues, and ideas about how to move from capitalism to an economy that will be more just and sustainable. John Cobb is a well-known process theologian well-versed in Whitehead. Herman Daly is an economist who pioneered an ecologically responsible economic theory, which he calls “steady-state economics.” Both have found an audience for their proposals, and even had some attention paid by the World Bank, though it is too soon to know what the long-term influence of the work will be. Like The Wealth or Health of Nations (which I was writing as a student of Cobb, at the same time that Daly and Cobb were collaborating on For the Common Good), Daly and Cobb use Whitehead’s critique of the misuse of deductive method and “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” to detail its economic consequences with respect to such areas as the market, measures of economic success like GNP (Gross National Product), the extreme individualism of homo economicus, and the disappearance of any consideration for “land” as a unique factor of production. Then they offer ideas to promote the development of a new economics. They begin with the need to shift intellectual work from the confines of academic disciplines, which have become too narrow, too isolated from real-world issues and from the insights of other

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disciplines, and which do not examine their own foundations once established—which has been the biggest problem with economics. They propose to reorganize intellectual work around real social problems instead, going beyond even interdisciplinary work to critique basic assumptions as well as share insights. They propose that emphasis be shifted from short-term profit maximizing to oikonomia, the management of the “household” (the Earth) for the long-term good of the whole. This will require a host of changes in thinking, including shifting from individualism to human beings as “persons-in-community,” from the “cosmopolitanism” of globalization to “communities-of-communities” which manage their economies to be as selfsufficient as possible and fully sustainable, and in which trade is truly “free”—i.e. entered into freely after basic needs at the local level have been met. Having laid the foundations for a sustainable, ecological, and more just economics, Daly and Cobb give suggestions for applying these ideas in the policy areas of global trade, population, land use, agriculture, industry, labor, income policies and taxes, and national security. The book ends with a discussion of the constructive role of the religious vision, and an appendix about how an “Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare” might replace the currently used GNP. Adam Smith, discontented with the monopolistic economics of his day, set out to think his way through to a more adequate way of conceiving and then advocating for a political economy. His suggestions, coherent and timely, succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and today drive the global economy. But they would not have done so if they had not been recognized as potentially effective, and further developed by generations of thinkers in political economy and practicioners and policy makers in actual economic life. Alfred North Whitehead, in his turn, worked out a way of thinking about the world and how it works that is potentially as likely as Smith’s work to change the world. It is incumbent upon us—those of us who believe that the need for better thinking about how to achieve a more just and more sustainable and healthier world for all can be built on the work of Whitehead—to move the work forward. If they could do it in their day, we can do our part in ours.

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Notes 1

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Thomas Malthus argued in the early 1800s that it would be impossible to pay more than subsistence wages to factory laborers, because population always grows exponentially while the economy and agriculture only grow arithmetically. Hence there will always be too many laborers clamoring for too few jobs and too little food. For the classic example of such a refusal, see the essay by Lionel Robbins, “The Nature and Significance of Economic Science” (1984); it was first published in England in 1935 and recognized immediately as a classic defense of deductive economic theory. Robbins sneers at all requests for economists to reexamine basic assumptions in the light of new knowledge and changing understandings of human nature. This religious reform movement, begun in the 1700s by John Wesley in England, became famous for its concern for factory laborers and their families. For the classic argument in favor of radical individualism in values, see the essay by Nobel-prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow, “Social Choice and Justice” (1983). The foundational assumption of capitalist economics, that individual choices in the market are the only admissible “good,” makes it impossible to argue for a “common good” or that some needs take priority over “wants” in the market. See Mill’s essay “On the Definition and Method of Political Economy” (1984, originally published in 1836) for the first great attempt to articulate economics on the basis of deductive assumptions about how it “should” be, and to deliberately leave out all other considerations for the sake of clarity and effectiveness.

Addendum: Further Commentary on the Work of Economist Herman Daly John B. Cobb, Jr.

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Whitehead’s thought has played no role in mainstream economic thinking. Indeed, the one major economist who has adopted it, Herman E. Daly, has been virtually ostracized from the guild of economists, at least in the United States. However, he has had a following in other circles, particularly ecologists and religious communities. He is in great demand all over the world among those critical of the dominant direction in which the global economy is going. He is called on for teach-ins at meetings of the anti-globalization movement. Furthermore, government officials who have responsibilities both toward the environment and toward the economy are often interested in what he has to say. And even some professional economists working on issues involving natural resources, for example, in schools of forestry, have turned to him for guidance. These officials, economists and others, who recognize the importance of taking the environment into account in economic theory and practice, now have their own organization, the International Society for Ecological Economics. Although the members of the society have diverse views, its organization was stimulated by Daly’s work, and he has continued to be a major influence within it. He is co-founder and associate editor of its journal, Ecological Economics. There are also national societies in which Daly is held in high esteem; this is certainly true of the Canadian society. Accordingly, one can say that, through him, a Whiteheadian economics is playing a role in the global drama. Daly studied economics at Vanderbilt University and then taught at Louisiana State University. At Vanderbilt he was influenced by economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen who emphasized the biophysical foundations of economics, especially the entropy law. It was through this polymath professor that Daly was first introduced to Whitehead, a connection later much strengthened by collaboration with John B. Cobb, Jr. When the World Bank succumbed to pressure to institute environmental impact studies of its proposed projects, Daly was its most visible choice. Daly’s prior experience in Latin America made him acceptable to that division of the Bank in spite of his unorthodox economic views. Since leaving the World Bank, Daly has taught at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Among his books are Steady-State Economics (1977, 1991), Valuing the Earth (1993), Beyond Growth (1996), and Ecological Economics and the Ecology of Economics (1999). Daly has received considerable recognition for his work, especially in Europe. He was honored with a Right Livelihood Award by Sweden. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences gave him its Heineken Prize for Environmental Science. He received the Sophie Prize from Norway. Subsequently he received the Leontief Prize for Contributions to Economic i

John B. Cobb, Jr., Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology, 1325 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711 & Center for Process Studies, www.ctr4process.org, [email protected].

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Thought (Tufts University), and the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic. Thus, Daly has not been ignored at all, except by the professional mainstream of economists. Perhaps this disjunction is an implicit expression of diminishing confidence in mainstream economics. Daly was clear from an early stage that the human economy should be understood to operate within the natural economy. Since the natural economy is relatively fixed, this means that the human economy cannot continue to grow indefinitely in its use of natural resources. Unfortunately, the now dominant economic thinking is based on the assumption that economic growth can go on indefinitely; the natural world figures trivially, at best, in its calculations. Accordingly, the managers of the actual economy aim at maximizing this growth. The goal of growth justifies policies that work against equity in human relations; these policies have also proved disastrous for the natural environment. That the human economy is part of a larger natural system that sets limits to human consumption is a fact difficult for most economists to recognize. They are schooled to believe that natural resources are infinitely substitutable, and that technology can, therefore, solve all problems of shortages. They understand nature simply as resource for human use, with no value in itself. Although most of them do not articulate their assumptions philosophically, they may clearly be classified as dualistic and anthropocentric. Daly joined Whitehead in rejecting these philosophical assumptions. He taught, following the philosopher and classical economist John Stuart Mill, that the goal is a steady-state, or stationary-state, economy, operating within the limits of nature and allowing for much of nature to function for the sake of other creatures. Daly has also been concerned about dominant economic assumptions concerning the human being. Most economists assert that desire is constitutive of value: that is, if a person desires X, then X is valuable. Indeed, value is generally equated with monetary value: X is valuable to the extent that people are willing to pay for it. In accord with this individualistic view is the assertion that no group of people should impose its values on others; it is not for economists or political leaders to say that some objects of desire are better than others. The market should be left to make the decisions as to which goods are available for consumption. Daly formulates matters differently. People desire many things that are not good for them. Society has some collective wisdom that can be employed to persuade and educate and otherwise influence the use of economic resources. In this, too, his views correspond to those of Whitehead and his followers, who find varying degrees of intrinsic value in all experiences, human and nonhuman alike. They, accordingly, do not identify value with price. They judge that it is important to evaluate actions as to whether they increase or decrease real value in the world. Economics should serve the long-term good of the earth with its human and nonhuman inhabitants, not simply provide ephemeral pleasures for those who can afford them. Daly quickly recognized his affinities with Whitehead. He made explicit use especially of Whitehead’s fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Whitehead saw that the human ability to abstract is a great gift; we cannot think without abstractions. But he saw also that when the abstractness of concepts is ignored, the conclusions drawn from them are limited in validity. If these conclusions are applied to the real world without consideration of what they have omitted, in other words, if they are treated as it they were accurate representations of concrete reality, the consequences can be destructive.

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Daly saw that Whitehead described well what takes place in much economic theory and in its application to society. He and John B. Cobb, Jr. organized much of their joint 1989 book, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future, around four of these abstractions: the market, economic success, Homo economicus, and land. In the 1994 expanded version, Daly added an appendix on money. The book proposes alternative concepts to those that are criticized. These concepts are based on different abstractions that take more of the actual reality into account and are more sensitive to what they neglect. To indicate the ways in which different assumptions lead to different policies, additional chapters propose many such policies. The first of these chapters points out that the ideal of free trade is based on the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, that a more concrete analysis supports a decentralized economy. For the Common Good won the Grawemeyer award for ideas improving world order. It remains the most fully developed discussion of economic theory from a communitarian and ecological perspective. It is also the most explicitly and intentionally Whiteheadian treatise on this subject. In addition, both authors believe with Whitehead that religious faith has a role to play in history. They think that it is crucial to change the destructive direction of events and that a Whiteheadian theology is relevant to the task of reframing economic thinking and practice. This difference follows from the replacement of the classical /Homo economicus /with “person in community.” the classical /Homo economicus /is understood in a fully individualistic way. He is related to other individuals through exchange and contract. Each of these individuals aims to attain as many goods and services as cheaply as possible while getting as much as possible for the least labor. Relations among people are, in philosophical terms, purely external and they become, therefore, purely competitive. The population as a whole is made up of such individuals. Obviously, much economic behavior conforms to this model, so that theories based on it have predictive use. Nevertheless, it involves a radical abstraction, which is acknowledged and then forgotten. People do not exist, could not exist, in this self-enclosed way. Recognizing that families cannot be understood as simply a collection of individuals, economists sometimes speak of households rather than persons as the units of the economy. It is then households that are related to one another in this purely external way. Whitehead teaches us that we consist largely of /internal/ relations, which he calls “prehensions.” These relate us to one another not only in the family but also in the wider society in such a way that our own well being is bound up with the well being of others. The good life is life in community,. Actually, we can develop a healthy individuality only in a healthy community. Hence we understand human beings better as “persons in community.” Many human actions, even economic ones, express our concern for the communities in which we live. A Whiteheadian economics will be “economics for community.” Since the idea of “community” plays no role whatever in standard economic theory, the contrast is sharp. When national policies are shaped by standard economic thinking the goal is to increase overall production and consumption. It is believed that this is best done when the size of markets is increased and each region within the market specializes in what it can produce most efficiently. Also government involvement should be kept to a minimum. A global market in which the role of national governments is minimized and corporations are free to act as they

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please is the ideal toward which the world has moved. This is the meaning of the “free trade” to which so many people have given their allegiance. In the process of realizing the ideal of free trade, tens of thousands of villages and small towns are being wiped out to be replaced by vast urban slums. In evaluating the results, the loss of community life is not even mentioned. Clearly the Whiteheadian view of people as persons in community leads to quite different policies, usually called “community development.” This expresses the Gandhian ideal. Gandhi wanted to improve the lot of the people of India, most of whom lived in peasant villages, by improving the quality of village life. That meant introducing tools and technologies that could be used by the villagers to increase their production. Of course, not all production would be at the village level and there would be trade among villages. But the emphasis would be on an economy that allowed persons in community to shape their community life and decide how to relate to others. Having experienced the human devastation caused by the global economy, more and more people today are recognizing the value of local economies. The co-author of the book, John B. Cobb, Jr., is a Whiteheadian theologian who sees the dominant economic theory as the ideology or “theology” that is most widely determinative of the course of events. Accordingly, he brings his Whiteheadian theology to bear on the assumptions of economic theory. He believes, with Daly, that current economic practice is destructive of both human society and its natural environment, and that its justification by economic theory should be challenged. From this point of view, Cobb has published several books dealing with the course of world events as they are informed by the dominant ideology as well as with more general questions of how Christianity does and should understand human society and the natural world.

Contemporary Schools of Economic Thought Julie A. Nelson

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The currently dominant school of economic thought among Euro-American academics is neoclassical economics, which is centered on an image of rational agents borrowed from classical liberal philosophy. Other contemporary schools of economics—such as postKeynesian, Austrian, institutionalist, feminist, critical realist, radical, ecological and humanistic economics—offer critiques of neoclassical economics. The alternatives proposed often, in part, move in directions that are somewhat more in line with Whiteheadian process thought. In no case, however, has a Whiteheadian ontology been fully adopted and applied. This article points out actual and potential connections between process thought and economics, taking a feministprocess perspective.

1. Neoclassical Economics Mainstream neoclassical economics is very much based on a radically reductionist, individualist, substance-and-attribute ontology. This ontology presumes the pre-existence of discrete, well-defined, rational, self-interested, and autonomous agents, but pays very little attention to the formation of these agents. In particular, it takes their preferences for goods and services as a given. Not only individuals, but also multi-person groups such as households and firms are treated in the core model as though they were individual agents. This allows neoclassical economics to sidestep any consideration of relationships that might involve the least degree of interconnection or interdependence. In the core model, the agents interact with each other only at arm’s length, communicating only through impersonal, mechanicallyfunctioning, and perfectly competitive markets. The preferred tools of the neoclassical economist are logic and mathematics. The economist, it is assumed, sits apart from the object he (“he,” since, historically, the vast majority of economists were male) studies. Like a Newtonian physicist, he is assumed to need only know the universal, unchanging rules and principles that undergird the economic system in order to make assertions and predictions about it. Among these rules is the proposition that agents make their choices so as to maximize utility (if they are consumers) or profits (if they are firms). The most common definitions of economics hold that it deals with the behavior of markets, or that it explores the ways rational individuals make decisions in the face of scarcity. In either case, it is assumed that the discipline is a “science”—i.e. objective and value-neutral. Aspiring to a narrow and rigid ideal of objectivity, mainstream economics accepts only efficiency as a normative goal. Here, an action or system is efficient if there exists no change which would i

Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, Medford MA 02155 USA, http://users.erols.com/julie.nelson/, [email protected].

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increase one agent’s utility without lowering the utility of another. Efficiency is assumed to be a universally accepted good, and one that therefore can be adopted as the sole normative standard: by referring all considerations to it, neoclassical economists hope to avoid making subjective and controversial value-judgments. Much study and research in economics is devoted to the elaboration of mathematicallyformulated rules and discussion about whether efficiency is or is not achieved, under various modifications of the basic scenario. The concept of human need is—surprisingly, to any who might argue that economics should have something to do with human survival and flourishing— banished from the discipline, as too ill-defined for an allegedly objective science. Even the recognition that high unemployment is bad has been sidestepped in recent decades by a focus on the theoretical “micro-foundations” (that is, explanations by means of rational choice and markets) of macroeconomic phenomena. All of these assumptions, of course, are rarely made explicit. The student of economics is very rarely taught anything about the history or philosophy of the discipline, or encouraged to pay attention to real-world problems like poverty, injustice, or the destruction of the natural environment. Instead, the student is plunged immediately into abstract graphs and equations.

2. Contrasts with Whiteheadian Thought The contrast with a Whiteheadian process ontology could hardly be more dramatic. Neoclassical economics regards agents as pre-existing and radically separate from each other. Process thought regards all agents as continually coming into being and creating the basis for the next moment as an aspect of a deeply interconnected whole. Neoclassical economists regard economies and markets as preexisting, mechanical, closed systems, with predictable behaviors that that they can aspire to model in elegant, abstract detail. In process thought the world— including, presumably, markets and other economic institutions—evolves as an organismic open system, with novelty as an integral feature. In neoclassical economics questions of value are equated with individual, subjective utility. More pressing for Whitehead are questions about “ultimate values” (SMW 203). Neoclassical economic theory was not yet as deeply entrenched in Whitehead’s creative period as it is now, and Whitehead did not engage at great length with this form of economic thought.1 However, he did write at considerable length about Cartesian thought and how during the eighteenth century “the notion of the mechanical explanation of all the processes of nature finally hardened into a dogma of science” (SMW 60). Since these influences strongly shaped the development of neoclassical economics, much of his critique is apropos.2 Whitehead also wrote about the world of commerce and industry. While such writings are not about economic thought per se, they do give us some clues about what he might have said, if pressed. For example, in the nineteenth century, when society was undergoing transformation into the manufacturing system, the bad effects of [Cartesian] doctrines have been very fatal. The doctrine of minds, as independent substances, leads directly not merely to private worlds of experience, but also to private worlds of morals. The moral

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intuitions can be held to apply only to the strictly private world of psychological experience. Accordingly, self-respect, and the making the most of your own individual opportunities, together constituted the efficient morality of the leaders among the industrialists of that period. The western world is now suffering from the limited moral outlook of three previous generations (SMW 195-6). It is neoclassical economic thought that provides the academic imprimatur to the current dogma that individual utility (“the strictly private world of psychological experience”) and self-interest (“the making the most of your own individual opportunities”) are intrinsic and central to economic life. As neoclassical economics takes the abstract concepts of Cartesian thought and translates them to the practical world of “industrialists” of Whitehead’s time and our own, it can clearly be brought under the Whiteheadian critique.

3. Feminism, Process, and Economics Neoclassical thought fails to recognize the importance of relationships and interdependencies among people, and between people and the larger environment. One of the ways this is most dramatically manifested is in its neglect of those parts of life that have traditionally been associated more with women than with men. Feminist economists have brought to light many gender-related biases in mainstream economics which can be seen as closely related to its rejection of a Whiteheadian ontology of connection and organicism. Note that the agent of neoclassical economic theory has no childhood or old age, and thus no periods of dependence and no need for the sorts of care traditionally provided by women. The rational agent has no emotions, no bodily needs, no intuitions, and not much use for sensitivity, receptivity, or thoughts about ethical behavior in relation to others and the natural world. In traditional Western thought, women have long been associated with the natural, presumably pre-rational world, and treated as merely part of the passive, exploitable environment that (invisibly) supports the activities of rational “man.” Considerable innovative feminist research during the 1980s (e.g. Harding 1986; E.F. Keller 1985) explored the historical, philosophical, and psychological ramifications of this highly gendered way of viewing the world within the development of science. From the early days of the scientific revolution, notions of reality and its exploration have been highly colored by an association of masculineidentified characteristics of autonomy and rationality with superiority and true knowledge. Resistance by mainstream philosophers to Whiteheadian concepts of feeling, connection, vagueness and value take some of their force, a feminist analysis would imply, from the psychological habit of perceiving these aspects of life as soft and feminine, and therefore inferior, compared with masculine-associated rationality, distance, precision, and neutrality (Nelson, 2003a). Feminist scholars have struggled to come up with more adequate ways of thinking about men, women, gender, and knowledge. One strain of feminist thought, sometimes referred to as “liberal feminism,” tends to argue, in essence, that women as well as men are (or can be) rational agents. This approach retains classical liberal values of individuality and rationality, but extends them to women. Another strain, sometimes referred to as “cultural feminism,” questions

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the primacy of those values, and argues for a revaluation of cooperation, emotion, and otherinterest as important dimensions of human life. Sometimes this line of thought falls into the trap of essentialism, reinforcing a hard-and-fast dualism by asserting that women are “by nature” more relation-oriented than men. At other times, it makes the mistake of seeking merely to flip the tables, rejecting all masculine-associated characteristics and elevating only feminineassociated ones. A third option, derived from feminist process thought, offers a way past the Scylla and Charybdis presented by liberal and cultural feminisms. Feminist process theologian Catherine Keller in From a Broken Web (1986) examines the mythical image that she calls the “separative” self. The separative self is an autonomous, self-possessing, independent, rational individual, imagined as over and against society, the world, and even his own body. Intimately paired with the separative self is the “soluble self.” The soluble self is self-negating, dissolved in others, and absorbed in all the emotional and bodily activities that invisibly support the separative self in his illusions of autonomy.3 What these mythical images serve to hide is exactly Whitehead’s insight that we are all individually valuable yet at the same time intrinsically made up of our relations in community—that each of us is both individual and related. Traditional masculine roles emphasize the individual side, while traditional feminine roles emphasize the related side. This dualism serves to drive people of both sexes into rigid, substantivist identities and away from a realization of our authentic, organic becoming. What is needed, instead, is a more dynamic understanding of ourselves as both/and—both individual and related, both rational and emotional, both competitive and cooperative, and so on. Overcoming sexist bias, in this case, is not a matter of rejecting the separative self in favor of the soluble self, but rejecting the dualism itself in favor of a more complex and truly relational understanding. Feminist economists have begun to apply such analysis to the economics of households and of other groups (Ferber and Nelson, 1993, 2003). An understanding of human behavior as dynamic, evolving, and highly interdependent and laden with value, of course, also requires a rethinking of the methodology of economics. The abstract, deductive approach of neoclassical theorizing is intimately linked with its assumption of the primacy of the separative self. The positing of discrete units whose behavior follows universal “laws” facilitates an analysis based on logic and mathematics. Consideration of the existence of fundamental interdependence makes us face the fact that the world is much richer and more complex than is generally acknowledged in neoclassical thought, and that much of reality lies beyond the reach of its conceptual tools. Many feminist economists have raised questions about the narrowness of mainstream methodology, and encouraged more use of concrete experiential data, qualitative studies, and the like. The response of mainstream economics to such critiques has been largely dismissive. One paradigm tends to dominate economic thought in most universities in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. Anyone who challenges that paradigm is simply dismissed as “not doing economics.” My own work, which takes a feminist-process approach (informed both by Whiteheadian thought and by related insights from American pragmatist and Buddhist philosophies) diverges not only from mainstream economics (in which I was trained) but also from that of many other feminist economists. While critiques of “economic man” and of the one-sided hegemony of

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abstract mathematical analysis now seem quite obvious to the majority of feminist economists, fewer are drawn to engage in discussions of ontology and value. Many see such discussions as too philosophical to be relevant to their practical work, or (rightly) fear that their work will seem even less “objective” to their economics colleagues if they engage in discussions of value and purpose. So it is in engagement with the smaller and often somewhat more self-reflective heterodox schools of economics that discussions of ontology and Whiteheadian thought may sometimes arise.

4. Whitehead and Heterodox Economics While neoclassical economics has a hegemonic hold over economics teaching and research in many countries, other schools of economics exist at the margins. In one case, there is evidence of a possible direct connection to Whitehead: the British economist John Maynard Keynes was influenced by Whitehead when they were both in Cambridge during the first years of the twentieth century (Hodgson 1993, 11).4 Keynes’ famous The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935-36) presented a major challenge to the market-oriented thought dominant in the 1930s. Developing Keynes’ insights further, the current school of postKeynesian economics considers capitalist market economies to be evolving and inherently unstable. Some post-Keynesian economists have suggested that Keynes used a distinctly organicist ontology (Chick and Dow, 2001).5 A number of other heterodox schools share the idea that economies are open systems that are fundamentally complex, dynamic, and unpredictable, rather than (as assumed in mainstream thought) closed systems, amenable to distillation into mathematical formulae. Austrian economics, for example, founded in Vienna by Joseph Schumpeter and Friedrich Hayek and others in the early 20th century, emphasizes activity, dynamic processes, creativity, and innovation. Schumpeter’s famous theory of “creative destruction” would never fit within a mechanical neoclassical model. Austrian economics is, however, notably non-Whiteheadian in its extreme individualism and its libertarian political stance. A more promising school is institutionalist (or evolutionary) economics, which developed in the early decades of the twentieth century in the United States (see Hodgson, 1993). Its early leaders included Thorstein Veblen and John R. Commons. Although this school’s founders seem to have had no connection with Whitehead, I find the basic directions of this school quite Whitehead-friendly. At its best, institutional economics sees the world as being continually in creation, and gives a balanced ontological importance to both stability, order, habit and the past on the one hand, and flux, chaos, novelty and the future on the other. The best institutionalist economists also direct their work explicitly towards the promotion of valuable ends. In part influenced by American pragmatist philosophy, institutional economists tend to reject dogmatic theories in favor of investigating how businesses, governments, and other social institutions can best be adapted to meet pressing economic problems.6 The “critical realism” approach defended by contemporary British economist Tony Lawson also advocates an open-system approach. Unfortunately, it is based on an ontology of “structures, powers, and generative mechanisms”

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(Lawson 1999, 31) that provides inadequate support for its claims of philosophical sophistication and liberatory intent (Nelson, 2003a). The work of process theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. has made the ideas of humanistic and ecological economics familiar to many process thinkers. Contemporary humanistic (or socio-) economics tends to emphasize ethical dimensions of economic behavior within human communities, while ecological economics views human activities within the broader context of a complex and fragile planetary ecosystem. Cobb’s work with ecological economist Herman Daly, most notably For the Common Good (1989, 1994), has been very influential in contemporary humanistic and ecological economics circles. Many of Daly’s and Cobb’s critiques of neoclassical theory and present global economic trends are right on target. But, in more subtle ways, their prescriptions for change reflect some habits of thinking against which Whitehead himself warned us. In Cobb’s view, market systems inexorably lead to concentration of wealth, and transnational corporations are, more or less, demonic powers bent on destroying value and community (see e.g. Cobb 2002, 5, 8). Such views borrow subtly from older radical or Marxist economic beliefs about the presumed inherent dynamics of capitalist systems. While radical economics has generally presented itself as the main alternative to neoclassical economics, it, ironically, shares the same ontological base. The sort of Marxian thought that posits inexorable capitalist dynamics is essentially a variant of classical economics, which grew from the eighteenthcentury work of Adam Smith. Smith’s idea that the economy is a large machine whose behavior is driven by physics-like “laws” provides the ontological basis for both neoclassical “laws” of optimization and the Marxian “law” of capital accumulation. And this perspective was, of course, an outgrowth of the particular scientific worldview of Smith’s time. In both neoclassical and (much) Marxian thought, the idea that economies might be evolving human-made creations is rejected in favor of an image of an abstract economy driven by universal principles and rules. What we see in real-world patterns of production and exchange, these schools imply, is merely a somewhat imperfect manifestation of the abstract ideal with its behind-the-scenes forces and principles. In rejecting the observed, evolving world in favor of idealized principles as our touchstone for knowledge, these views demonstrate what Whitehead called the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” For instance, in one passage Whitehead writes: A factory, with its machinery, its community of operatives, its social service to the general population, its dependence upon organizing and designing genius, its potentialities as a source of wealth to the holders of its stock is an organism exhibiting a variety of vivid values. What we want to train is the habit of apprehending such an organism in its completeness. It is very arguable that the science of political economy, as studied in its first period after the death of Adam Smith (1790), did more harm than good. It destroyed many economic fallacies, and taught how to think about the economic revolution then in progress. But it riveted on men a certain set of abstractions which were disastrous in their influence on modern mentality. It dehumanized industry (SMW, 200, emphasis added). One possible reading of this passage might interpret it as saying that classical political economy converted some sort of earlier, humane, organic industrial system (that is, the sorts of factories referred to early in the passage) into an inhuman economic machine. But this ignores history

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and mixes up abstractions and reality. The factories that Whitehead refers to as organisms must be contemporary factories, since history contradicts the notion of an early industrial Eden. The correct way to understand this passage, I claim, is to see Whitehead as stating that even presentday global market systems and transnational corporations are process-based, human-made organisms. Whitehead was arguing, I believe, that the abstractions of classical (and later neoclassical) thought have created a belief that economies are something other than human organizations, and that this belief has been used to justify inhumane actions. Corporate leaders dehumanize workers when they treat them merely as inputs. But progressive thinkers also “dehumanize industry” when they portray corporate leaders as mere personifications of greed, or imagine corporations to be non-human entities inexorably driven by unseen forces. There are good empirical reasons to believe, instead, that markets and corporations are evolving human organizations, and that the strength of the “laws” that supposedly drive them have been very much overstated (Nelson, 2006). This realization can have subtle but important effects on prescriptions for (much-needed) economic transformation. Instead of envisioning economic transformation as a battle between ethical human communities and demonic inhuman corporations, one is challenged to identify and support the value-enhancing processes within human organizations of any kind, and to resist the value-destroying tendencies within human organizations of any kind. Cobb’s and Daly’s prescriptions for change tend to have a devolutionary, retrenching, and negative tone to them. They prescribe the breaking up of large corporations, the withdrawal of international ties, and the halting of economic growth. These are perfectly understandable reactions if one perceives the problem as a battle between human values and an inexorable global economic machine that has gone out of control. In a similar way, Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril (2001) by feminist process theologian Sallie Mcfague contains many insights, but ends on a negative note, with its advocacy of sacrifice and self-denial. While the sorts of ecological and human suffering that Cobb, Daly, and Mcfague describe are as important and pressing as these writers claim, a fully process-oriented understanding points towards more positive and creative solutions. The goal should not be to try to defeat a presumed global economic machine, but, first, to recognize that the machine image is, in fact, a product of an eighteenth-century view of the world and our habits of abstraction. Rather than retreating, we need to realize that the real world of human economic endeavor is living, evolving and alive with, as Whitehead wrote, “vivid values.” In practical terms this would entail, for example, dropping the idea that corporations cannot be socially and ecological responsible because economic “law” dictates that they must maximize profits. Instead, it means starting to seriously demand that they—and we, as workers, consumers, and in all our other roles—act with the social and ecological responsibility, creativity, and respect for inherent value that we are called to realize from our locations within the organic whole. It does not mean retreating, but rather plunging forward with all the creativity we can muster to “grow” our economies in ways that serve life rather than defeat it.7

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5. Conclusion Whiteheadian thought on economics challenges the common belief that economies are lifeless systems, driven by rules and laws that lie beyond human control. It provides an adequate ontology for the notion that economies are creative, evolving, and value-laden. As such, it also provides an adequate intellectual explanation for why taking action in the economic world in line with ultimate values not only makes sense, but is the most important thing we can do.

Notes 1

See Johnston in this volume for a review of Whitehead’s writings on economics. See Nelson (1993) for more on the Cartesian roots of neoclassical economics. 3 Sociologist Paula England and I, in the early 1990s, recognized in this analysis a key to understanding the creation of the image of separative “economic man” and the denigration women and relationships. In 1993 England wrote “The Separative Self: Androcentric Bias in Neoclassical Assumptions” for a collection I co-edited, and from that time the term separative self has become part of the discourse of feminist economics. 4 Whitehead also refers to Keynes work on probability theory (PR 206). 5 Two notes of caution are in order. First, there exist sub-fields within mainstream economics that share its basic ontology and methodology, but which have names similar to the heterodox schools discussed here. “Keynesian” economics is a subfield of the mainstream, while postKeynesian economics has an open-system ontology. Similarly, “new institutionalist” and “environmental” economics are essentially mainstream, while (“old”) institutionalism, and ecological economics break the mould. Secondly, many heterodox scholars, even when they claim to have a more open and processual ontology, fail to extend this to thinking about gender. As a result, when it comes to gender, heterodox economists are frequently as rigid or ignorant as their mainstream peers. 6 For more on the relation of institutionalism, pragmatism, and process thought see Nelson (2003b). 7 See Nelson (2006) for more on this point in general, and, more specifically, Nelson (2003c) on the work of Mcfague. 2

Management and Organization Studies Mark R. Dibben

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People say that machinery and commerce are driving beauty out of the modern world. I do not believe it. A new beauty is being added, a more intellectual beauty, appealing to the understanding as much as to the eye (OT, 67). Alfred North Whitehead’s own thoughts on management are largely confined to his statements on the role of business schools in tertiary education. These are to be found primarily in two addresses, a decade apart, the first “at the Prize Distribution, Borough Polytechnic Institute, Southwark, February, 1917” (OT, 58-68) and the second, a May 1927 address to a meeting of the “American Association of the Collegiate Schools of Business” at the Harvard Business School (Whitehead, 1928). Although both deal with similar arguments for the cultivation of foresight and insight, and indeed were ultimately reprinted as consecutive chapters— interestingly in reverse order (VIII and VII respectively)—in “The Aims of Education,” neither 1 were intended as philosophical pieces per se. Rather they were intended to make public arguments for the teaching of business in higher education in terms of its broader contributions to economic and social life: It is not enough that [business men] should amass fortunes in this way or that and then endow a college or a hospital. The motive for amassing the fortune should be in order to use it for a socially constructive end […]. It is time to teach business its sociological function; for if America is to be civilised it must be done by the business class, who are in possession of the power and the economic processes. I don’t need to tell you there is a good deal of sniffing on this, the Harvard College and graduate school’s side of the Charles River […] at the new Harvard School of Business Administration on the opposite bank. That strikes me as […] unimaginative. […] Universities [… should] be taking business in hand and teaching it ethics and professional standards (D, 63-4). This is true also of a later address to an April 13th 1933 “meeting held in commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the founding of the Harvard Business School” (Lowe and Baldwin, 1951, 768), later published in the Harvard Business Review (Whitehead, 1933; also Johnson, 1959). In this, his only recorded publication on management studies (Lowe and Baldwin, 1951), Whitehead provided more of a contemporary and practical rationale for the education of businessmen than that found in the two earlier addresses. Noting that a twofold trend towards individualism and a growing reliance upon employers was creating a freedom of choice constrained by the need to work—what he termed “iron-bound conditions of employment and trivial amusements for leisure”—Whitehead advocated the study of business and management through “direct observation and practical experience.” This, he suggested, was essential because the change in scale of modern industry has made nearly the whole of previous literature on the topic irrelevant, and indeed mischievous […]. Unless the twentieth century can produce a whole body of reasoned literature elucidating the many aspects of this great topic, it will go hard with the civilisation that we love

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(Whitehead, 1933; cited in Johnson, 1959, 70). Such study, Whitehead argued, should focus on at least three key areas: 1) industrial and managerial psychology; 2) the role of technology in work and employment, particularly the phenomenon of “technological unemployment;” and 3) the development, sale and distribution 2 of individually tailored products within a mass manufacturing system. Despite this single foray into management studies—a foray almost entirely unnoticed, in spite of its prophetic insight into the nature and future impact of business on society—Whitehead’s influence on the field has been considerable. First, we may surmise that Whitehead had at least some influence on the contributions which his son, T. North Whitehead, made to the seminal Hawthorne studies of worker productivity in large scale industry (1924-33), published in 1938 (Whitehead, 1938); the Hawthorne studies were, after all, very much industrial and managerial psychology studies of the role of technology in work and employment, relying upon direct observation and practical experience. Furthermore, Whitehead’s letters to his son from 1924-29 reveal a tendency to discuss his own thinking as it might apply to his son’s work; at the same time, he often sent him pre-copies of those works he felt would be of most interest, such as 3 Science and the Modern World (Lowe, 1990, 279-341). 4

Second, and perhaps more substantively, the rise of organization studies as a legitimate field within management as a social science after WWII, and notably since the 1970s, has provided an increasingly receptive forum for more generic aspects of Whitehead’s philosophy, namely the Fallacy of Simple Location and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, to be applied to the understanding of the management experience of business and other work organizations. In this brief review we examine key areas within the field to which Whitehead’s thinking has been applied. We note some of the limitations of these uses and suggest certain extrapolations, in order to point out further possible applications of Whitehead’s thought for future study of the 5 nature of managerial and organizational life.

1. Applications of Whitehead’s Thought in Management and Organization Studies It is no accident that an age of science has developed into an age of organisation […]. Science is the organization of thought, but not any organization of thought […]. Organisation is the adjustment of diverse elements so that their mutual relations may exhibit some predetermined quality (OT, 105). My point is that the final outlook of Philosophic thought cannot be based upon the exact statements that form the basis of the special sciences. The exactness is a fake (Whitehead, 1941, 700). A recent review of the development of organization studies in America by its pioneering scholar James March (e.g. March and Simon, 1958) and colleagues would suggest that, rather than being regarded as central to the field, process oriented research in general (much less the “strong view” to which process philosophy ascribes) is not regarded as playing even a minor part either in its post-war history, or its future (Augier et al, 2005). Nevertheless, a broader review of the management and organization studies literatures beyond the United States

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uncovers growing recognition of the value of process thinking, especially among European scholars. Whitehead is here used (along with other more popular process philosophers such as Bergson, James and more recently Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze) to help provide the philosophical basis for one of four recognized approaches to studying organizational change 6 (Van deVen and Poole, 2005). There is a fundamental reliance, however, on the less technical aspects of Whitehead’s explanations of process, primarily those found in “The Century of Genius” (Chapter III of Science and the Modern World), which provides an argument against the Newtonian assumptions that still pervade the social sciences. Beyond this, there is some use made of Whitehead’s work on education, notably “The Aims of Education” and “Universities and their Function,” Chapters I and VII of The Aims of Education and Other Essays, in order to develop arguments for the cultivation of insight and the nature of leadership in management. Similar use is occasionally made of ‘Science and Philosophy’ (Chapter IX) and ‘Aspects of Freedom’ (Chapter IV) of Adventures of Ideas, as well as small snippets from Modes of Thought for the same purpose. Beyond this, we find very occasional references to, mostly, the introductory parts of Process and Reality, and this only to embellish that found on the nature of process as the ultimate reality in Science and the Modern World. This can hardly be described as a wide ranging and comprehensive use of Whitehead’s work; at most it amounts to no more than fifty individual pages cited from some half-dozen of his ninety English language publications (Woodbridge, 1977; cf. Lowe and Baldwin, 1951). Furthermore, those of his works that are used are primarily those written by “Whitehead the philosopher of science,” as opposed to “Whitehead the metaphysician.” Yet its impact on the field of management and organization studies, particularly over the past decade, is out of all proportion to either the number of works cited or the technical sophistication of the material quoted. So much so that citing a Whitehead book has become de rigeur for any article purporting to discuss processes of managing and/or organizing. Unfortunately, it follows that the frequency of Whitehead’s citation in the field is, with the notable exceptions of those authors discussed in detail below, often inversely proportional to its comprehension of him.

2. Robert Chia While the genesis of Whitehead’s use in management and organization studies can be traced back at least to the 1970s (e.g. Cooper, 1976—see below), the popularity and influence of Whitehead in contemporary management and organization studies is in no small part due to the scholarship of Robert Chia. A survey of subject areas within management, such as managerial decision making (1994, 2003: decisions are no longer “events,” intentions, choices, but a series of pre-definitive acts of punctuating the flow of human experience, producing a version of reality to which managers and workers respond), entrepreneurship (1996a, cf. Dibben, 2000, 2004a and Khalil in this volume: rather than exploration and exploitation of new business opportunities being separate activities, exploitation is a paused, stabilized moment of the exploratory), organization theory (1992, 1996b, 1997, 1998, 1999; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002:

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organizations are not static structures but ever-shifting groupings of dynamic acts of organising, which is itself an interminable ontological quest of arresting, punctuating, isolating and classifying the essentially undivided flow of human experiences) and management learning (Chia and Morgan, 1996; Chia, 2005) reveals that his use of process thought is invariably the benchmark for any subsequent analysis (Dibben and Munro 2003). Due to both the painstaking nature of its development and also its inherent conceptual richness, Chia’s work is not only the first word on the subject in the management and organization studies literatures, but often the final word also. Rarely has one person galvanized and reshaped the discourse of his discipline in such a manner, and in such a short space of time. The most complete rendering of Chia’s arguments for a process perspective in management are perhaps found in an article written specifically for the journal Process Studies (Chia and Tsoukas, 2003), which combined key elements from a number of previously published articles (including the original draft of an article that had appeared with substantial revision / simplification—all references to Whitehead removed—in the leading management journal 7 Organization Science; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002 ) into a single piece, as a demonstration of the use of process philosophy in the field. In summary, the argument proceeds as follows. Management and organization theorists, Tsoukas and Chia argue, are not good at thinking process and movement. Their instinctive conceptual skills favor the fixed and the static, the separate and the self-contained. Taxonomies, hierarchies, systems and structures represent the instinctive vocabulary of management and organization theorists in their determined subordinating of flux, movement, change and transformation. Dominant models of change in general and organizational change in particular are, therefore, paradoxically couched in the language of equilibrium and fixity. The standard construal of organizational change and the strategies that are formulated to manage that change are shaped by deeply ingrained habits of thought, which surreptitiously privilege substance, stability, and spatial order over process, change, and temporality. One major consequence is that process and change are construed in orderly terms; changes are hypostatized and treated as exceptional rather than natural. Starting with this premise, Chia and Tsoukas use Whitehead, Bergson, Deleuze and others to argue that, on the contrary, change is the pervasive feature of organized contexts of action, for it stems from actors’ re-weaving of their webs of beliefs in order to accommodate new experiences obtained through interactions with others and with one’s own thoughts. Organizing is an attempt to order the intrinsic flux of human action through generalizing and institutionalizing particular cognitive categories. Organization is an exceptional effect produced by the deliberate slowing down of change. The effort to generate stabilized patterns of interaction is inherently temporary and intrinsically incomplete. Change in organization is not externally imposed, but immanently produced. In that sense it is better to talk about organizational becoming rather than change. (Dibben and Cobb 2003, 180-81) In this way, Chia’s writing and that which has followed it (e.g. Wood, 2002 and 2005b; cf. Linstead, 2002 and Styhre, 2002) uses process thought essentially to turn passive static noun into active changeful verb, such that organization becomes organizing, management becomes managing, knowledge becomes knowing and so on. It then uses this reconceptualization to derive insightful commentary on the nature of management. For example, developing

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Whitehead’s commentary regarding education and the business school (AE 136-52), Chia argues that the philosopher-manager engages in an ongoing education of intellectual and emotional preparation. This allows him to be aware of the need to avoid the conceptual closure afforded us by the dominant cultural norms, actions and beliefs expressed through the professional language of managerial life (Chia and Morgan, 1996). Such preparation consists of being open to Whitehead’s “creative advance into novelty,” allowing a Whiteheadian “awakening” of the senses to the myriad possibilities afforded by the imaginative recombining of new information into renewed understanding and, as a result, foresight. In this sense, Chia argues management learning consists of a continual intellectual process of knowledge-making through the momentary stabilizing and encoding of patterns of informational and human relations. Management knowledge is therefore “always about to become something other than itself” (Chia and Morgan, 1996, 58; cf. Chia, 1996a).

3. Robert Cooper Chia’s appreciation of Whitehead has its genesis in his doctoral supervisor’s landmark essay, “The Open Field,” published in the interdisciplinary social science journal Human Relations (Cooper, 1976). Robert Cooper here developed a “process epistemology” by combining Whitehead’s notion of an extensive continuum—what Cooper called an “abstract field”—with the thinking of a variety of philosophically oriented psychologists and sociologists to argue man 8 as “ever open and unfinished” in a Heideggerian sense, experiencing himself and the world as an “open field.” However, perhaps because of the influence of and reliance upon such a variety of other writers, his “process epistemology” arguably lacks any substantive use of Whitehead’s core principles of panexperientialism and internal as well as external relations, leaving his concept of process constrained to being “the action between beginning and end” (1976, 1011). This remains in Cooper’s more recent thinking developing the work of Merleau-Ponty, Foucault and Levinas on the nature of relations (2005). This, as with his original work, provides a processual analysis of human agency; relationality concerns the “interspace” between separate things. From the perspective of organization, Cooper has argued it is not the elements within the organization per se, but rather the relations between those elements that constitute the organization, some of which will be contentious and unstable and some of which may be relatively stable and hence describable as “organizational structure” (Cooper and Law, 1995; also Cooper, 1986). From this perspective, the boundary of an organization (as opposed to the more standardly rendered organization itself) is now a site of struggle, contest and change where energy is continuously expended in dividing the inside from the outside (Dibben and Munro, 2003). Thus, although Cooper’s work draws to a certain extent on Whitehead to “articulate the nature of a processual and emergent form of knowing and its consequences for strategies of intellectual inquiry” (Chia 1998a, 4), a thoroughgoing Whiteheadian expression of the nature of experience is not taken up. In spite of this, and unlike Chia’s considerably more prolific focus on selective applications discussed above, Cooper’s approach is perhaps the most intuitively Whitehedian

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expression to be found in the management and organization studies field (see also Chia 1998a, 1998b; Cooper 1987 and 1992).

4. Martin Wood One scholar who has recently recognized and sought to grapple with the problem of how to move comprehensively beyond discussions of external relatedness in management and organization studies is Martin Wood. Focusing on the notion of leadership, Wood argues discussion of leadership should not be directed toward distinguishing a state, but rather toward internal relatedness, toward the identification of an essential movement, in which what endures is internal qualitative difference: the being-itself of difference, and not the sameness of identity. The idea of simple, objective location has gone and the relation as a thing itself is brought to the fore (2005a; cf. 2005b and 2003). In this way, Wood extends the standard use of Whitehead’s “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” beyond a straightforward explanation of the primacy of process to one which addresses directly the problem of contemporary process discourses in the field, discourses that retain the static understanding of “self-identical individualism and discrete relatedness, and thereby leave the relation external to the related” (Wood, 2005a). Wood is perhaps alone among his contemporaries, therefore, in genuinely rising to the challenge of focusing on processes rather than things. In so doing, he argues leadership is “going on within a subtle synthesis of internal differences without mediation or relation to others.” The “essence” of leadership is thus more accurately seen as “the accelerating pace (and shrinking space) of relations of movement and rest, speed, slowness and simulataneity.” This, as opposed to a “self-evident [and] particular leadership figure construed as a simple element, present at hand […]” (2005b, 285). In this rendering of leadership, Wood shows hitherto partial expressions of process in the management field lack the capacity to articulate a sense of the managerial experience as “the subtle synthesis of internal forces that are always qualitatively relating through their difference” (2005a). As a result of this analysis of the impact of internal as well as external relations on the managerial phenomenon of leadership, Wood argues that management research must pay attention not to quasi-scientific neo-empiricism but rather to “the withdrawn or background processes of individuation,” accessing the “mise en scene through the deployment of qualitative, interpretive and ethnographic research” (2005b, 287). If it is to grapple fully with the implications of a process ontology, therefore, the field should investigate how perpetual movement and divergent processes form a discrete body, or appear to obtain in a substantial set of individual qualities and capabilities, at the same time as preserving the uninterrupted continuity of our experience (Wood, 2005b, 287).

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5. Management in the Process Studies Literatures An epic poem is a triumph of organisation […]. It is the successful organisation of multitudinous sounds of words, associations of words, pictorial memories of diverse events and feelings ordinarily occurring in life, combined with a special narrative of great events: the whole so disposed as to excite emotions which […] are simple, sensuous and passionate. (OT 105-106) We have noted the uses of Whitehead’s thought in management and organization studies and explored a number of contributions to knowledge this has enabled. For the most part, these can be described as resulting from the “selective application” of specific elements of the work of a variety of process philosophers to unpack a particular aspect of the topic under study (Dibben and Munro, 2003). As such, it rarely comes to grips with the technical details of process thinking, such as distinguishing between conscious discrimination, causal efficacy, presentational immediacy and symbolic reference, or recognizing panexperientialism. A more complete use of Whiteheadian thinking to explore management and organization related topics may, however, be found in the process studies literature. Besides arguments against contemporary business globalization effects from an eco-relational perspective (Gare 1996 and in this volume; cf. McLaren, 2004, Daly and Cobb, 1994 and Cobb in this volume), the most in-depth explorations seek to develop Whitehead’s explanations of emotional experience (AI 183-84, 192-93). In essence this involves a shift in the fundamental unit of analysis, from organization to individual human being. This allows more attention to be paid to core aspects of the mind-body problem (i.e. the nature and locus of experience), and thus greater integration with Whitehead’s philosophy beyond the broad-brushed generalizations concerning process ontology and epistemology discussed above. The acceptance of panexperientialism, coupled with a recognition of the significance of Whiteheadian relationality, allows detailed integrations of management and organizational issues. For example, a topic of continued interest to managers and management scholars is the role and effect of trust in and between organizations. A Whiteheadian rendering reveals the nature of its development, by exploring it in terms of the concrescence of an actual entity. This provides otherwise unavailable access to our experience of trust as a complex emotion by allowing (1) an important distinction to be made between trust in the present from past trust; and (2) the derivation of trust from the past prehension of the individual trusted. In any given interpersonal interaction, it is now possible to distinguish (1) prehension of past experiences objectified in part by trusting the other person and largely conformed to; and (2) the prehension of the person now, with a subjective form of trust. By reference to Whitehead’s phases of experience, it follows both prehensions discussed thus far belong to the first phase. Their integration belongs to the second phase, which consists of the separation of the subjective form of trust learnt from prior experiences as an ingredient in the immediate prehension of the other person. This then continues with reintegration into propositional feelings and intellectual feelings concerning the other person and which, in the ideal case, strengthens the trust that concresces (Dibben 2004b, 36; cf. 2000).

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Extending this method of integration with, as opposed to selective application of, Whitehadian process thought still further allows us to “transliterate” contemporary phenomena into Whiteheadian terminology, and thereby gain new insight into their processual nature. For example, it is possible to unpack information systems technology—a phenomenon Whitehead had no knowledge of—in terms of, for example, the given world of cyberspace or the human agent providing aim etc., providing determinate data; these are as objectifications of themselves that the characters of their actual entities can provide. In this way, relative to any actual entity, there is first a “given” world of settled actual entities and second a virtual reality potentiality that is real in effect, but not in fact, and which is the datum for creativeness beyond that standpoint. This will be recognized as the primary phase in the process that constitutes an actual entity, and is merely the actual world in its organized character as a possibility for the process being felt. As such, information systems technology can be shown to exemplify the Whiteheadian metaphysical principle that every being is a potential for a becoming, whereby the actual world comprises the objective content of each new creation (PR 65; in Dibben and Panteli, 2003). In this way, two meanings of potentiality are apparent. First, the bundle of possibilities provided by the multiplicity of eternal objects, i.e. the countless mutually consistent or alternative possibilities extant in cyberspace, that makes up a “general” potentiality. Second, the “real” potentiality as conditioned (organized) by the data of the actual world but delimited by the human agent via the medium of information technology. Thus, while the general potentiality of cyberspace is absolute, the real potentiality of virtual reality is relative to some actual entity, such as a Google search request. Such a rendering provides a positive appreciation of the impact of information technology on life experience (cf. Shields 2002). This is because, unlike less active media experiences such as watching the television, the interactivity that distinguishes virtual reality lies in the manner we enhance the uniqueness of each individual occasion, and at the same time disclose its essential relationship to occasions other than itself […bringing] into prominence the potentialities for alternative realisations, in the past, in the future and in the present (MT 105-6). Besides such technical renderings of management topics and issues, process-thinking is also argued within process studies to be a practically powerful tool in both the daily life of business management and the strategic planning process of global corporations, encompassing issues such as salaries, treatment of workers, product development and manufacturing (D’Arcy and Dibben, 2005). Rather than the evil commonly associated with it, the practical application of Whiteheadian process thought to management allows the potency for good to be realized through seven significant activities (D’Arcy and Dibben 2005, 260). First, the gradual equalization of wages and other benefits, leading to less polarization of the world’s wealth. Second, the placement of most countries on a more even playing field by a more complete sharing of materials across national boundaries. Third, a more complete development of businesses, markets and manufacturing through a more even spreading of investment capital across a broader range of geographical locations. Fourth, the provision of reasonable workers rights to a broader segment of the world’s population. Fifth, the spread of environmental regulations and best-practices around the world. Sixth, a growing respect for differentiation and

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appreciation of “otherness” as a result of the recognition that we are all interdependent with each other. Lastly, seventh, as a most significant and positive direct result of the globalization process, radically profound transformations in educational-understanding, informationalflowing, cultural-exchange, and religious dialogue.

6. Extrapolations We do not adequately analyze any one personal existence; and still less is there any accuracy in the division into species and genera […]. Let us [therefore] consider more closely the character of personal identity. A whole sequence of actual occasions, each with its own present immediacy, is such that each occasion embodies in its own being the antecedent members of that sequence with an emphatic experience of the self-identity of the past in the immediacy of the present (Whitehead 1941, 689-90) [H]uman experience can be described as a flood of self-enjoyment, diversified by a trickle of conscious memory and conscious anticipation […]. When memory and anticipation are completely absent, there is complete conformity to the average influence of the immediate past. There is no conscious conformation of memory with possibility. Such a situation produces mere matter […]. Thus the universe is material in proportion to the restriction of memory and anticipation. (Whitehead 1941, 695, my emphasis) We have noted the main uses of Whitehead’s thought in management and organization studies, along with a number of limitations, and discussed a small variety of different approaches to the use of Whitehead extant in process studies. These latter pay closer attention to the detail of Whiteheadian thought in their attempt to unpack the processual nature of management and organizational life experience. We are now in a position, therefore, to briefly revisit some of Whitehead’s uses in the management field and consider both how a more complete Whiteheadian rendering may be possible and what the implications of such a rendering might be. We begin with Chia’s discussion of management learning outlined above.

7. Management Learning A more comprehensive use of Whitehead allows us to develop Chia’s work further, through discernment of learning as a subjective experience of “transition” (Cobb and Griffin 1976, 1415) from one moment of knowing to another. This knowing, as a momentary event, resides in one individual and to which the individual alone has direct access (Mead, 1934). Since knowledge is understood to be the “conscious discrimination of objects experienced […] derived from, and verified by, direct intuitive observation” (AI 176), learning also requires another individual or set of individuals as a stimulation for it (Dewey 1938, 35-37). As such the learning experience of the individual “does not go on simply inside the person, […] but changes in some degree the objective conditions under which experiences are had” (Dewey 1938, 39). Educative growth through learning is thus not simply a subjective function of direct personal reflection by the individual as a separate experience of self-as-was a moment ago (Mead, 1934)

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to which the self-as-now reacts. Rather, it has an objective character communicated in action towards others, the datum to which those others each respond. These responses, in their turn, are objective reflections of new subjective experiences of learning. In this way, the philosophermanager educates others through his actions, which are a result of his own learning. The continuation, pervasiveness and importance of learning in and across managerial situations therefore arises from the creative urge that transcends the actual occasion such that, upon concrescence, it is immediately part of the universe of entities which affect the concrescence of future managerial occasions. Thus, the dynamism that is the learning experience arises from the continuing creativity of new learning occasions. When viewed as the mechanism by which individual managers act in organizations, organizational growth and development—be this in terms of the daily practice of management or the establishment of longer term strategic policy—is a function of this learning process.

8. Relating Individual Experience to Organization Two questions follow from such a rendering. First, how does each individual managerial experience precisely relate to the business corporation or organization? Second, how can we reconcile the two very different levels of analysis of individual manager and organization (cf. Cooper above), and thereby unpack in process terms the mechanism by which managerial learning may transfer itself into the intellectual (and economic) growth of the business? One answer is to suggest from a technical perspective that it can not. A core problem for writers in management and organization studies, as we have already seen, is the unit of analysis; human agents, organizations and the like are the requisite focus of attention in the field whereas, for Whitehead, these are at best once-removed abstraction. For Whitehead, organizations are not res verae. Here at once lies an indication of the error of the social scientist. Since in process thought only those things that do not endure subjectively beyond the moment of their becoming really exist, the fundamental unit of analysis for the management social scientist—the enduring society that is the organization—is nothing but an epistemological phantom that contravenes the speculative metaphysician’s ontological principle of “togetherness in the formal constitution of an [individual] actuality” (PR 32). This is recognized in part by Clegg et al (2005), who use Whitehead to argue organizations not as “one of the final real things of the which the world is made up” (PR 27), but rather as a “combination of indivisible processes located (and in flux) through space and time and related to each other” (Clegg et al, 2005). Rather than existing, they argue, an organization is the “momentary apprehension of an ongoing process of organizing that never results in an actual entity.” In this sense, they suggest the fallacy of considering an organization as a concrete “thing” thus “consists of neglecting the degree of abstraction involved when an actual entity is considered merely so far as it exemplifies certain categories of thought” (PR 11). The implications of this Whiteheadian insight for either organization studies as a field of research, or for our practical appreciation of organizations as we experience them, however, are left unexplored.

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Nevertheless, a more complete application of Whiteheadian thinking does allow us to explore such implications, by way of postulating a second answer to the questions posed above. The transfer of managerial learning discussed above into the organization can be understood as the inter-relation between occasions and the progressive layers of social order into which they are organized within the business. Certainly an organization in Whiteheadian terms is not a subject of experience as it is not able to make a “decision” with respect to its self-continuation. Yet it does possess “causal laws which dominate the social environment […] and is only efficient through [the actions of] its individual members” (PR 90ff; in Bracken 1989)—actions which, as D’Arcy and Dibben have sought to demonstrate (2005), are the result of process-thinking and learning. Furthermore, the members of the organization can only function as a part of it “by reason of the laws which dominate [it], and the laws only come into being by reason of the analogous characters of the members of the society” (Bracken, 1989). These laws, or policies, procedures and recommendations—such as those discussed above—are in and of themselves a manifestation of managerial learning. In this sense, therefore, a business organization may be thought of as an energy-field, perhaps analogous to a particular kind of extensive continuum, “progressively shaped and ordered by successive generations of [e.g. managerial learning] occasions, so that it effectively serves as the medium for the transmission both of physical feelings and of conceptual patterns from one generation [of, perhaps, managers and/or workers?]… to another” (Bracken 1989, 155). This rendering certainly emphasizes the processthinking manager’s connection with the human life experience of synthesis demonstrated, for example, in the foregoing discussion of trust development. Nevertheless, it subscribes also to a disputed argument that Whiteheadian societies are structured fields of activity that are both objectively real and progressively structured by the events taking place within them (cf. Bracken, 2002, 2004).

9. Furthering a Whiteheadian Understanding of Management and Organization How might such a “field-oriented” rendering be developed so as to further our understanding of management and organization? The first step is to unravel the process-philosophical detail. It would include but by no means be limited to the problems of prehension, tri-modal perception—and in particular the extent to which an event field may be inherently causally efficacious—and what we may term in a general way the problem of continuity within change that a more active event field postulate opens up. Further, we may be forced to ask some fundamental questions, both from a philosophical and a practitioner-oriented perspective. What does an active event field mean for our understanding of Whiteheadian process thought? What does this say for our understanding of Whiteheadian societies, let alone macro societies or social entities and our relations both “to” and “with” them? A number of implications arise, both for our approach as process thinkers to the social sciences, and for social scientific approaches to the nature of the realities they seek to

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understand, should Joseph Bracken’s thesis concerning event fields prove to be demonstrably applicable to contemporary reality. It would, for example, become appropriate to “recognize” social entities as real—they patently are since we at the very least “inhabit” them conceptually. If this is possible within process metaphysics (i.e. within the speculative schema of Process and Reality, as opposed to the scientific schema of Science and the Modern World), the bridge between Whitehead the philosopher of science and Whitehead the metaphysician would be rendered more explicit. It might then be possible to make more use of his early writings on “the organisation of thought,” his 1916 Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in which a number of his later metaphysical concepts are discussed in what amounts to the beginnings of a process epistemology of experience, as related to the science of physics and the logic and geometry of mathematics. It would also be possible to consider social entities, such as organizations, as societies in a Whiteheadian manner more constructively than has perhaps been the case hitherto. This is because it would allow a substantive definition of societies as res verae that retained the Whiteheadian appreciation that (1) the production of social continuity is a function of the transmission of its defining characteristic; and at the same time, (2) the entity makes a decision in its completion about just exactly how that defining characteristic will be appropriated from the social environment into the unitary reality of its individual actuality causa sui. As a result, we would no longer need merely to circumvent the noun (organization) and reinvent it as a verb (organizing). Rather, we may be able to address the noun head-on and at the same time not fall foul of the host of fallacies this has traditionally led us into. It would allow us to extend Cooper’s thinking on relations discussed above by suggesting that the complex enduring pattern we call an organization somehow selects those aspects of both its environments and its parts that are relevant for its functioning and lends its own aspects to what it draws 9 together in its own limitation. Further, we would be able to take better account of the effect of the negative intuitive judgment (PR 273) not only on the concrescing entity but on the capability of the society (/organization) to endure as a result of the continuing conscious discrimination of successions of higher occasions of experience. In short, we may be able to address ourselves more readily and comprehensively to questions the sciences and social sciences concern themselves with directly. Questions that we have so far tended to dismiss as falling foul of the fallacies of misplaced concreteness, simple location and direct (i.e. without an awareness of causal efficacy and presentational immediacy) symbolic reference. Lastly, we might extend Cooper’s and Wood’s arguments regarding the qualitative study of boundaries and interspaces by applying Whitehead’s theories of, amongst others, “extensive abstraction,” “congruence” (CN) and “extension” (PR) to consider in detail what 10 Michel Weber has described as “pointless qualities” (Weber, 2006). In this way, we would also be able to broaden possible research into the Whiteheadian nature and organization of virtuality in information systems, as “the geometrical behavior of space in which one or more of the coordinates are imaginary” (Dibben and Panteli, 2003), to general explanations of organization.

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10. Conclusion: Moving beyond Beginnings 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 (PR 329). Although the focus of Whitehead’s thinking was largely elsewhere, he did turn his attention to management issues in terms of business education. In recent years, this work has been developed by a number of writers in management and organization studies to include a variety of topics, from management knowledge, learning and decision making to organization theory and analysis. This literature is noteworthy for its selective application of specific elements of Whitehead’s thinking, notably that regarding Simple Location and Misplaced Concreteness to explore particular aspects of management of concern to it. Such use has gained substantive currency, largely as a result of the analysis of organization undertaken by the academic and consultant Robert Chia, to the extent that special workshops and conference tracks on process thought in organization studies are now commonplace at academic conferences in the field. The work presented therein is, however, characterized by a stylistic tendency to use a wide range of philosophers in concert, such as Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, James, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida and Nietzsche—as well as occasional references to Whitehead—to develop a general process-oriented discourse. This is because at the general level in which they are used, there are apparently obvious similarities among these philosophers—even if a more in-depth analysis would perhaps place greater emphasis upon the differences between them. As a result, we find comparatively little evidence of a thoroughgoing use of a Whiteheadian process relational philosophy but, rather, arguably a less than complete rendering of the influence of process in management and organizational life. In this sense, and despite the considerable scholarship of a number of writers, notably Chia and Wood, we may conclude that the field has not advanced either in style or substance far beyond Cooper’s original 1976 “Open Field” article. Worse, because the literature neither fully applies Whitehead’s thought, nor fully explores the implications of a Whiteheadian analysis to its topics of study, it often displays at best a sketchy grasp of his philosophy. A growing characteristic is the reliance upon secondary citation of recognized management and organization studies scholars, notably Chia, who cite Whitehead and other process philosophers; understanding of core process issues is consequently limited by 11 abridgment of the abridgers. Furthermore, even among recognized authorities in the field who may be said to engage in detailed study of at least some of Whitehead’s primary literature, there is little evidence of the use of his secondary literatures; rarely are works noted within process studies as providing accurate explications of Whitehead’s thought such as those of Cobb, Griffin, Hartshorne or Sherbourne ever referred to, much less considered in depth. As a result, errors of interpretation are easily made, and promulgated. These errors are partly a function, also, of process thinking in management and organization studies having its basis in deconstruction, or deconstructive postmodernism, as opposed to constructive postmodernism. Renderings in management and organization studies of the deconstructive postmodernisms of Derrida (Cooper, 1989), Foucault (Cooper and Burrell, 1989) and others seek to overcome “the modern worldview through an antiworldview [that]

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deconstructs or eliminates the ingredients necessary for a worldview, such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth as correspondence” (Griffin, 1993). Put bluntly, therefore, deconstruction—“organizational analysis as deconstructive practice” (Chia, 1996b and 1994; cf. Cooper, 1987, 1989 and Cooper and Burrell, 1988, 1989), the premise for an application of Whitehead in management and organization studies, holds to an implicit purpose and worldview that is the precise opposite to that of Whiteheadian thinking (cf. Gare 2000, 2001). Constructive or revisionary postmodernism as espoused by Peirce, James, Bergson, Whitehead and Hartshorne, on the other hand seeks to unify scientific, aesthetic and religious institutions in order to overcome the modern worldview. This is because, in contrast to deconstructive postmodernism, constructive postmodernism provides a more complete rendering of our experience as a result of its return to organicism through a creative synthesis of both premodern and modern truths and values that, crucially, brings with it an acceptance of non-sensory perception (Griffin, 1993). We might, therefore, dismiss the use of Whitehead’s thought (and more generically perhaps, that of a range of other philosophers) in management and organization studies as the expedient development of an inappropriately based discourse that amounts to little more than “intellectual hop-skotch,” a “recipe book” of “sound-bite philosophy” that is itself, ironically, delightful to read, easy to comprehend, and unavoidably incomplete. On the other hand, we might remind ourselves not only that the main focus for management and organization studies scholars is of course not philosophy, but also that management and organization studies scholars are ultimately working in a discipline that is fundamentally constrained in two ways. First, the discipline is not appreciative of advances in physics that understand and model reality as having a primitive form of self awareness, i.e. prehensions of other actualities as objects in terms of their provocation of some special activity within the subject (Whitehead 1933, 176; cf. Cahill, 2005). It is thus not yet capable of appreciating Whitehead’s notions of panexperientialism, let 12 alone God. Second, it expects not depth of primary citation, i.e. the exhaustive and detailed analysis of the works of an individual philosopher, but rather the precise opposite—mere breadth of (largely deconstructive postmodern) secondary citation. Indeed, it apparently regards such breadth as evidence an author has mastered the philosophy he or she cites. Furthermore, we might also remind ourselves that Whitehead’s philosophy was not intended to provide for explanations of business organizations as a primary unit of analysis and, thus, a considerable amount of interpretation is required to put it to use in the field. This, when coupled with the very limited amount of primary source material from Whitehead himself on management upon which to base such work, compels the final conclusion that, even bearing in mind its numerous philosophical limitations, the advances in understanding made by management and organization scholars using Whitehead’s thinking, and touched upon in this brief review, represent a remarkable achievement. As such, the current level of understanding and application of Whitehead’s thinking in management and organization studies can perhaps best be described as a substantive starting point from which further insight may be developed. Moving beyond this beginning requires the range of core principles of Whitehead’s thought to be brought to bear upon the topics to be

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discussed. Following D’Arcy and Dibben (2005), we may summarize the most relevant of these core principles as follows: (1) Hard-core common sense notions ‘that all human beings inevitably presuppose in practice, even if and when they deny them verbally’ (Griffin 1998, 18) are the ultimate test of the adequacy of a philosophical position; (2) Whitehead’s non-sensationalist doctrine of perception, according to which sensory perception is a secondary mode of perception, derivative from a more fundamental, non-sensory prehension; (3) All true individuals (as distinct from aggregational societies) have at least some iota of experience and spontaneity (self-determination); panexperientialism with organizational duality; (4) All enduring individuals are serially ordered societies of momentary “occasions of experience”; (5) All actual entities have internal as well as external relations; (6) The provision of cosmological support for the ideals needed by contemporary civilization is one of the chief purposes of philosophy in our time. With this in mind, I have sought above to outline a number of directions in which such developments might progress. In broader terms, we have seen that process-thinking is a powerful tool not only in the academic search for knowledge about the managerial experience of organization but also, in both the daily life of business management and the strategic planning process of a global corporation (D’Arcy and Dibben, 2005). In short, process thinking guards against an overly simplistic either-or perspective on the key issues of contemporary life. In terms of the core principles of a Whiteheadian process-relational viewpoint, the management experience represents a synthesis of human qualities, allowing our advancement toward novelty through an enjoyment of essential relatedness, creative self-determination and self-expression through the lure of thoughtfulness (D’Arcy and Dibben 2005, 261). These qualities of experience contribute towards an emerging pattern of managing and organising which are “generated from complex and continuous social negotiations […], selected out of multiple possibilities of contested meanings and interpretations” (Sun 2002, 207), and manifest in managerial acting. In regards to the economic and socio-ecological impact of globalization, the active, inquiring nature of Whiteheadian process-thinking in management offers us the most positive means by which to grapple with both the greatest opportunity for and the greatest challenge to human experience in the present century. This, as John Cobb has recently and painstakingly pointed out (2007), is because it helps us focus both on the significance of the internal relation to experience, and on the value inherent in the interplay between “community” and “person,” as this may manifest itself in the institutions that are so characteristic of twenty-first century life.

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Notes 1

2

3

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It should be noted that these, along with a collection of other papers published in a range journals such as Atlantic Monthly, Phillips Bulletin and Radcliffe Quarterly have been referred to as “Whitehead’s American Essays in Social Philosophy” (Johnson, 1959) since they amounted collectively to a general treatise on the value of civilization. The specific papers under discussion here are, however, concerned neither with metaphysics nor with philosophy of science, even although some were later published under such a title (ESP). Readers with a particular interest in marketing may find Whitehead’s comments on the latter topic insightful: “The modern salesmanship associated with mass production […], the determined attempt to force completely finished and standardised products upon the buyers […], is producing a more deep-seated reason for the insecurity of trade. We are witnessing a determined attempt to canalise the aesthetic enjoyments of the population […]. But all intensity of enjoyment, sustained with the strength of individual character, arises from the individual taste diversifying the stream of uniformity. Destroy individuality and you are left with a vacancy of aesthetic feeling, drifting this way and that, with vague satisfactions and vague discontents” (Whitehead 1933; cited in Johnson 1959, 72-73). It would seem prudent to add of course that Whitehead’s comments on the nature and impact of modern industry in the above quote most likely have their source in such discussions also. At the time of writing, I can as yet find nothing beyond secondary inference to confirm the connection between the thinking of the father on the work of the son, and vice-versa; such a connection seems self-evidently natural enough, however. “Organization studies [includes] various forms of research and speculations on organizations occurring under labels such as organization theory, administrative theory, management theory, organizational economics, organizational psychology and organizational and economic sociology” (Augier et al 2005, 94). This entry is a revised and extended version, with particular emphasis on Whitehead, of previous general reviews by the author of process philosophy’s uses in the management literature, published variously in Dibben and Cobb (2003), Dibben and Munro (2003) and D’Arcy and Dibben (2005). The author gratefully acknowledges both the contribution of his co-authors in those publications and also the copyright of that material (Centre for Process Studies © 2003 and Cambridge Scholar Press © 2005, respectively). The “extrapolations” discussed in this entry were first proposed as part of the opening address to the 2 nd Chapter for Applied Process Thought Conference, Dublin May 2005; the author is grateful to Joeph Bracken, Isabelle Stengers and Tom Ord for their insightful comments. The four approaches are defined as follows. Approach I, Variance Study of Change in Organizational Entities by causal analysis of independent variables that explain change in those entities as the dependent variable. Approach II, Process Studies of Change in £Organizational Entities narrating a sequence of events, stages or cycles of change in the development of an entity. Approach III, Process Studies of Organising by narrating emergent actions and activities by which collective endeavours unfold. Approach IV, Variance Studies of Organising by quantitative analysis of an event series through dynamic modeling of agent-based models or chaotic complex adaptive systems. It will be clear to the reader that Approach III corresponds most readily to a Whiteheadian process thought, since it concerns an understanding of “organization as a verb, a process of organising, an emergent flux.” This is described as the “strong view” of process; Approach II is described as the “weak view” since it retains a belief in organization as “noun, social actor or real entity (thing)” (Van de Ven and Poole, 2005, 1387). The difficulty facing authors publishing complex process material in the mainstream American Organization Science literature is starkly apparent in this example; immediately after it (not before as one might expect) is to be found a scholarly example of the standard rendering of change in the field, in which empirical work is based upon the presumption of stasis as

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predominant over process (Standenmayer et al, 2002), as per Approaches I and IV in endnote v above. 8 Interestingly, Cooper seems to rely more on Heidegger than Whitehead to develop this point. This, in spite of Whitehead’s long-standing association with arguments for an infinite and open universe. 9 I am grateful to Isabelle Stengers for pointing this out in conversation. 10 I am grateful to Michel Weber for helping me making this connection in conversation. 11 A striking illustration of this may be found in Weick et al (2005), where the leading organization studies scholar of his age—and one of the founders of the field—Karl Weick shamelessly uses Chia’s rendering of organizing as sensemaking (see above) to articulate his own view of the phenomenon, a view more representative of Approach II in Endnote 3 above. This, without even so much as a passing reference to either Bergson or Whitehead, in a special issue of the journal Organization Science interestingly entitled “The Frontiers of Organization Science.” See also much of that presented at a recent organization studies workshop “Theorizing Process in Organizational Research.” Of the forty seven papers presented, only five attempt any substantive use of Whitehead; this is either limited to the accepted use of Simple Location and Misplaced Concreteness to argue for process over stasis or, in those instances where some critique is attempted, confused by quasi-scientific presumptions concerning external relatedness and the prevalence of the object as predominant in experience. (This collection of papers is downloadable from http://www.egosnet.org/journal/os_summer_workshop_2005.shtml). 12 The management scholar who is perhaps most likely to make this connection is Martin Wood. Wood’s emphasis on the internal relatedness of leadership allows a rendering of the leader him/herself as a “fellow sufferer who understands,” experiencing, mutually relating, influencing-but-not-directing those workers he/she is nominally responsible for, in his/her desire (aim) to arrive at their best possible achievement (value), moment-to-moment.

Action, Entrepreneurship and Evolution Elias L. Khalil

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1. What is the Question? Let us define entrepreneurship as creativity and the evolution of novelty.1 Let us suppose, which is the main thesis of the chapter, that entrepreneurship is an action that does not differ from everyday action such as walking, driving, or chewing gum. If the definition and main thesis of the chapter are granted, we can conclude, as illustrated in Figure 1, that the theory of everyday action, such as chewing gum, is one and the same as the theory of evolution. Everyday Action
Entrepreneurial Action
Evolution Figure 1: A Single Theory of Action and Evolution

The conclusion is definitely strange if not extraordinary. It is based on a subtle but subversive thesis: There is no difference between everyday action and creativity and, consequently, evolution. This conclusion is extraordinary only because it goes against the dominant dogmas in economics (i.e., neoclassical theory) and evolutionary biology (i.e., neo-Darwinian theory). Both dogmas draw a radical divide between action and evolution. For neo-Darwinian theory, action is phenotype ultimately determined by genotype—while the genotype evolves according to another mechanism. For neoclassical economics, action is determined by rational calculation of the efficient allocation of given resources—while resources evolve according to another mechanism. To undermine the radical divide between the theory of action and the theory of evolution, this chapter shows how everyday action—from walking, fetching water, to fishing— is entrepreneurial at first level of approximation—and hence should be the basis of the theory of evolution. Let us start with Robinson Crusoe, a favorite among economists. Robinson’s “everyday action” would involve going to the sea to catch fish with his bare hands. Robinson’s “entrepreneurial action” might involve the sharpening of a tree branch to catch fish. The term “evolution” denotes the change of technology from the use of bare hands to the use of branches.2 However, the technology of catching fish by hand is entrepreneurial because the action undergoes improvement through time. The agent will learn different ways of using his hands. For instance, one way might be to use one’s hands along with one’s chest to block and trap the fish. Another way is to dive from a rock onto the fish, which amounts to using the body and the hands as a spear. The latter method would make it easier to find a new function for the

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Department of Economics, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia, http://wwwpersonal.buseco.monash.edu.au/~ekhalil/; [email protected].

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tree branch, i.e., to replace the function of the arm and hand. So, evolutionary change is not limited to the physical use of the tree branch. The tree branch is actually a continuation of the everyday action of catching fish by hand—where such action has already undergone change. As Alfred Lotka argues (1945), there is no ultimate difference between manufactured tools and biological tools; this is also implied in Richard Dawkins’ concept of “extended phenotype” (1982). So, everyday action entails evolution. The fact that an evolutionary change appears as a quantum jump should not mislead us to conceive evolution or entrepreneurship as contrary to everyday action. It is common knowledge that the “progress” of economic theory in the past two centuries has neglected entrepreneurship (Baumol, 1968; Demsetz, 1983; Blaug, 1998; Endres & Woods, 2006). This should not mean that economists did not discuss entrepreneurship, however. Actually, they have discussed it intensively, especially starting in the early 1980s. These discussions, as Milo Bianchi and Magnus Henrekson (2005) demonstrate, generally trace entrepreneurship to some talent, drive, or individual trait and then proceed to draw the macroeconomic implications. That is, these discussions do not explain entrepreneurship. The fact that neoclassical theory has no explanation of entrepreneurship is not accidental. It is rather due to a fallacious dichotomy that underpins neoclassical theory between everyday action and entrepreneurial action. The dichotomy is certainly helpful in solving many problems at secondary and tertiary approximations. However, at first approximation, if we want to analyze entrepreneurship, the dichotomy is unfounded. The dichotomy amounts to presenting everyday action as instrumental or, to use the economist terminology, as “maximizing” behavior, while presenting entrepreneurial action as creative in the sense of innovative. Consequently, there is no single theory that can explain everyday action and entrepreneurship/evolution. The everyday/entrepreneurial dichotomy leads economists to a choice of two assumptions: the first, adopted by the classical and Austrian economic traditions, is to assume that entrepreneurship is part of the nature of the actor, i.e., a character trait. The second assumption, endorsed by the neoclassical tradition, is to postulate that entrepreneurship, similar to innovation, is the outcome of stochastic, exogenous shocks. This approach has been used extensively in growth models. Another approach, used in neoclassical industrial organization literature, is to model innovations as output of a production function, where the inputs are investments in research and development. As Suzanne Scotchmer (2004) shows, this amounts to treating innovations as products such as shoes and clothes. This means that innovations can be produced at will as if they are paradoxically already known. In contrast, Anthony Endres and Christine Woods (2006) have suggested a three-way distinction among three theories of the entrepreneur—neoclassical economics, Austrian economics, and behavioral economics. However, as they concede, there are very close similarities between Austrian economics and behavioral economics. On the other hand, some aspects of behavioral economics can be easily incorporated into neoclassical economics (Khalil, 2006a). For instance, the notion of bounded rationality, as proposed by Herbert Simon (1957, 1987), has been incorporated into neoclassical economics. It is now part of the general idea of scarcity, but extended to the human brain: as a consequence of limited computational capacity, agents use heuristics and rules of thumb, leading to mistaken decision-making on some

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occasions. So, in the end, the insights of behavioral economics are incorporated either into neoclassical economics or Austrian economics. Therefore, economists have so far resorted to one of these two alternatives: either entrepreneurship is the product of a personality trait (Austrian/classical) or the result of some exogenous stochastic shocks (neoclassical). Neither option is satisfactory, however. The option that traces entrepreneurship to some natural character is basically tautological. The option that traces entrepreneurship to exogenous shocks simply begs the question: what is the origin of the shock? So, we need to go back to the drawing board, and formulate a different theory of action.

2. The Plan of the Essay The attempt to articulate a single theory of action and evolution may sound ambitious. The dominant economic theory has no theories of evolution or entrepreneurship, other than the appeal to exogenous factors. This is an embarrassing state of affairs given that entrepreneurship is the main impetus of economic development, prosperity, and evolutionary change. But this state of affairs should not be surprising. For the most part, neoclassical economic theory has severed the connection between everyday action and entrepreneurial action and, in turn, presented everyday action as a mechanistic response to stimulus. Consequently, entrepreneurial action has to be introduced as the outcome of unexplained exogenous events. Classical and Austrian economics, on the other hand, reject the idea of action as a mechanistic response to stimulus. They present action as expressive of some innate essence or character trait and, hence, entrepreneurial action is at the heart of action itself. But this argument is tautologous: entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs because it is in their nature to be entrepreneurs. In short, neoclassical theory presents action as mechanistic and conceives entrepreneurship as an exogenous intervention in everyday affairs. In contrast, the other approaches present action as expressive of essences, and thus entrepreneurship is explained by assuming entrepreneurship. The dichotomy formulated by John Dewey and Arthur Bentley (1999), between the “interactional” and the “self-actional,” can be profitably applied here. Neoclassical theory holds entrepreneurship to be “interactional” insofar as the agent reacts to changing stimuli. In contrast, according to classical/Austrian theory, entrepreneurship is “self-actional” in the sense that the agent is motivated by an essence or a trait in one’s nature and, hence, may change one’s action without any change in the stimulus (Khalil, 2003a). Despite the differences between the interactional and self-actional views, they share a common substantivist metaphysics, which forms the deeper reason for their inability to explain entrepreneurship. According to this metaphysics, an agent consists of two parts—the “end” of the agent, and the “means,” such as bodily ability, physical tools, and natural resources. Interactional and self-actional approaches may differ in specifying the contents of ends and means, but both are substantivist in the sense that the agent becomes a divisible individual, and each part of the agent is treated as a substance that can be defined independently of the other part. Such a metaphysics hinders the ability to see how action entails the creative development of the agent, i.e., evolution.

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It is the contention of this essay that economics is incapable of explaining entrepreneurship as long as its theory of action is informed by a substantivist metaphysics, i.e., by the end-means dichotomy that divides the individual in half. To explain entrepreneurship-qua-creativity, we need to break away from the substantivist metaphysics of economics. The work of Alfred North Whitehead and other process philosophers provide a clear alternative. Whiteheadian process thought advances a philosophy of the organism, called here “organismic” metaphysics. The organismic approach should help us identify the problems one must overcome in order to explain entrepreneurship.3 In short, the essay seeks to build bridges between a Whiteheadian approach, Deweyan terminology, and the two basic traditions in economics. Figure 2 summarizes the terminology we will use.

Figure 2: A guide to the terminology

3. Neoclassical Economics Every tradition in economics is defined by its answers to the most fundamental questions: What is the human condition which economists call the “economic problem”? What are the issues that humans need to focus on in order to solve the economic problem? The economic problem, for neoclassical economics, is the problem of scarcity. That is, we have to be efficient in how we use resources because resources are scarce. If there were no scarcity, there would be no need to attend to the issue of efficiency—and there would be no need for the discipline of economics. It is crucial to note that the neoclassical notion of scarcity is narrow, and differs from the common usage of the term. Crucially, it ignores creativity, i.e., the ability of the agent to create more resources. From the neoclassical perspective, resources are scarce in the sense that the budget is “given,” i.e., defined as a basket of goods. The agent can only decide how to make the best, i.e. efficient, use of the contents of the given basket. The core of the neoclassical program is the idea of efficiency (or allocation). The roots of this idea can be traced to the 1870s when three economists independently advocated marginalist analysis in what came to be called the “marginalist revolution” (Blaug, 1997, Chapter 8). Leon Walras in Switzerland, Carl Menger in Austria, and William Stanley Jevons in England advanced the simple and seemingly innocuous idea that when agents decide to consume goods, such as peanuts, they do not make a decision whether to consume all (e.g., one kilogram) or none. They can decide to consume a fraction of the kilogram. As agents consume more, they get less satisfaction from the last unit, i.e., the marginal satisfaction declines with more consumption of the same good. Thus, as they consume more, other alternatives start to look

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attractive. They would be ready to consume more only if the price of the good declines relative to the prices of the alternatives. This means that agents arrange their consumption efficiently, i.e., make sure that they receive the greatest satisfaction from their given resources. For instance, if the price of peanuts goes up, they reason that it would be better to spend the last euro on some other good. So, agents allocate their resources among diverse goods in such a way that the satisfaction they receive from the expenditure of the last euro on each good gives them an equal amount of satisfaction. For instance, if the agent receives twice as much satisfaction from the last euro spent on good X as from the satisfaction derived from the last euro spent on good Y, then to be both rational and efficient, the agent should demand more of good X and less of good Y until the satisfaction derived from the last euro spent on both is equal. And if the price of good Y declines, it means the last euro spent on Y generates greater utility than the last euro spent on all other goods. This prompts the agent to demand more of Y, or less of all other goods, until one’s given resources are spread efficiently. This basic idea can be expressed mathematically as the maximization of the utility function (U), given the income constraint (I): Maximize: U = U (X, Y, Z) Subject to constraint: I = px X + py Y + pzZ where X,Y, and Z are the quantities of three different goods, and px, py, and pz the respective prices of the three goods. So, the consumer allocates one’s given income (I) among the three different goods in such a way that the mix of the three goods would give the agent the greatest satisfaction (U). The same logic of maximization applies when the maximizer is a firm. Let us say that the firm produces the good X and sells it at the market price px. The firm, in competitive markets, cannot control the price. Also, in competitive markets, the firm cannot control the amount it sells (for reasons that need not be discussed here). What the firm can control is the mix of inputs that produce the good X. In neoclassical theory, it is traditional to assume three inputs—labor (L), capital (K), and land (T). So, the firm, in order to maximize profits (
), wants to employ these inputs in such a way that minimizes its cost according to this formula Maximize:
= pxX – TC Subject to constraint: TC = wL + iK + rT, where px X is total revenue; TC total cost; w, i, and r are the wage rate, interest rate, and rent of the three inputs, respectively. In this fashion, given total revenue pxX, the firm maximizes profits (
) when it minimizes the budget used to produce X, i.e., total cost (TC). The firm can, according to neoclassical economics, minimize total cost without improving the technology. As discussed below, this feature sets neoclassical economics apart from classical economics. But how can one suppose that the firm minimizes total cost without an improvement of technology or, alternatively, finding cheaper resources? One could suppose so because, again, of marginal analysis. The contribution of each input is conceived to decline at the margin as the firm adds more inputs. For instance, if the firm adds an extra unit of labor to a given piece of land or a given factory, output increases, but it increases at a declining rate. Or, when the firm

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withdraws a unit of labor, the marginal contribution of the remaining labor would rise. The task for the firm is to combine inputs in such a way that the contribution of each, given its cost, is equalized across all inputs. So, if the price of one input increases, the firm would use less of that input until its marginal contribution is higher, i.e., justified by the higher price. There are many details in the theories of consumption and production that we can ignore. The salient point that underlies both theories is that the agent—whether consumer or producer—can manipulate the mixture of the means in order to maximize the end. In the case of the consumer, the means are the different goods of enjoyment. In the case of the producer, the means are the different inputs into the production process. While the consumer tries to make the best of a given budget, the producer tries to minimize the budget of producing a given output. In either case, the means are supposedly combined efficiently in order to maximize the product (utility) given the budget or, what is the same thing, to minimize the budget given the product (output). In maximization/minimization, action is mechanistic. Action is simply a reaction to a stimulus, for instance, the change of the price of goods. Such a reaction does not prompt technological innovation or creativity. So, how can entrepreneurship-qua-creativity be explained? The only option is to assume that creativity takes place due to shocks from outside the system. The neoclassical notion of efficiency simply cannot explain creativity, which it was constructed, from the beginning, to ignore.

4. Classical Economics Does classical economics offer a framework that can better explain entrepreneurship? Much has been written about the classical tradition and how it differs from neoclassical economics (e.g., Harris, 1978, Introduction). One can trace the classical tradition to Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. It has experienced a revival recently in the work of modern Marxian economists (e.g., Shaikh & Tonak, 1994) and neo-Ricardians such as Piero Sraffa (1960; cf. Steedman, 1977). While neoclassical economics defines the economic problem in terms of efficiency, classical economics defines the economic problem in terms of the production of surplus. In the classical paradigm, resources are not scarce, but rather spread through nature in heterogeneous qualities. For example, land is not scarce, but rather it comes in different gradations of quality or proximity to a desired location. The economic problem for classical economists is how agents can work productively and abstain from luxury consumption so that they can effectively reach out to lower quality resources. If agents do not work productively, the product of low-quality land may not justify the effort, i.e., the surplus would be negative. So, the reduction of unproductive activities is a major policy conclusion of classical economics. Agents have to make such differently available resources readily available. Thus, the economic problem is not about the optimum or proper mix of inputs or goods to maximize an output. It is rather the application of productive capacity to subjugate nature and make less accessible resources—such as less fertile land or mineral deposits that are harder to extract— more ready for human consumption.

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The application of productive capacity involves the expenditure of matter and energy, what Karl Marx called the “means of production.” The economic problem is that the resulting output should at least be large enough to cover the costs of the expended inputs or means of production. That is, the economic problem amounts to securing non-negative surplus (S), the difference between output (O) and input (I): S = O – I. Given this simple equation, the economic problem is defined as the production of non-negative surplus (S
0).4 Interestingly, with one important difference, the surplus formula resembles the profit function in neoclassical theory mentioned above, viz.,  = pxX – TC where S corresponds to , O to pxX, and I to TC. The one important difference is that TC in neoclassical theory can be minimized by adjusting the mix of inputs in light of changing input prices while using the same technology. In contrast, for classical theory, inputs (I) is a single value given by the technology. No degree of adjustment to the input mix can change the input cost, because inputs cannot be combined in different proportions. That is, for classical theory, each technology has one single combination or mix of inputs and, hence, has one single I. Economists call such technology “Leontieff technology,” which does not allow substitution or re-combination among inputs. In other words, for neoclassical theory, there is more than one way to produce X using the same technology, while for classical theory, there is only one way of producing X using the same technology. However, if the classical formula of surplus allows only one way of producing X, what is the agent doing in classical economics? There is no efficiency problem in classical economics and, hence, the agent cannot be allocating resources, i.e., choosing the correct mix of inputs. Nonetheless, the agent can have two different functions in the classical model. First, the agent can expand output by either abstaining from luxury consumption or by reducing expenditures on unproductive services. Luxury consumption and unproductive services are seen as superfluous and, to promote economic growth, they can be reduced at will. Second, the agent can invent a new technology that improves on the method of production, i.e., leads to greater output per input. Concerning the first function, can the agent reduce luxury consumption and unproductive services at will? Regarding luxury, if the agent reduces luxury consumption, the agent would be able to invest the saved income which, in the second period, would lead to higher output. However, upon reflection, the reduction of luxury and the consequent economic growth does not necessarily entail innovation or evolution of technology. The growth can take place on a replicative scale. Concerning the productive/unproductive distinction, it is ultimately untenable. To make sense of the concept of unproductive labor, one must assume an identical system without the supposedly redundant or unproductive labor. But why should one stipulate that such an ideal system is tenable or costless? For instance, if there is expenditure on guards, accountants, and lawyers, their services must have been needed given the level of trust in society, which is

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obviously less than ideal. But even in an ideal system of trust, it is not costless to maintain such institutions. In the ideal system, society must spend a great amount of resources on education, public occasions, and the like to sustain the level of trust. But classical economists did not see it in this manner. They preached the virtue of magnification of surplus. They saw luxury consumption as the clear enemy of the production of surplus and the wealth of nations. They also saw unproductive expenditure on bureaucracy, army, and other services as the clear enemy of surplus and the wealth of nations. This raises the issue: Why should humans strive to magnify the surplus? Why should the capitalists ensure, to use Marx’s term, the “accumulation of capital”? The assumption that humans are driven to accumulate surplus is based on an essentialist, self-actional view. It explains entrepreneurship, ambition, or internal motivation by assuming it (Khalil, 2006b). Such a tautological explanation is more evident in the second supposed function of the agent in the classical model. Namely, the agent can innovate at will. If this is the case, the agent has desires which are defined prior to action—as if action were merely the execution of a given plan.5 This is why Dewey and Bentley called such an explanation “self-actional”: the action is supposed to externalize a deep desire for greater wealth or surplus. To enhance the production of surplus per unit of input, the agent must dedicate a portion of current surplus to the research and innovation that brings about an improved technology. Such improved technology entails that greater output is produced for the same input expended or, equivalently, that the same output is produced with less inputs. But the function of innovating again begs the question: Why is the agent driven to innovate? Classical theory explains creativity by assuming it.

5. Austrian Economics Austrian economics is also generally based on an essentialist, self-actional view (see Smith, 1990). For Austrian economists, entrepreneurship is an expression of purposeful, human action, as opposed to so-called mechanistic action. This opposition is best expressed in the notion of “praxis” in the work of Ludwig von Mises (1966), a major figure in Austrian economics. Mises distinguishes between purposeful behavior, which can only be found in humans, and mechanistic behavior, which characterizes the behavior of non-human animals/plants and the biological aspects of human behavior such as instincts. The human/non-human distinction runs through much of the social theory informed by Germanic romanticism (Khalil, 1996). The Austrian dichotomy, similar to Marx’s concept of abstract labor, is a reminder of the essentialist metaphysics of vitalism, but carried over to the supposed divide between human and non-human living organisms.6 Joseph Schumpeter (1949) also regards entrepreneurship as expressive of the human impulse to be creative. But he differs from Mises by regarding entrepreneurship as a character trait possessed by different people in different degrees, or even not at all. Schumpeter likened the entrepreneur to the medieval knight who rushes to adventure out of an urge for selfaggrandizement. Such an urge, which Schumpeter playfully called “irrational,” differs from

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arbitrage, i.e., a mechanistic action that takes advantage of the difference in prices of the same good. Arbitrage is the calculative action of rational agents who make money by buying cheap in one market and selling dear in another. Such action helps the two markets to be connected and, hence, to become one market, i.e., to reach an equilibrium. In contrast, driven by inner impulses the entrepreneur introduces new ideas or novelty as a way to self-aggrandizement, and in the process upsets the old equilibrium. On the other hand, for Israel Kirzner (1973, 1985), a student of Mises, the entrepreneur brings order to the system. As an arbitrageur, the entrepreneur is distinguished from other agents by greater “alertness.” Such a trait allows the entrepreneur to see opportunities, such as differences in prices, which others cannot.7 Despite their differences, Mises, Schumpeter, and Kirzner identify entrepreneurship as a character trait unique to humans. Likewise, Frank Knight (1971), who sympathizes with Austrian economics in other regards, views the entrepreneur as a risk-taker—ready to take action when outcomes are uncertain. Knight distinguishes between risk, which is quantifiable, and uncertainty, which is unique. One cannot form a quantifiable probability of unique events. Sometimes, the agent is in total ignorance, unaware of whether the event is unique. Agents who bid on unique events may earn windfall profits because the cost of the bid cannot reflect probability that is non-quantifiable. Such windfall profits cannot be equalized in the market because the market can only equalize ordinary profits that stem from quantifiable or predictable events, i.e., risk. So, for Knight, entrepreneurs are the residual claimant of activities that are uncertain, which are to be distinguished from ordinary or risky activities. Knight’s view explains the persistence of windfalls profits. However, this explanation does not explain entrepreneurship itself. All these theories in the Austrian tradition, which are similar in some aspects to the classical tradition, see entrepreneurial action as expressive of a character trait. While ordinary agents may not be characterized by such a trait, the ones who are so are identified as entrepreneurs. This explanation, similar to that proffered by classical economics, is a tautology: it explains entrepreneurship by assuming it.

6. The End-Means Dichotomy As mentioned above, both economic approaches are limited by their assumption of a substantivist metaphysics that divides the agent into two independent substances. One of these two halves consists of the end which the agent tries to maximize; this may be the utility/ profit of neoclassical economics, or the surplus of classical economics. The other half consists of the means that the agent needs to recombine efficiently (neoclassical theory) or reduce (classical theory). But this ends-means dichotomy cannot accommodate creativity and the rise of novelty.8 The basic problem with the dichotomy is that it pits the agent against the agent’s capability, which the agent, in both theories, sees in a wholly instrumental fashion. In both schools of thought, the resources of the agents (TC in neoclassical theory, and I in classical theory) are combined with the environment before they are juxtaposed against the end. So, the agent treats

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his own body, skills, mental and physical development, and tools as objects that stand external to himself; they are regarded no differently than are trees, rivers, and soil, say. In neoclassical theory, land (T) is treated symmetrically with labor (L) and capital (K). To start with, human labor and tools are mere capacities to perform work, while land is the source of nutrients, minerals, and materials which the agent needs to appropriate—and indeed to rob.9 Obviously, as a result of production, land (T) does not become more creative, but on the contrary loses some of its nutrients and resources. To treat the capacity to perform work (L and K) as symmetrical with T amounts to treating them as incapable of creativity. Labor and its tools (K) are there to assist in robbing nature, while land is the object of such action. The same issues arise in classical theory. Production is conceived as the application of a set of instruments, including human labor, which is juxtaposed against the goal of the agent. Marx, for instance, presents the “labor process” (i.e., production) as the extraction of surplus, where the agent is separated from one’s own labor power.10 Thus in the classical tradition too, the agent is divided into the “end” and the “means.” The means include the environment as well as the skill and tools of the laborer.

7. What is Missing in the End-Means Dichotomy? The end-means dichotomy is a useful approximation particularly in engineering projects. It allows the engineer to evaluate one action as opposed to another while assuming that means are external to the end. However, means cannot be given. They are part of the evolving capacity of the actor. This capacity is evolving because action, any action, is a creative act which leads to the development of the actor (Khalil, 1997a). While the ends-mean dichotomy is useful for some engineering problems, it cannot be used if we are interested in understanding the evolution of capacity. The dichotomy treats capacity as, first, a well-defined substance and, second, as part of other elements that make up the environment which confronts the agent. The problem in this picture is the radical split of the actor into two halves, where the end or mental images are set apart from the agent’s capacity. In this manner, the end-means dichotomy cannot allow us to understand entrepreneurship. The end-means dichotomy does not allow us to see the agent as an organism—a conception needed if we want to understand evolution or creativity, at least as related to everyday action. If we need to explain entrepreneurship-qua-creativity, the entry point of theorizing should be the actor as a whole, i.e., the unity of the end and the means—where the means here are limited to the set of tools of production. That is, the set of tools does not include the environmental nutrients and minerals that the agent wants to extract. In this manner, with an organismic view of the actor, the tools of production would be seen as inseparable from the end, whether it be utility/profit (neoclassical theory) or surplus (classical theory). If the goal is to explain action in the most fundamental sense, the dividing line should be drawn differently. It should not be between the end and the means, but between the organism, or “actor,” and its environment, which it robs.

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Such a view is not permitted in the neoclassical notion of scarcity or efficiency. According to the neoclassical view, resources are given in a basket and, hence, do not need to be robbed. The resources only need to be re-arranged in the most optimal way. That is, for neoclassical theory, the problem is how to re-arrange the given resources of a basket so as to meet a particular criterion, such as the optimization of utility. However, if the economic problem is defined as one of survival, the agent would focus on how to rob nature to obtain the basket of goods in the first place.11 Interestingly, Whitehead uses the expression “robbery” to describe the ecological relation between the actor, or “living society,” and the environment: Another characteristic of a living society is that it requires food. In a museum the crystals are kept under glass cases; in zoological gardens the animals are fed. Having regard to the universality of reactions with environment, the distinction is not quite absolute. It cannot, however, be ignored. The crystals are not agencies requiring the destruction of elaborate societies derived from the environment; a living society is such an agency. The societies which it destroys are its food. This food is destroyed by dissolving it into somewhat simpler social elements. It has been robbed of something. Thus, all societies require interplay with their environment; and in the case of living societies this interplay takes the form of robbery. The living society may, or may not, be a higher type of organism than the food which it disintegrates. But whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery (PR, 105). So, if the robber’s components, such as labor and tools, cannot be included in the environment set which the robber wants to rob, then what does the environment set include? It includes components that are external to the actor, such as the weather, raw materials, physical laws of nature, market fluctuations, property rights, conventions about standards of measure, and so on. However, contents related to the ability of the actor, which are misplaced as part of the constraint function in neoclassical and classical economics, should be placed in the “actor” set. Such contents include human capital such as health, biological capacity, and produced tools of production used by the actor. The actor set, as summed up in Figure 3, is broader than the “end” set in neoclassical and classical economics. The actor set includes, besides utility/profit, surplus, and desires such as self-aggrandizement, labor capacity and its tools. The Actor:

The Environment:

Utility/profit/surplus and capital/labor/land in the sense of tools of production

Land in the sense nutrients and minerals

End:

of

Means:

Utility/profit (neoclassical theory) Surplus (classical theory)

Capital, labor, land (neoclassical and classical theories)

Self-aggrandizement (Schumpeter) Figure 3: What is the proper dividing line?

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There are serious differences between the neoclassical and classical/Austrian views of what constitutes the “end.” The neoclassical, or interactional, view presents action as the result of the interaction between the actor’s end and the given means in the sense of incentives. The classical/Austrian, or self-actional, view, presents action as the expression of the self—either as a norm, type, or desire. Despite the differences, either view splits the actor apart. One part—the mental—either optimizes along neoclassical theory or executes action according to norm, type, or desire along classical/Austrian theory. The other part—the means—is used to attain the end.

8. Conclusion The proposed actor-environment partition is not a dichotomy as in the vitalist living/nonliving or human/nonhuman distinctions. The actor-environment partition does not suppose that a new element is introduced into nature with the emergence of life on Earth or with the emergence of humans. Rather, the proposed actor-environment partition is an ecological observation of where the boundary lies if the focus is on survival of the organism. In the proposed actor-environment partition, the actor is not split in half as in the case of the end-means dichotomy. The actor-environment partition complements the philosophy of the organism as proposed by Whitehead. The divide reaffirms the unity of the actor. To note, such a unity is not based on some homogeneous conception of the actor. The actor is rather made up of many subordinate actors, each of which, in turn, is made up of other subordinates. For instance, an organism is made up of organs, organs of tissues, and tissues of cells, and so on. Each actor in this hierarchical complexity seeks its own goal. On the other hand, this should not mean that the actors within the hierarchical complexity are pitted against each other. Rather, they should be seen as involved in a cooperative enterprise according to the general plan of the organism. As Whitehead puts it: The concrete enduring entities are organisms, so that the plan of the whole influences the very characters of the various subordinate organisms which enter into it. In the case of an animal, the mental states enter into the plan of the total organism and thus modify the plans of the successive subordinate organisms until the ultimate smallest organisms, such as electrons, are reached. Thus an electron within a living body is different from an electron outside it, by reason of the plan of the body. The electron blindly runs either within or without the body; but it runs within the body in accordance with its character within the body; that is to say, in accordance with the general plan of the body, and this plan includes the mental state. But the principle of modification is perfectly general throughout nature, and represents no property peculiar to living bodies (SMW, 79). The proposed actor-environment juxtaposition is most necessary if we want to account for creativity. For one thing, it can explain why the actor undergoes creative development. In the proposed juxtaposition, the actor can never be a substance, i.e., an entity that is well-defined. The ability of the actor is not an instrument to serve an end external to it. Further, when the actor relates to the environment, it is the actor as a whole that is involved. The actor is fundamentally unified as it tries to rob resources from the environment.

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It seems also to be the case that an explanation of creativity is Whitehead’s main focus (e.g. AI, 181-82). Whitehead wanted to situate creativity or novelty in nature. He understood the organism broadly to include non-living organizations (such as atoms and molecules). In this manner, he avoided the opposition of mechanistic nature and freedom, which is the root of the body/mind problem (see Rose, 2005). But we need not go into these far-reaching and deeper concerns of Whitehead. For the question of economic theory, the organism-environment divide allows us to see creativity as part of action. Everyday action is one and the same as entrepreneurial action. One must remember that the environment includes organisms that are conspecifics and that may cooperate with each other. If they do, an order of society can arise, with neighborhoods or markets. This order of the market should be carefully distinguished from a different type of order, the order of the super-organism, in which an agent is a member of larger organism (see Khalil, 1990, 1998-99). But for our purpose here, it is sufficient to state that we are not dealing with relation of submission or authority that occasions the super-organism. Rather, the relation under focus is between the organism and the external environment, which may or may not give rise to orderly patterns such as the market or traffic flow. But we need to start with the relation of the organism to the external environment, rather than the market, if we want to analyze the challenge that faces the organism. Such a challenge might be the basis for the decision to submit to authority and, hence, be part of a super-organism, such as the firm. In its relations with its external environment, the actor as an organism is a unified unit subsisting on its environment. Such actor-environment juxtaposition is useful insofar as it provides an account of creativity, which the substantivist view underpinning the end-means dichotomy cannot. The actor-environment juxtaposition highlights that the actor’s main challenge is to remain acting, i.e., remain in the game of survival. As such, the actor is not mainly trying to maximize an output while assuming its own ability as a given. Rather, it acts because if it does not it will not be able to maintain its own organizational cohesion. In this regard, the actor is not a substance but rather sees itself only in relation to the environment. The main unit of analysis here is the relation between the actor and its environment. Such an organismic view affords an endogenous account of creative action and the rise of novelty. When the actor acts, the actor acquires a new ability or knowledge. Also, the environment upon which the actor acts undergoes change because of its action. The transformation of the environment ensued here differs from the stochastic fluctuation of the environment that may take place for other reasons. But even if the environment remains the same, the actor experiences it differently because of the knowledge or ability which the actor acquired in the process. Therefore, the theory of action is also a theory of creativity, and the theory of creativity is also the theory of action.

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Notes 1

This chapter is revised from a working paper titled “Entrepreneurship and Economic Theory.” The author greatly appreciates the comments of Michel Weber, Anthony Endres, and, especially, Giampaolo Garzarelli and the editorial assistance of Simon Hone and William Desmond. The usual caveat applies. 2 The evolutionary change can be “micro” if it involves the improvement of the skill of catching fish with bare hands or the improvement of the skill of catching fish with a sharpened tree branch. The evolutionary change can be “macro” if it involves the movement from the use of bare hands to the use of the sharpened tree branch. There should ultimately be no difference between micro- and macro-evolution. But this is a subject outside the focus of this essay. 3 I am aware of only one economist, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1972), who seriously studied the notions of creativity, novelty, and evolution in the Whiteheadian process tradition. Unfortunately, whatever Whiteheadian insights Georgescu-Roegen gained, he confused them with the entropy law (Khalil, 1990a). Put succinctly, Georgescu-Roegen thought that the irreversible increase of entropy in a closed universe is identical with Whitehead’s understanding of evolutionary change as the appearance of novelty. 4 In case the economy consists of more than one commodity, the variables S, O, and I must have the same metric. Marx developed a theory of value, his “labor theory of value,” to provide such a metric. Marx’s metric ran into many problems, the most famous of which is the “transformation problem” (Foley, 2000). Ricardo, followed by Sraffa, developed a different metric, a composite index of value, which avoids the transformation problem (Steedman, 1977). We need not discuss the controversies surrounding the appropriate metric. 5 In some sense, my earlier essay (Khalil, 1997a) can partially be characterized in the vitalist, classical economics tradition, where agents are portrayed as motivated by self-competition: they try to excel beyond their previous achievements. 6 See Samuel Hollander (2004) for a closely related observation of the similarity of Marx’s and von Mises’s views of the actor. 7 My earlier essay (Khalil, 2003b) offers a Deweyan view of entrepreneurship where agents, empowered by different perspectives, see the same substance differently. 8 The same substantive metaphysics underpins neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory which hinders it from advancing a developmental view of evolution (Khalil, 1993). 9 The use of the term “rob” is not accidental. It is a term used by Whitehead, and it is used here to stress that the economic problem is ultimately about survival, for the actor must rob the environment in order to maintain himself. This is a common view in ecological science and ecological economics (Khalil, 1997b). 10 1976, Chapter 7. Marx strongly differentiates the “labor process” of humans from the labor activity of insects. For humans, the act of production involves the mental conception of the process which is supposedly prior to execution. For insects, there is supposedly no such mental representation. Insects simply act according to their given nature. So, for Marx, human mentality clearly stands outside nature. Such a view asserts a non-bridgeable gulf between mental conception and action, as if both were separate substances. Given the classical definition of the economic problem as the production of surplus, Marx is forced to adopt the substantivist view, and in particular the dichotomy between action and conception of the action (see Khalil, 1992). Marx is forced to adopt such a position in order to argue that diverse human activities, such as tailoring and carpentry, can be compared because they are mere instances of the same substance, viz., homogeneous in terms of the abstract mental component which Marx called “abstract labor.” Using the concept of “abstract labor,” Marx was able to employ the metric to account for the surplus. Even if the agent were Robinson Crusoe, where he undertakes all different specializations during the day, at the end of the day he would still have to calculate the surplus. To do so, he must use a metric that allows him to add the diverse activities spent, e.g., on hunting as opposed to fishing. If there is no abstract substance underpinning the diverse

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heterogeneous acts of labor (which Marx called “concrete labor”), how can the agent know whether he is producing a surplus? So, to produce a surplus, the agent must treat his labor as something external to himself—as an instrument that can be calibrated by an engineer and can tabulated along a ledger of costs that stand apart from the end. It is obvious that the actor should not rob his own tools of production—such as his health, limbs, physical capital, and so on—in order to survive. For instance, the actor should avoid addictive substances if he wants to maintain his health or, in general, his “human capital.” Although this point is obvious, the end-means dichotomy entails that the actor could rob his own human capital if it maximizes his utility. His human capital is part of the means to be exploited. In fact, in his model of addiction, Gary Becker (1996) portrays addiction as no different from entrenched habits of consumption, such as the habit of partiality to a particular music. The term “rob” is used to stress that we should include the means of production in the actor set rather than in the set to be robbed.

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1. Contextualization 1.1. The Present Predicament While economic theory has been enormously influential since the eighteenth century, the cultural, political and ethical dominance it has gained in the last few decades is unprecedented. Not only has economic theory taken the place of political philosophy and ethical discourse and imposed its own concepts and image of society on other social sciences, it has also redefined the natural sciences as nothing but instruments of production, investment in which is to be judged in terms of profitability. No longer does economics justify its claim to be a science on its supposed success at modeling itself on physics: on the contrary, it stands in judgment of physics and demands of physicists that they justify themselves in economic terms. Literature and the arts have also been redefined, as part of the entertainment industry, also to be judged in terms of profitability and contribution to GNP. Rationality itself has been redefined by rational-choice theorists to accord with the economists’ model of economic choice within the market. There is no common good, participation in the pursuit of which could give meaning to people’s lives; according to rational-choice theorists there is only the satisfaction of diverse individual subjective preferences (Amadae 2003, 111ff.). Governments almost everywhere (apart from New Zealand and some countries in South American where such policies have now lost all credibility) are redefining their relationship to their citizens through economic categories (Osborne & Gaebler, 1993). Under the influence of economists (and the pressure of transnational corporations), the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO are imposing market relations on virtually every facet of social, political and cultural life. This involves deregulating markets, freeing trade, removing impediments to capital mobility, privatizing public assets, applying the “user pays” principle to allocate resources, applying economic principles to government and measuring success in purely “economic” terms. Even after whole countries have been thrown into economic chaos, as vast numbers of people are losing their livelihoods, welfare institutions are being dismantled, democracy is being undermined and, most ominously, the global eco-system is being degraded, there has been only weak resistance to these developments, apparently because the majority of humankind, or at least most of those with any power, have come to view themselves and their everyday relationships, both to other people and to nature, in economic terms. Politicians, in particular, appear oblivious to any other way of conceiving the world.

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Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry, Swinburne University, Australia, 3122; www.swinburne.edu.au; [email protected].

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These may appear to be extreme claims. However, this appearance is a further indication of how successful economics has been in colonizing the way people think about their everyday lives. It is now difficult to appreciate the uniqueness of present culture. One way to highlight this uniqueness is to consider one country, Britain, a century ago—that is, when Alfred North Whitehead was involved in politics. It is generally assumed that Britain at that time was dominated by much the same thinking that dominates the present. Not so. The most powerful political and cultural force at the time was social liberalism (or New Liberalism), a movement largely inspired by the Idealist philosopher T.H. Green (1836–1882) (Boucher, 1997 viiiff.). In his “Lecture on ‘Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract’,” delivered in 1881, Green had attacked the notion that freedom is gained through freely entered contracts and that the state’s primary role is to protect property and enforce contracts, arguing that contracts made between people with unequal power, as between employees and employers, could not be called free (1986, 194ff.). Inspired by Kant, Fichte and Hegel, Green argued instead that freedom is gained by participating in democratic communities united in the quest for a common good. “When we speak of freedom,” he writes, “we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, something that we do or enjoy in common with others.” Green continued: When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and exercise on the whole of those powers of contributing to social good with which we believe the members of the society to be endowed; in short, by the greater power on the part of the citizens as a body to make the most and best of themselves (1986, 199). The highest good, never fully realized, is not increase in GNP but human perfection pursued through institutions. As Green put it in his Prolegomena to Ethics, published posthumously in 1883: There are arts and institutions and rules of life, in which the human spirit has so far incompletely realized its idea of a possible Best; and the individual in whom the idea is at work will derive from it a general injunction to further these arts, to maintain and, so far as he can, improve these institutions (2003, 431). The state’s mission is to nurture the potential of its citizens to live the best possible life by enabling them to participate in these projects. From the 1880s onwards, social liberals, inspired directly or indirectly by Green’s philosophy, undertook a crusade against poverty and ignorance as barriers to freedom and democracy; they argued for the rights of women to be educated and to vote; they defended the role of the state to control the economy, and opposed imperialism. “The State arises,” proclaimed David Ritchie, “to ensure that the individual shall be fully realized, chiefly through his own conscious action. The State guarantees him his individuality, which Society with its self-seeking struggle of competitors tends to efface” (1902, 155). Social liberals demonstrated empirically that poverty was socially produced and systemic in nature, not the fault of individuals. L.T. Hobhouse and J.A. Hobson, for example, argued that wealth was created by society rather than individuals, and that the state owed its citizens the means of maintaining a civilized life—a debt, Hobhouse argued, “not adequately discharged by leaving him to secure such wages as he can in the haggling of the market” (1911, 164). Hobhouse also called for wealth taxes to “quench the antisocial ardour for unmeasured wealth, for social power and the vanity of display” (1911,

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201). The older laissez-faire liberalism was deemed to be theoretically and practically obsolete. The inequality and poverty engendered by laissez-faire economics were seen to be bad not simply on utilitarian grounds, but because it made it impossible for people to develop their potential and function effectively as citizens of a democracy. Apart from calling for intervention in the economy to eliminate poverty, social liberals campaigned for free public education, set up the Workers’ Educational Association to educate the working class and called for free public libraries and galleries. Reading books and contemplating works of art were not seen as mere entertainment but as part of self-education and the development of oneself as a person, the supreme duty of people as citizens of a democracy (Murdoch 1903, 236ff.). While social liberalism was inspired by philosophers, it was also developed by political theorists and economists. While John Hobson was the major economist in this tradition in the first decades of the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes to some extent continued the tradition of social liberalism. Apart from his economic theories concerned to show how depressions can be avoided through state involvement in the economy, Keynes, through his involvement in negotiating the Bretton Woods Agreement, strove to create a world order in which democratic states could control their own markets and their own destinies and cultivate higher ends than avarice. The rise of economics to its present despotic position was not the triumph of economic science as such, but the triumph of neo-classical economics—and the revival of Social Darwinism. Neo-classical economics is based on the analysis of market behavior, with its major assumptions of isolated, utility-maximizing economic agents and of diminishing marginal utilities for each commodity. Prices are determined by supply-and-demand schedules, the shape of which is determined by diminishing marginal utility, with prices supposedly determined by the intersection of these schedules, indicating that it is at this price with these quantities that demand and supply will be equal. At this equilibrium point, the value of the marginal item will be exchanged for its value equivalent, with all other items of this kind exchanged in the market resulting in a value gain for those involved in the exchange. Value is treated not as something objective, but as something subjective, and is determined by what people are willing to pay. The economy is then represented as a circular flow of money between business enterprises and households (or the public) with business paying for land, labor and money (as rent, wages and salaries, and interest respectively) and gaining profits through its entrepreneurial efforts, while the households pay for goods and services. Neo-classical economics has its roots in the work of Jevons (in England), Menger (in Austria) and Walras (in Switzerland and France), each developing their ideas in the 1870s, at about the same time that Green was elaborating his ideas (Pibram 1983, 277ff.). Jevons set out to rebuild economics as “the mechanics of utility and self-interest” (Jevons 1924, 21). While this idea has been influential, it was the mathematically oriented Walrasian school with its model of general equilibrium which eventually prevailed. The conclusions drawn from the work of this school, that it is through the free operation of the market that scarce resources will be most efficiently distributed between unlimited wants, has been supported also by the less mathematically oriented and more evolutionary Austrian school deriving from Menger, promoted most vigorously by Friedrich von Hayek.

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How did this tradition triumph? Keynesian economics, advancing the insights of Hobson and challenging the cozy conclusions of neo-classical economics that free markets will tend to an equilibrium in which there will be full employment of labor (unemployment on this model being explained by the unwillingness of workers to accept lower wages), had been vindicated by the Great Depression and the success of solutions Keynes provided for it. But while Keynesian economics was widely embraced, social liberalism was in decay. The philosophy that had underpinned it was abandoned. While John Rawls revived social contract theory in order to defend the welfare state, the effect of his work was to revive the atomic individualism on which neo-classical economics had been based (Rawls, 1971). Robert Nozick was able to use this doctrine to launch an attack on the welfare state (Nozick, 1974). In the USA, Keynes’ ideas were reinterpreted through neo-classical marginalist theory, and this paved the way for the revival of neo-classical economics and the almost complete eclipse of Keynesian thought (Harcourt 1982, 355ff.). This occurred in the 1970s, and neo-classical economics has dominated ever since. This ascendancy has been associated with the privileging of abstract mathematical models of the market which has had the effect of excluding the general population from participation in economic debates. Neo-classical economics, elaborated into the ideology of neo-liberalism (or more accurately, managerial market fundamentalism) has come to almost completely dominate public policy formation. This is the basis of our present predicament.

1.2. The Challenge of Ecological Economics to Neo-Classical Economics Neo-classical economics has not gone unchallenged. In fact there has been a bewildering array of challenges to it, with both alignments and conflicts between the challengers. Basic assumptions have been questioned even within neo-classical economics. Criticisms have ranged from pointing out that even in terms of their own assumptions, neo-classical economists have not been able to show that there is any reason for markets to move to an optimal equilibrium, to questioning the central assumptions about markets, human nature and society together with assumptions about the nature of science and scientific explanation on which neo-classical economics is based (Gowdy and Erikson 2005, 208). Criticisms have been leveled at the characterization of economic actors as egoistic utility maximizers and objections have been made to analyses of factor markets on the assumption that these are essentially the same as markets for goods and services. In relation to the labor market, Green’s point that employers and employees have unequal power in the marketplace has been reiterated (Nell 1980, 23ff.). The assumption of diminishing marginal productivity of capital, required to show that there is an equilibrium point in capital markets, has been shown to be highly problematic. Developments within mathematical economics associated with complexity theory have revolutionary implications. Brian Arthur focused on “increasing returns,” that is, markets where success feeds on itself to generate more success (Arthur, 1994). In such circumstances, which are normal rather than exceptional, there is no tendency towards equilibrium, and it is necessary to treat the economy as much more dynamic, creative and destructive, than neo-classical economists have been prepared to acknowledge. Complexity theory also gives a place to emergence, implying limits to the reductionism assumed by neo-classical economics. By

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showing that present conditions are dependent upon the paths which have generated them, such work requires economists to acknowledge the importance of history (Ormerod, 1994). Arthur’s work has effectively vindicated the historical, institutionalist, evolutionary economics that neoclassical economics first displaced and then almost obliterated (Hodgson, 2001). It has also been pointed out that despite the acknowledgement of land as a factor of production and Jevons’ appreciation of the limits to energy resources, the concepts of neo-classical economics virtually excluded nature from consideration (Groh and Sieferle, 1980). The neo-classical model of economic growth is inconsistent with the second law of thermodynamics and oblivious to the dynamics of eco-systems, including the global eco-system. The rapid destruction of resources and eco-systems for short-term profit increases can be shown to be entirely rational on neoclassical assumptions, suggesting something irrational in neo-classical characterizations of rationality. It has also provided further reasons for investigating the relationship between the dynamics of economies, other social formations, and the rest of nature. Most importantly, this justifies a greater concern with the relationship between the dynamics of economies and the dynamics of eco-systems, particularly the dynamics of the global economy and local ecosystems (Bunker, 1985). In doing so, these critiques of mainstream economics provide overwhelming reasons for reviving fundamental questions about the nature of the knowledge and what it is to be a science. It is here that major problems arise, however. What I have presented is a very schematic account of arguments against neo-classical economic theory. As noted, there is no consensus among the opponents of neo-classical economics. The political economy movement led by Joan Robinson attempted to revive a left Keynesianism, and failed (Kregel, 1975; Nell, 1980). Marxist critics split on the most basic issues of what Marxism stands for (Roosevelt, 1975). Students in France have sparked a global movement for post-autistic economics, but they are clearer on what they oppose than what they stand for. Institutionalists attempted to chart an alternative path to mainstream and Marxist economics (Mirowski, 1986). This movement had some success, but those involved in this revival are finding that they have to retrace the history of historical and institutional economics and confront the problems within it, which led to its eclipse by neo-classical economics. It is necessary to meet again Menger’s challenge to historical economics and the limits of Thorstein Veblen’s efforts to develop institutionalist economics (Hodgson 2001, 75ff., 150ff.). Attempts to make economics into an evolutionary science have forced institutional economists to confront disputes within evolutionary science (Mirowski, 1994; Hodgson, 1999). Such developments align institutionalist economists with some of the economists grappling with environmental problems (Söderbaum, 2000 21ff.). Not that there is any consensus here. There is a division between the environmentalist economists who have attempted to extend neo-classical economics to deal with environmental problems, attempting to incorporate “externalities” into the market, and ecological economists who have attempted to characterize economics as part of the broader science of ecology (Spash, 1999). This has presented another problem, since ecology is by no means a unified discipline. As in economics, divisions among ecologists extend to conflicts about what is knowledge and what is science (Levins and Lewontin, 1985). It might seem that complexity theory provides the necessary bridge between mainstream economics, institutional economics, ecological

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economics, ecology and evolutionary theory on which a new synthesis might be built; but “complexity” defines a problem rather than the solution, and there is a range of rival research programs addressing this problem (Gare, 2000a). Mirowski, a proponent of institutionalist economics, has severely criticized complexity theory as a new phase in mechanistic thought (Mirowski, 2002). Despite problems within it, it is ecological economics which is now emerging as the most potent opponent to neo-classical economics. It is ecological economics which addresses the most profound failure of neo-classical economics, the failure to deal adequately with resource depletion and environmental destruction both locally and globally (Constanza, 1991, Söderbaum, 2000). In doing so, it has drawn on the whole range of arguments against mainstream economics, including the relationship between economics and other sciences (Røpke, 2004, 2005). All problems and debates within and over economics have thereby been brought into focus. As two proponents of ecological economics proclaimed, human ecology is “the only heterodox school of economics focusing on both the human economy as a social system, and as a system embodied in the biophysical universe, and thus both holistic and scientifically based;” moreover, “ecological economics is poised to play a leading role in recasting the scope and method of economic science” (Gowdy and Erickson, 2005, 207). In doing so, ecological economics simultaneously raises all the most basic questions about the nature of knowledge and science, of physical existence, of life, of humanity, of society and of the individual. While this has generated a range of debates, ecological economics suffers from a weak identity (Røpke, 2005, 286). The challenge it faces is to hold together as a radical challenge to mainstream economics in virtually every respect.

1.3. Economics and Philosophy Given the chaotic state of debates within economics and the challenges confronting ecological economics, we need to examine the history of both economics and philosophy in order to expose the unexamined philosophical assumptions that can befuddle these debates. It is also necessary to see what happened to social liberalism and why it lost its impetus. To begin with, it is necessary to look at epistemology, and in particular at the development of and influence of logical positivism. But it is also necessary to look behind this to the rivalry between broader traditions of thought about humanity, society and politics and how this has been affected by logical positivism. Logical positivism emerged as part of the new tradition of analytic philosophy. In Britain this developed in opposition to the Idealism inspired by Green. Logical positivists were concerned to invalidate not only the claims but the whole project of metaphysics, and in Britain the metaphysics its proponents usually had in mind were the metaphysics of Idealism. So, whether intentionally or not, logical positivism was centrally involved in undermining the social ideals proposed by Green and the liberalism he inspired. However, this was not simply a matter of undermining Green’s philosophy and influence—an influence associated not only with social liberalism but the rise of the welfare state and social democracy. It was also a matter of facilitating a revival of the ideas that Green and the British Idealists had been concerned to overcome. To begin with, it is clear that the triumph and influence of logical positivism greatly

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helped the advance of neo-classical economics. While von Hayek was not a logical positivist, the influence of logical positivism is clearly evident in the characterization of economics as a science by the major proponent of neo-classical economics and neo-liberalism in USA, Milton Friedman (Friedman, 1953, Part I; Hollis and Nell, 1979). Such logical positivism was later assumed unconsciously by economists who attempted to develop computer models of the economy. What mattered was constructing mathematical models from which predictions could be made and tested, even if the predictions were all wrong; all other forms of intellectual inquiry were held to be “unscientific” and not worthy of being taken seriously. This meant that ideas deriving from social liberalism could easily be dismissed. Logical positivism also facilitated the revival of a broader tradition of thought that the social liberals had opposed, social Darwinism. If there was one philosopher whom the British Idealists opposed, it was Herbert Spencer. Spencer had first coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” later adopted by Darwin. Spencer used this idea to present a vision of evolutionary progress driven by the struggle for survival in which the fitter defeat and dominate the weaker. Spencer, who was also editor of The Economist, argued that the free-market economy in which individuals struggle against each other to satisfy their insatiable appetites is the basis for continued evolutionary progress (Spencer, 1969, 141ff.; Spencer, 1973, 73). For this to work, the state should withdraw support from the losers in this struggle within the market, since this will interfere with the mechanism driving evolutionary progress. Competition between countries should also become economic competition. The role of the state in society is merely to keep in place the rules of the market, most importantly, protecting property. This political philosophy was presented as part of the scientific vision of the world, or, in the language of Spencer’s friend, John Tyndall (and fellow member of the “X Club” which was attempting to promote science as the core of education and of culture) as part of “scientific materialism,” a term Tyndall coined in 1868 (Barton, 1987; Harman, 2001, 199). While this vision of the world is not explicitly invoked by neo-liberals, it is presupposed by them and neo-liberalism gained immense impetus through the revival of social Darwinism (Lewontin et al., 1984), largely made possible through the positivists’ defense of reductionist forms of explanation. The revival of social Darwinism reached its highest point with the development of socio-biology in the 1970s where social behavior was explained as nothing but the effect of the struggle for survival by selfish genes. Explicitly aligning himself with Spencer, the foremost socio-biologist, Edward O. Wilson, argued that “the individual organism is only their vehicle, part of an elaborate device to preserve and spread them with the least possible biochemical perturbation” (Wilson, 1975 3). To some extent the triumph of neo-classical economics is merely a manifestation of the revival of Spencer’s social Darwinism. Logical positivism had its greatest impact in undermining those philosophical movements that challenged social Darwinism. What were these movements? There was more to Anglophone philosophy in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century than the opposition between social Darwinism and Idealism. “Scientific materialism” had already met with opposition within physics from Clerk Maxwell and his colleagues (Harman, 2001 199ff.). Maxwell’s work in field theory in physics was one of the high points in the tradition, ultimately inspired by Leibniz and Boscovich, who sought to overcome the mechanistic cosmology of the

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Newtonians. Maxwell was Einstein’s hero, and the theories of relativity continued this tradition of thought. While Darwinian evolutionary theory was taken as vindicating scientific materialism, evolutional theory had originally been revived by opponents of Newtonian thought who had wanted to exalt humanity as the product of a creative nature (Richards, 2003 298ff.). There were tensions in both Spencer’s and Darwin’s theories, and good reason to draw different political conclusions than those drawn by Spencer from the theory. Darwin himself eventually drew different conclusions (Richards, 2003 547ff.). While disputes in these areas were underway, logic was being revolutionized by the importation into it of the algebraic techniques developed within mathematics. While logical positivism had drawn heavily on this new logic, particularly as it had been developed by Frege, in the USA Charles Sanders Peirce advanced symbolic logic for different ends—to justify speculative thought (as abduction) and to develop a revised form of Objective Idealism incorporating a radicalized form of evolutionary theory (Peirce, 1955, 322). In Britain, some of Green’s followers, most notably Ritchie, were attempting to advance Idealism by synthesizing it with Darwinian evolutionary theory (Ritchie, 1893 38-76). While this synthesis provided some support for the social liberals, in general evolutionary theory was held to be incompatible with Idealism and political theorists such as Hobhouse (who had been influenced by Green) and the economist Hobson felt that nature was inadequately appreciated in Idealism. During the First World War they came to believe the Hegelian idea of the State was responsible for German militarism (Clarke, 1978, 193) and, distancing themselves from Idealism, moved towards a new form of non-reductionist naturalism giving a place to emergence. This was being supplied by Samuel Alexander who had attended Balliol College when Green was in residence, and who early in his career had attempted to reformulate Green’s ethical philosophy to reconcile it with Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Alexander embraced both the theories of relativity and Lloyd Morgan’s notion of emergence and attempted to reformulate them into a new, evolutionary cosmology construing nature as essentially creative. Even more significant than its opposition to Idealism, logical positivism was important for having subverted this effort to develop a new, post-mechanist naturalism.

2. The Importance of Whitehead It is against this background that we need to understand the significance of Whitehead. Whitehead was actively involved in politics. He was aligned with the social liberals of the Liberal Party although he also had some sympathy for the emerging Labour Party of which he later became a supporter (ESP 19f.; Lowe, 1985 313ff.). He knew Keynes, and praised his Treatise on Probability as “by far the best discussion of the philosophical theory of probability” (PR 237n.). Whitehead had been taught “that beauty, moral and aesthetic, is the aim of existence; and that kindness, and love, and artistic satisfaction are among its modes of attainment” (ESP 15) and he was concerned to uphold what he had been taught. He anticipated a future democracy in which “every man and every woman will be trained for a free intellectual life” (ESP 180). But at the same time he was a mathematician, a mathematical physicist, a

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logician and philosopher of mathematics and science, and a metaphysician. Whitehead was strongly influenced by Maxwell and concerned to interpret and advance his new physics. He was also a central figure in the development of the new symbolic logic, advancing Peirce’s rather than Frege’s conception of logic (Code, 1995). He had been strongly influenced by Idealist philosophy, but believed it was necessary to go beyond their work, utilizing advances in the sciences and developments in logic. Like Peirce, he embraced evolutionary theory, but noted that this was in fact incompatible with scientific materialism (SMW 107). Matter, as conceived by scientific materialists, cannot evolve, he argued (echoing Peirce). Aligning himself with the work of Lloyd Morgan and Samuel Alexander, he worked to provide a new metaphysics which would make the evolution of humanity from nature intelligible (SMW viii). His first major work directed towards a broader public, a work in which he also for the first time defended and sketched out a new cosmology and new metaphysics, Science and the Modern World, was a sustained critique of scientific materialism and its nihilistic implications. With a profound appreciation of the implications of the new logic, he exposed the failings of logical positivism, anticipating virtually all the arguments against it which were developed from the 1950s to the 1970s (PR 8; AI 124ff.; Gare, 1999). Justifying speculative philosophy, Whitehead not only showed the incoherence of the ideas on which social Darwinism was based but provided foundations for advancing the ideas of the social liberals. For Whitehead, scientific materialism represented the power of abstract thought. It was through a process of constructive abstraction that science arrived at simply-located bits of matter on the one hand, and minds on the other, enabling the physical world to be understood through mathematics. But as Whitehead noted: The enormous success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand matter with its simple location in space and time, on the other hand mind, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact. Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined (SMW 55). It is this which has led to the oscillation between dualists who accept mind and matter on equal terms, materialists who attempt to reduce mind to matter, and idealists who attempt to explain matter as a mental construct. But such thinking is contaminated by taking abstractions for concrete reality, without acknowledging or appreciating the level of abstraction involved. This is the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” As Whitehead again noted, “this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the inherent confusion introduced by the ascription of misplaced concreteness to the scientific scheme of the seventeenth century” (SMW 55). By this Whitehead was not suggesting that we could grasp reality in all its complexity if only we are prepared to eschew abstractions. The problem is that through the fallacy of misplaced concreteness scientists and philosophers, including Idealist philosophers, have remained wedded to a particular set of abstractions, blinded to the possibility of developing alternatives. As he argued: You cannot think without abstractions; accordingly, it is of the utmost importance to be vigilant in critically revising your modes of abstraction. It is here that philosophy finds its niche as essential to the healthy progress of society. It is the critic of abstractions. A civilization which cannot burst through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility after a very limited period of progress (SMW

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59). Whitehead examined the Idealists, appreciating their insights into the limitations of scientific materialism but criticized them for being too divorced from the scientific outlook, failing “to connect, in any organic fashion, the fact of nature with their idealistic philosophies” (SMW 64). Nevertheless, Whitehead did not dismiss Idealist philosophy. In the “Preface” to PR he wrote of his own work: “if this cosmology be deemed successful, it becomes natural at this point to ask whether the type of thought involved be not a transformation of some main doctrines of Absolute Idealism onto a realistic basis” (PR xiii). Elsewhere, he defined the task of philosophy as the transcendence of the opposition between scientific materialism and the German tradition of philosophy: Leibniz introduced the alternative tradition that the entities, which are the ultimate actual things, are in some sense procedures of organization. This tradition has been the foundation of the great achievements of German philosophy. […] It should be the task of the philosophical schools of this century to bring together the two streams into an expression of the world-picture derived from science, and thereby end the divorce of science from the affirmations of our aesthetic and ethical experiences (SMW 156). Examining the various forms of confusion engendered by the efforts to escape the dualism of mind and matter by privileging one or the other, Whitehead proclaimed that “substance is for me the one underlying activity of realization individualizing itself in an interlocked plurality of modes. Thus, concrete fact is process” (SMW 70). The basic existents are not bits of matter but hierarchically ordered organisms which are more than the sum of their parts: “The concrete enduring entities are organisms, so that the plan of the whole influences the very characters of the various subordinate organisms which enter into it” (SMW 79). That is, he upheld the doctrine of emergence of Alexander and Lloyd Morgan. This provided the basis for a revolution in science. Whitehead’s work is relevant to economics in several ways. To begin with, he criticized economic science for having abstracted away from concrete reality and having mistaken its abstractions for concrete reality: It is very arguable that the science of political economy, as studied in its first period after the death of Adam Smith (1790), did more harm than good. It […] riveted on men a certain set of abstractions which were disastrous in their influence on modern mentality. It de-humanised industry […]. [A]ll thought concerned with social organization expressed itself in terms of material things and of capital. Ultimate values were excluded (SMW 200, 202ff.). Beyond this, Whitehead exposed the illusions underlying Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism with its glorification of competition. This theory had “directed almost exclusive attention to the aspect of struggle for existence in a fixed environment” (SMW 205). Due to this abstraction, Whitehead pointed out, “the watchwords of the nineteenth century have been, struggle for existence, competition, class warfare, commercial antagonism between nations, military warfare. The struggle for existence has been construed into the gospel of hate” (SMW 205). Freed from the limitations of this abstraction, evolutionary theory has different implications: “The full conclusion to be drawn from a philosophy of evolution is fortunately of a more balanced character. Successful organisms modify their environment. Those organisms are successful which modify their environments so as to assist each other” (SMW 205). At the same

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time, Whitehead attacked “the Gospel of Uniformity” (SMW 206) and defended “the power of wandering” (SMW 207). “Physical wandering is still important,” Whitehead averred, “but greater still is the power of man’s spiritual adventures—adventures of thought, adventures of passionate feeling, adventures of aesthetic experience” (SMW 207). He defended diversity, arguing that “other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends” (SMW 207). Finally, Whitehead offered a new set of abstractions which, overcoming the dualisms generated by the triumph of scientific materialism, allowed humans to be understood as creative participants within an intrinsically valuable nature. Through this cosmology, Whitehead was able to offer a strong defense of cooperation in the pursuit of the common good, the cultivation of individuality and the pursuit of the higher ends the social liberals had sought to uphold (SMW 206). In a later work Whitehead analyzed the loss of freedom associated with the industrial system where “there only remain iron-bound conditions of employment and trivial amusements of leisure” (ESP 166). He called for economic statesmanship to recreate the conditions for freedom, individuality and variety of opportunity for useful activity “that the great commercial corporations are setting themselves to destroy” (ESP 169). Whitehead’s new cosmology not only provided a defense of the ideals of social liberalism, it provided an alternative characterization of science to logical positivism. In doing so it provided the basis not only for criticizing both social Darwinism and neo-classical economics, but guidance for overcoming the one-sided abstractions of these traditions of thought, for building a new kind of science on more adequate abstractions, a science which could analyze the relationship between humans in the context of nature.

3. History of Whitehead’s Influence on Ecological Economics To some extent the potential of this was realized in biology. Whitehead’s ideas were taken up by his colleague at Harvard, the ecologist William Morton Wheeler. Wheeler, emphasizing symbiotic relations and the emergence of communities as new patterns of integration, had a major influence on subsequent ecology in the USA, particularly through the work of W.C. Allee (Worster 1994, 320ff.). Whitehead also had a profound influence on the theoretical biology movement in Britain. C.H. Waddington, a leading member of this movement, questioned the abstractions of mainstream biology, including both the terms “environment” and “gene.” In taking up Whitehead’s questioning of the abstraction of “environment,” Waddington pointed out that organisms are not selected by a particular environment, but move in their environment, change it, and are selected according to how they choose to respond to it (Waddington, 1969a & 1969b). Adaptation must be thought of in a way that takes account of the organism’s instinctive and conscious reactions to stress situations as well as contingencies such as what it has inherited and what environment it happens to be in. Examining epigenesis in the development of embryos—that is, the differentiation of cells and the generation of form—Waddington showed that there was no simple relationship between genes and phenotypes, with epigenesis involving development along emergent time paths (chreods) with different degrees of stability. Fitness can only be defined properly from the point of view of the population of active, striving organisms

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in various stages of development. So fitness cannot be defined in terms of genotypes, and there are even more difficulties involved in the attempt to speak of the fitness of single genes. Since any new species produces a more heterogeneous environment as a consequence of its interactions with the diverse phenotypes already in existence, it will generate the conditions for more species to evolve to fill the new ecological niches. And since the newer environments will be a function of an increasing number of phenotypes, there will be a tendency for more complex phenotypes to evolve which are capable of operating effectively in the more complex environments. This work was an important contribution of ecology and anticipated later complexity theory. Furthermore, Waddington extended his ideas to encompass humanity, and grappled with the major environmental problems facing us (Waddington, 1978). Independently of both US ecologists and British biologists but influenced by both of them, Whitehead had a significant influence on Australian biology through the work of W.E. Agar and his student, Charles Birch. Birch became a major environmentalist and proponent of Whiteheadian thought, expounding his central ideas on ecology and human ecology in The Liberation of Life, a work he wrote with John Cobb Jr. (1981). Ecological economics is also realizing the potential of Whitehead’s guidance. Ecological economics did not originate with Whiteheadian thought. It originated in the work of those who saw the incompatibility of the assumption by economists that growth could occur indefinitely and the second law of thermodynamics (Martinez-Alier, 1990). However, one of the most important proponents of this argument was Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen who did draw on the work of Whitehead (Georgescu-Roegen 1971, 69ff.). Georgescu-Roegen attacked the “arithromorphism” and “arithromania” dominating modern thought, and economics in particular—namely, the assumption that all concepts can be defined, and all reality understood with arithmetic precision (1971, 44ff., 52). He lamented the fact that the complex notion of economic development has been reduced to a number, the income per capita. The dialectical spectrum of human wants (perhaps the most important element of the economic process) has long since been covered under the colorless numerical concept of “utility” for which, moreover, nobody has yet been able to provide an actual procedure of measurement (1971, 52). This is part of the pervasive tendency of economics to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (1971, 320ff.). To counter such tendencies, Georgescu-Roegen defended “dialectical” or “vague” concepts which cannot be precisely defined, arguing that these are essential for understanding qualitative change which is ubiquitous in nature and society. Through a wide ranging analysis and critique of science in general and thermodynamics and economics in particular, Georgescu-Roegen exposed the flaws in neo-classical economics which had blinded it to qualitative change associated with historical and evolutionary processes and, most importantly, to the basic conditions of existence for the economy and humanity. He introduced the notion of “entropic flow” to characterize the one-way flow beginning with resources and ending with waste. This diagnosis of the core deficiencies of economic thought was embraced by Herman Daly, one of Georgescu-Roegen’s students. Daly went on to become one of the founders of The International Society for Ecological Economics and its journal, Ecological Economics. Daly’s first major paper in ecological economics proposed that economics be conceived as a life

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science (Daly, 1968). Arguing that ecology had abstracted nature from humanity while economics had abstracted humanity from nature, in each case failing to acknowledge that such an abstraction had taken place, Daly proposed a development of Leontief’s input-output model of the economy for overcoming these abstractions and uniting the two sciences. In later work, Daly identified a range of abstractions used by economists and then taken to be concrete reality. The clearest case is the neo-classical model of the economy as a circular flow between business and the public of money in one direction, and factors of production and goods in the other. This, Daly pointed out, is like abstracting the circulatory system of an organism from its metabolism in which it ingests food, transforms it and excretes waste, and then treating the circulatory system as the total organism (Daly, 1996 193). Acknowledging “entropic flow” and a range of distinctions ignored by neoclassical economists, Daly argued that we must aim at a steady-state economy, one which does not increase entropic flow but concentrates on greater efficiency in the use of materials to produce a better quality of life (Daly, 1977). Achieving such ends, Daly argued, involves bringing ethics (and implicitly, politics) back into the picture. We need to change values. We need to think about what the good life is and how to ensure that the market is controlled to maintain a steady-state and use resources efficiently to enable people to live a good life. Daly devoted considerable attention to what kinds of institutions would be necessary for these ends, arguing for institutions to prevent the concentration of income and the accumulation of excessive wealth, to limit births and to place quotas on resource depletion (1977, Chap. 3). In the end, Daly called for biophysical equilibrium and moral growth (1977, Chap. 8). Effectively, Daly (who often cites Hobson) has been reviving the social liberalism with which Whitehead was aligned. Daly teamed up with John Cobb Jr. to write For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (1989, 1994). To fully appreciate the significance of this title it is necessary to appreciate both the role ascribed to the common good by the social liberals and the vehemence with which this notion was attacked by the rational-choice theorists associated with neo-classical economists and neo-liberalism. For the Common Good began with a thorough analysis of the abstractions that economists have treated with a certain “misplaced concreteness”: the market, measurements of economic success, homo economicus and land. It called for a fundamental transformation of universities from academic disciplines to “thought in service of community.” It called for a reorientation in thought from chrematistics (the study of money) to oikonomia, the study of the household, from individualism to person-in-community, from cosmopolitanism to communities of communities, from matter and rent to energy and biosphere. It offers policies for community in the United States, attacking the doctrine of free trade and promoting decentralization of political and economic power as real alternatives to the policies of the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives. It also called for a new role for the USA, from world domination to national security. Finally, the work offered an Index of Sustainable Welfare as an alternative to Gross National Product as a measure of the true health of the economy (further developed by Clifford Cobb and John Cobb Jr., 1994). This gave a quite different picture of the US economy than measures of GNP, particularly after 1980. “Economic welfare has been deteriorating for a decade,” they noted, “largely as a result of growing income inequality, the exhaustion of resources, and unsustainable

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reliance on capital from overseas to pay for domestic consumption and investment” (1989, 1994, 507). All this was presented from the coherent perspective of Whiteheadian process philosophy. Apart from editing several anthologies on economics, ecology and ethics (1973, 1980, 1993) and a major statement and defense of his doctrines (1996), Daly has now produced a major textbook on ecological economics, Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications (2004), which expands and further defends the arguments of For the Common Good. Daly has also gone well outside the discipline of economics to produce with Thomas Prugh and Robert Costanza a major defence of strong democracy, The Local Politics of Global Sustainability (2000). Given Daly’s efforts to construe the market as a part of the community which can at times be destructive and his concern to re-embed the market in the community, it was logical that he should have begun work on political institutions. And given his concern to revive communities, it was logical for him to embrace democracy as the form of power that involves people and thereby strengthens community. In developing these arguments, Daly and his colleague made an extremely important point. They noted that in the USA environmentalism is a mile wide, but only an inch deep (2000, 90). In this work they provided an explanation for this. In practice people evaluate courses of action according to the role they are playing. If the role they are playing is that of consumers, they will tend to want the best they can get for their money. Any amount of moral growth will only have a minor impact on the decisions they make. But if the role they are taking is that of governors, then they are likely to take a very different perspective. As the authors put it: The citizen preference orientation is currently attenuated to the point of invisibility. Yet strengthening it would ineluctably bring people face-to-face with the problems of governance, including those of sustainability. Citizens brought into confrontation with the stark problems of governing their communities through hands-on participation […] would be educated in the sources of community troubles, in the origins of their way of life, and in the trade-offs that must be accepted in any collective choice. With regard to sustainability issues in particular, self-governing citizens would more likely learn the ecological costs of their community’s lifestyle and socioeconomic character (2000, 99). This brings us back to the central insight of the social liberals which Whitehead’s philosophy advanced but which were somehow lost sight of as the twentieth century progressed—the importance of democracy as both means and an end for the development of the full potentialities of people, as participants in institutions, to contribute to the common good, with the common good now extended to encompass the whole of nature.

4. Assessment: Ecological Economics and Human Ecology However, Daly’s excursion into political philosophy highlights something fundamentally problematic about ecological economics as a discipline, a dimension of which both Daly and Cobb appear to be acutely aware. The evolution of universities has produced a tendency towards specialization that has fragmented knowledge. This has been conducive to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. As noted, Daly and Cobb raised this issue in For the Common Good, suggesting reforms in universities to overcome this tendency by giving a place to cosmology, to

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interdisciplinary studies and efforts to grapple with global problems (1989, 1994, 364ff.). It is difficult, however, to overestimate how deeply rooted this fragmentation is and some attention needs to be paid to the forces driving it. One of these is the quest to establish areas of expertise through which knowledge can be commodified and lucrative careers based (Levins and Lewontin, 1985, chap. 8). This force has had a pervasive influence on the kinds of knowledge produced by these disciplines—they are heavily biased towards knowledge of how to control. Ecology, along with biology generally, has been affected by this. Donald Worster in his study of the history of ecology has traced this influence through such emergent fields as “bioeconomics” by which nature is construed as an economic system. Hermann Reinheimer provides one example of the mindset of “bioeconomists”: Every day, from sunrise until sunset, myriads of [plant] laboratories, factories, workshops and industries all the world over, on land and in the sea, in the earth and on the surface soil, are incessantly occupied, adding each its little contribution to the general fund of organic wealth (Worster 1994, 291). Worster noted Whitehead’s efforts to overcome “one-eyed reason, deficient in its vision of depth” (1994 316, quoting SMW 74) and the influence his notion of relational processes had on ecology. However, this influence was eclipsed. It was the bioeconomic vision which came to dominate. As Worster noted, By the 1960s, orthodox scientific thought was virtually monopolized by thermodynamics and bioeconomics. The organicists’ vision of relatedness was confined to the eco-system model of the New Ecologists, who were quite as reductive in their way as Whitehead’s bètes noires, the eighteenth-century philosophes. From most professional circles, at least, the metabiological, idealizing tendencies of organicism had been firmly exorcised: Ecology at last had got its head out of the clouds, its feet on solid ground, and its hands on something to measure. […] It was thought that, to qualify as a field of objective knowledge, ecology could have no further dealings with the private, muddled realms of value, philosophy, and ethics (1994, 332). Bioeconomics is the kind of knowledge which would enable ecologists to lay claim to an expertise in environmental management. Daly did not formulate ecological economics in terms of the Whiteheadian strand of ecology as promoted by Wheeler, Waddington and Birch but in terms of bioeconomics. The influence of bioeconomics is manifest in the relative inattention by Daly to the exploration by organisms and to the possible contributions of their efforts to survive to the environments of other organisms, features of life to which Whitehead had drawn attention and which were amplified by Waddington. Without this, the challenge to social Darwinism presented by Whitehead and Waddington is weakened. Ecological economics as a science could itself become merely a tool of management for governments. So even Daly’s ecological economics is to some extent tainted by one-eyed reason, and perhaps partly for this reason has not fully realized its potential to subvert the prevailing neo-liberal culture. What is needed to free science completely from one-eyed reason? Whitehead provided the basis for an answer to this when he characterized the task of a university as “the creation of the future, so far as rational thought, and civilized modes of appreciation, can affect the issue” (MT 171). A science which no longer implicitly positions itself in relation to subjects considered wholly external to the world will have to reflexively acknowledge its own development and the

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partiality of its own claims vis-à-vis against rival orientations (Shiva, 1989; Guha, 1994; Taylor, 2005, Prologue). This will be a science which explicitly relates itself to philosophy. Daly has attempted this to a certain extent. But in order better to link the many scientific disciplines with the more reflexive thought of philosophy, it is necessary not just to encourage interdisciplinary work, as did Daly and Cobb, but also to develop a range of trans-disciplines that facilitate comprehension of the relationship of more specific trans-disciplines, disciplines and subdisciplines to each other. To some extent the humanities, both philosophy and history can and should play this role, but more is needed. Ecological economics itself has been presented with some justification as a trans-discipline. But to relate the evolution of modern civilization to the broader evolutionary history of nature and humanity; to relate the study of markets not only to ecological processes and institutions associated with economic activity but to other social forms and institutions of diverse societies and civilizations; to identify the ecologically sustainable and ecologically unsustainable social forms; to comprehend and align people in relation to the power struggles within and between societies and to efforts by people to understand and control their destinies; to reflexively acknowledge the participation of science in such efforts; to evaluate all these and orient people for action, requires more than philosophy, history and ecological economics: it requires human ecology. While in the past human ecology has floundered in the face of the complexity of the theoretical problems confronting it—for it must tackle problems both of ecological complexity and the complexity of social dynamics (Kormondy & Brown, 1998)—recent work in theoretical ecology has provided the means to incorporate the “population-community approach,” with its focus on the interaction between organisms and the formation of communities, with the “bioeconomic” “process-functionalist approach,” with its focus on energy flows and nutrient cycles (Allen and Starr, 1982; O’Neill et al., 1986; Allen and Hoekstra, 1992), and to extend this to encompass humanity and its history (Dyke, 1988; Gare, 2000b & 2002; Allen et al., 2003). This theoretical perspective is based on a form of hierarchy theory which does not derive from Whitehead, though it is a form of process thinking consistent with his metaphysics (Gare, 2000c). One of its implications is that the very being of any entity as self-creating is taken to involve self-constraining. This means that when it comes to humans, the constraints associated with ethics and politics are no longer seen as extrinsic to people but as an aspect of their selfcreation. While human ecology formulated in this way is consistent with the ecological economics of Daly and Cobb, the commitment to democracy and the conditions for achieving it can be made even stronger (Gare, 2004). It provides a broader framework for examining what is required to achieve democracy throughout the world and presents the struggle to address global environmental problems in a more positive way. Daly defines the basic ethical principle of his ecological economics in this way: “We should strive for sufficient per capita wealth— efficiently maintained and allocated, and equitably distributed—for the maximum number of people that can be sustained over time under these conditions” (Daly 1996, 220). This is a moralistic injunction which tends to assume a disjunction between how people should behave and their self-interested inclinations. The social liberals, Whitehead included, tended to think more in terms of characterizing the good life and working out the conditions for achieving it.

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They upheld a vision of life in which the pursuit of highest ends requires the recognition and appreciation of others, holding that a life of self-indulgence is not only destructive of others but intrinsically deficient. The quest to be able to live a life not destructive of nature, other people and the future is not a curtailment of one’s freedom but is central to the pursuit of liberty, the condition under which people, both as individuals and as members of communities, can develop their full, unique potentials to freely contribute to the common good. Developing such a transdiscipline to revive the tradition of social liberalism is only in its early stages and demonstrates the continued importance of Whitehead as a guide for the elaboration of new abstractions. Ecological economics and human ecology will be subject to the usual pressures of universities to develop as specialist disciplines, to provide a particular area of expertise for environmental management rather than the perspective needed by citizens to create and sustain a genuinely democratic society. The prospects for success in this regard are intimately related to the prospects of process thought generally, and this in turn will largely determine the prospects for civilization and the future of humanity.

Works Cited and Further Readings Allen, T.F.H. and Starr, Thomas B. 1982. Hierarchy: Perspectives for Ecological Complexity (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Allen, T.F.H., Tainter, Joseph A., & Hoekstra, Thomas W. 2003. Supply-Side Sustainability (New York, Columbia University Press). Allen, Timothy F. H. and Hoekstra, Thomas W. 1992. Toward a Unified Ecology (New York, Columbia University Press). Amadae, S.M. 2003. Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Arrow, Kenneth. 1983. “Social Choice and Justice,” in Collected Papers (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press). Arthur, Brian. 1994. Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press). Augier, M., March, J. and Sullvan, B. 2005. “Notes on the Evolution of a Research Community: Organization Studies in Anglophone North America, 1945-2000,” Organization Science, 16, 1, 85-95. Barton, Ruth. 1987. “John Tyndall, Pantheist: Rereading the Belfast Address,” Osiris, 2nd series, 3, 111-34. Baumol, William J. 1968. “Entrepreneurship in Economic Theory,” American Economic Review, 58, 64-71. Becker, Gary S. 1996. Accounting for Tastes (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Bianchi, Milo and Magnus Henrekson. 2005. “Is Neoclassical Economics Still Entrepreneurless?” Kyklos, 58, 3. Birch, Charles and Cobb, John B. Jr. 1981. The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Blaug, Mark. 1997. Economic Theory in Retrospect (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Blaug, Mark. 1998. “Entrepreneurship in the History of Economic Thought,” Advances in Austrian Economics, 5, 239-71. Boucher, David (ed.). 1997. The British Idealists (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Bracken, J. A. 1989. “Energy Events and Fields,” Process Studies, 18, 3, 153-65. Bracken, J. A. 2002. “Continuity Amid Discontinuity—A Neo-Whiteheadian Understanding of the Self,” Process Studies, 31, 2, 115-124.

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Endres, Anthony M. and Christine R. Woods. 2006. “Modern Theories of Entrepreneurial Behavior: A Comparison and Appraisal,” Small Business Economics, 26, 189-202. England, Paula. 1993. “The Separative Self: Androcentric Bias in Neoclassical Assumptions,” in Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics, edited by Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993), 37-53. Ferber, Marianne A. and Julie A. Nelson (eds.). 2003. Feminist Economics Today (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Foley, Duncan K. 2000. “Recent Developments in the Labor Theory of Value,” Review of Radical Political Economics, 32, 1, 1-39. Friedman, Milton. 1953. Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Gare, Arran. 1996. Nihilism Inc.: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability (Como, Eco-Logical Press). Gare, Arran. 1999. “Speculative Metaphysics and the Future of Philosophy: The Contemporary Relevance of Whitehead’s Defence of Speculative Metaphysics,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 77, 2, 127-145. Gare, Arran. 2000. “Philosophy, Civilisation and the Global Ecological Crisis: The Challenge of Process Metaphysics to Scientific Materialism,” Philosophy Today, 44, 3, 283-94. Gare, Arran. 2000a. “Systems Theory and Complexity,” Democracy and Nature, 6, 3, 327-339. Gare, Arran. 2000b. “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, 7, 4, 277-290. Gare, Arran. 2000c. “Human Ecology, Process Philosophy and the Global Ecological Crisis,” Concresence: The Australasian Journal for Process Thought: An Online Journal, 1, 1. Gare, Arran. 2001. “Postmodernism as the Decadence of the Social Democratic State,” Democracy and Nature, 7, 1, 77-100. Gare, Arran. 2002. “Human Ecology and Public Policy: Overcoming the Hegemony of Economics,” Democracy and Nature, 8, 1, 131-141. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). Gowdy, John and Erickson. 2005. “The Approach of Ecological Economics,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 29, 207-222. Graupe, Silja. 2005. Der Ort ökonomischen Denkens. Die Methodologie der Wirtschaftswissenschaften im Licht japanischer Philosophie, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag. Green, T.H. 1986. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings, edited by Paul Harris and John Morrow (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Green, T.H. 2003. Prolegomena to Ethics, edited by David O. Brink (Oxford, Clarendon). Griffin, D.R. 1989. Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom and the Mind-Body Problem (Berkeley, University of California Press). Griffin, D.R. 1993. “Introduction to the State University of New York Press Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought,” in Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy: Pierce, James, Bergon, Whitehead and Hatrtshorne edited by D.R. Griffin et al (Albany, State University of New York Press), vii-x. Groh, Dieter and Sieferle, Rolf-Peter. 1980. “Experience of Nature in Bourgeois Society and Economic Theory,” Social Research. 3, 557-581. Guha, Ramachandra. 1994. Social Ecology (Oxford, New Delhi). Harcourt, G.C. 1982. The Social Science Imperialists (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul). Harding, Sandra. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, Cornell University Press.) Harman, P.M. 1998. The Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Harris, Donald J. 1978. Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul). Hobhouse, L.T. 1911. Liberalism (London, Williams & Norgate).

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Hodgson, Geoffrey M. 1993. Economics and Evolution: Bringing Life Back into Economics (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press). Hodgson, Geoffrey M. 1999. Evolution and Institutions: On Evolutionary Economics and the Evolution of Economics (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar). Hodgson, Geoffrey M. 2001. How Economics Forgot History (London, Routledge). Hollander, Samuel. 2004. “Economic Organization, Distribution and the Equality Issue: The Marx-Engels Perspective,” Review of Austrian Economics, 17, 1, 5-39. Hollis, Martin and Nell, Edward J. 1979. “Two Economists” in Philosophy and Economic Theory, edited by Frank Hahn and Martin Hollis (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Jevons, W. Stanley. 1924. The Theory of Political Economy, 4th ed. (London, Macmillan). Johnson, A.H. 1959. Whitehead’s American Essays in Social Philosophy (New York, Harper and Brothers). Johnston, Carol. 1998. The Wealth or Health of Nations: Transforming Capitalism From Within (Cleveland Ohio, Pilgrim Press). Keller, Catherine. 1986. From A Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (Boston, Beacon Press.) Keller, Catherine. 2005. “The Tao of Postmodernity: Process, Deconstruction and Postcolonial Theory”, Wenyu Xie, Zhihe Wang, George Derfer (eds.), Whitehead and China. Relevance and Relationships, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Yale University Press). Khalil, Elias L. 1990a. “Entropy Law and Exhaustion of Natural Resources: Is Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s Paradigm Defensible?” Ecological Economics, 2, 2, 163-78. Khalil, Elias L. 1990b. “Natural Complex vs. Natural System,” Journal of Social and Biological Structures, February, 13, 1, 11-31. Khalil, Elias L. 1992. “Nature and Abstract Labor in Marx,” Social Concept, June, 6, 2, 91-117. Khalil, Elias L. 1993. “Neo-classical Economics and Neo-Darwinism: Clearing the Way for Historical Thinking” in Economics as Worldly Philosophy edited by J. Chatha and E.J. Nell, (London, Macmillan), 22-72. Khalil, Elias L. 1996. “Economic Action, Naturalism, and Purposefulness,” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, 14, 119-140. Khalil, Elias L. 1997a. “Buridan’s Ass, Uncertainty, Risk, and Self-Competition: A Theory of Entrepreneurship,” Kyklos, 50, 2, 147-163. Khalil, Elias L. 1997b. “Production and Environmental Resources: A Prelude to an Evolutionary Framework,” Southern Economic Journal, April, 63, 4, 929-46. Khalil, Elias L. 1998-99. “The Janus Hypothesis,” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Winter, 21, 2, 315-42. Khalil, Elias L. 2003a. “The Context Problematic, Behavioral Economics and the Transactional View: An Introduction to ‘John Dewey and Economic Theory’,” Journal of Economic Methodology, June, 10, 2, 107-130. Partially reprinted from Transactional Viewpoints, Winter 2003, 2, 1, 1-8. Khalil, Elias L. 2003b. “A Transactional View of Entrepreneurship: A Deweyan Approach,” Journal of Economic Methodology, June, 10, 2, 161-79. Khalil, Elias L. 2006a. “Making Sense of Behavioural Anomalies: Distinguishing Four Kinds of Framing Effects” (Working paper). Khalil, Elias L. 2006b. “Moral Outrage: A Rational Theory of Nationalism, Ambition, and other Internal Motivations” (Working paper). Kirzner, Israel M. 1973. Competition and Entrepreneurship (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Kirzner, Israel M. 1985. Discovery and the Capitalist Process (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Knight, Frank. 1971 [1921]. Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. Introduction by George J. Stigler (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Kormondy, Edward J. and Brown, Daniel E. 1998. Fundamentals of Human Ecology

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(Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall). Kregel, J.A. 1975. The Reconstruction of Political Economy, 2nd ed. (London, Macmillan). Lawson, Tony. 1999. “Feminism, Realism, and Universalism,” Feminist Economics, 5, 2, 2559. Levins, Richard and Lewontin, Richard. 1985. The Dialectical Biologist (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). Lewontin, R.C., Rose, Steven and Kamin, Leon J. 1984. Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature (New York: Pantheon Books). Linstead, S. 2002. “Organisation as Reply—Henri Bergson and Casual Organization Theory,” Organization, 9, 95-112. Lotka, Alfred J. 1945. “The Law of Evolution as a Maximal Principle,” Human Biology, 17. Lowe, V. 1990. Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work, Vol. II (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press). Lowe, V. and Baldwin, R.C. 1951. “Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred North Whitehead,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead edited by P.A. Schilpp (Illinois, Open Court), 745-78. Lowe, Victor. 1985. Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work, Volume I: 1861-1910 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press). March, J.G. and Simon, H.A. 1958. Organizations (London, Wiley). Marshall, Alfred. 1925. Principles of Economics, 8th Edition (London, Macmillan). Martinez-Alier, Juan. 1990. Ecological Economics: Energy, Environment and Society (Oxford, Blackwell). Marx, Karl. 1906. Capital, 3rd edition, edited by Frederick Engels, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York, The Modern Library). Marx, Karl. 1976. Capital, Vol. 1. Introduction by Ernest Mandel (Harmondsworth, Penguin; London, New Left Books). Mcfague, Sallie. 2001. Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). McLaren, G. 2004. The Metaphysical Roots of Physical Inactivity and Obesity in LateCapitalism: Toward a Better Understanding of Major Health Problems through the Application of Process Philosophy, PhD Thesis (Swinburne University of Technology, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry). Mead, G.H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Mill, John Stuart. 1984 [1836]. “On the Definition and Method of Political Economy,” in The Philosophy of Economics, edited by Daniel M. Hausman (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Mirowski, Philip (ed.). 1986. The Reconstruction of Political Economy (Boston, LuwerNijhoff). Mirowski, Philip (ed.). 1994. Natural Images in Economic Thought (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Mirowski, Philip (ed.). 2002. Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Mises, Ludwig von. 1966 [1949]. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Chicago, Contemporary Books). Murdoch, Walter. 1903. The Struggle for Freedom (Melbourne, Whitcombe & Tombs). Nell, Edward J. 1980. Growth, Profits & Property (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Nelson, Julie A. 1993. “The Study of Choice or the Study of Provisioning? Gender and the Definition of Economics,” in Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics, edited by Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson (Chicago, University of Chicago Press), 23-36. Nelson, Julie A. 2003a. “Once More, With Feeling: Feminist Economics and the Ontological Question.” Feminist Economics 9, 1, 109-118. Nelson, Julie A. 2003b. “Confronting the Science/Value Split: Notes on Feminist Economics, Institutionalism, Pragmatism and Process Thought,” Cambridge Journal of Economics

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VI. Education Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education: Its Promise and Relationship to the Philosophy of Organism Adam Scarfe and Howard Woodhouse i

ii

1. Main Themes of Education The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929) is a series of lectures delivered primarily in England before, during, and after the First World War.1 Whitehead envisages an egalitarian society in which a reenergized liberal education strengthens the imaginative capacities of students from every social class.2 His views still resonate with us almost a century later. “The whole book,” he writes, “is a protest against dead knowledge, that is to say against inert ideas” (AE v). Indeed, “the problem of keeping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert […] is the central problem of education” (AE 5). Inert ideas are those “ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations” (AE 1). Where knowledge is transmitted to a passive learner unable to use ideas in a practical way or relate them to her own experience, the result is a “useless” waste of time. By utilizing an idea, Whitehead means “[…] relating it to that stream, compounded of sense perceptions, feelings, hopes, desires, and of mental activities, adjusting thought to thought, which forms our life” (AE 3). The life of the learner, like that of all human beings, is a stream flowing from the past through the present to the future, one in which all events are connected to each another. The stream is a fluid mix of emotions, desires, hopes, feelings, and sense perceptions. Mental activity consists of relating one idea to another in novel and creative ways.3 This is why inert ideas are so “harmful”: they stultify the “self-development,” or growth, of “students [who] are alive” (AE v). As a mathematician, Whitehead was especially concerned with the “inclusion of mathematics in a liberal education” so as “to train the pupils to handle abstract ideas.” In order for such ideas

i

Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, California State University, Bakersfield, 9001 Stockdale Hwy, Bakersfield, California, 93311 U.S.A. [email protected].

ii

Department of Educational Foundations, University of Saskatchewan, 28 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 0V6, Canada, http://www.usask.ca/usppru/; [email protected].

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to come to life, students taking elementary courses should be spared the drudgery and “pointless accumulation of details,” since the “general use of mathematics should be the simple study of a few general truths, well illustrated by practical examples” (AE 80, 81). The examples he has in mind have become standard fare in teaching the subject: a train passing several stations in a certain amount of time can illustrate continuous and discontinuous functions; a train can also help to explain the differential calculus; and vectors as straight lines are graphically illustrated by someone walking across the deck of a moving steamer (IM 111-12, 167, 37). “Another way in which the students” ideas can be generalized,” Whitehead claims, “is by the use of the History of Mathematics” (AE 84). In An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), he gives the example of Archimedes jumping from his bath, running naked in the streets and shouting “Eureka!” when he first realized that a body immersed in water is pressed upwards by a force equal to the weight of the water it displaces. “This day,” writes Whitehead, “ought to be celebrated as the birthday of mathematical physics” (IM 24) and taught to students as part of their mathematical education. The influence of the Chinese on the introduction of the compass into Europe more than three thousand years after they had first used it; Galileo’s dropping of weights from the tower of Pisa in order to show that bodies of a different weight fall from the same height in the same time; and the dispute between Newton and Leibniz about who had invented the calculus (IM 19-20, 27-8, 163-4) all provide a rich source for bringing abstract ideas to life.4 By means of historical examples illustrating the importance of mathematical ideas when they were first advanced, Whitehead believed it possible for students to learn “the precise connection between this world [of abstract ideas] and the feelings of actual experience” (AE 106). Arguably the most important contribution Whitehead made to educational thought is the rhythmic cycles of growth. The process of self-development, which lies at the base of all learning, is a natural one to which educators should pay close attention. He claims that “life is essentially periodic” with its “alternations of work and play, of activity and of sleep” punctuated by “subtler periods of mental growth with their cyclic recurrences, yet always different as we pass from cycle to cycle” (AE 17). Learning passes through a threefold cycle of romance (“adventure” and “the joy of discovery”), precision (the “self discipline” required to master any discipline) and generalization (“a return to romanticism” coupled with a broad understanding) (AE 33, 2, 35, 19). The cycles can overlap with one another and are conjoined in a repetitive, or more accurately reiterative, process of growth that is lifelong.5 According to Whitehead, “the rhythmic pulses of life” comprise a “difference within a framework of repetition” or, put differently, “an alternation of dominance” (AE 25, 17, 28) in which freedom and discipline complement each other in a creative dance of contrasting patterns.6 The cycle of romance is characterized by the freedom of the learner in “a process of discovery […that] is both natural and of absorbing interest” (AE 32). Romance is arguably the most important of the cycles, since it allows the student to pursue her own interests unconstrained by the demands of others, for “its essence is browsing and the encouragement of vivid freshness.” This initial phase is too often neglected, resulting in an inertia in which the learner regards knowledge as one would “the dryness of the Sahara” (AE 22, 17).

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Once romance has run its course and “been properly guided another craving grows […for] the enlightenment that comes from precise knowledge.” The discipline required for the cycle of precision is important, because “there are right ways and wrong ways, and definite truths to be known,” but it is also capable of stifling romance (“training is apt to kill initiative”). Teachers and learners need “pace, pace, pace. Get your knowledge quickly, and then use it. If you can use it, you will retain it” (AE 33-6). The freedom experienced in the cycle of generalization is built upon both the adventure of romance and the discipline of precision. Now, however, the learner can dispense with “the precise knowledge of details […] in favour of the active application of principles, the details retreating into subconscious habits.” This ability to relate general principles to the concrete facts of experience is “the final possession of wisdom” (AE 37). It enables one to recognize the practical implications of theoretical knowledge and the possibilities for more coordinated forms of human thought and action (AI 66-7). Generalization is the main goal of university education, though it is not limited to this level. The University should be imbued with imagination in the form of “a contagious disease […] communicated by a faculty whose members wear their learning with imagination.” Only then will faculty and students work together as “a band of imaginative scholars,” who recognize that “the learned and imaginative life is a way of living, and is not an article of commerce.” For Whitehead, unless the imagination infects the University in this manner, faculty are likely to become “a faculty of very efficient pedants and dullards” (AE 97, 100, 97, 99) and their students pale reflections of their professors.7

2. A History of Scholarship on the Relationship between Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education and the Philosophy of Organism Over the last half century, scholars have debated whether or not Whitehead had a fully thought out and systematic philosophy of education. Some of his many essays pertaining to education were reprinted in The Aims of Education and a handful of others published posthumously in Essays in Science and Philosophy (1948). But these essays are all capable of “standing on their own,” because they are not necessarily linked to each other or to an overall philosophical framework. For this reason, some scholars have concluded that Whitehead never wrote systematically on education. Nevertheless, it is widely held that Whitehead’s Process and Reality (1929) is his magnum opus, and many scholars have asked whether or not we may interpret or apply the concepts and ideas therein for the purposes of setting forth a more systematic Whiteheadian philosophy of education. In his 1951 essay, “Whitehead’s Views on Education,” Henry Holmes notes that Whitehead has “not written about education extensively” and that “neither Process and Reality nor Adventures of Ideas contains direct references to education as a process.” Holmes concentrates mostly on the Aims of Education and provides little evidence of how one may link Whitehead’s educational thought to his other works. However, Holmes does predict that “it is not unlikely that his influence on education will have to come in part by indirection—through interpretation

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of his general theory” (1951, 622, 626). Hence, from Holmes’ perspective, Whitehead’s philosophical writings may eventually prove to inform his views on education. Likewise, in 1957, Frank Wegener notes the same problem of linking Whitehead’s respective writings on education and cosmology. Wegener writes that “although Whitehead did write and lecture on aspects of education, he did not apply his basic philosophical conceptions in the overt formulation of a systematic organic philosophy of education” (1957, 43-44). In the introduction to his much overlooked book, The Organic Philosophy of Education, Wegener raises the question of whether or not one may utilize Whitehead’s philosophy of organism for the purposes of elucidating his pedagogical views. Particularly, he asks if one logically turned the question around it might be asked “to what extent would the Philosophy of Organism be in agreement with the Organic Philosophy of Education?” It should be clearly understood that discrepancies of interpretation, application, and emphasis would no doubt be very evident (1957, 36). In such a case, for Wegener, there is an asymmetrical relationship in which Whitehead’s speculative metaphysics can be said to ground his philosophy of education, but not vice-versa. However, we think that there are several themes in Whitehead’s philosophy of education which may inform his cosmology, such as the interpretation of the notion of the rhythms of education as reverberating throughout nature. But, Wegener does take quite a bold approach with respect to the idea of using Whitehead’s complex philosophical notions towards the construction of an organic, “process” pedagogy. He utilizes the complex cosmological notions of Process and Reality, such as “creativity,” “prehension,” “concrescence,” “subjective aim,” and “selfrealization,” in the construction of a truly novel and organic philosophy of education. At the same time, he maintains that while “the Organic Philosophy of Education is in substantial agreement with Whitehead’s philosophy of organism,” he makes no “intimation […] to convert the philosophy of organism directly into an equivalent educational philosophy” (1957, 35). In any case, Wegener uses Whiteheadian concepts in order to improve upon those previous theories of education which maintained rigid separations between the various notions of education; for example, between “teacher” and “student,” “authority” and “freedom,” and “academic” and “experiential.”8 Wegener posits Whitehead’s cosmological notions as coextensive with education since he believes that life and experience comprise the real “classroom” of learning. Specifically, for Wegener, “education involves the blending of systematic “schooling” and “life-experience” in the total educational process” (1957, 89). Wegener’s stance is admirable in its depiction of the connection between education and the rest of the organic universe. But, it might be argued, scholarship demands more clarity regarding the boundaries between what is practical in education and what is not. Later in the book, Wegener claims that by and large there is an educational philosophy implicit in Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. Yet in order to make this philosophy of education explicit, one must bring a knowledge of the unique problems and content of the field of education, realized from one’s study and experience, to the general philosophy in question (1957, 324-25). It would seem, following from Wegener’s reflections, that a philosophy of education is contained within Whitehead’s general philosophical writings, but not vice-versa. Any

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consideration of education in light of the theory of prehensions should appeal to one’s own experiences in education. Later, we shall consider these important notions further. In the mid-1960s, in his book, Whitehead on Education, Harold Dunkel further raised the issue of the relationship between Whitehead’s writings on education and his general philosophizing. According to Dunkel, Whitehead’s interest in education stemmed from being an educator in the same sense as are all professors who are sincere and conscientious about their professional duties. His educational writings are scattered essays. He never attempted to publish a specific philosophy of education or to train teachers in it. […] One may then ask why, apart from certain brief essays on Whitehead’s educational position, no extended attempt has been made to use his general philosophy as a basis for educational thought and action (1965, 7-8). According to Dunkel, Whitehead himself made little attempt to link his views on education with his cosmology and made few references to the theory of prehensions in his writings on education. The question, then, is why scholars would want to attempt to make the connection. Dunkel goes on to write that since Whitehead never presented his educational ideas in one organized, coherent statement […there is the] question whether his views on education represent only scattered insights and comments or whether they actually form a coherent whole. […] The question[s] immediately arise […] whether the views expressed in these earlier educational essays are congruent with (or even related in any way to) his more mature philosophic doctrines […], whether there is any relation possible between general philosophic theory, on the one hand, and educational theory, ideas, and practice, on the other […and] whether there is any significant connection [between them] (1965, 9-10). With these problems in mind, Dunkel carefully maintains a focus primarily on The Aims of Education, while at the same time making reference to many of the key philosophical themes of Whitehead’s other writings. Education, for Dunkel, is connected with the processes Whitehead describes in his general philosophizing, and tends “to have moments or aspects [that] correspond to parts of this process.” Specifically, Dunkel points to the process of learning as “self-development,” which may be analogous to the process of concrescence of an actual entity, described by Whitehead in Process and Reality. Since the purpose of education in general is to assist such self-development, Dunkel believes that Whiteheadian cosmology offers a “comprehensive conceptual matrix” within which a philosophy of education could be elaborated. And he argues that educators should become more interested in philosophy so as to carry out this task. Dunkel concludes that “the correspondence between Whitehead’s philosophic doctrine and his educational views appears both extensive and fundamental” (1965, 102, 20, 170). But Dunkel is more reserved than Wegener in merging Whitehead’s views on education with his cosmology. More recently, Malcolm Evans, in Whitehead and Philosophy of Education has raised similar questions regarding the possible use of Whitehead’s general philosophy for the purposes of education: in much of his formal philosophy, Whitehead is writing about ideas that are indispensably relevant to the universe. What are the ideas in his metaphysics that are indispensably relevant to our lesser universe—education and schooling? […]

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Do such ideas as creativity […], prehension, concrescence, satisfaction, etc. […] fit into education? (1998, 98). In attempting to answer these questions, Evans’ book serves as a useful introduction to understanding Whitehead’s perspectives on education. He outlines many previous commentators’ approaches to the question of the possible connection between the philosophy of organism and the philosophy of education, and uses Whitehead’s formal technical vocabulary in his discourse about the latter. From Evans’ perspective, Whitehead’s writings on education and philosophy must be joined together, for “those who would seek Whitehead, philosopher of education, must examine all of his writings.” In this direction, Evans endeavors to “tap both formal and informal philosophies for the rich insight they provide and to draw out the implicit philosophy of education found there.” He recommends that we read Whitehead’s formal,” or more systematic writings with a view to applying them to education since “Whitehead’s metaphysical writings, although far removed from traditional educational theory, provide a new and necessary frame for thinking about education and its societal setting” (1998, 34, 34, 49; emphasis added). Whitehead’s metaphysical writings provide a cosmological framework within which a philosophy of education may be situated. But, for him, the task of constructing a more complete Whiteheadian philosophy of education or of “unpacking” (2000, 5) one from Whitehead’s speculative metaphysical writings are tasks which have yet to be carried out. Evans’ book provides an excellent preparation for such an endeavor. These four writers do not represent the whole history of scholarship on the question of the connections between Whitehead’s philosophy of education and his philosophy of organism. Many others have pondered the question extensively and have made valuable contributions on the issue.9 However, from this particular sampling of scholars, it is evident that there is a general disagreement about the question of the putative link between Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and his views of education. While some try to connect Whitehead’s writings on education with his general philosophizing, others are more hesitant about making such links. In summary, there are three major reasons why connecting Whitehead’s cosmology and his philosophy of education might be said to be problematic. First, Whitehead’s writings on education do not form a systematic conceptual whole, and he does not explicitly spell out the relationship between his views on education and his general philosophy. Second, the technical vocabulary employed in his philosophy of organism is a deterrent to many scholars of his philosophy of education, and especially to those who feel that such concepts have little to do with the concrete states of affairs in classrooms, schools, and universities. Third, education does not seem to have much to do with the biological or organic processes in nature at the core of his cosmology. However, we have argued that the project to merge the two in a systematic way constitutes an important advance in theoretical scholarship in the area of Whiteheadian philosophy of education. Historically speaking, since most of Whitehead’s philosophy of education is to be found in addresses and writings from 1912-1922, before his mature philosophical works were written, there is need for a reconsideration of his philosophy of education in light of his cosmological works. In short, any attempt to “put his philosophy of organism back into” Whitehead’s philosophy of education demonstrates the compatibility of both frameworks.

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3. Integrating Whitehead’s Philosophies of Education and Organism There are several key ways in which Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and his philosophy of education complement one another. First, although his account of education does not seem to be related to the organic processes in nature described in his general philosophy, both exhibit a concern for life. As Whitehead himself explains, education is the guidance towards a comprehension of the art of life; and by art of life I mean the most complete achievement of varied activity expressing the potentialities of that living creature in the face of its actual environment. […] Each individual embodies an adventure of existence. The art of life is the guidance of this adventure (AE 39). The “art of life” is a journey filled with adventure in which education provides the lure that enables the learner’s self-development or self-realization. The fulfillment of this process is the actualization of the many life-possibilities of which s/he is capable in a more “comprehensive life-range,”10 namely, a wider range of feeling, thought, and action. As such, educational institutions are a main vehicle for enhancing those organic processes and activities of appropriation, creation, self-realization, and self-enjoyment that Whitehead describes in his speculative writings. Second, Whitehead insists that his philosophy of organism is applicable to many domains of thought. At the outset of Process and Reality, Whitehead writes that “the true method of philosophical construction is to frame a scheme of ideas, the best that one can, and unflinchingly […] explore the interpretation of experience in terms of that scheme” (PR xiv). Furthermore, he states that a speculative scheme of ideas should “in respect to its interpretation, [be] applicable and adequate” (PR 3), such that many forms of experience, including educational experience, should be interpretable through it. This suggests an implicit connection between his speculative cosmology and education. Third, in The Aims of Education, Whitehead provides a possible analogy between education and his theory of prehensions. He writes, education is not the process of packing articles in a trunk. Such a simile is entirely inapplicable. […Rather] its nearest analogue is the assimilation of food by a living organism: and we all know how necessary to health palatable food is under suitable conditions. When you have put your boots in a trunk, they will stay there till you take them out again; but this is not at all the case if you feed a child with the wrong food (AE 33). Both the process of education and the notion of a “prehension” are defined as the “assimilation” or the “appropriation” of food by an organism. Whereas “assimilation” designates “taking something in and making it part of the thing it has joined,” a “prehension” designates an organism’s “uncognitive apprehension” and “selective appropriation” of the elements in its environment for the sake of its own existence. To be sure, Whitehead explains that “for the foundation of its own existence” an organism feels and appropriates “the various elements of the universe out of which it arises” which, in his speculative terminology, means that “each [such] process of appropriation of a particular element is termed a prehension” (PR, 219). The notion of a prehension as an appropriation, parallels a student’s selective reception of a lecture,

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taking down only those parts s/he finds of interest and importance. It is reasonable to infer that Whitehead considers learning as a similar process to an organism’s feeling and absorption of the multifarious data in the environment. Fourth, Whitehead conceives of the theory of prehensions as primarily a “theory of feelings.” Feelings and emotions provide the ground from which cognition grows and their importance cannot be ignored as though it were some kind of encumbrance to rational thought. As such, the theory of prehensions can be favorably compared with cognitivist and behaviorist theories, both of which underestimate the importance of “affect” in learning. Jean Piaget, for example, emphasizes cognitive development as the exclusive goal of education in which the learner acquires “the critical attitude of the mind, objectivity, and discursive reflection” (1969b, 180). However noble these attributes may be as integral to an emerging critical consciousness, Piaget considers them in abstraction from the emotions and feelings of the learner. If, as Whitehead argues, our primary awareness as human beings is “emotional feeling, felt in its relevance to a world beyond” (PR 163), then any attempt to develop a theory of cognition that does not take this concrete experience into account will “fail to explain the relationship between bodily feelings, emotions, and higher forms of consciousness in human beings” (Flynn 1995, 378). On the other hand, behaviorists of Whitehead’s day, such as J. B. Watson, reduced human beings to stimulus-response mechanisms whose “measurable behaviors” could be changed by means of classical conditioning. They gave no account of the interior lives of human beings at all, since they were part of a “black box” whose mysteries could be ignored as non-scientific. While more recent behaviorists like B. F. Skinner have proposed “operant conditioning” as a process of rewards in which “a bit of behavior is followed by a certain kind of consequence” so that “it is more likely to occur again,” their neglect of the emotions is no less striking.11 By way of contrast, the theory of prehensions depicts the non-linear process of intellectual development, starting from primitive bodily feelings and emotions, and ending with consciousness and self-consciousness. According to Whitehead, while feelings and emotions are more primitive than consciousness, the latter is a high level of experience belonging to highgrade organisms like human beings, but it is fraught with the problems of abstraction. The theory of prehensions describes the process by which consciousness develops from our basic feelings and emotions on the basis of which we appropriate and assimilate the data in our environment. Moreover, it speaks of the interrelation of body and mind, as well as the need to enhance our pre-conscious awareness of the world through feelings and emotions. Fifth, Whitehead’s conception of the cyclical stages of educational growth of education (romance, precision, and generalization) has a remarkably similar structure to the theory of prehensions. Whitehead’s rhythms of education are a general articulation of the natural phases of learning, to which teachers must be attentive if they are to provide an environment conducive to learning. While each of the stages cannot be said to be rigidly separate from the others, learning is a process, which in general flows in a cyclical manner from one phase to the next. Without permitting the flow from phase to phase, and by neglecting this natural pattern in the variance of methods of presentation of a subject-matter, teachers may stunt the learning of their pupils.

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The original stage of romance involves a first-step into intellectual inquiry. It is the stage of “first apprehension,” of potentiality, wonder, curiosity, and the joy of discovery, as well as of interrogative and imaginative stirrings in the body and mind regarding a particular subjectmatter to be learned. Romance builds upon “the creative impulse toward growth [which] comes from within” (AE, 39) by strengthening the emotions of the child in her love of learning. Next, the stage of precision involves an analytic engagement with the specific principles of a subjectmatter, and the coming to conscious awareness of the conceptual divisions within a domain of investigation. It is the stage of self-discipline, and the development of a specialized knowledge of a subject-matter, through analysis, negation, elimination, critique, and selectivity, which, as Whitehead maintains, are intrinsic to the development of consciousness. Last, the stage of generalization is the application of the specific conceptual divisions learned in the stage of precision, creatively modifying them, and applying them to actuality. It is the stage of satisfaction, aesthetic experience, synthesis, and the awareness of logical contrasts. The stage of generalization also involves the merging and comparison of the feelings originally experienced in the stage of romance with the conscious awareness of the subject-matter attained through the stage of precision. According to Whitehead, the stage of generalization also leads to “a return to Romanticism” (AE 19) after the acquisition of specialized knowledge, leading to a new cycle of learning. These rhythms of education correspond to a learner’s process of educational selfrealization (of research and discovery in learning) are akin to Whitehead’s analogy of the creative process as the flight of an airplane, with a take-off, a flight, and a landing: The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation (PR 5). The structure of Whitehead’s theory of prehensions also mirrors that of his cyclic rhythms of education. There is, at first, experience characterized by the broad physical feeling of the interconnected environment as well as the emotions. Through integrations and eliminations of felt data, chiefly involving negation, selectivity, and eventually judgment, the prehending subject’s (e.g. the learner’s) awareness of an object in its environment (or a subject-matter) is then raised to consciousness. Subsequently, having experienced the conceptual wealth of higher conscious experience, the prehending subject overcomes the abstractions of consciousness, attains some measure of satisfaction, and “steps back” down to the level of feelings in order to begin the prehensive process anew. Thus, Whitehead’s theory of prehensions offers a more precise and comprehensive way of understanding the rhythms of education, one in which these stages are reflected as an integral part of the unfolding of the organic universe. Sixth, there is a general correspondence between the underlying meaning of “education” and Whitehead’s notion of “concrescence.” According to the Canadian philosopher John McMurtry, the true etymological root of the word “education” is not, as is commonly held, the Latin word educere, “to lead out,” but rather educare, “to enable to grow” (1988, 39).12 Education, defined as “enabling a learner to grow” or as authentically assisting the flourishing and selfdevelopment of learners, resonates with Whitehead’s theory of prehensions in its chief notion of “concrescence” or the “growing together” of organisms. As Dunkel explains, “the student is engaged in a process of self-development, which is more than merely analogous to the general

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process of concrescence described in [Whitehead’s] cosmological works” and the role of the teacher is “to guide and foster this process” (1965, 149, 269). One final similarity is that in describing a subject who is engaged in an “activity of other-formation” (AI 193), Whitehead coins the term “subject-superject,” a notion which is consistent with the role of a teacher in enabling the learner’s growth or self-development. In short, all these connections suggest that education is an organic process consisting in the mutual “growing together” of teachers and students, in which students learn from teachers and teachers learn from students in a fusion of horizons. Moreover, as a whole, they confirm that much of Whitehead’s philosophical terminology is exemplified in education, which can indeed be interpreted through his speculative scheme.

4. Whitehead’s Contribution to Educational Thought Of all Whitehead’s contributions to educational thought, his views on technical education are particularly striking.13 Technical education should be integrated with the rest of the curriculum to promote a liberal education in which all students can relate knowledge to their concrete experience. Whitehead defines technical education as “a training in the art of utilizing knowledge for the manufacture of material products,” for which are needed “manual skill, and the coordinated action of hand and eye, and judgment in the process of construction.” The process of “handcraft” involves “a reciprocal influence between brain activity and material creative activity” in which “the hands are peculiarly important.” Students learn to put their ideas into practice by making objects with an increasing dexterity for, as he puts it, “If you want to understand anything, make it yourself” (AE, 49-53). In the modern world, there is an overwhelming need for craftspeople, who create beautiful objects in wood and metal, as well as farmers and cooks freed from the fetters of industrialization (AE 55-6). In order for hand-craft to be successful, however, some scientific knowledge is required in the form of an understanding of “those natural processes of which the manufacture is the utilization.” Scientific education, which is “primarily a training in the art of observing natural phenomena, and in the knowledge and deduction of laws concerning the sequence of such phenomena” provides a theoretical base for the activities of technical education. At the same time, technical education can overcome “the narrow specialism” too often found in “a study of science” (AE 50, 49). Once again, the interrelationship of theory and practice enables knowledge to remain fresh in students’ minds. The full integration of the curriculum is only possible with the inclusion of literary studies, or “the study of language,” its structure, techniques of verbal expression, and relationship to intellectual feelings. Indeed, it is “the subtle relations of language to feeling […which] lead to keen aesthetic appreciations being aroused by the successful employment of language.” The language of poetry or prose appeals to “the sense organs” and fosters their “high development” as a channel for the expression of feeling in aesthetic and constructive ways. Analogously, it is “bodily feeling[s] […] focused in the eyes, the ears, the voice, the hands” which provide the

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“reciprocal influence between brain activity and material creative activity” at the base of technical education (AE 49-50). On the one hand, the artistic use of language emancipates the thoughts and feelings of the speaker; on the other, the bodily feelings of the craftsperson are liberated though the creative practice of the plastic arts. The two forms of education complement one another, which is why “geometry and poetry are as essential as turning lathes” (AE 45). Whitehead is arguing for a kind of “spiral curriculum” (Entwistle 1970, 115) in which there is an alternating emphasis upon the literary, the scientific, and the technical. The goal is to achieve a balanced education better suited to the needs of modern (and postmodern) society than the classical education of an English gentleman of yesteryear. Just as the cycles of romance, precision, and generalization constitute the general rhythm of education, so “the problem of education is to retain the dominant emphasis, whether literary, scientific, or technical and without loss of coordination to infuse into each way of education something of the other two” (AE 54). This alternating emphasis, or rhythm, integrates all three spirals, producing a “seamless coat of learning” that imparts “an intimate sense for the power of ideas, the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas” (AE 11-12). Nor should technical education be “conceived as a maimed alternative to the perfect Platonic education.” One of “the evil side[s] of the Platonic culture has been its total neglect of technical education,” stemming from the dualism of mind and matter” (AE 54, 50). The Platonic belief in “disinterested intellectual appreciation” as the goal of education and life should be replaced by an emphasis on “action and our implication in the transition of events amid the inevitable bond of cause to effect” (AE 47). Students learn to bring about change by creating objects of beauty through a combination of thought (“headwork”) and action (“handwork”). They thereby come to appreciate the importance of “causal efficacy,” or “the “withness” of the body […] that makes the starting point for our knowledge of the circumambient world” (PR 81). The bodily feelings expressed in the unity of mental and manual labor provide a direct epistemological connection between the learner and reality. Education and work must both allow for the creative expression of bodily feelings. A restructuring of the workplace is required in order to overcome the alienation of labor. “Is it likely,” Whitehead asks, “that a tired, bored workman [sic], however skillful his hands, will produce a large output of first-class work?” Greed and the “desire for money” among employers is a destructive force which “will produce hard-fistedness and not enterprise.” This deadening of the purposes of life infects the whole of society, heightening class conflict, for “there can be no prospect of industrial peace so long as masters and men in the mass conceive themselves as engaged in a soulless operation of extracting money from the public.” In order to ensure “a large supply of skilled workmen, men [sic] with inventive genius […] and employers who enjoy their work,” the entire process should be “transfused with intellectual and moral vision and thereby turned into a joy” (AE 44, 45, 44). The Benedictine approach to communal work, “stripped of its theological trappings,” provides the basis for such a vision. Since “the nation has need of a fluidity of labour,” a new breed of skilled workers should be educated to move freely “not merely from place to place, but […] from one special type of work to another” (AE 44, 55). This

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vision of work as joyful, creative, non-specialized activity capable of overcoming humanity’s alienation as a species being is reminiscent of the early Marx.14 The craft exemplified in the human capacity for skilled work is no different in kind from that in painting, sculpture or music. The creative impulse finds its full expression in the “aesthetic emotions” at the base and forefront of Art in this most general sense. Aesthetic emotions provide students and workers alike with “the sense of value, the sense of importance […] the sense of beauty, the aesthetic sense of realized perfection” with which their own work is imbued (AE 40). It would be quite easy, Whitehead argues, to educate an artistic population with a sense of their own potentiality for constructive and coordinated action. As men and women work together creatively, they learn to appreciate the growing “strength of beauty” in their interior lives. “The beauty of the soul,” as John Cobb calls it, enables people to work with others and share in the accomplishments of the community so that “all will understand that their achievements are products of the group and contributions to the group” (1998, 107). This Utopian vision of a just and equitable society (AE 41) is strengthened by the humanizing power of Art articulated in Whitehead’s philosophy of organism.15 Unlike scientific materialism, whose “assumption of the bare valuelessness of mere matter led to a lack of reverence in the treatment of natural or artistic beauty” so that “art was treated as a frivolity,” the goal of an organic philosophy of education is “to strengthen habits of concrete appreciation of the individual facts in their full interplay of emergent values” (SMW 196, 198). Only where students appreciate the beauty in nature and human artifacts, and the panoply of changing values inherent in both, will they learn “the art of life,” namely “(i) to live, (ii) to live well, (iii) to live better.” Art and aesthetic appreciation enable human beings to lead civilized lives in which they strive “towards the attainment of an end realized in imagination but not in fact” (FR 4, 8). At the same time, art brings the potentiality of the imagination into the actuality of everyday life. Artists, like craftspeople, are engaged in a bodily activity in which they create tangible objects expressive of human perfection, “a finite fragment of human effort achieving its own perfection within its own limits.” As a result, “Art heightens the sense of humanity. It gives an elation of feeling which is supernatural […]. It requires Art to evoke into consciousness the finite perfections which lie ready for human achievement” (AI 270, 271). Art enables us to recognize the perfection of which humanity is capable. It acts as a lure to consciousness in discriminating between what is worthwhile in human life and what is not. It is for this reason that Whitehead regards “the use of art as a condition of healthy life […] analogous to sunshine in the physical world” (AE 58).

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Notes 1

We wish to thank the other members of the University of Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit—Mark Flynn, Bob Regnier, and Ed Thompson—for their continuing support and collegiality. 2 Whitehead’s vision of a liberal education is similar to that of Russell in Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916, Chapter 5) except that Russell places a greater emphasis on education for peace. For a comparison of the educational thought of Russell, Whitehead, and Dewey, see Woodhouse 1983. 3 This is similar to Dewey’s principle of the continuity of experience (1959, 26-27). 4 Whitehead’s influence can be seen today in such works as de Berg 1992, Thompson 1997, and Ernst 2000. 5 This contrasts with Piaget who conceives of the stages of learning as linear, discrete, invariant, and sequential (1969a, 123). For a full account of Whitehead’s rhythmic cycles of growth, see Entwistle 1970, 212-17. 6 For a connection between the rhythmic cycles of growth and the “characteristics of life,” see Woodhouse 1995. For a similar connection, based on the notion of concrescence, see Garland 2005. 7 See Woodhouse 1999 and 2005c, and Regnier 2005. 8 According to Wegener, “existing conflicts between educational theories—formal versus informal, conservative versus progressive, classic versus subjective, liberal versus practical, realistic versus idealistic, academic versus pragmatic, logical versus psychological, external versus internal, and many others—are really complementary and reciprocal when viewed organically” (1957, 29). 9 See for example Mellert 1998: “the third chapter of The Aims of Education, entitled, ‘The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline,’ is where I find the essence of Whitehead’s educational philosophy. This philosophy, I shall argue, is simply a reiteration in educational language of the core principles of his general philosophy as stated in Process and Reality and in Science and the Modern World.” Hendley quotes a letter from Whitehead stating that working in Harvard’s philosophy department would provide him with “a welcome opportunity of developing in systematic form my ideas on Logic, the Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics, and some more general questions, half philosophical and half practical, such as Education” (1986, 80). Breuvart writes: “Whitehead’s reflection about the educative process ought to be first found in his book The Aims of Education. But my point in this paper is to prove that one could find a more complete conception through a closer examination of Process and Reality’s Categoreal Scheme. For we could find in it a conception of responsibility which is more relevant for a theory of educational process, and for a practice as well, in the sense of a more effective commitment in the educative process” (2001, 286). See also Cobb 1998, which takes up some of the work of Woodhouse and Regnier; and Flynn 1995 and 2005, which relate Whitehead’s philosophy of organism to his philosophy and psychology of education. 10 Woodhouse 2001, 223. For Whitehead’s cosmological explanation of the notion of “the art of life,” see FR, 4. 11 See Skinner 1972, 5, 147-48, 27. For a critique of behaviorism, see Woodhouse 2005b, 399-401. 12 Cf. Woodhouse 2001b, 224. 13 See Hendley 1986, 87-88; Allan 1999; Collins 1996, 70-71, 82. 14 See Marx 1972; Spring 1994, 11-12; Nivens 2005. Johnson claims that Whitehead believed in strict limits to the freedom of craftspeople who would simply add the “finishing touches” to mass-produced articles (1962, 92). 15 Cf. Taggart 2004.

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1. Why Education? Why would a mathematician-philosopher concern himself over many years with education? Why would others return to his work for decades of guidance in educational philosophy and practice? Alfred North Whitehead was a persistent educator and educational thinker, even while adventuring with ideas and developing a cosmological system. Perhaps this is the very reason why he was so concerned with educational practice. He personally witnessed the lack of adventure in much educational practice, first in his native England and then in the United States. He even witnessed the penalties sometimes paid by other adventurers with pedagogy. More positively, he saw the power of creative people tapping into the creative powers of the universe and contributing to the creative advance of history. Certainly Whitehead is joined in history by other philosopher-educators: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Johann Pestalozzi, Friedrich Froebel, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, William E. B. DuBois, Ivan Illich, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, to name a few. This suggests that natural connections exist between thinking about the universe (philosophy, metaphysics, cosmology) and thinking about thinking (epistemology). Natural connections also exist between both of these and educating future generations. These connections include the obvious expectation that great minds are often expected or required to be teachers themselves. Three other connections are also important. First is the inherent connection between the desire to reflect deeply on the nature of things and the desire to engage others in dialogues of exposition and discovery. Second is the yearning to pass one’s own discoveries to new generations, both for their sakes and for the well-being of society. Finally, there is the inevitable discovery that knowledge has unfathomable depths that require an ongoing process of learning, teaching, and learning again. Given this propensity for philosophers to turn to education, Whitehead stands out as one of those who reflected on education both explicitly and implicitly (in his cosmology). For this reason, we turn to Whitehead’s educational legacy as a ground upon which to build future visions. This legacy includes his writing as well as others’ work inspired by his philosophy.

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2. Whitehead and his Legacy One can parse Whitehead’s contributions in many evocative ways. Most commonly, people name the contributions in relation to his “rhythms of education”: romance, precision, and generalization (AE, 15-28). Not only have people built upon Whitehead’s rhythms (Gunter, 2006; Evans, 2005, Breuvart, 2005; Woodhouse, 2005; Allan, 2005; Brumbaugh, 1982), but they have also entertained different permutations of them, more and less in dialogue with Whitehead. Still others have enumerated other summaries of Whitehead’s contributions, such as Allan and Evans’ (2006) summary into “a different three R’s” for education: reason, relationality, and rhythm. In light of these rich ruminations by Whitehead and his inheritors, I suggest five accents to represent Whitehead’s educational contributions: creativity, reason, rhythm, relationality, and rootedness.

2.1. Creativity and Creative Advance For Whitehead, the principle of creativity underlies the dynamism of the universe; thus, everything in the universe, micro-realities and meta-movements, is imbued with creativity. The creative process is best exemplified by the process of concrescence, in which the “many become one and are increased by one” (PR, 21). In this process, all elements of past experience are brought into a new unity in a becoming occasion, and the new occasion then becomes an element of experience for later occasions. By this basic, subatomic process, repeated billions of times every millisecond, everything that exists comes into being. The process takes place in rocks and trees, animals and seas, tiny plants and human beings; thus the entire universe is continually becoming, opening possibilities for the creative advance of the world. On the other hand, the possibilities for destruction are also magnified by this creative process, as when something is created that snatches life from others. One educational theorist, William Doll (1993; 2002), has given particular attention to creativity, relating it with chaos and drawing upon chaos theory to explicate a relation between chaos and order. He argues that chaotic order operates in the natural world, as in patterns of population change (e.g., the birth-rate/death-rate ratio among gypsy moths). The wildness of chaos exists within a simple order (1993, 96). Doll then constructs a chaos-complexity theory of curriculum, which invites people to form patterns and order by returning frequently to ideas and practices, thus finding or constructing a pathway of meaning rather than a static content or product (96-102). The result is depth and adventure. Such a view is compatible with Whiteheadian metaphysics because the view of knowledge is open and interactive. As Doll says, “The world’s knowledge is not fixed waiting to be discovered; it is continually expanding, generated by our reflective actions” (102). The concern with creativity comes in many forms in Whitehead and his inheritors. From beginning to end, Whitehead accented creativity in his writing, especially the creative interplay of past and present with novelty in the ever-becoming processes of this world (AI, 192-193). For

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him, the very nature of the world is creativity; hence, education needs to participate in, and equip people to participate more fully in, that creative process. The accent falls on imagination and aesthetics. What he hoped to avoid in education and in philosophical thinking was “minds in a groove” (SMW, 197). What he hoped to instill and encourage was “habits of aesthetic apprehension” or “the habit of enjoying vivid values” (SMW, 199-200). These accents are carried forward by many philosophers of education in the Whiteheadian tradition, people who have had varying degrees of relationship with Whitehead himself. Indeed, many inheritors have argued for developing educational theory from convergences of Whiteheadian thought with pragmatism, constructivism, and compatible philosophers of education, such as John Dewey and Henri Bergson (Riffert, 1999; Hendley, 1986; Bashor, 1991; Gunter, 1995). Early in the development of a process-relational philosophy of education was Bernard Meland (1953), who concerned himself with higher education and human consciousness. For Meland, the goal of higher education is to cultivate appreciative consciousness, or the creative human response to the creative emergence of the world (1953, 51). This requires integration of past, present, and future; imagination and critique; and science and art (1953, 79-109). Because of his fundamental accent on creativity, Meland did not think that moral consciousness was a sufficient end to education; appreciative consciousness was essential if people were to reach toward mystery and wonder. Similar accents were offered by Meland’s contemporaries such as Philip Phenix (1975), who accented transcendence in the methods and goals of education (1975, 323-324), again pointing to mystery and wonder. Later still came educational theorists such as Donald W. Oliver and Kathleen W. Gershman (1989); Robert Regnier (2005); Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore (2004; 2005a); Pete A. Y. Gunter (2005), George Allan (2005), and Christelle Estrada (2006) to name a few. Regnier links imaginative learning with creative subjectivity; Moore posits that imagination is at the center of educational process; Gunter recognizes the power of creativity in counteracting what Whitehead disdains in “inert ideas.” Now, in the early twenty-first century, we also see the emergence of major teaching and research projects across the world, building upon the creativity accents of Whitehead. Among these are the China Education Project, focused on education and values in universities and colleges throughout China; the action research taking place in the Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit, University of Saskatchewan; and the revision of teacher education taking place at Kentucky Wesleyan College. These and other projects reveal the power of creativity in education and the role of imagination, which Estrada playfully follows Whitehead in calling “a contagious disease” (121; AE, 97). Creativity breeds creativity, potentially contributing to the creative advance of the world.

2.2. Reason This reflection on creativity has already pointed to reason as a significant accent of education. One might think that reason is so obvious as to be taken for granted in education, which is typically understood to teach people facts and ideas so they can function in the world. Education has traditionally been understood as the intentional process of teaching people to engage the wisdom of the centuries, to think, to make decisions, and to act. These actions can all be seen as components of reason. On the other hand, in popular imagination, reason is typically limited to

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a narrow range of forms, particularly those that focus on logic (“if this, then that”); cause and effect (“this causes that”); proof (“these facts lead to these conclusions”); or argumentation (“these reasons lead to this conclusion”). These are all important aspects of reason, but are largely linear patterns that obviate other aspects of reason that entertain novelty, play with ideas, explore depths of feeling, construct new paradigms or social practices, explore aesthetic expression, or integrate disparate realities in strange new forms of meaning. By naming this large, inexhaustible range of reason, we expand upon both the subjects and methods of education. We stir imagination regarding Alfred North Whitehead’s own understanding, well summarized in his pithy statement: “The function of reason is to promote the art of life” (FR, 4). Lest I be misleading, I hasten to add that such practice of reason includes traditional forms, such as logic, which Whitehead understood to be critical in learning, both in precise investigations and in larger philosophical rumination (AE, 89). Indeed, he believed that logic can be an avenue for opening the world: “Logic, properly used, does not shackle thought. It gives freedom, and above all, boldness” (AE, 118). Reason in its many forms is thus a network of pathways by which people explore the heights and depths and breadth of life, which awaken them to complexities, connections, and new possibilities. The adventurous practice of reason can break open abstractions that prevent people from “straying across country” with new ideas and combinations of ideas rather than travel in familiar grooves (SMW, 197). It is the way to counteract Whitehead’s “inert ideas” (AE, 13); to encounter the world aesthetically in its immediacy and wholeness (SMW, 199); and to encourage analysis and precision to the end that new generalizations emerge (AE, 30). In this movement of generalization or mastery, the whole comes back into view with greater clarity or freshness of perspective. Such a range of reason leads beyond linearity, as George Allan and Malcolm Evans argue (2006, 3-7 and 155-167), but it does more. It avoids the popular rhetorical move of narrowing the meaning of reason to a techno-rational process, then setting reason over against some supposed opposite, such as creativity or feeling or aesthetics. By claiming the wide range of reason, one acknowledges that reason is a creative process with many forms. One recognizes that all aspects of human knowing are included. Indeed, reason is itself an aesthetic way of relating with the world, engaging the world through the multiple senses and intuitions and practicing many forms of analysis and interpretation to yield many conclusions in thought and action. It is closely allied with creativity and imagination, as discussed above, and its purposes, like the purposes of creativity, are to contribute to greater value in the world, or to what Whitehead refreshingly called “the art of life.”

2.3. Rhythm The discussion of reason leads naturally into the educational value of rhythm, a major mark of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of education. The rhythms of romance, precision, and generalization (AE 15-28) begin with the wonder of new discovery and conclude with the wonder of new integrations. Robert Brumbaugh prefers to rename Whitehead’s last rhythm as “mastery” (1982, 45) or “satisfaction” (1982, 119), for it represents something beyond a theoretical abstraction. When a person learns a musical instrument, such as the piano, the person often enjoys playing with the piano in the beginning and wondering at the resonant sounds and

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her ability to play simple tunes. This is only the beginning, however. The novice pianist then studies the precision of notes, scales, chords, and diverse compositions and styles. When a pianist has accomplished a high level of precision, she is then able to play complex compositions and improvise in creating new sounds and effects. This exemplifies Brumbaugh’s mastery. Many pianists and other musicians describe this transition as the time when their practicing becomes a delight; they have crossed a bridge into satisfaction. Thus far, I have described the rhythms as a large movement over time; yet, the rhythms also occur in shorter and recurring cycles. Thus, one might experience the three rhythms in learning to play a new composition on the piano, beginning with the romance of exploring the new piece, followed by painstaking practice, and concluding with delightful mastery of the piece. One might even experience more than one cycle with the same composition, experiencing it afresh in romance and developing a new style or approach to it through precision and mastery yet again. In learning to play the piano, one might experience many other cycles, as when one learns a new technique or a new genre of music. The cycles relate to learning other subjects as well, such as algebra or reading or history. The cycles may move at very different tempos, and people may experience cycles within cycles. I often design a course to flow with the natural learning cycles that Whitehead describes. Within the same course, I can also design each session to follow the rhythms. All of this rhythmic teaching can be nested within a school’s comprehensive curriculum, which is similarly designed in rhythms. What is important here is the heuristic value of these rhythms. They are one way to describe a natural pattern of learning; thus, they are valuable for designing educational processes that flow with natural rhythms rather than against them. Interestingly, these rhythms are analogous to other descriptions of meaningful engagement, such as the “flow experiences” described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which William Garland (2006, 88-100) develops in a Whiteheadian comparison. Garland relates both “flow experiences” and Whitehead’s rhythms to the learning of tennis, logic, or literature, while Pete Gunter uncovers the power of rhythmic education to shape the contours of environmental education (2006, 80-85). Combined with Whitehead’s accents on creativity and reason, and his discussion of educational rhythms between freedom and discipline (AE, 29-41), the rhythms we have been discussing remind teachers and learners alike that education is multi-faceted and multi-purposeful. The rhythms are also reminders that education has many moments of playfulness, discovery, tending to details, analyzing complexities, integrating, and constructing. Each of these moments needs to be respected and encouraged as part of the process.

2.4. Relationality One educational accent of Whitehead deserves a warning sign as we approach it, not because of controversy but because of deceptive understandings; that is relationality. Relationships are commonly accented in education, but in less extensive ways than one finds in process philosophy. In educational literature, relationships are often encouraged among teachers, students and administrators, even with parents and the larger community. The focus is most often on interpersonal relations or on collaborations in educational projects. The Whiteheadian concept of relationality includes all of this, but is much more pervasive: everything in the

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universe is related to everything else. For this reason, we need to explore multiple forms of relationality in the educational process, for education nourishes (or impedes) and is nourished by (or impeded by) human relationships of every kind. These include, but are not limited by, our relations with: self, community and culture, people of difference, the earth, and social structures (Moore, 2006). In addition to the extensiveness of relationships important in Whiteheadian thought, we also need to attend to the quality of relations. If the entire universe is interrelated, one must recognize that some of these relations are more life-giving than others. In developing these ideas, Whitehead himself is helpful in three significant ways. First, he addresses relationality as vital in the educational process, such as his accent on the purposes of education as duty and reverence (AE, 14). This view implies an intimate relation between education and community life, one that foreshadows Bernard Meland’s more extensive reflection on the educational values of moral consciousness and appreciative consciousness. Second, Whitehead accents relationality in his cosmology, or metaphysics, as an internal relationship of every becoming occasion with all that has been and is to come (PR, 309). This leads to a Whiteheadian conclusion, namely that the very act of knowing is relational. As a girl studies stars from a textbook, she is internalizing (more and less) the facts presented in the book, the form of that discourse (such as artistic or logico-mathematical), the teacher’s ways of presenting, the responses of other students, and her own experience or lack of experience in viewing stars. She is internalizing sights and sounds and smells that relate to stars, authority figures, community relationships, and many other conscious and unconscious bits of knowledge. Whitehead’s epistemological claims are thoroughly relational, though he never fully develops these claims into a systematic epistemology. To elaborate, Whitehead argues that every entity has a subjective aim and some degree of mentality (however large or slight), which takes account of the world and makes a judgment regarding its final form. Further, all entities are physically connected with others, through physical inheritance over time. Such interconnections are bright threads of epistemic relation between emerging entities and their past. In the more macro picture of human life, people know as they harvest past riches of human experience in the world and engage in the interplay of feelings, ideas, and values that arise in those experiences, whether of fluttering breezes, geological epochs, historical records, scientific discoveries, political movements, poetry, or humanistic theories. They know when they intuit that which they cannot name and when they paint that which is beyond words. Their knowing finally transcends language and other forms of human expression. In simpler terms, Whitehead acknowledges, “Yet mothers can ponder many things in their hearts which their lips cannot express” (RM, 65). The significance of a Whiteheadian light on relationality is that it illumines many aspects of relationality in education that are generally ignored. Without being conscious of it, Whitehead points the way for radical thinking that other educational theorists have developed within more limited scopes. John Dewey (1977, 1961) developed education in relation to students, interpersonal relations, and democratic social participation. Paulo Freire (1970) developed education in relation to students, local communities, and social structures. When others have directly engaged Whiteheadian ideas about relationality, they broaden the scope to include:

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relations within the self and with the cosmos (Moore 1998a; 1998b; 2006); collaborative relations among teachers, students, and their communities (Estrada, 2006); relations with local and national school systems (Riffert, 2005a, 411-433); and diverse forms of relations with the wonders of the world (Meland, 1953). One fine example of engaging Whitehead ideas to stretch familiar ideas of relationality is found in John Bennett (2006), who argues that the popular United States educator Parker Palmer would benefit from a more adequate, thoroughly relational metaphysics. Palmer needs a larger view of relationships than one constructed in terms of objectivism or binaries. According to Bennett, human beings do not simply negotiate complexities conceived “as poles of opposites that we must hold in balance;” rather, people learn as they “convert the contraries and oppositions that Palmer calls paradoxes” into broader frameworks of fundamental relatedness and community (2006, 181). In more tangible language, a child learning to do geometry learns the complexities of lines, circles, and triangles interplaying with one another in the natural world and in the mathematical constructions of people who build buildings, measure earth surfaces, and paint pictures. Similar to Bennett’s dialogue with Palmer, I have queried Paulo Freire, suggesting that process ideas can stretch Freire’s liberative pedagogy to embrace more aspects of reality, more exploration of complexity, and more options for action (Moore 1998b, 186-190). Whether people gather in classrooms to study history or in community meetings to analyze an immediate situation, their alertness to relationality will encourage them to explore multiple dimensions of a situation. Such alertness can extend the range of their conscious knowing and their respect for complexities that they have not yet considered or included.

2.5. Rootedness Of the qualities of education associated with Whitehead, the final one, rootedness, is the least often associated with his name in educational literature and popular imagination. Yet Whitehead valued the role of roots in teaching and learning, addressing these values explicitly at points and more often implicitly. Drawing upon his system of thought, one can say that teaching and learning are at their best when: (1) rooted in history, (2) rooted in local communities and systems, (3) rooted in the earth and neighboring eco-systems, and (4) rooted in Divine life or transcendent mystery. This accent on roots complements the more obvious accents in Whitehead’s thought about education. It can sometimes be a corrective as well, especially when educators are tempted to consider creativity, reason, rhythms, or relationality as ends in themselves without further grounding. Each of these four is indeed a value in itself, but the relation among these values is the true genius of Whitehead’s work. The creative process is beautiful, for example, creating and expressing beauty at every turn. Novelty is a fresh gift that enables the world to transcend itself, which is not only a moment of beauty but can potentially contribute to an increase of beauty in a broken world. At the same time, creativity and novelty can be passing fads if they are not connected with creative processes and emergences of the past and if they do not amplify, break open, critique, reform, or radically transform the world as it is. The theme of roots has been underplayed in the educational literature on Whitehead, but is important to contemporary educational discourse, which has returned once again to ardent

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discussions of “basics,” “fundamentals,” “principles,” “classics,” and other such substantive ways of conceptualizing the purposes and content of education. If basics, fundamentals, principles, and classics are viewed as substances, as in substantive philosophical discourse, they are not roots but fixed “givens.” Whitehead urged another approach. For example, he encouraged that educators approach the study of classics as they contribute to habits of thought and visions of past civilizations rather than teach them as the firm and unquestionable grounds for education (AE, 61-75). George Allan (2006) gives a rationale for this in Whitehead’s metaphysics, which is grounded in complex realities rather than abstractions. Allan can thus conclude that moral principles fall into Whitehead’s “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (2006, 30; SMW, 51-55; PR, 7-8, 18). Of course, anything that educators name as an educational fundamental can be overthrown or ignored as irrelevant, but the very act of claiming fundamentals produces problems. Such claims promote substantive thinking and obscure the dynamic character of the universe. The claims also set up a situation in which overthrowing or ignoring a set of previously declared fundamentals require oppositional debates between valuing and rejecting the traditions of a people. This approach threatens to underplay or overplay one part of the human-cosmic story in favor of another (e.g., the past in favor of the present or the present in favor of the future). What are needed are more holistic ways of thinking about education and the accumulating wisdom of humankind. Holistic thinking enables great discoveries and insights of the past to be rediscovered in new ways, to be rejected in part and reconstructed in part, or to be rejected radically in light of humanity’s continuing experience of the world. Holistic patterns of thinking are helpfully represented by an organic metaphor. Roots are living things, emerging in the history of a plant and continuing to function and grow over time; thus, roots are highly suggestive for a Whiteheadian view of education. Basics, fundamentals, and classics are significant as living roots: they connect a plant to the wisdom of ages, both human and earth wisdom. At the same time, they are continually changing and growing. They are critical to human learning, for they embody the accumulating wisdom of the human race (Moore 1983, 176-178; 2005b). In exploring roots, one will also find embodiments that have been overlooked or actively suppressed by dominant educational leaders of the past. Further, new embodiments will continue to emerge and be constructed. Thus, the basics, fundamentals, principles, and classics of education will change through time. Like roots, they give life, but cannot be trapped in a small container in which they cannot spread and grow. A plant in a container too small for its roots will die, as will a tree that is trapped in soil and rocks that block its roots from seeking new sources of nourishment. Consider the kinds of rootedness that Whitehead addresses. First, the idea that education is rooted in history seems obvious, but only certain subjects are routinely taught with historical contextualization or connections with past sources and influences. Why, for example, did human beings develop mathematics or astronomy? What in their immediate worlds and imaginations compelled people to think about numbers and stars, and how have these studies changed over time with accumulating knowledge and its complex interplay with cultural and intercultural patterns of relationship? Whitehead himself focuses fruitfully on mathematics in the history of thought (SMW, 19-37). We can also ask what in human political and economic

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history led to the development of certain kinds of scientific and social scientific knowledge and the neglect or under-development of other kinds of knowledge. Whitehead does not address such social history questions with more than occasional mentions, yet they are logical extensions of his urging to consider historical contexts. Engaging historical roots in these diverse ways allows one to avoid the cultural predisposition to binary thinking about the past and future, posing them as oppositional and forcing educators to choose between teaching traditions and encouraging critical and creative thinking. Whitehead himself regularly analyzed historical patterns in pondering cosmological questions; he encouraged such work in education as well. Process educational theorists have similarly given attention to these matters; yet binary habits of thought persist and need to be revisited in the present era. I earlier argued this case, but the time to argue it again has re-emerged. Educators need to deny an “inverse relationship between continuity and change” (Moore 1983, 135). To maximize continuity is to maximize the potential for change; to maximize change is to maximize the potential for continuity. The relationship is synergistic rather than oppositional, fed by creative interweaving of past, present, and future in the educational process. Whitehead’s accent on rootedness in local communities and systems is more indirect. While Whitehead understood that emergent entities are particularly shaped by dominant streams from the past, he did not extend his thinking to consider how human communities are profoundly shaped by their immediate human and ecological communities and systems. Later process educators have developed this accent in fruitful ways. Franz Riffert (2005a, 2005b) and his colleagues have collaborated with school systems in Austria to propose the reform of educational practice and assessment in relation to the local and national communities in which the schools exist. The Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit does similar collaboration in Saskatchewan, Canada, and beyond, conducting research, developing localized teaching experiments, and reflecting on these in light of process philosophy (Woodhouse, 2003). Another exemplar is Christelle Estrada (2006), who has developed models of teacher development in Salt Lake City, Utah, that are rooted in the city systems, school cultures, and teacher-student relationships. Others have given attention to Whitehead’s metaphysics and its implicit and explicit revelation of the need for human communities to be rooted in the ecological patterns of local eco-systems, the earth, and the cosmos (Gunter, 2006; Cobb, 1992; Johnston, 1998; Moore, 1998a; 2000). In this ecological discourse, however, process educational thinkers have often focused on particular examples (such as Gunter, 2006) or on ecological analysis with allusions or brief expositions on educational practice (Moore, 1998a; 2000), but without sustained reconceptualization of education. At the same time, teachers and school administrators in Africa, the Pacific, North America and other parts of the world have been practicing ecological education for decades, with expanding efforts in recent years, motivated by the destruction of local ecologies and economies. Indigenous peoples have practiced such education for centuries. A few educational theorists, most notably Chet Bowers (1995), have done considerable research and theory-building based on ecological analysis and analysis of indigenous practices. Such work is highly compatible with process-relational thought; yet, the dialogue for mutual critique and enrichment has barely begun.

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Receiving less attention is the fourth Whiteheadian accent on roots, namely educational rootedness in Divine life or, what I have called in a less religion-specific way, transcendent mystery. The argument for transcendence has been made in other areas of process thought, such as Franklin Gamwell’s emphasis on the metaphysical necessity of God for ethics. Gamwell argues that ethicists need a large metaphysical view of “the moral enterprise,” or they run the danger of emptiness (1990, 125), ignoring the implications of God in human experience, and missing the possibility of grounding ethical validity and human goals in something larger than human consensus (1990, 153, 183). In my recognition of religious diversity and contestation, alongside the complexities of mixing religion-talk with education-talk, I will lift an idea from Gamwell, but transpose it into a different language. One can argue that, as with ethics, education without a large view of the educational enterprise runs the danger of emptiness, ignores the human experience of wonder, and misses opportunities to engage people with the world’s largess and mysteries. The accumulated knowledge of humankind will inevitably be a limited explanation and expression of the universe that we contemplate; it will inevitably be partial knowledge, pointing beyond itself, by its very partiality and limits, to what human beings might discover and construct in the future, and even to the new mysteries they will encounter.

3. Imagining the Future This discussion of Whitehead’s contribution to educational philosophy and practice draws many sources from the past and identifies significant dimensions of education. Underlying all of these is the value of existence, the value of Life. Whitehead understands existence as having “its own justification” and “its own character” (MT, 109). As George Allan (2004b) suggests, values are thus existential and aesthetic rather than pragmatic. A race well run is of value whether a runner wins or loses the race. I would say this about educational values. In the California Community College system there is a common, but striking, practice of accepting onto the track team anyone who wishes to do the sport. A runner who can barely complete the laps, but who finishes with a sense of team spirit and personal accomplishment may have contributed to the value of existence, whether in the form of personal worth, community inspiration, or simply performing an act that is preserved in the life of God or the memory of the universe. This idea suggests that the purposes of education are to investigate, value, preserve, and enhance existence, rather than to produce certain attainments, job opportunities, economic stability, or even democratic ideals. Describing purposes in this way does not mean that pragmatic values are irrelevant; they are simply subordinate to the value of existence. Insofar as job opportunities, economic goals, and ideals for social and political relationships contribute to an increase in existential value, they need to inform education. Insofar as the same goals undermine existence, such as obscuring more significant values with a veneer of materialism or convincing people that their nation’s political organization is the only acceptable way, the educational goals need to be critiqued and reshaped. George Allen helpfully summarizes how evaluation fits with Whitehead’s aesthetics: “A value is relevant insofar as it contributes to the formation of other values, and it grows in

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importance as the scope of that relevance broadens and its intensity deepens” (2004, 284). Whitehead himself turns this discourse to education when he describes education as “guidance of the individual towards a comprehension of the art of life” (AE, 39). Educators might thus evaluate their values and goals in terms of how they do or do not enhance “habits of aesthetic apprehension,” or “the habit of enjoying vivid values” (SMW, 199, 200). The qualities of education that I have explored in this essay are qualities that inspire aesthetic apprehension and vivid values. They enhance the existence of individuals (all individuals), communities (all communities), and the earth (the whole of the earth). The parenthetical phrases are important here. If education contributes to the well-being of an elite class of people while reinforcing class-prejudices and growing economic disparity on a global scale, it is undermining existence, rather than supporting and enhancing it. It is undermining the creative advance of the world, even though a few might benefit, and it is destroying the life-giving potential of relationships. On the other hand, education that shapes a new generation of intellectuals, craftspeople, factory workers, technocrats, homemakers, and trades people to delight in learning, to value the existence of others as well as themselves, and to contribute to creativity and value in the world will enhance the existence of the whole. Such education connects people with the creative powers of the universe and contributes to the creative advance of history. Such education is possible; it continues to beckon.

Works Cited and Further Readings Allan, G. 1997. Rethinking College Education (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press). Allan, G. 1999. “Weaving Our Common Good,” in Readings in Process Philosophy and Education (St. Paul, MN, Association for Process Philosophy of Education), 47-53. Allan, G. 2004. Higher Education in the Making: Pragmatism, Whitehead, and the Canon (Albany, S.U.N.Y. Press). Allan, G. 2004b. “Ultimate Value,” Process Studies, 33, 2, 284-302. Allan, G. 2005. “Solomon’s Dream and Whitehead’s Rhythm of Education,” Process Studies, 34, 2, 224-39. Allan, G. 2006. “On Learning to be Good,” in A Different Three Rs for Education: Reason, Relationality, Rhythm, edited by George Allan and Malcolm D. Evans (New York, Rodopi B.V.), 27-42. Allan, G. and Evans, Malcolm D. (eds.). 2006. A Different Three Rs for Education: Reason, Relationality, Rhythm (New York, Rodopi B.V.). Baby, A. 2005. “Whitehead et l’éducation,” in Jean-Marie Breuvart (éd.), Les rythmes éducatifs dans la philosophie de Whitehead, Chromatiques Whiteheadiennes, Vol. 3 (Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag). Bashor, P. S. 1991. “Process Philosophy of Education: Confluence and Construction,” in Readings in Process Philosophy and Education, edited by Malcolm Evans (St. Paul MN, Association of Process Philosophy of Education), 1-7. Bennett, J.B. 1980. “Whitehead and the Framework for Liberal Education,” Teachers College Record, 58, 329-341. Bennett, J.B. 2003. Academic Life: Hospitality, Ethics, and Spirituality (Boston, Anker Publishing). Bennett, J. B. 2006. “Educational Spiritualities: Parker J. Palmer and Relational Metaphysics,” in A Different Three Rs for Education: Reason, Relationality, Rhythm, edited by George Allan and Malcolm D. Evans (New York, Rodopi B.V.), 169-83. Benson, G. D. and Griffith, B. E. (eds.). 1990. Process, Epistemology, and Education: Recent Work in Educational Process Philosophy (Toronto, Canadian Scholars’ Press). Bowers, C. A. 1995. Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture: Rethinking Moral Education, Creativity, Intelligence, and Other Modern Orthodoxies (Albany, State University of New York). Breuvart, J.-M. (ed.). 2000. “Whitehead and Weil’s Reading of Kant in Moral Philosophy,” Education, Ecology, and Science, Special Issue, Interchange, 31, 2&3, 279-92. Breuvart, J.-M. 2001. “How Could Be Related Ethics and Education in Whitehead’s Process Philosophy?” Proceedings of the Whitehead and China in the New Millenium Conference. Breuvart, J.-M. 2005 (ed.). Les rhythmes éducatifs dans la philosophie de Whitehead, Chromatiques Whiteheadiennes, Vol. 3 (Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag). Brumbaugh, R. S. 1988. “Why Whitehead? A Justification for the Association for Process Philosophy of Education,” Process Papers (Belle Mead, NJ: Association for Process Philosophy of Education). Brumbaugh, R. S. 1982. Whitehead, Process Philosophy, and Education (Albany, State University of New York). Burnett, J. R. 1961. “The Educational Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead,” Educational Theory, 11, 193-210. Cobb, J. B., Jr. 1998. “Beyond Essays,” Interchange, 29, 1, 105-110. Cobb, J. B., Jr. 1992. Sustainability: Economics, Ecology, and Justice (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Press). Collins, M. 1996. “Current Trends in Adult Education: From Self-Directed Learning to Critical

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Theory,” in Process, Epistemology and Education: Recent Work in Educational Process Philosophy, edited by G.D. Benson and B.E. Griffith (Toronto, Canadian Scholars Press), 69-85. de Berg, K. C. 1992. “Mathematics in Science: The Role of the History of Science in Communicating the Significance of Mathematical Formalism in Science,” Science and Education, 1, 1, 77-87. Derfer, G. 2005. “Education’s Myths and Metaphors: Implications of Process Education for Educational Reform,” in Whitehead and China: Relevance and Relationships, edited by W. Xie, Z. Wang, Z., and G. Derfer ( Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag). Dewey, J. 1959. Experience and Education (New York, MacMillan). Dewey, J. 1961, 1916. Democracy and Education (New York, MacMillan). Dewey, J. 1977, 1938. Experience and Education (New York, Collier Books). Doll, W. E., Jr. 1993. A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum (New York, Teachers College Press). Doll, William E., Jr., and Gough, Noel (eds.). 2002. Curriculum Visions (New York, Peter Lang). Dunkel, H. B. 1965. Whitehead on Education (Ohio, Ohio State University Press). Dunkel, H. B. 2000. “Education, Ecology, and Science,” Special Issue, Interchange, 31, 2-3. Egan, K. 1996. “Imagination and Understanding,” Process Papers, 1, 79-91. Entwistle, H. 1970. Child-Centred Education (London, Methuen). Ernest, P. 2000. “Whitehead and the Implications of the Process Metaphor for Mathematics,” Education, Ecology and Science Special Issue, Interchange, 31, 225-41. Estrada, C. 2006. “They Wear their Learning with Imagination,” in A Different Three Rs for Education: Reason, Relationality, Rhythm, edited by George Allan and Malcolm D. Evans (New York, Rodopi B.V.), 121-40. Evans, M. 1998. Whitehead and Philosophy of Education (Atlanta, Rodopi). Evans, M. 2000. “Process, Teaching, and Learning,” Process Perspectives, Winter. 3, 225-41. Evans, M. 2005. “Process, Teaching, Learning,” Process Studies, 34, 2, 171-77. Evans, M. 2006. “Reason: A Gift to Be Nurtured,” in A Different Three Rs for Education: Reason, Relationality, Rhythm, edited by George Allan and Malcolm D. Evans (New York, Rodopi B.V.), 155-67. Flynn, M. 1995. “Conflicting Views on the Importance of Emotion to Human Development and Growth: Piaget and Whitehead,” Interchange, 26, 4, 365-381. Flynn, M. 2005. “Learning in the Process of Teaching,” in Alfred North Whitehead on Learning and Education: Theory and Application, edited by F. Riffert (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press), 199-210. Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, translated by Myra Bergman Ramos (New York, Herder and Herder). Gamwell, F. I. 1990. The Divine Good: Modern Moral Theory and the Necessity of God (Dallas, Southern Methodist University). Garland, W. J. 2005. “The Rhythm of Learning and the Rhythm of Reality,” in Alfred North Whitehead on Learning and Education: Theory and Application, edited by F. Riffert (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press), 35-57. Garland, W. J. “Finding Flow through Discipline and Imagination,” in A Different Three Rs for Education: Reason, Relationality, Rhythm, edited by George Allan and Malcolm D. Evans (New York, Rodopi B.V.), 87-102. Gunter, P.A.Y. 2005. “Education, Modernité et Fragmentation du sens,” in Jean-Marie Breuvart (éd.), Les rythmes educatifs dans la philosophie de Whitehead, Chromatiques Whiteheadiennes, Vol. 3, (Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag), 223-238. Gunter, P.A.Y. 1995. “Bergson's Philosophy of Education,” Educational Theory, 45, 3, 379-94. Gunter, P.A.Y. 2005. “Whitehead’s Struggle against Inert Ideas,” Process Studies, 34, 2, 21123. Gunter, P.A.Y. 2006. “Whitehead and Environmental Education,” in A Different Three Rs for Education: Reason, Relationality, Rhythm, edited by George Allan and Malcolm D.

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Evans (New York, Rodopi B.V.), 75-86. Hendley, B. 1976. “A Whiteheadian Model for Teaching Introductory Philosophy,” Metaphilosophy, 7, 307-315. Hendley, B. 1986. Dewey, Russell, and Whitehead: Philosophers as Educators (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University). Holmes, H. 1951. “Whitehead’s Views on Education,” in The Library of Living Philosophers, Volume 3: The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, edited by P.A. Schilpp (New York, Tudor Publishing), 621-40. Hutchins, R.M. 1936. “A Reply to Professor Whitehead,” Atlantic Monthly, 158, November, 582-588. Johnson, A. H. 1946. “Alfred North Whitehead,” The University of Toronto Quarterly, 15, 37383. Johnson, A. H. 1962. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Civilization (New York, Dover Publications). Johnson, A. H. 1969. “Whitehead as Teacher and Philosopher,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 29, 351-376. Johnson, A. H. 2005. “Knowledge, Value, and Meaning as Process,” Special Issue, Interchange, 36, 1-2. Johnston, C. F. 1998. The Wealth or Health of Nations: Transforming Capitalism from Within (Cleveland, Pilgrim Press). Langeveld, M. J. 1966. “Some Considerations on Whitehead’s Aims of Education,” Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte en Psychologie, 58, 95-105. Lawrence, N. 1987. “Whitehead: Teacher of Teachers,” in Plato, Time, and Education, edited by B. Hendley et al. (Albany, S.U.N.Y. Press). Lee, S-E. 2004. “The Process Worldview and a Vision of Korean Education,” Process Papers, 8, 26-41. Lowe, V. 1962. Understanding Whitehead (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press). Marx, K. 1972. “The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by R.C. Tucker (New York, W.W. Norton), 56-65. McMurtry, J. 1988. “The History of Inquiry and Social Reproduction: Educating for Critical Thought,” Interchange, 19, 1. Meland, B. E. 1953. Higher Education and the Human Spirit (Chicago, University of Chicago). Mellert, R. B. 1998. “Searching for the Foundations of Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education,” Paideia, Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts (online at www.bu.edu/wep/Papers/Educ/EducMell.htm). Mullino Moore, M.E. 1983. Education for Continuity and Change: A New Model for Christian Religious Education (Nashville, Abingdon Press). Mullino Moore, M.E. 1998a. Ministering with the Earth (St. Louis, Chalice Press). Mullino Moore, M.E. 1998b, 1991. Teaching from the Heart: Theology and Educational Method (Harrisburg PA, Trinity Press International). Mullino Moore, M.E. 2000. “Ethnic Diversity and Biodiversity: Richness at the Center of Education,” Interchange, 31, 2&3, 259-78. Mullino Moore, M.E. 2004. “Imagine Peace: Knowing the Real, Imagining the Impossible,” Process Papers, 8, 5-25. Mullino Moore, M.E. 2005a. “Imagination at the Center: Identity on the Margins,” Process Studies, 34, 2, 192-210. Mullino Moore, M.E. 2005b. “Rythmes de Programme: Repères pour un Parcours Educatif,” translated by Jean-Marie Breuvart, in Les rythmes éducatifs dans la philosophie de Whitehead, edited by Jean-Marie Breuvart (Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag), 189-222. Mullino Moore, M.E. 2005c. “The Relational Power of Education: The Immeasurability of Knowledge, Value, and Meaning,” Interchange, 36, 1-2, 23-48. Mullino Moore, M.E. 2006. “Nourishing Relationships that Nourish Life,” in A Different Three Rs for Education: Reason, Relationality, Rhythm, edited by George Allan and Malcolm D. Evans (New York, Rodopi B.V.), 103-120. Nivens, P. 2005. “Gramsci and Whitehead Rate Consent in Politics,” in Chromatikon 1:

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Annuaire de la philosophie en procès, edited by M. Weber, M. and D. D’Epremesnil (Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain), 177-93. Oliver, D. W. and Gershman, K. W. 1989. Education, Modernity, and Fractured Meaning: Toward a Process Theory of Teaching and Learning (Albany, State University of New York Press). Page, F.A. 1948. “A.N. Whitehead: A Pupil’s Tribute,” Dalhousie Review, 28, 71-80. Phenix, P. 1975. “Transcendence and the Curriculum,” in Curriculum Theorizing, edited by William Pinar (Berkeley, McCutchan). Piaget, J. 1969a. Psychology of Intelligence (Totowa, N.J., Littlefield, Adams). Piaget, J. 1969b. Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child (New York, Penguin Books). Priestley, J.G. 1996. Spirituality in the Curriculum (London, University of London). Priestley, J.G. 2000. “The Essence of Education: Whitehead and the Spiritual Dimension,” Interchange, 31, 2-3, 117-33. Regnier, R. 2004. “Prophetic Visions for Professional Teachers: A Whiteheadian Perspective on Designing University Courses,” Proceedings of the Process Thought and East Asian Culture Conference Proceedings: Education (Whitehead Society of Korea). Regnier, R. 2005. “Cosmological Foundations of Imagination in Learning: A Whiteheadian Perspective,” Process Studies, 34, 2, 2005, 178-191. Regnier, R. 1994. “The Sacred Circle: A Process Pedagogy of Healing,” Interchange, 25, 2, 129-44. Regnier, R. 2005. “Cosmological Foundations of Imagination in Learning: A Whiteheadian Perspective,” Process Studies, 34, 2, 178-91. Riffert, Franz G. 1999. “Process-Philosophy and Constructivist Education: Some Basic Similarities,” Salzburger Beitrage: zur Erziehungswissenschaft, 2, 68-77. Riffert, F. G. 2005a (ed.). Alfred North Whitehead on Learning and Education: Theory and Application (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press). Riffert, F. G. 2005b. “The Use and Misuse of Standardized Testing: A Whiteheadian Point of View,” Interchange 36, 1-2, 231-52. Russell, B. 1916. Principles of Social Reconstruction (London, George Allen and Unwin). Russell, B. 1956. “Alfred North Whitehead,” Portraits from Memory (London, George Allan and Unwin). Scarfe, A. 2003. “Whitehead’s Theory of Prehensions as Inclusive of, and Conducive to a Philosophy of Education,” Process Studies Supplements, 4 (online at http://www.ctr4process.org/publications/PSS/) Scarfe, A. 2005. “On Whitehead and Selectivity in Teaching: Toward a Consensual Curriculum Selection in the Emancipatory Interest,” Process Papers, 9, 27-45. Scarfe, A. 2005. “Selectivity in Learning: A Theme in the Application of Whitehead’s Theory of Prehensions to Education,” Interchange, 36, 1-2, 9-22. Schindler, S. 2005. “The Tao of Teaching: Romance and Process,” Process Papers, 9, 46-52. Skinner, B.F. 1972. Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York, Alfred A. Knopf). Smith, J. E. 1983. “Speculative Thinking, Science, and Education,” in The Spirit of American Philosophy (Albany, S.U.N.Y. Press). Soini, H. & M. Flynn. 2005. “Emotion and Rhythm in Critical Learning Incidents,” Interchange, 36, 1-2, 73-83. Spring, J. 1994. Wheels in the Head: Educational Philosophies of Authority, Freedom, and Culture from Socrates to Paulo Freire (New York, McGraw-Hill. Stolz, J. 2005. “Les Rythmes Educatifs: Models d’enseignement et d’historiographie,” Les rythmes educatifs dans la philosophie de Whitehead, Chromatiques Whiteheadiennes, Vol. 3 (Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag) 169-188. Taggart, G. 2004. “Whitehead and Marcuse: Teaching the ‘Art of Life’,” Process Papers, 8, 5367. Thompson, H. E. 1997. “The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness: Its Importance for Critical and Creative Inquiry,” Interchange, 28, 2-3, 219-30.

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Thompson, H. E. 2005. “Education as Process: Why Engaging the Whole Person is Important and How to Do It,” in Alfred North Whitehead on Learning and Education: Theory and Application, edited by R. Riffert (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press), 347-80. Upitis, R. 2003. “In Praise of Romance,” Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 1, 1, 53-66. Walker, F. N. 1996. “Whitehead on Soul Murder in Education: The Continuing Problem for Teachers,” Process Papers, 1. Walker, F. N. 2000. Enjoyment and the Activity of Mind: Dialogues on Whitehead and Education (Atlanta, Rodopi). Weber, M. et D. D’Epremesnil (eds.). 2005. Chromatikon 1: Annuaire de la philosophie en process (Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain). Wegener, F. C. 1957. The Organic Philosophy of Education (Dubuque, Wm.C. Brown). “Whitehead’s Philosophy and Education,” Special Issue, Process Studies, 34, 2, 2005. Winchester, I. 2005. “Who was Whitehead?” Interchange, 36, 1-2, 1-3. Woodhouse, H. 1983. “The Concept of Growth in Bertrand Russell’s Educational Thought,” Journal of Educational Thought, 15, 2, 12-21. Woodhouse, H. 1995. “Towards a Process Theory of Learning: Feeling the Beauty of the World,” Interchange. 26, 4, 347-364. Woodhouse, H. 1999. “The Rhythm of the University: Part One—Teaching, Learning, and Administering in the Whiteheadian Vein,” Interchange, 30, 2, 1999, 191-211. Woodhouse, H. 2001a. “L’ecoulement de l’eau comme metaphore de l’ecoformation chez Whitehead,” in Les Eaux Ecoformatrices, edited by G. Barbier and G. Pineau (Paris, L’Harmattan), 261-267. Woodhouse, H. 2001b. “Ultimately, Life Is Not For Sale,” Interchange, 32, 3, 2001, 217-232. Woodhouse, Howard. 2003. “Strengthening Saskatchewan Communities through Education,” Saskatchewan Notes: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2, 3, 1-4. Woodhouse, H. 2005a. “Le rythme de l’éducation a l’université,” in Jean-Marie Breuvart (éd.), Les rythmes éducatifs dans la philosophie de Whitehead, Chromatiques Whiteheadiennes, Vol. 3 (Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag), 127-167. Woodhouse, H. 2005b. “Evaluating University Teaching and Learning: Taking a Whiteheadian Turn,” in Alfred North Whitehead on Learning and Education: Theory and Application, edited by R. Riffert (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press), 383-409. Woodhouse, H. 2005c. “A Process Approach to Community-Based Education: The People’s Free University of Saskatchewan,” Interchange, 36, 1-2, 132-134.

VII. Ethics Process and Morality Brian G. Henning

i

[M]orality does not indicate what you are to do in mythological abstractions. It does concern the general ideal which should be the justification for any particular objective. The destruction of a man, or of an insect, or of a tree, or of the Parthenon, may be moral or immoral. […] Whether we destroy or whether we preserve, our action is moral if we have thereby safeguarded the importance of experience so far as it depends on that concrete instance in the world’s history (MT 14-15). It is through passages such as this that we are reminded of just how radical and far-reaching Whitehead’s thought can be. Whereas traditional ethical theories limit morality to the relations between human beings, Whitehead seems committed to a fundamentally different model. Yet despite the longstanding consensus among process scholars that Whitehead’s philosophy of organism provides an ideal ground for a rich moral philosophy, particularly one encompassing ecological concerns, there is a relative dearth of scholarship on the topic. What is more, among those who do engage in such scholarship, there seems to be no agreement as to how to classify Whitehead’s ethics, which has at different times been labeled, among other things, a moral interest theory, a totalizing form of utilitarianism, and a virtue ethic.1 Some have even suggested that Whitehead’s metaphysics is consistent with a deontological approach (e.g. Lango 2001). Given the diversity of such conflicting interpretations, one might well wonder whether Whitehead can even be said to have a moral philosophy. In this essay, my primary aim is to bring clarity to the debate over Whitehead’s ethics by systematically examining Whitehead’s own scattered remarks on morality. I will demonstrate that, although he may not have systematically elaborated a complete moral philosophy, he did indeed affirm a model of morality that is every bit as unique, fallible, and speculative as his metaphysics.

1. The Paradox of Morality Though scattered references to morality can be found throughout his post-London works, Whitehead does not turn his attention directly to the nature of morality until Modes of Thought (1938). Here we find that, in rather stark contrast to much of modern and contemporary moral philosophy, Whitehead rejects the view that morality can be distilled into absolute, unchanging i

Philosophy Department, Mount St. Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, MD 21727; http://faculty.msmary.edu/henning; [email protected].

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moral laws, arguing that “[t]here is no one behavior system belonging to the essential character of the universe, as the universal moral ideal” (MT 14). Yet, without qualification, this claim is likely to be misunderstood to imply some form of gross relativism. In that Whitehead’s position grows out of his general rejection of a static conception of reality, it is helpful to consider his position on moral codes in the same light as his repudiation of independent substances. While it is well known that Whitehead rejects the explanatory adequacy of the substantial view of individuals, we must not forget that he fully recognizes that it is unavoidable and even important that the human mind think of things in terms of substance and quality. For “without these ways of thinking we could not get our ideas straight for daily use” (SMW 52). Thus, for Whitehead the problem is not the mere fact that we perceive the world in terms of substantial individuals—this is both unavoidable and practically important—but that we fail to recognize “that we are presenting ourselves with simplified editions of immediate matters of fact” (SMW 52). This inappropriate substitution of the abstract for the concrete is the essence of what Whitehead calls the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” Ultimately, then, the violation of this fallacy does not result from the mere employment of the word “substance,” but from taking, whether consciously or unconsciously, independence rather than interconnection as ontologically ultimate (e.g. PR 79). Whitehead’s rejection of moral codes should be seen in a similar light. By carrying us beyond “our own direct immediate insights,” abstract moral codes are “useful, and indeed essential, for civilization. […] But we only weaken their influence by exaggerating their status” (MT 14). Thus, Whitehead does not reject moral codes per se. What he rejects is the notion that one could achieve a timeless expression of moral obligation. Pushed beyond the environment for which it was designed, a moral code becomes nothing more than a “vacuous statement of abstract irrelevancies” (MT 13). Ultimately, then, the problem with the idea of absolute moral codes is that they presuppose a static conception of reality. If reality were static, then it would, in principle, be possible to formulate a moral code that described how one ought always to act. However, in light of our dynamic and processive cosmos, such a static formulation is unavailable. In this way, moral laws are analogous to physical laws. Just as physical laws are those “forms of activity which happen to prevail within the vast epoch of activity which we dimly discern” (MT 87; cf. MT 143, 155), moral codes are those patterns of behavior that are likely to promote the “evolution” of a given environment toward its “proper perfection” (AI 292). Moral and physical laws are not, therefore, timeless expressions of absolute verities.2 Just as new experiments may force the revision and reinterpretation of physical laws, the emergence of new forms of social order will inevitably require the revision and refinement of our moral laws. In keeping with the dynamic and processive nature of reality, therefore, morality must always remain open to improvement (AI 290). In this way, the true foe of morality is not change, but “stagnation” (AI 269).3 Yet in the effort to avoid dogmatism, Whitehead recognizes that we must be equally wary of embracing the opposite extreme and rejecting all moral codes for some form of pure relativism or subjectivism. Novel and intense experiences are only achievable within a sufficiently stable environment. Law and order, for instance, are critical to the functioning of complex human

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communities. The problem, however, is that too often the conservative becomes obstructionist, particularly in debates over morality. As Whitehead notes in an uncharacteristically harsh passage, “it is true that the defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change. Perhaps countless ages ago respectable amœbæ refused to migrate from ocean to dry land—refusing in defence of morals” (AI 268). In attempting to defend absolute, unchanging moral laws, the “pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe” (AI 274). Thus, morality must be at once conservative and adventurous. Morality requires that we intrepidly revise our moral laws in light of new forms of order, while simultaneously preventing relapse to “lower levels.” This is what Whitehead calls the “paradox concerning morals” (AI 269). At its best, then, morality concerns itself not with codifying certain behaviors, but with the formulation of moral ideals which serve to inspire and challenge. “In ethical ideals we find the supreme example of consciously formulated ideas acting as a driving force effecting transitions from social state to social state. Such ideas are at once gadflies irritating, and beacons luring, the victims among whom they dwell” (AI 17-18). Thus perhaps the most important function of moral philosophy is in formulating, testing, and revising our moral ideals. Given this understanding, let us turn to Whitehead’s own formulation of the aim of morality.

2. The Perfection of Importance One of the first things one is likely to notice regarding the opening quotation is how broadly Whitehead paints the scope of morality. Whereas for traditional ethical theories the only relations that are morally significant are inter-human relations, for Whitehead, “[t]he destruction of a man, or of an insect, or of a tree, or of the Parthenon, may be moral or immoral” (MT 14). To understand this initially surprising claim, let us briefly examine Whitehead’s unique conception of value. It is difficult to find a system that gives a more central role to value than Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. For Whitehead, to be actual is to have value. Every individual—no matter how fleeting or insignificant—has value “for its own sake” (MT 109). However, if it is to be properly understood, this claim must be put within the larger context of Whitehead’s organic conception of individuality and its rejection of independent existence. In our processive cosmos, every individual begins from and is partially constituted by the achieved values of the past and completes itself by rendering its relationship to each of these past values determinate either by eliminating them (negative prehension) or by incorporating them into itself by repeating their felt value intensity (positive prehension). Hence, an individual is what it is because it is internally and essentially related to other achieved values (SMW 194). This process constitutes the ultimate fact of existence: “the many become one and are increased by one.” For Whitehead, therefore, an individual’s self-value cannot be taken in isolation from the value it contributes to others and to the whole. The notion that “[e]verything has some value for itself, for others, and for the whole” not only characterizes “the very meaning of actuality,” it is by reason of this fact that “the conception of morality arises” (MT 111).

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In this way we arrive at a sense of how broadly Whitehead conceives of the scope of morality. In contradistinction to the long-held conception of ethics as being limited to inter-human relationships, Whitehead affirms a conception of morality that excludes nothing from its scope. In a universe in which every individual is intrinsically valuable, nothing can be wholly excluded from our moral concern. Every action is potentially moral or immoral. Given this triadic conception of value, then, the important question is not whether others have intrinsic value, but whether the intrinsic value of oneself, of others and of the whole is recognized, appreciated, and affirmed. For Whitehead, this defines the essence of morality: Morality consists in the control of process so as to maximize importance. It is the aim at greatness of experience in the various dimensions belonging to it. […] Morality is always the aim at that union of harmony, intensity, and vividness which involves the perfection of importance for that occasion (MT 13-14). It is on the interpretation of this definition, which Whitehead himself notes is “difficult to understand,” that most of the scholarship on Whitehead’s ethics has focused. In particular, it was Paul Arthur Schilpp’s 1941 Library of Living Philosopher’s essay, “Whitehead’s Moral Philosophy,” that established the context for the interpretation of Whitehead’s ethics in the twentieth century. Thus, Schilpp’s essay is an apt point of departure for our own analysis. The argument that most concerns us at present is Schilpp’s claim that Whitehead reduces importance to “interest” and that, therefore, Whitehead’s moral philosophy should be classified as a “moral interest theory.” “Unless the essential meaning of Whitehead’s notion of ‘importance’ has been missed,” Schilpp contends, “there have appeared no sufficiently adequate reasons for accepting this doctrine of the subordination of morals under ‘importance’” (Schilpp 1951, 610). The question, then, is whether Schilpp’s characterization of importance is accurate. Does Whitehead make importance equivalent to interest? A closer examination of Whitehead’s work reveals that this interpretation is unduly narrow. In his first lecture of Modes of Thought, which was dedicated to the topic of importance, Whitehead defines importance in a particularly broad way: Importance is a generic notion which has been obscured by the overwhelming prominence of a few of its innumerable species. The terms morality, logic, religion, art, have each of them been claimed as exhausting the whole meaning of importance. Each of them denotes a subordinate species. But the genus stretches beyond any finite group of species (MT 11). Insofar as morality, logic, religion, and art are merely a handful of the “innumerable species” of importance, we must take Whitehead’s use of the term in a much wider and more fundamental sense than mere “interest.” Indeed, Whitehead himself explicitly states that he understood importance to extend beyond interest: “there are two aspects to importance; one based on the unity of the Universe, the other on the individuality of the details. The word interest suggests the latter aspect; the word importance leans toward the former” (MT 8, author’s emphases). Given critics’ claims to the contrary, it is ironic that Whitehead intentionally chose the term importance because it emphasized the unity of the universe, rather than the interests of individuals. The problem, as Whitehead himself recognizes, is that “the word importance, as in common use, has been reduced to suggest a silly little pomposity which is the extreme trivialization of its meaning here. This is a permanent difficulty of philosophic discussion; namely, that words must be stretched beyond their common meanings in the

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marketplace” (MT 12). Yet if importance is not limited to interest, then how does Whitehead conceive of it? A closer analysis of Modes of Thought demonstrates that Whitehead makes importance equivalent not to interest, but to value. For instance, as we see in the following selections, Whitehead uses both importance and value to describe what is attained by actuality: “Our enjoyment of actuality is a realization of worth, good or bad. It is a value experience” (MT 116); and “Actuality is the self-enjoyment of importance” (MT 117). Similarly, as the following passages suggest, both importance and value have the same triadic structure of the self, other and whole: “But the sense of importance is not exclusively referent to the experiencing self. It is exactly this vague sense which differentiates itself into the disclosure of the whole, the many, and the self” (MT 117); and “Everything has some value for itself, for others, and for the whole. This characterizes the meaning of actuality” (MT 111). Finally, Whitehead also describes morality in terms of both value and importance: “Morality is the control of process so as to maximize importance” (MT 13-14); and “Everything has some value for itself, for others, and for the whole[…]. By reason of this character, constituting reality, the conception of morals arises” (MT 111). Thus, value and importance have the same structure and equally characterize morality and actuality. Because of this, I contend that for Whitehead value and importance are ontologically interchangeable.4 In this way we can begin to understand just how much Whitehead intends to “stretch” the common usage of importance. He conceives of importance as not only the aim of morality, but of every process. “The generic aim of process is the attainment of importance, in that species and to that extent which in that instance is possible” (MT 12, emphasis added). This passage gives us a crucial insight into the relationship between Whitehead’s systematically developed metaphysics and his nascent moral philosophy. If the general aim of process is at the attainment of importance and value, then morality, as a particular species of process, must necessarily aim at the attainment of importance and value as well. Morality, then, is but one species of the process of the universe, the whole of which aims at the attainment of importance. Given that it is not appropriate to define Whitehead’s moral philosophy as a moral interest theory, how are we to understand his conception of morality as “the control of process so as to maximize importance”? Given that he defines morality as but one instance of the universal drive to maximize importance and value, perhaps Whitehead affirmed some form of totalizing utilitarianism? It is this view, put forward by Clare Palmer in her Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking (1998), that has served as the context for much of the recent debate over the possible value of Whitehead’s ethics. The heart of Palmer’s position lies in her understanding that, for process thinkers such as Whitehead, “The ultimate aim of ethical behaviour is to produce the greatest possible value for the consequent nature of God” (Palmer 1998, 15). If all ethical behavior and all value is to be understood only in terms of how it contributes to God, then morality becomes the maximization of a certain form of experience (value, beauty, importance) for God. Thus, like utilitarianism, one ought always to choose that course of action which maximizes utility/happiness/value for the relevant entity, which, in our processive cosmos, is God. Given this interpretation, Palmer concludes that, “Value is contributory; God sums the value generated by actual occasions and

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within Himself; the system must therefore be consequentialist and totalizing” (1998, 213). By reducing an individual’s value to its possible contribution to God’s experience, Palmer argues, Whitehead constructs a totalizing form of utilitarianism and is, therefore, subject to the same concerns regarding, for instance, justice. Palmer is certainly correct that any Whiteheadian moral philosophy will have a strong consequentialist element. Our aim is to bring about “that union of harmony, intensity, and vividness which involves the perfection of importance for that occasion” (MT 14). Where Palmer’s interpretation shoots wide of its mark, however, is in suggesting that Whitehead’s thought leads to a totalizing form of utilitarianism. This position ultimately rests on her understanding that, for process thought, “What matters is the generation of rich experience for God” (Palmer 1998, 15). The problem is that, while this interpretation of process thought, referred to as “contributionism,” plays a prominent role in process theology, it is doubtful that Whitehead ever held such a view.5 Yes, every individual has value for the whole but, Whitehead insists, an individual’s value for the whole cannot be separated from the value it has for itself and for others. Each part of this axiological triad of self, other and whole equally characterizes actuality. “These three divisions are on a level. No one in any sense precedes the other” (MT 116-17). Yet if morality aims at the maximization of importance and value, but value is understood to extend not merely to the self but to others (the past actual occasions in an occasion’s actual world) and to the whole (the totality of achieved occasions), then it becomes impossible to interpret Whitehead’s moral philosophy as a totalizing form of utilitarianism aimed at maximizing intense experience for God.6 Moral behavior aims to maximize the value experience not only of the whole or God, but also of every individual for its own sake and for the sake of its community. Yet if Whitehead’s moral philosophy is neither a moral interest theory nor a totalizing utilitarianism, how are we to classify it? First, given the equivalence of actuality and value, the scope of morality may exclude nothing. Any action may be moral or immoral. “Whether we destroy or whether we preserve, our action is moral if we have thereby safeguarded the importance of experience so far as it depends on that concrete instance in the world’s history” (MT 15). Second, the primary task of moral philosophy is not the divination of apodictic codes of behavior but the development and revision of ideals that seek to lure, rather than coerce. As Whitehead conceives of it, the ideal of morality is to maximize or perfect the importance and value experience for the self, for others, and for the whole. Morality, like every process, aims at the attainment of value. In this sense we have found that—contrary to the contemporary ethical offspring of modern metaphysical projects—the aim and nature of morality grows out of and is continuous with the aim and nature of the creative advance of the universe. Morality is but one species of process, the whole of which aims at the attainment of value and importance. Yet there is one essential component of Whitehead’s conception of morality that has to this point been overlooked: his controversial claim that morality is ultimately an aspect of aesthetics. It is this claim that is at once the most distinctive and, for some, troubling element of Whitehead’s unique conception of morality.

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3. Whitehead’s Æsthetics of Morals Throughout much of his metaphysical work we find Whitehead repeating two central claims regarding beauty: first, the aim of the universe is at the production of beauty; and second, morality is an “aspect” of aesthetics. For instance, as early as his 1926 Lowell Lectures, Religion in the Making, we find Whitehead claim that “All order is […] aesthetic order, and the moral order is merely certain aspects of aesthetic order” (RM 105). Though a discussion of beauty is notably absent from Process and Reality (1929), in Adventures of Ideas (1933) Whitehead expands on his earlier claims, arguing that “The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty. Thus any system of things which in any wide sense is beautiful is to that extent justified in its existence” (AI 265). “The real world is good, [therefore,] when it is beautiful” (AI 268). These claims are once again repeated in one of his last monographs, Modes of Thought (1938), where he argues: “The final actuality has the unity of power. The essence of power is the drive towards aesthetic worth for its own sake. […] There is no other fact. […] It constitutes the drive of the universe” (MT 119). At first encounter many are likely to chafe at such claims. Does Whitehead really mean to argue that all forms of order are aesthetic? Why would he give such a prominent role to beauty? Furthermore, does he really intend to reduce ethics to aesthetics? How are we to interpret these claims? Though notable in their absence from Palmer’s assessment of process thought, Whitehead’s characterizations of beauty are not overlooked by Schilpp, who does not hesitate to accuse Whitehead of a vicious aestheticism. While both ethics and aesthetics involve value judgments and value experience, he argues, this structural similarity is an insufficient justification for reducing the one (ethics) to the other (aesthetics). There are, Schilpp insists, “sufficient differences, both of kind and in number, between the two types of value judgment and value experience to warrant a rather precise method of differing analysis, procedure, and conclusion for the two areas” (Schilpp 1951, 615). Because Schilpp conceives of these substantial differences between ethics and aesthetics, he sees the subsumption of ethics under aesthetics as a “disastrous reduction.” “After all,” Schilpp argues, “morality is not beauty, though the moral life—like a lot of other things—may be beautiful; but it is not the fact that it is beautiful which makes it moral” (1951, 615). If correct, Schilpp’s criticism would seem to seriously undermine the viability and appeal of Whitehead’s moral philosophy. Thus to avoid the charge of aestheticism perhaps we should join Lynne Belaief, who in Toward a Whiteheadian Ethics argues that “the apparent identity of ethical concepts with the basic aesthetic analysis is only apparent, Whitehead [is] being intentionally metaphorical when using the language of aesthetics to apply to ethical phenomena, except in the justifiable case when he is discussing the generic origin of moral experience” (1984, 53; italics added).7 Initially, Belaief’s position seems very appealing. For if we interpret Whitehead’s statements as being merely metaphorical, the danger of aestheticism subsides. Yet, as a closer analysis reveals, Belaief’s position comes at a high price.

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The problem with Belaief’s solution is that Whitehead’s claim that the good is an aspect of the beautiful follows directly from his more basic commitment to the view that every process aims at the achievement of beauty (AI 265; MT 119). Every process represents some finite achievement of beauty. Thus, if, following Belaief, we argue that Whitehead is merely being metaphorical, then we commit ourselves to the untenable position that morality has an aim and structure different from that of the rest of the creative advance. For in making morality into an inexplicable anomaly, we risk irreparably rupturing the coherence of Whitehead’s system. We are forced, therefore, to take seriously Whitehead’s claims regarding the foundational relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Yet, in doing so, have we not granted that he is guilty of a vicious aestheticism as Schilpp contends? How are we to maintain the coherence of Whitehead’s system while avoiding the potentially serious charge of aestheticism? The problem, I contend, is not with Whitehead’s alleged aestheticism, but in critics’ attenuated conception of beauty. As I have argued more fully elsewhere, Whitehead’s conception of beauty is far more rich and complex than the common usage of the term (Henning 2002, 71-114). Just as creativity is the fundamental process whereby “the many become one and are increased by one,” Whitehead defines beauty as the achievement of a “miraculous balance” wherein “[t]he whole displays its component parts, each with its own value enhanced; and the parts lead up to a whole, which is beyond themselves, and yet not destructive of themselves” (MT 62). For Whitehead, every process aims at the achievement of beauty in the sense that it aims at achieving an ideal balance between harmony, which concerns the greatest possible variety of detail with effective contrast, and intensity, which concerns the comparative magnitude or depth of the contrasts achieved. In this sense, there is no strictly unbeautiful experience. Actuality is, to use a phrase coined by Frederick Ferré, inherently kalogenic or beauty generating (Ferré 1996, 340). “Beauty is […] the one aim which by its very nature is self-justifying” (AI 266). Moreover, in defining it in this way we also come to understand the relationship between beauty, importance and value. In that each is at various times taken to be the aim of both process and morality, beauty, importance, and value are ultimately coextensive. Every individual represents a finite achievement of beauty, importance, and value for itself, for others and for the whole. Given this metaphysically rich understanding of beauty, it becomes possible to affirm that ethics is a species of aesthetics, but in a non-reductive sense. For to do so is simply to regard morality as a process continuous with the creative advance of the universe as a whole. Indeed, given that the universe itself aims at the attainment of beauty, importance, and value, as a particular form of process, morality must be a species of aesthetics. It is in this sense that we should understand Whitehead’s claim that “The real world is good when it is beautiful” (AI 268). Insofar as every process aims at the achievement of beauty, the conditions of beauty are the conditions of maximally effective processes in general, and, by extension, of morality. In this way aesthetics can serve as a bridge from Whitehead’s rich metaphysics of creativity to the development of a fully fledged ethics of creativity. It is this insight that guides my own interpretation and use of Whitehead’s moral philosophy. In The Ethics of Creativity I seek to systematically articulate an organic ethical paradigm grounded in Whitehead’s rich aesthetico-metaphysics of process by developing the moral

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implications of a kalocentric conception of reality. Our most basic moral obligation, I argue, is the “obligation of beauty” or the obligation to act in such a way to affirm the greatest possible universe of beauty, value, and importance which we can see (Henning 2005a, 146). Given that even a brief analysis of this position is not possible here, we may instead examine one of the more novel aspects of this approach: its depiction of the relationship between an individual’s value and individual’s moral significance. In rather stark contrast to mainstream contemporary philosophy, process scholars continue to maintain (rightly I would argue) that every individual is equal in having value, but that every individual does not have value equally. Thus, process thought affirms what Ferré aptly calls a “multidimensional continuum” of beauty and value (1996, 374). Yet it is this retention of what is perceived to be hierarchical thinking that leads many moral philosophers, e.g., deep ecologists, to shy away from Whitehead’s work. After all, hierarchical thinking has too often led to the subjugation and destruction of “less valuable” individuals. However the problem, I suggest, is not with the notion of degrees of value per se. Rather, hierarchical thinking is invidious when an individual’s degree of value determines its moral significance, as in the argument: “Individual A is less valuable than individual B. Therefore, A may be sacrificed in instances of conflict with B.” The problem with this argument, I contend, is not in the premises, but in the conclusion. I argue that while the depth of beauty and value achieved by an individual (its “onto-aesthetic status”) is relevant in determining its moral significance, an individual’s onto-aesthetic status does not strictly constitute its moral significance. In an ethics of creativity we find that our obligation is not simply to give preference to “higher-order” individuals, but to maximize the beauty achievable in a given situation. This is what is referred to as the “obligation of peace” or the obligation to avoid destroying another individual, unless not doing so threatens the achievement of the greatest degree of harmony and intensity which in that situation is possible (cf. Henning 2005a, 146). Accordingly, depending on the situation, it is not only possible but likely that meeting this obligation will require sacrifice on the part of “more valuable” individuals. For the most beautiful whole achievable is often not in keeping with the perceived needs of, for instance, humans. In this way, by insisting that our moral obligation is to affirm the greatest possible universe of beauty, value, and importance which in each situation we can see, the ethics of creativity is neither anthropocentric nor biocentric: it is kalocentric. Despite the numerous attempts to do so, in the end, we find that Whitehead’s moral philosophy does not fit neatly into traditional moral categories. Indeed, in an important sense, it is this very approach which has most undermined previous attempts to evaluate Whitehead’s ethics. Perhaps because of the relative paucity and abstruseness of the material, instead of asking “What is Whitehead’s ethics?” most commentators begin instead by asking “What is Whitehead’s ethics like?” For instance, in calling for the “maximization of importance,” perhaps it is like utilitarianism, or like moral interest theory? Or, since it affirms the irreplaceable uniqueness of every individual, maybe it is like deontology? Clearly there is a sense in which such comparisons are helpful. After all, it is not uncommon for scholars to approach Whitehead’s notoriously difficult metaphysics by asking how it is like or unlike the systems of Leibniz, Locke, or Plato. Moreover, Whitehead himself regularly makes such comparisons. While initially helpful and to an extent unavoidable, if such comparisons are taken

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as our primary interpretive lens, we are likely to miss what is unique and valuable about Whitehead’s conception of morality. Indeed, by taking such comparisons as our primary context we inevitably import many of the presuppositions that Whitehead’s system was explicitly designed to avoid. Utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, each is grounded in certain metaphysical and axiological assumptions that Whitehead repudiated. Thus although we may begin examining any aspect of Whitehead’s thought by asking how it is like or unlike previous positions, if it is to be properly understood, it must ultimately be confronted on its own terms. Though certainly more arduous, in the end this is the only path that will allow us to come to a true understanding of Whitehead’s conception of morality and its possible contributions to contemporary moral discourse.

Notes 1

These positions are defended respectively in Schilpp 1951, Palmer 1998, and Gier 2004. See, for instance, MT: “The notion of the unqualified stability of particular laws of nature and of particular moral codes is a primary illusion which has vitiated much philosophy” (13). 3 Cf. Adventures of Ideas: “For after all, we can aim at nothing except from the standpoint of a well-assimilated system of customs—that is, of mores. The fortunate changes are made ‘Hand in hand, with wand’ring steps and slow’” (269). Though Whitehead is primarily concerned with the exaggeration of the status of moral codes of behavior, his criticisms would seem to equally apply to a conception of morality grounded in categorical imperatives. Though I would hesitate to adopt such language, one might say that for Whitehead all imperatives are ultimately hypothetical. For a more developed discussion of this view and the relationship between a Whiteheadian moral philosophy and deontology, see Lango 2001, Henning 2006 and 2005a (esp. Chapters 5 and 7). 4 If there is a difference, it would seem merely to be a matter of emphasis. Whereas the term value seems to suggest that which is achieved in process, importance seems to emphasize the end toward which process strives. 5 In several recent articles, scholars have sought to respond to Palmer’s criticisms from within the contributionist framework. See the exchange between Palmer, Cobb, Dombrowski and Menta referenced in the bibliography. 6 A complete analysis of this claim would require a more thorough analysis of Whitehead’s conception of individuality, particularly the relationship between the subject and superject. How one resolves this relationship significantly affects how one interprets Whitehead’s axiology and moral philosophy. In contrast to the “classical interpretation” of Whitehead’s work, which insists on a sharp ontological distinction between the subject and superject, I defend what I refer to as the “ecstatic interpretation” of Whitehead’s metaphysics (see Henning 2005a, 41-65 and Henning 2005b). 7 Belaief reiterates this claim in her “Whitehead and Private-Interest Theories” (1996, 279). 2

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In this article I will explore a particular application of the revolt against dualism and the defense of a scale of becoming in Whitehead’s thought. I will detail Whitehead’s simultaneous belief in the continuity between nonhuman animals and human beings, and the partial transcendence of human beings over nonhuman animals. I will also note two arguments used by recent philosophers in favor of nonhuman animal rights. Finally, I will indicate what a Whiteheadian defense of these two arguments might look like. A brief bibliography follows.

1. Revolt Against Dualism Throughout his career Whitehead was, for various reasons, an opponent of dualism. Not least among these reasons was the fear that dualism could easily lead to reductionistic materialism once it was realized that mind (or life or self-motion) is, as a result of dualism, an irrelevant ghost in the machine. The materialist merely exorcises the ghost (SMW, Chapter 5). Whitehead’s response was to advocate a fusion of mind (or life or self-motion) and physical nature in the composition of the “really real things.” This revolt against dualism has the following implication for nonhuman animals: in abstraction from its animal body, a living nexus is not understandable at all (and vice versa). Indeed, each actual occasion is a bipolar fusion of the physical and the appetitive or mental (e.g. PR 104, 108; MT 150; AI 210, 212-13, 253, 259).

2. Scale of Becoming This fusion (or better, interfusion) is spread throughout nature in something like a scale of becoming—the process version of the traditional “scale of Being.” At one point, Whitehead distinguishes among six types of occurrences in nature. In descending order, these are human existence, the kind of life found in vertebrate animals generally, vegetable life, living cells, large-scale inorganic aggregates, and finally the happenings on an infinitesimally small scale as disclosed by physicists (MT 156-57; PR 98). At another point, he distinguishes in an analogous way among four grades of reality, with the highest level exhibiting a reorganization of experience characteristic of reason (PR 177-78). Whitehead makes it clear that these are not airtight boundaries, but are rather heuristic and explanatory devices. That is, different modes of existence “shade off into each other.” By implication, there is no absolute difference between human beings and nonhuman animals;

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indeed human beings are animals. Likewise, the most primitive plants fade into the lives of a cluster of living cells. There is not even an absolute gap between living and nonliving societies. Ours is a “buzzing world, amid a democracy of fellow creatures” (PR 50, 102; MT 157). The problem for Nature (Whitehead himself capitalizes here) is the production of complex societies that are unspecialized; in this way “intensity is mated with survival” (PR 101). This problem is solved by the enhancement of the mental pole. It should be noted that Whitehead does not restrict such enhancement to human beings (as in Kant), rather he extends it to “higher organisms.” These are organisms that “think,” at the very least in the sense that they do not thoughtlessly adjust to causal factors affecting them (PR 101-103). I will return to nonhuman animal mentality momentarily. Animal bodies are living societies that contain both living cells as well as “inorganic” subservient apparatuses at the level studied by physicists. In a famous turn of phrase, Whitehead describes life as “the clutch at vivid immediacy” (PR 103-105). We will see that this immediacy is noteworthy from an ethical point of view if what is vividly experienced is pain, especially if it is unnecessary pain. Nonhuman animals clearly exhibit modes of behavior that are directed not only toward the avoidance of pain, but also toward “self-preservation,” Whitehead thinks. In fact, they give every indication of having some sort of feeling of causal relationship with the natural world. Even a jellyfish advances and withdraws in response to causal influence; and plants reach down to find water and nutrients with their roots (PR 176). Although feeling of some minimal sort is spread throughout nature, in that there are “throbs of pulsation” in molecules, plant cells, and the lives of nonhuman animals and human beings, it is only with animals that we find sense perception or sentiency per se. It is probably true that nonhuman animal perception does not rise to the level of presentational immediacy found in human beings. In human beings there can be immediate absorption in the projected present, as opposed to being (largely but not exclusively) a vehicle for receiving the past. But whereas the laws of nature are constituted by large average effects that are impersonal, those beings capable of both sense perception and “expression” exhibit a significant degree of personal individuality (PR 176-78; MT 21, 86).

3. Continuity with Nonhuman Animals We have seen in the previous section both that Whitehead defends a hierarchy of becoming in nature and that there are no wide gaps, but rather continuity and shades of difference, between each hierarchical stage. There is no sharp division between mentality and nature. Likewise, there is no sharp division among the levels of mentality found in nature: we live within nature (MT 156; AI 186). Like us, nonhuman animals have minds that are temporally ordered in a continuous way. Further, their minds are incorporated in bodies that are constituted by a vast number of occasions of experience that are spatially and temporally coordinated. Such coordination is a major factor in the activities of the parts (PR 106). In addition, vertebrate animals with central nervous systems, at the very least, have their social systems dominated by mentality to such a

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significant extent that it is fair to say that their lives are personally ordered. Although a dog does not rise to the height of human mentality (and hence, in this sense, is not a person in the commonsensical version of personhood), a dog nonetheless has a mental life that is temporally coordinated, with continuity among its occasions of experience (and hence, in a different and technical sense, is a person). To take a simple example, if a dog is kicked by a particular human being on Tuesday, then when the same human being approaches the dog on Wednesday the dog either cowers or growls because she remembers what happened the previous day. Lower animals and vegetation, by way of contrast, lack the dominance provided by a (quasimonarchical) personal society of occasions. As Whitehead put the matter: “a tree is a democracy” (AI 205-206, 215, 291). In technical language, personal order characterizes a society when “the genetic relatedness of its members orders these members serially” or when a society “sustains a character” (PR 34-35). Immediately we think of human persons, and rightfully so. In some sense we think of human persons as the same realities from birth to death, but the issue of personal identity is complex in process philosophy, as is well known, due to the belief that the primary, concrete realities are momentary experiences. There is something more abstract involved in attributing identity to these experiences when they are strung together over long stretches of time. As a result, the abstract identity of a human being or a nonhuman animal should not be overemphasized. This is because if, as Whitehead thinks, “life is a bid for freedom,” then human identity (or the soul) cannot be seen as a strictly enduring substance. Both we and nonhuman animals change from moment to moment. That is, human beings and nonhuman animals are living organisms that exhibit self-motion in their reactions to any tradition (PR 90, 104). Charles Hartshorne’s Whiteheadian way of putting the issue is to speak of personal identity in terms of temporal asymmetry: we are internally related to our pasts, which are already settled (e.g., I cannot change the fact that I was born in Philadelphia), but externally related to our futures, which are partially open to our plastic control (who knows what city I will be in when I die?). “Life is a passage from physical order to pure mental originality” (PR 107). Whitehead’s use of “pure” here is misleading, however, in that it suggests complete central control or strictly mental activity without the body. Rather, Whitehead seems to think that we are somewhat more decentralized than this in that our hearts beat and our hormones secrete largely in ways outside of our control (PR 106-108). The key point here is that whereas primitive feeling is to be found at lower levels of reality, “we have passed the Rubicon” when sense perception is acquired; here “we” refers to both human beings and other sentient animals. Sentient nonhuman animals (albeit to a lesser degree than most human beings) use sense perception to learn from their mistakes; they “profit by error without being slaughtered by it.” And in our own “upward evolution” we proceed not only by way of error-elimination, but also by a positive, confident “animal faith” (à la Santayana) that the world is intelligible (PR 113, 142, 168; AI 4, 20, 177-78, 214, 247). Donald Griffin has us notice here that the aforementioned Whiteheadian “Rubicon” is not crossed when human rationality comes on the scene, but when sense perception is acquired by nonhuman animals. It is because human beings have animal bodies capable of sense perception that we can use these bodies as “the great central ground underlying” more intellectual pursuits. This central

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ground makes possible the “inflow into ourselves of feelings from enveloping nature,” an inflow that sometimes overwhelms us such that it is only gradually, after much thought and experimentation, that we can understand it. In Whiteheadian terms, the supposedly more exalted perception in the mode of presentational immediacy is dependent on perception in the mode of causal efficacy. Hume and other modern epistemologists erroneously invert this relationship (and thereby obliterate causal efficacy); hence they misunderstand the nature of the continuity between nonhuman animals and human animals. We, as with nonhuman animals, feel with our animal bodies in terms of a “vector transmission of emotional feeling,” with such feeling being not only transmitted but also modified along the way (PR 170, 178, 181, 312, 315). Even in MT, where a human being’s partial transcendence of nonhuman animality is a major theme, Whitehead notes that the rise of human genius and of human civilization has a long history that stretches back to nonhuman animals. That is, the highest reaches of the human psyche cannot be dissociated from our animal physiology. Indeed, sense perception already involves abstraction in the sense that it encourages (in fact, requires) selective emphasis. Thus, when a human being tries to be as clear as possible regarding sense perception, he or she “sinks to an animal level.” Nonhuman animals, too, in a certain sense specialize their perceptions, as when a pig picks up a scent for food when hungry and then will not let it go. Our “triumph of specialization,” although distinctive, is continuous with nonhuman animals’ transmission and modification of massive and vague experiences in the mode of causal efficacy (MT 65, 73, 113, 121). To put the aforementioned point in a phenomenological way, the sharp distinction between mentality and nature is not what we experience. In a courtroom trial we are skittish about merely circumstantial evidence; we also want to know what the accused’s motive was. Likewise, a lost dog that exerts great effort to get home is believed to have aimed to do so. Despite the fact, rightly noticed by George Lucas, that Whitehead does not explicate the thoughts of Darwin or other major evolutionary biologists with the same attention that he gives to major figures in the history of physics, nevertheless everything that he says about nonhuman animals presupposes a worldview thoroughly consistent with the theory of evolution. Consider vision. We are obviously not the only animals who can see, even though vision is considered by some scholars to be the most intellectual sense because of its abstract, impartial spectator quality (in contrast, say, to the concreteness of touch). In fact, some nonhuman animals (e.g., eagles) see better than we do. Hence, Whitehead sees evidence of “flashes of mentality” in nonhuman animals (MT 156-59, 167-68).

4. Partial Transcendence of Animality Despite the considerable continuity between human beings and nonhuman animals detailed in the previous section, Whitehead nonetheless is committed to the contrast between the highgrade functioning of human beings and “mere animal savagery” (AI 48). The contrast is a subtle one, however, despite the startling language regarding savagery. For example, the high-grade functioning of human beings in Whitehead is quite different from the traditional

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anthropocentric, essentialist claim that human beings are rational. “This is palpably false: they are only intermittently rational” (PR 79); and only some of them are intermittently rational, as we will see. The higher nonhuman animals (i.e., vertebrates with central nervous systems) are persons, in the sense specified above, but they are not aware of themselves as such, as we at times are. Our intermittent self-consciousness allows us a partial transcendence of nonhuman animality (PR 107, 109). Much of our lives is spent aesthetically appreciating the world in ways continuous with those of the nonhuman animals. Thus, Whitehead thinks that Kant’s “Transcendental Aesthetic” is a distorted fragment of what should have been his main topic. When Whitehead says that “intensity is the reward of narrowness,” he seems to be referring to those relatively rare moments of self-consciousness when we reflect on our lives as conscious animals (PR 112-13). We pay a price for this narrowness, however. That is, we pay a price for our partial transcendence of nonhuman animality. This is because it is precisely narrowness in the selection of evidence that is the chief danger to philosophy, especially when such narrowness is confused with synoptic vision of all aspects of a problem (PR 319, 337). It seems that narrowness of focus (and the intensity of experience it brings) is both necessary to and destructive of systematic philosophy. A human being’s partial transcendence of nonhuman animality is found in all of Whitehead’s major philosophical works (SMW, AI, PR), but it is especially prominent in MT. Here he makes it clear that he thinks that although songbirds (the hermit thrush, the nightingale) can produce real beauty, they are not civilized beings. Note in the quotation below, however, evidence of both the partial transcendence of nonhuman animality as well as the seeds of a Whiteheadian ethic of nonhuman animal rights: The hermit thrush and the nightingale can produce sound of the utmost beauty. But they are not civilized beings. They lack ideas of adequate generality respecting their own actions and the world around them. Without doubt the higher animals entertain notions, hopes, and fears. And yet they lack civilization by reason of the deficient generality of their mental functionings. Their love, their devotion, their beauty of performance, rightly claim our love and tenderness in return […]. Civilized beings are those who survey the world with some large generality of understanding (MT 3-4; emphasis added). Along with many other twentieth-century philosophers, Whitehead sees language as the key to our advanced mental functioning, but even the most articulate among us often find it difficult to speak with learned precision about what we feel as animals (MT 5). In Whitehead’s terms, nonhuman animals as well as human ones have intense “interest” in various particular things as well as some inchoate sense of the “importance” of the whole environment. Further, Whitehead thinks that it is importance that generates interest and that such generation gives rise to discrimination among interests and hence gives rise to language and advanced consciousness. Once again, there is continuity with nonhuman animals here. They can clearly engage in both signaling and emotional expression, but Whitehead thinks that nonhuman animals are limited in the degree to which they can engage in abstraction from the immediate situation. The biblical metaphor used by Whitehead to make the point is that on the sixth day God gave human beings speech and they thereby became souls (PR 11-12, 44, 52-53, 57).

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At one end of the continuum of nature there are human beings with a profound experience of “disclosure” of nature’s secrets; at the other end there is supposedly inorganic nature. Toward the upper end of this continuum there are confused nonhuman animal satisfactions as well as a certain degree of clarity found in human understanding. Or again, nonhuman animals enjoy the structure of the world, but human beings can study it. We can see form within fact. By way of contrast, Whitehead cites an example from personal experience of seeing a mother squirrel remove her young from a dangerous place one by one until all three were safe, but she returned a fourth time to the old place because […] she could not count (PR 87, 104-107). We can try to understand nature in terms of concepts like “space,” “time,” and “deity.” Nonhuman animals only anticipate this understanding when they sometimes pass beyond the enjoyment of immediate fact. The aforementioned mother squirrel, for example, presumably stored up acorns for the winter. In Whitehead’s strongest statement in favor of partial human transcendence of nonhuman nature, however, he suggests that “when all analogies between animal life and human nature have been stressed, there remains a vast gap in respect to the influence of reflective experience” (MT 102-103). Or again, “take the subtle beauty of a flower in some isolated glade of a primeval forest. No animal has ever had the subtlety of experience to enjoy its full beauty. And yet this beauty is a grand fact in the universe” (MT 120). Even less capable of experiencing such a beauty are the living cells in the flower. Yet Whitehead nonetheless thinks it is an example of “holiness” that one notices the “sacredness” of natural beauty in both flowers and nonhuman animals. Partial transcendence of nonhuman animality depends on the level of abstraction at which we (some of us, some of the time) can think. Granted, nonhuman animals live at a much more abstract level than cells, but we emphasize and are explicit about such abstraction (MT 123).

5. Two Arguments in Favor of Nonhuman Animal Rights There are two arguments that have been most frequently cited by animal rightists in the past generation—the argument from sentiency and the argument from marginal cases. In very abbreviated form, the former is as follows: A. Any being that can experience pain or suffer has, at the very least, the right not to be forced to experience pain or suffer or be killed unnecessarily or gratuitously. B. It is not necessary that we inflict pain, suffering or death on nonhuman animals so that we can have a healthy diet, because a vegetarian diet can be healthy or even healthier than a meateating one. C. Therefore, to inflict unnecessary pain, suffering or death on nonhuman animals in order to eat them is morally reprehensible. Jeremy Bentham put the point famously when he said that the key question is not whether nonhuman animals can reason, but whether they can suffer (Bentham 1948, Chapter XVII). All philosophical vegetarians, even those who are not utilitarians, agree with Bentham on this point. Some might suspect that an escape from this argument can be found in “sneaking up” on the nonhuman animal so as to kill it painlessly. There are many ways to respond to this objection,

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one of which is through the argument from marginal cases. Peter Singer sums up this argument in the following terms: The catch is that any such characteristic that is possessed by all human beings will not be possessed only by human beings. For example, all humans, but not only humans, are capable of feeling pain, and while only humans are capable of solving complex mathematical problems, not all humans can do this. So it turns out that in the only sense in which we can truly say, as an assertion of fact, that all humans are equal, at least some members of other species are also “equal”—equal, that is, to some humans (Singer 1975, 265). To say that we can legitimately eat (or wear, experiment on, etc.) nonhuman animals but not human beings, because human beings are rational, or autonomous, or language-users, etc., ignores the fact that some human beings are not rational, autonomous and the like. These “marginal cases” of humanity include infants, the mentally enfeebled, those with senile dementia, etc. If we lower our standard to that of sentiency per se (e.g., the ability to experience pain or suffer) so as to protect these human beings (as we no doubt should!), in order to be consistent we must also protect many nonhuman animals, including those that we eat. Hence, the argument from marginal cases can also be called the argument from moral consistency.

6. A Whiteheadian Contribution There is much that a Whiteheadian could contribute to the contemporary debate regarding nonhuman animal rights. We have seen that regarding the argument from sentiency a Whiteheadian could emphasize that higher animals with central nervous systems have an enhanced mental pole and do not thoughtlessly adjust to causal factors affecting them. Life, in general, is the clutch at vivid immediacy, an immediacy that is especially noteworthy from an ethical point of view when it involves unnecessary or gratuitous infliction of pain or suffering. Although feeling of some minimal sort is spread throughout the universe, it is only with animal sense perception that the Rubicon of sentiency per se (in contrast to microscopic sentiency) is crossed. Further, nonhuman animal minds are temporally ordered; indeed, according to Whitehead, they are personally ordered societies. For these and other reasons, nonhuman animals rightly claim our “love and tenderness” in return; there is some “holiness” or “sacredness” in their beauty that civilized beings like ourselves cannot fail to notice. This emphasis on what we civilized beings should notice indicates that a Whiteheadian approach to nonhuman animals is as much a virtue approach as a rights-oriented one. However, as a political liberal Whitehead himself was not opposed to the language of rights, as are some philosophers. Whitehead also helps us to understand the implications of the argument from marginal cases. There are no airtight boundaries (whether scientific or ethical) between species in that different modes of existence shade off into each other. Specifically, there is no absolute boundary between nonhuman animals and human beings at the very least because human beings are animals. Whitehead defends both hierarchy in nature and continuity and shades of difference between each hierarchical level: we live within nature, as do nonhuman animals. Further, there is something hyperbolic in claiming that human beings are rational. Rather, some of them are rational some of the time and some others (the marginal cases of humanity) are either hardly

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ever or never rational. And some nonhuman animals exhibit remarkable mentality, such that we are tempted to think that they are either rational or are on the cusp of rationality. The argument from marginal cases makes it clear that there are ethical implications to the continuity (and overlap) thesis that Whitehead defends. Some Whiteheadians resist the conclusions to these two arguments because a chicken, they allege, does not have a mental life that is very high and its momentary suffering just before its death is outweighed by all of the pleasurable moments it could have had in its life before the point of death; a life, by the way, that probably would not have come into being were it not for the practice of meat-eating. A four-way debate between myself, John Cobb, Clare Palmer and Timothy Menta has explored the nuances of this sort of objection and of a process response to it. Here we should note once again that Whitehead thinks not only that nonhuman animals try to avoid pain, they also engage in self-preservation, which seems to presuppose a sort of stable identity that is stronger than that found in the view that there really is no enduring self to be preserved. A process view of a self changing through time is nonetheless compatible with a genetic relatedness among the events in a temporal series that constitutes a same self; in fact, a personal society is one that sustains a character (PR 34-35, 176). To kill a nonhuman animal painlessly is nonetheless to deny it all of the future experiences it would have had in its life (not ours). We should take seriously Whitehead’s example wherein, in the Garden of Eden, Adam saw nonhuman animals before he named them, whereas children today can name nonhuman animals before they ever see them (SMW 198). By extension, justifications of meat-eating are often very abstract, armchair (or better, dining-room table) sorts of affairs. Actually seeing what goes on at slaughterhouses moment by moment is a gruesome affair, as anyone who takes the time to do so will quickly learn. As more people become aware of nonhuman animal sentiency and mentality, we can hope with Whitehead that “if mankind can rise to the occasion, there lies in front a golden age of beneficent creativeness” (SMW 205). Or again: There is something in the ready use of force which defeats its own object. Its main defect is that it bars cooperation. Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants. The Gospel of Force is incompatible with a social life (SMW 206). One practical advantage of process metaphysics is that it could enable us to give a more accurate analysis than has been given historically of quite ordinary propositions like (to use Whitehead’s own example): “There is beef for dinner today.” The process analysis would insist that “the point to be emphasized is the insistent particularity of things experienced and of the act of experiencing,” in contrast to a very abstract description of the act of meat-eating wherein the point at which the cow suffers intensely is left out of the picture; the cow appears only later in a creation ex nihilo wrapped in cellophane at the grocery store (PR 11, 43). Whitehead notes that for a living organism to survive it needs food, even if there is no absolute distinction between living organisms and those that are “nonliving.” The foods that are eaten are themselves societies of some sort. Whitehead’s term for what is required in order for living organisms to survive is “robbery.” The question is whether the robbery is to be a mere petty theft or a major heist. As Whitehead puts the point, “life is robbery. It is at this point that […] morals become acute. The robber requires justification” (PR 105-106). It is noteworthy that

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in the paragraphs immediately following this passage Whitehead speaks of divine tenderness directed toward each actual occasion as it arrives in the evocation of intensities of experience. It is commonly acknowledged that there is a romantic component to Whitehead’s thought wherein the Wordsworthian dictum that “we murder to dissect” is taken quite seriously. Process philosophy (or better, the philosophy of organism), as Whitehead sees it, is explicitly an attempt to enlarge ethical discourse so as to include consideration of the nonhuman animals whom we rob or murder. No hyperbole is committed here on a Whiteheadian view. The goal should be to foster intensities of experience that are positive “adversions” or contributions to reticulative beauty rather than negative, painful “aversions” to gratuitous killing. Moral responsibility consists in owning up to the ways in which we use our power of self-motion to determine the course of events (PR 140, 204, 254-55; SMW, Chapter V). A nonhuman animal body is a nexus of many actualities that can be treated as though it were one actuality. This one actuality when considered in reference to the publicity of things is a superject; but in reference to its own privacy it is a subject, a moment in the genesis of its own self-enjoyment. And as Whitehead famously put the point, God is the “fellow-sufferer who understands” such self-enjoyment. To put the point in different Whiteheadian terms, intense self-enjoyment has value for itself, for others, and for the whole. The key point to notice in the present context is that human experience is but one, albeit especially exalted, sort of higher experience, given the reigning doctrine of evolution that Whitehead supports (PR 287, 298, 351; MT 111-12). It may very well be the case, however, that the greatest contribution a Whiteheadian could make to the current nonhuman animal rights debate would involve the emphasis Whitehead placed on what can be called reflective equilibrium. All of us, or almost all of us, recoil emotionally at the thought of (more so at the sight of!) a cow having its carotid artery slit. This emotional reaction needs to be reconciled with the justifications we give for our eating practices (robberies). The meat-eater, at the very least, is in a state of disequilibrium between emotional response and rational justification (PR 16). No doubt some Whiteheadians will reach a different conclusion. They will say that because human eating invariably involves robbery, we can eat what we wish as long as we do so “mindfully,” by recognizing the loss in intrinsic value that occurs when we eat nonhuman animals. Two final comments are in order by way of response: (1) It is crucial that we not commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness by thinking that it is the Platonic forms of Cowhood or Chickenness that suffer and die. It is individual cows and chickens, here and now, who are the loci of value in a Whiteheadian universe. (2) When these individuals are killed for food, their suffering and death are unnecessary, given the healthiness of a vegetarian diet, and hence the robbery involved is, as mentioned above, a major heist rather than a petty theft. Granted, all of the pleasures the nonhuman animal experienced up until the point of death are not negated, in that they are preserved in the divine life, but neither are its sufferings negated, nor is the loss of its life (not ours) forgotten. It is unclear, to say the least, whether these meat-eating “contributions” (to use Hartshorne’s word) to the divine life are the sorts that we would like to

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make when seen from the perspective of the adventure of ideas that spreads across the generations. That is, species-ism may very well eventually go the way of racism and sexism.

Works Cited and Further Readings Armstrong, Susan. 1986. “Whitehead’s Metaphysical System as a Foundation for Environmental Ethics,” Environmental Ethics 8, 241-57. Belaief, Lynne. 1975. “A Whiteheadian Account of Value and Identity,” Process Studies 5, 3146. Belaief, Lynne. 1984. Toward a Whiteheadian Ethics (Lanham, University Press of America). Belaief, Lynne. 1996. “Whitehead and Private-Interest Theories,” Ethics 76, 277-86. Bentham, Jeremy. 1948. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York, Hafner). Clark, Stephen R. L. 1977. The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford, Clarendon Press). Cobb, John. 1989. “Review of Daniel Dombrowski, Hartshorne and the Metaphysics of Animal Rights,” Environmental Ethics 11, 373-76. Cobb, John B., Jr. 2001. “Deep Ecology and Process Thought,” Process Studies 30, 112-31. Cobb, John B., Jr. 2004. “Palmer on Whitehead: A Critical Evaluation,” Process Studies 33, 423. Cobb, John B., Jr. 2005. “Another Response to Clare Palmer,” Process Studies, 34, 132-35. Cobb, John B., Jr. and Charles Birch. 1981. The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Davis, Richard S. 1973. “Whitehead’s Moral Philosophy,” Process Studies 3, 75-90. Dombrowski, Daniel. 1984. The Philosophy of Vegetarianism (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press). Dombrowski, Daniel A. 1988. Hartshorne and the Metaphysics of Animal Rights (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Dombrowski, Daniel. 1996. Analytic Theism, Hartshorne, and the Concept of God (Albany, State University of New York Press). Dombrowski, Daniel A. 1997. Babies and Beasts: The Argument from Marginal Cases (Chicago, University of Illinois Press). Dombrowski, Daniel A. 2001. “The Replaceability Argument,” Process Studies 30, 22-35. Dombrowski, Daniel. 2004. Divine Beauty: The Aesthetics of Charles Hartshorne (Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press). Dombrowski, Daniel. 2005. A Platonic Philosophy of Religion: A Process Perspective (Albany, State University of New York Press). Dombrowski, Daniel. 2006. Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Ferré, Frederick. 1996. Being and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Ferré, Frederick. 2001. Living and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Ethics (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Gier, Nicholas F. 2004. “Whitehead, Confucius, and the Aesthetics of Virtue,” Asian Philosophy 14, 171-90. Gray, James R. 1983. Process Ethics (Lanham, University Press of America). Griffin, Donald. 1976. The Question of Animal Awareness (New York, Rockefeller University Press). Guy Debrock. 2004. “Ethics and Pragmatic Process Philosophy,” in Process Pragmatism. Essays on a Quiet Philosophical Revolution, edited by Guy Debrock (Amsterdam/New York, Rodopi B. V.), 159-70. Harrison, R. K. 1953. “A. N. Whitehead on Good and Evil,” Philosophy 28, 239-45. Henning, Brian G. 2002a. “On the Possibility of a Whiteheadian Aesthetics of Morals,” Process Studies 31, 97-114. Henning, Brian G. 2002b. “On the Way to an Ethics of Creativity,” International Journal for

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Field-Being, 2, 3 (online at http://www.iifb.org/ijfb/BGHenning-3.htm). Henning, Brian G. 2005a. The Ethics of Creativity: Beauty, Morality, and Nature in a Processive Cosmos (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press). Henning, Brian G. 2005b. “Saving Whitehead’s Universe of Value: An ‘Ecstatic’ Challenge to the Classical Interpretation,” International Philosophical Quarterly 45, 447-66. Henning, Brian G. 2006a, “Is There an Ethics of Creativity?,” Michel Weber et Pierfrancesco Basile (sous la direction de), Chromatikon II. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès— Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 161-174. Henning, Brian G. 2006b. “Morality in the Making,” Science and Theology News, June. Jones, Judith A. 1998. Intensity: An Essay in Whiteheadian Ontology (Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press). Lango, John W. 2001. “Does Whitehead’s Metaphysics Contain an Ethics?” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 37, 515-36. Lucas, George. 1989. The Rehabilitation of Whitehead (Albany, State University of New York Press). McGee, Glenn. 1994. “Whitehead and Environmental Ethics,” in Joe Pappin and Curtis, Hancock, eds., Environmental Rights in Conflict: Issues in Environmental Ethics (Conway, Arkansas, University of Central Arkansas Press). Menta, Timothy. 2004. “Clare Palmer’s Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking: A Hartshornian Response,” Process Studies 33, 24-45. Palmer, Clare. 1998. Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking (Oxford, Clarendon Press). Palmer, Clare. 2004. “Response to Cobb and Menta,” Process Studies 33, 46-70. Press, Howard. 1971. “Whitehead’s Ethic of Feeling,” Ethics 81, 161-68. Regan, Tom. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, University of California Press). Schilpp, Paul A. 1951. “Whitehead’s Moral Philosophy,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (LaSalle, Open Court), 561-618. Schindler, David L. 1983. “Whitehead’s Inability to Affirm a Universe of Value,” Process Studies 13, 117-31. Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation (New York, New York Review).

VIII. History Process Interpretations of History George Allan

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1. The Presuppositions of Whitehead’s Philosophy of History 1.1. Ontological Foundations The cosmology of Process and Reality provides the metaphysical framework for an objective understanding of history. The key elements of that framework, discussed elsewhere in this Handbook, are briefly summarized here in a manner echoing Aristotle’s four conditions for understanding any entity. Material condition. The basic units of reality have spatio-temporal thickness. The outcome of an actual occasion’s concrescence is a determinate whole analyzable into elements some of which are earlier than others. What is holistically presented has duration, and therefore temporal transition is directly experienced rather than inferred. The materials an historian investigates are composed of events that have objective origins and endings; that is, they actually come to be and perish. Efficient condition. An actual occasion bears the marks of its past and prefigures its future. It begins by prehending past realities that constrain the manner and content of its development, and it concludes by effecting a result that serves as a constraint on what and how subsequent actual occasions become. The spatio-temporal units of reality are linked by causal lines of influence. An historian can use what is currently experienced as a resource from which to detect the prior events that explain it and to suggest likely features of what will happen next. These claims about trajectories of influence are not arbitrarily imposed; they have an objective basis. Final condition. An actual occasion is not reducible to what has influenced it. A concrescence makes from its inheritance a fresh determination involving at least some minimum of novel adjustment. Thus, each spatio-temporal event is a unique individual greater than the sum of its contributed parts. Scientific determinism is an inadequate interpretation of how things happen, the more so when the relevant events involve more than minimal elements of novelty. The intentions, understandings, purposes, and choices central to an historian’s account of the actions of human beings are objective features of the world.

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Formal condition. The ways in which actual occasions influence their successors include the emergence of features replicated throughout a temporal sequence of occasions. The replicated features become the defining characteristic of the group composed of those occasions and, where these features are replicated because they have been inherited from earlier members of the group, the group is called a nexus. These stable patterns of relatedness rescue the cosmos from relative or actual anarchy, transforming the microcosm of momentary events into the enduring objects of macrocosmic experience. History is not a whirl of meaningless comings and goings, nor are the stories an historian tells mere fictions. Historical accounts of the temporal dynamics of meaningful forms of human interaction and organization interpret the world’s objective structures.

1.2. Historical Objects Historical objects are the various nexs comprising the subject matter of historical inquiry. They include human actions, not only overt behaviors but also memories, feelings, beliefs, aspirations, intentions, dispositions, aims, judgments, interpretations, regrets. Humans never act in isolation: what they do affects others, who respond to their actions negatively or positively, agreeing or disagreeing, cooperating or resisting. From these interactions, habitual ways of acting develop: social practices and the institutional rules and structures by which those practices are enforced, extended, and passed on to subsequent generations. Historical objects thus range from individual human actions to the dynamics of human groups, from one person’s incisive choice to the democratic election of a nation’s government. In considering such entities, we are a long way from actual occasions. An electron is a nexus of actual occasions, a molecule a nexus of electrons, an organic cell a nexus of molecules, a living organism a nexus of cells, a tribe a nexus of human organisms, a nation a nexus of tribes, a civilization a nexus of nations. So in considering a civilization, we rise up a hierarchy of levels of complexity that in this very crude account is seven levels of remove from the basic temporal units of actuality. Describing an historical object in terms of the coming to be and perishing of the actual occasions that comprise it is the metaphysical equivalent of describing the physics involved in two people shaking hands. The complexity of the details obscures the action; it also leaves out the meaning. Very little insight into the nature of the Roman Empire is achieved by describing it, as a Whiteheadian morphology would, as a “nonliving socially-ordered structured nexus” (for these definitions, see PR 34-36, 96-109; AI 201-208). In short, the cosmology of Process and Reality is of little direct use in understanding human history. Its categoreal generalities have little of interest to say about the life and death of the kinds of enduring object that are of interest to historians. Whitehead, it would seem, offers us a Naturwissenschaft, whereas what we need is a Geisteswissenschaft. Yet this is the sort of bifurcation Whitehead’s metaphysics repudiates, the body-mind dichotomy that reappears also as a science-history dichotomy. The chasm can be bridged, however. There are grounds in Whitehead for developing an analogy between actual occasions and historical objects. He argues that any of the units resulting from the coordinate division of an actual entity can be “conceived as an actual occasion with its own actual world forming its initial datum.” The part of what, genetically understood, is an indivisible whole, can be taken as “the hypothetical

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satisfaction of a hypothetical process of concrescence” (PR 286). And inversely, a nexus of actual occasions can be taken as “a super-actuality in respect to which the true actualities play the part of coordinate subdivisions” (PR 286-87). The motive for these analogical moves is functional: it is a matter of one’s aims. “Just as for some purposes, one atomic actuality can be treated as though it were many coordinate actualities, in the same way, for other purposes, a nexus of many actualities can be treated as though it were one actuality” (PR 287). The justification is ontological: because the multiplicity of space-time events comprise an extensive continuum, a single whole that is the defining characteristic of the current cosmic epoch, their genetic division and their coordinate division have similar features that can be exploited for certain purposes. We are not being arbitrary when we treat the span of a human life as though it were the concrescence of an actual occasion or the phases of an actual occasion as though they were stages in the emergence and collapse of an empire. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness cannot be violated, however. A human life is not a concrescence, although we can treat it is as though it were. Whitehead has quite a bit to say about historical objects in most of his books. Even when his focus is elsewhere—on education, religion, epistemology, modern science, the soul, consciousness—he discusses their historical context and worries constantly about the disastrous consequences that are likely to follow, or that have followed, from misunderstanding what they are and how they should function. The use of analogy as a method for mapping these historical processes onto the process of an actual occasion’s concrescence allows us to interpret Whitehead’s statements as extensions of his metaphysics and not merely as unmetaphysical musings, obiter dicta that uncritically reflect the biases of a late Victorian Englishman.

2. The Rise and Fall of Civilizations Arnold Toynbee argues that civilizations are the proper units of study for a philosophy of history, just as for Darwin organisms are the proper units of natural selection in a theory of evolution. In Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead identifies Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, and Peace as “those essential qualities, whose joint realization in social life constitutes civilization” (AI 284). The features of an actual occasion to which these qualities are analogous are, respectively, its physical prehensions, conceptual prehensions, subjective aim, subjective forms, and objective immortality.

2.1. Emergence of a Civilization A process of concrescence is inaugurated when a set of initial data comprising the given past are objectified by a subject in terms of its aim at some ideal mode of synthesis. “Beauty,” a possible aesthetic harmonization of contrasting elements, is Whitehead’s general term for such an ideal, whereas “Truth” refers to the given state of affairs, the brute fact of the determinate world. The subjective aim of an occasion is thus to attain the Beauty it envisions, to achieve a new given state of affairs in which what will have then become Truth is what now is the ideal. Its aim is at “Truthful Beauty.”

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According to Whitehead, the keystone of a civilization, indeed of any human institution, is the social vision its members share. By embracing a shared goal, diverse elements of a population gain a specific unity, setting them apart from the wider group. Their common “transcendent aim” (AI 85), their shared “ideal of the good life” (ESP 235), need never be fully articulated. It may hover in the dimly discerned background, coloring the attitudes of a people and finding expression in more particular ideals and special ends, without ever rising into conscious formation. Yet without this shared ideal, there would be no coordinated endeavor to move away from the given state of affairs in the direction of a social order different from the present one. The caretakers of a society’s transcendent aim are those elements within it peculiarly responsible for shaping the mentality of the age, either by articulating its vision or by guiding the actions of its members in conformity with that vision. For example, Whitehead suggests that the importance of Rome to the emergence of Western civilization lies in the fact that it played exactly this role. The West inherited from the ancient world a diverse set of mutually incompatible characteristics, especially those exhibited in the polarizing conflict between Greek and Hebrew worldviews. Rome had sought in its own day to mute these disruptive tensions and to mold them into a rich social unity. Even though Rome failed in this endeavor, its goal survived. “The vision of Rome is the vision of the unity of civilization” (AE 75). The power of that vision is reflected in the attempts of the major unifying forces in Western civilization—the Carolingians, the Roman Catholic Church, Napoleonic France—to justify their universal claims by advertising themselves as the true successors of Rome. The Holy Roman Empire may have been neither holy, Roman, nor an empire, but it represented a vision haunting Western selfunderstanding for a millennium and which has continued to exert its influence in such notions as the Third Rome and the Third Reich, the Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana. The realization of an ideal, albeit only partially, is not enough. The new achievement needs to be solidified, its novel ways routinized. “Unless society is permeated, through and through, with routine, civilization vanishes […]. Society requires stability […], and stability is the product of routine” (AI 90). The self-sufficient individualism of the solitary desert wanderer needs to be replaced by the cooperative pooling of specialized skills and achievements. These cooperative practices are not innate. They must be learned and are difficult to master, so a society is always in danger of slipping back into more familiar and simpler ways unless they can be routinized, becoming part of the unexpressed background of daily life, no longer noticed but “giving a tonality to all that happens” (ESP 34). Whitehead calls this routinization “Instinct”: “the mode of experience directly arising out of the urge of inheritance, individual and environmental” (AI 46), the commonplace attitudes and methods bequeathed the present by its past and acted on without special thought or explicit consideration. For example, the faith in reason underlying modern science can be considered instinctive. The reasonableness of the universe was accepted by seventeenth-century Westerners as a truth needing no argument, an “instinctive tone of thought and not a mere creed of words” (SMW 12). They were unaware of this debt to the medieval monastics because “they had no idea that men could think in any other terms, or for lack of penetration could fail to think at all” (FR 47). Both the ability to think and to think rationally were achievements that routine had made instinctual.

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A society’s transcendent ideals are its keystone, and so their preservation is especially important. A system of symbols needs to be developed capable of eliciting in anyone who experiences them those meanings constitutive of its fundamental ideas. The very possibility of national existence, for instance, “depends on commonly diffused symbols evoking commonly diffused ideas, and at the same time indicating commonly understood actions” (S 76). The language of a national literature, its patriotic flags and songs, its unique geographic features, and “the habitual phrases of early life” are all symbols that “foster this diffused feelings of the common possession of a treasure infinitely precious” (S 68). The more discordant the initial data, the less likely a concrescing subject will be able to achieve a satisfaction of high intensity. A subject that cannot prehend its initial data under conformal subjective forms will find itself confronted by discordant elements that offer no clear pathway to their successful harmonization. It will have to accept trivialization in order to achieve satisfaction. Similarly, a culture not grounded in instinctual patterns of civilized behavior and thought will find itself unable to preserve attained levels of social order. To sustain their way of life, the members of a society must presuppose certain achievements that, although once the product of innovative methods of contrast and integration, are capable of being transmitted without the recipient having to exert a creativity proportionate to that manifested in the original act of achievement. Past creative accomplishment must be transmitted as today’s commonplace if a civilization is to endure.

2.2. Development of a Civilization Stability is not enough, however, for to live is to grow and the failure to grow is the ominous signal of approaching death. Today’s commonplace ways must be constantly transcended, and for this to happen more is needed than a stable base of Truth and a guiding standard of Beauty. Adventure must also be involved, the element of appetition. Adventure is that element in a social order that prevents a people from remaining content with any given level of achievement. The subjective aim of occasions, and by analogy the transcendent aim of societies, cannot be satisfied with any given quality of life; its aim must be at living well and living better (FR 8). “To sustain a civilization with the intensity of its first ardour requires more than learning. Adventure is essential, namely, the search for new perfections” (AI 258). Adventure is dangerous, however. “It is the first step in sociological wisdom to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur” (S 88). Civilization is often defended in the name of security, but the two are not synonymous. The challenge is to achieve progress without destroying social order, to forsake the stability of a given civilized regime in order to fashion a better regime, but to do so without collapsing into barbarism. “On the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages” (SMW 208). A growing civilization is not simply one that provides security for its members. What it provides above all else is the possibility for value-fulfillment. But this means the pursuit of new attainments, and novelty requires for its actualization a disruption of the old order. A dynamic civilization is one which understands itself as embarking on “a concrete passage into an unknown future” (ESP 214), as undertaking an “adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay” (AI 279).

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If the adventure along the borders of chaos is to bear fruit, however, if the contrast of a new ideal with the actual is to issue in Truthful Beauty, then Art is also required. “Art is purposeful adaptation of Appearance [Beauty] to Reality [Truth]” (AI 267). The difference between Adventure and Art is the difference between commitment to the pursuit of an ideal and development of a method for attaining it, between subjective aim and subjective form. Art is the tool by which the energy of adventuresomeness is channeled into effective outcomes. The synonym for Art is Reason. Reason is “a factor in experience which directs and criticizes the urge toward the attainment of an end realized in imagination but not in fact” (FR 8). It is how the appetition toward the better and the best can become a force in history rather than an ineffective merely restless urge. “The function of Reason is to promote the art of life” (FR 4). Whitehead distinguishes two aspects of Reason: the Reason of Plato and the Reason of Ulysses, speculative reason and practical reason (FR 11). Speculative reasoning is akin to the process of conceptual valuation and to the types of propositional feelings that evoke and focus the ideal elements in concrescence. Practical reasoning is akin to the comparative feelings that synthesize ideality with the original physical data for the purpose of attaining some new determinate satisfaction. The function of Art, in other words, is analogous to the function of the supplementary phases of an actual occasion’s concrescence. Thus there are “two levels of ideas which are required for successful civilization, namely, particularized ideas of low generality, and philosophic ideas of high generality (AI viii). Foresight is the element in technique that blends the lower with the higher, the practical with the speculative. Speculation continually infuses practice with the broader possibilities that prevent it from slipping into hardened routine; practice continually confronts the speculative with the realities that keep it relevant. “This interplay of thought and practice is the supreme authority. It is the test by which the charlatanism of speculation is restrained” (FR 81), and the test by which the routine of practice is leavened. Scientific technology is an obvious example of the mating of practice with speculation in the modern world, but it is only one example. Social institutions in general are products of the Art of civilization. They embody the envisagements of a civilization in some particularized practical form and foster instruments for its attainment. Churches fuse vaguely felt religious insight with specific ritual patterns of belief and practice; commercial organizations translate a faith in the free market into methods of trade and production for generating wealth; universities shape curricula for imparting established knowledge and the methods for its acquisition, and create research opportunities and incentives to encourage the search for new knowledge. The arts of civilization are therefore the means by which a society actualizes the ideals speculative reason elucidates and adventure desires; they are the means by which it routinizes such actualizations as stepping stones in the drive toward realizing better harmonies. “Thus, in its broadest sense, art is civilization. For civilization is nothing other than the unremitting aim at the major perfections of harmony” (AI 271).

2.3. Flourishing of a Civilization There remains the element of Peace, which is that quality in activity that transcends the immediate aim at value. An actual occasion entertains a subjective aim at intensity and molds its data in ways conducive to its attainment. But this essentially selfish end is tempered by the

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influence of the future, by the realization that momentary achievements must find their place as elements in further achievements beyond the present occasion. Similarly, Peace is “essential for civilization. It is the barrier against narrowness” (AI 286), involving that aspect in life “where the ‘self’ has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality” (AI 285). Finding one’s own good in a common good, as an act not of enlightened self-interest but of love or compassion or loyalty, is a necessary condition for a community to flourish. The meaning of Peace involves the notion of tragedy. The adventure toward the attainment of Truthful Beauty is a tragic one in the sense that the intensity of harmony sought is never fully realized. The disparity between the ideal that might have been and the reality that is indicates an irreparable failure, a tragedy of broken dreams. And even what is in fact achieved eventually perishes. No matter how intense the satisfaction, the subsequent objective immortality always involves loss. The reaction could be despair: why seek value if the only true commentary on historical achievements is that they too shall pass away? “Amid the passing of so much beauty, so much heroism, so much daring, Peace is then the intuition of permanence. It keeps vivid the sensitiveness to the tragedy; and it sees the tragedy as a living agent persuading the world to aim at fineness beyond the faded level of surrounding fact” (AI 286). Social life is possible because its agents are motivated in at least some vague and unformulated way by a belief in the intrinsic worth of the values they inherit, achieve, and transmit.

2.4. Collapse of a Civilization The analogy to an actual occasion fails us at a key point. A concrescence develops until it attains its apotheosis in a determinate satisfaction, and then is gone. The event occurs and is immediately succeeded by another event. Human societies, even if they achieve some sort of golden age, do not at that moment cease to exist. They are enduring objects, not occasional ones, struggling to sustain their accomplishments, to perpetuate their defining characteristics. Hence, their efforts not only meet with mixed success but sooner or later are overwhelmed. Genesis and development find their converse in decay and dissolution. A civilization is a route of attainments, and its decline and fall is due to the gradual or sudden trivialization of those attainments. It begins to decline with the loss or even the weakening of any or all of the five elements making for growth: Beauty, Truth, Adventure, Art, Peace. The loss of Beauty. If a common social aim is indispensable to societal growth, the fragmentation of that vision can be disastrous. A conflict internal to the generally accepted ideas and ideals of a civilization is as dangerous to it as an armed conflict, and in the long run often more so. It enfeebles thought by blurring the meaning and purpose toward which that thought is directed. Whitehead is critical of the presuppositions of the modern Western worldview because he finds them incoherent. For instance, a belief in scientific mechanism is conjoined with a belief in the uniqueness and freedom of human agents, but the two beliefs are contradictory. Consequently, those who have been shaped by these beliefs are at odds with themselves over ultimate ends and meanings (SMW 76). Loss of a common vision stifles a society by separating contemporaries from one another, turning the community into a cacophony of sects. Or it stifles

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the society by bifurcating the individual psyche so that it compartmentalizes its experience, for instance into weekend religious ideals and weekday business practices. The loss of Truth. When a society’s creativity becomes excessive, its novel achievements can impel an irreparable break in social continuity. Revolution typically involves a repudiation of the old regime and the cultural tradition of which it is caretaker. To the degree that it destroys the shared symbols of a nation in the name of some new order of the ages, a revolution destroys the unexpressed and never fully conscious agreements in habit and outlook that supply the social stability a people need to exist. A sufficient dissolution of old symbols plunges the revolution into a reign of terror: only force is left as an effective means for cohesion (S 76). Revolutionaries are rarely as radical as they might think, but to the degree they successfully break a civilization’s continuity they sow the seeds of its demise. The loss of Adventure and Art. The converse of revolution is even more dangerous to social survival, if only because more prevalent. A civilization can suffer fatigue—a weakening of Adventure and Art. “Fatigue means the operation of excluding the impulse toward novelty” (FR 23). Once-successful methods may petrify into an orthodoxy that insures its hold by repressing novel tendencies. But stasis in a world of change spells inevitable decline. “When the species refuses adventure, there is relapse into the well-attested habits of mere life. The original method now enters upon a prolonged old age in which well-being has sunk into mere being” (FR 19). The attempt to preserve order at any cost forces a retreat to levels of lesser but safer complexity. Religion, for example, which can be a source of creative adventure, can also be its enemy when it becomes a matter of “satisfactory ritual and satisfied belief without impulse toward higher things” (RM 28). The growth of professionalism has similar stultifying consequences, for it tends to develop “minds in a groove,” men and women whose knowledge is severely restricted and whose thoughts are chained within the boundaries marked out by the set of abstractions favored by a particular discipline. This “celibacy of the intellect” (SMW 197), if widespread, dooms the society to sterility. The “spiritual blindness” of a society’s leaders, involving their “dull materialism,” uncreative attachment to “petty formulae,” and inability to “meet the new age with new methods,” is a sign of a nation’s failure to foster or sustain the qualities of Art and Adventure among its citizens (AE 41). The loss of Peace. Peace is an expression of civilized culture at its best, providing the sense of transcendent worth that makes cooperation and persuasion possible and that prevents cynicism and despair. Whitehead argues that the absence of such a virtue threatens the social order with a resurgence of the modern barbarisms that are signs of the end of an age. This sense of one’s aims and actions as part of an ongoing and all-encompassing effort is a foundational source of individual and communal meaning, a sense of meaning that gives strength to creative endeavor and sustenance through the trials and frustrations that inevitably accompany its pursuit. The loss of this meaning vitiates that strength and undermines that perseverance, destroying creativity, fossilizing the ability to adjust to new situations, weakening the will to overcome adversity, leaving the individual or society at the mercy of new and more vital internal and external forces.

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3. Historical Progress We have seen that Whitehead understands historical change as an oscillation between periods of growth in the complexity of social attainment and periods when that complexity is in decay. Growth is destabilizing, and so the effort to consolidate the new levels of value achieved in a period of creative advance works against the qualities requisite for growth. Too much stability stifles the adaptive flexibility needed to create regions of cultural value amid the dangers posed by a changing environment, but too much flexibility shatters the collaborative concentration of power needed to protect that value from those dangers. Whitehead’s vision of human history is therefore deeply tragic. Human beings are always hoisted on their own petard, caught on the horns of an impossible dilemma, victims of the hubris that infects inescapably their creative powers. And yet Whitehead believes in historical progress. This progressivist side of his thinking is the central theme of Adventures of Ideas. One of the intellectual agencies involved in historical change is a society’s general conception of the status of its individual members. For Western civilization, this conception is the intrinsic worth of the individual. It appears in the classical period as “speculative suggestions,” first made by Plato and then by the Stoics, that “human nature has essential rights” and that a social system can be criticized for repudiating them (AI 15, 14). Christianity adds persuasive power to this notion, through the emotional intensity of its “impracticable moral ideals” of an ethic suited for the Kingdom of God (AI 15). Impractical ideals can have historical power, however: they can become “a program for reform” (AI 42). Slowly over the subsequent centuries this ideal of the intrinsic value of the human soul found expression in various specialized arenas and limited forms, blossoming in the eighteenth century with the belief in universal human dignity that inspired the abolition of slavery and the emergence of democratic governments. “Like a phantom ocean beating upon the shores of human life in successive waves of specialization,” these various versions of the idea of the unique worth of every individual slowly did “their work of sapping the base of some cliff of habit: but the seventh wave is a revolution” (AI 19). A vague idea about “the intrinsic possibilities of human nature” (AI 42) haunted Western civilization and was eventually given effective institutional form. But why so slowly? Why is it that “centuries, sometimes thousands of years, have to lapse before thought can capture action” (AI 55)? The reason is not merely that those in positions of privilege resist change and those harmed by the current arrangements lack the power to force change. The problem is that the character of individuals, the structure of their communities, and the patterns of their cultural habits are exceedingly complex. Official blueprints for how to change the social order are “not worth even the price of the defaced paper. Successful progress creeps from point to point, testing each step” (AI 20). The “communal customs,” the background assumptions shared by the members of a community, must change sufficiently for them to “sustain the load” of a new idea’s concrete exemplification (AI 22). Fortunately, “the general world of occurrent fact” is neutral to such ideas and societal organizations have sufficient “plasticity” to make room for them. “The story of Plato’s idea is the story of its energizing within a local plastic environment. It has a creative power, making possible its own approach to realization” (AI 42).

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Though slow, this realization is progressive, its partial attainments forming emergent and irreversibly progressive stages of development. Civilized conduct at a certain level of “favourable order” is “protected from relapse into brutalization by the increasing agency of ideas consciously entertained” (AI 25). The senseless agencies of historical stasis and change are always present; the brute facticities can never be denied. Nonetheless, the intellectual agencies are also genuinely present, and patient persuasion is as powerful as coercive force. Humankind is “nerved” in its quest for the better and the best by “the supreme insight” that there exists an “indwelling persuasion towards the harmony which is the height of existence” (AI 68). This growth in “reverence for that power in virtue of which nature harbours ideal ends, and produces individual beings capable of conscious discrimination of such ends […] is the foundation of the respect for man as man. It thereby secures that liberty of thought and action, required for the upward adventure of life on this Earth” (AI 86). We know that in aligning ourselves with Beauty, with a power able to transform Truth, we have aligned ourselves with a power indwelling in the course of human history and of the whole cosmos. Whitehead’s understanding of human history is apparently inconsistent. On the one hand, as discussed in the prior section, he seems to be a meliorist, insisting that all historical objects are contingent achievements. We are always struggling for an optimal solution to the insoluble problem that plagues all attempts to wrest a determinate harmony from an incommensurable heritage. Humans may be motivated by the lure of ideals to fashion social structures more conducive to their individual and collective well-being, but these achievements are flawed and eventually dissolve. We can hope for the better, finding strength in a sense of Tragic Beauty or in a sense to renew our struggle toward the better. But meliorism is only a hope, and hope is not prophecy. It is “the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest […], a flight after the unattainable” (SMW 192). On the other hand, as this section has indicted, Whitehead detects a progressively upward path toward more inclusive and more intense harmonies, a trend that is crooked rather than straight, stumbling rather than steady, “vacillating, vague, and dim. But it is there” (FR 90). This progressive notion is best validated by appealing to what Whitehead says at the end of Process and Reality about the role of God in the evolving cosmos and in human history. God directly provides the best possible initial aim for each actual occasion relative to its situation, and the reconciliation of each resulting satisfaction in God’s ongoing life further influences the character of the initial aims provided to subsequent actual occasions. Moreover, actual occasions are internally related to their predecessors and successors, and those relationships typically comprise structural nexs. In this way, God not only seeks the greatest good for each occasion but also seeks through the coordination of those goods the good of the many enduring objects and cosmic orders. If ultimate perfection is an ideal that cannot be actualized in history, nevertheless it is in principle asymptotically approachable and is finally transcended in the “Apotheosis of the World,” the reconciliation of its permanence and its flux in God’s “everlastingness” (PR 348), the transformation of “our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore” (PR 351).

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4. Assessing Whitehead’s Philosophy of History 4.1. Secondary Sources Process theists typically support a meliorist view of history, whatever progress they find being based on hope not certainty. David Griffin, for instance, argues that in order for creatures to exist with the power to create and enjoy values that are intrinsically good, they must be free to create and enjoy values that are intrinsically evil. That the power to create both good and evil “is correlative with the capacities for self-determination and intrinsic value means that humanlike beings could not have been created so as to be less dangerous than we are” (Griffin 2001, 229; italics removed). The risk that great evils would occur was the metaphysically necessary price God was willing to take so that the quality of the values humans are able to create would be possible. As Delwin Brown points out, this view of human nature does not mean we need be pessimistic about the possibility for progress in history. He finds evidence in the “circuitous path” taken by evolution that God is at work in the world, luring his creatures toward the good. A process theist is a utopian in the sense of being someone “who believes that progress from the given to the significantly better is possible, and that the expectation of such progress is reasonable” (Brown 1975, 13). Similar explications of theistic hope are found in the writings of Christian theologians associated with the so-called Chicago School and are nicely epitomized in these words by Daniel Day Williams: “Christian hope which gathers up all particular human hopes and yet is deeper than they is founded upon the fact of the present creative and redemptive working of God in human life” (Williams 1971, 463). Other process thinkers reject Whitehead’s optimism about history. Richard Hocking, for instance, finds Whitehead’s views weakened by his claim that ideas are primary agencies and harmony the primary value. “Such an aesthetic interpretation of history […] falls short, both materially and categorially, of what is required for the comprehension of the historical process.” What is needed is “a less elegant, but more empirical” approach, one more dialectical, involving “polar opposition,” alienation, loss, irony (Hocking 1967, 182). Howard Parsons, however, finds that Whitehead and the dialectical Marx have more in common than Hocking allows. Whitehead emphasizes nature, Marx history; but both agree that “man comes out of nature and in turn shapes his environment” (Parsons 1967, 284). Nonetheless, Parsons thinks Whitehead is both too optimistic and too passive about progress in history. A. H. Johnson defends Whitehead against the charge of optimism. Good and evil are unavoidable aspects of history and so aspects even of God’s consequent nature. Yet because human beings are free agents, they are not “caught in the flow of history like chips in a whirlpool. The stream of history can be directed by the efforts of men” and so improvement is possible. “The gates of the future are not wide open, but the future can be better than the past” and that is enough (Johnson 1946, 248). I agree that there are important similarities between dialectical philosophies of history and Whitehead’s, but I think that both Hegel and Whitehead should be criticized for denying the primacy of the historical by making it merely a means to divine realization. “Their dread of time and of history” is disclosed in “the need each has to secure human accomplishment in some

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reality immune to the ravagings of time.” But “history can only be grasped for what it truly is if the notion of God as hidden savior is repudiated as a false concept” (Allan 1986, 321). Lewis Feuer is equally dismissive: philosophies of history like those of Whitehead, Marx, and Toynbee are “defensive measures against historical anxiety” (Feuer 1952, 331). They are “projective propositions” in which “the underlying reality of history is found to coincide with the philosopher’s values, which forecasts the outcome of history as a fulfillment of these values, and suggests to others that they would do well to enroll themselves among the triumphant forces of history” (Feuer 1952, 336). Robert Creegan thinks the problem with Whitehead and other interpreters of history is their attempt to “postulate unreduced historical units” and then interpret the complexity of historical events in terms of them. Any adequate “theory concerning process units must remain multi-valent to the end, on any empirical grounds” (Creegan 1942, 270). Creegan then sketches a method of interpretation that, although studiously non-reductive, does not, he argues, contradict Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. Marie Collins Swabey rejects Kant’s and Hegel’s approaches to history because they claim that “a teleological process [exists] operating through nature as unconscious reason, an evolutionary development tending toward the realization of a particular institution” (Swabey 1954, 205). In contrast to this passive sense of human agency, this view of humans as pawns of “the mole-like burrowing of the unconscious reason of dialectical philosophies” (Swabey 1954, 208), she applauds Whitehead and Toynbee for understanding humans as active historical agents. They discover ideas that “reveal antecedent patterns in the universe,” and these ideas “through being grasped by men’s reason acquire application, effectiveness, agency in the human scene. They are brought down to earth, so to speak, incorporated in inventions and social institutions, and open up fresh paths of unprecedented fruitfulness” (Swabey 1954, 206). Suffering and loss are not relative evils, justified as “stepping-stones to the better” (Swabey 1954, 212). They are objectively evil, tragic and irredeemable, but cathartic. For Whitehead, Swabey argues, “the development of civilization means learning through suffering, it means being weaned from ourselves through a sense of being more than ourselves, a sense of being part of a harmony as both participant and spectator […] glimpsing spirit as eternally triumphant over the complex tangles of the world” (Swabey 1954, 211). She quotes Adventures of Ideas about “the force of grandeur” of ideas that drive forward “the human soul in its journey toward the source of all harmony” (Swabey 1954, 213; quoting AI 22). Although he makes no mention of Whitehead, Eric Voegelin in his monumental Order and History develops an approach to history similar to Swabey’s proposed interpretation of Whitehead’s approach. Voegelin argues that human beings, in their struggle to survive and to make sense of that struggle, create forms of social order that over time have moved “from compact to differentiated order” (1957-87, 2.5), from barbarism to increasingly complex and pluralistic answers to how their lives can reflect “the order of being that has its origin in worldtranscendent divine Being” (1957-87, 2.4). But these efforts are irremediably partial. Voegelin rejects all “gnostic” attempts to eliminate the mystery of being and of historical meaning by developing philosophies that find an unfolding progressive pattern in history in which the human spirit is subjugated to some finite good. Instead, Voegelin advocates “respect for every order, and every truth about order; for every society, on whatever level of compactness or

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differentiation its experiences and symbols of order move” in their striving “for attunement with the order of being” (1957-87, 2.23). For this striving to have become reflexive, however, for philosophies of history to have arisen in which persons “become historical” because conscious of their endless quest, a “leap of being” was required, in which their existence was grasped as “in the present under God.” This has happened only in “the Judaeo-Christian response to revelation” (1957-87, 2.22) and in the rational expression of that revelation in Hellenic culture, most completely in the thought of Plato. “History is made wherever men live, but its philosophy is a Western symbolism” (1957-87, 2.23). And so we come full circle, for Voegelin’s God is akin to the God of process theism, a divine presence in history, one that nurtures rather than controls its development. Those who applaud Whitehead’s philosophy of history do so because they reject reductive materialism. Purposive agencies, ideas, and ideals are at work in history, making a difference in the shape and the meaning of things. Those who reject Whitehead’s approach find only senseless agencies at work, whether the resulting historical process is fundamentally entropic and meaningless, or whether as with Darwinism it has a negentropic evolutionary direction but no telos. In a crucial sense, therefore, how we assess Whitehead’s philosophy of history depends on how we understand his speculative metaphysics. A fairly detailed bibliography of books, journal articles, dissertations, and unpublished essays on “Process Thought, the Past, and History” can be found at the website of the Center for Process Studies (www.ct4process.org/publications/Biblio/Thematic/History.html).

4.2. Comparisons to Other Philosophies of History The antimetaphysical philosophies spawned by Vienna Circle positivism and Husserlian phenomenology reduce philosophy of history to a question of the character of historical explanation. Since the covering laws crucial to scientific explanations cannot be used legitimately in explaining historical events, historians must be understood as using an alternative mode of explanation, either a mode better than the scientific because better suited to its subject matter or a mode that is fundamentally illegitimate. Both approaches bifurcate reality in a Cartesian or Kantian manner, and so are at odds with the holism defended by a philosophy of organism. Dale Porter has sketched an understanding of historical explanation based on Whiteheadian notions, but he has had no followers in this endeavor. Whitehead’s approach is more akin to the so-called “speculative philosophies of history” that are as old as those developed by Augustine or Joachim but that are usually associated with the work of Hegel, Spengler, and Toynbee. A brief comparison of Whitehead and these philosophers may be helpful. Hegel arranges civilizations in a linear, even if also dialectical, fashion—a developmental sequence of increasingly concrete realizations of Spirit. The essence of Spirit is Freedom, so that human history is an account of the pathway by which the ideal of freedom has come to characterize actual human relationships, an account that occurs, ironically, within a closed system of possibilities. Hegel’s metaphors are all deterministic. The process by which Freedom becomes historically concrete is like the turning of the Earth on its axis: a “great Day’s work of Spirit,” a progression begun at the dawn of civilization and culminating in the noontime

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brilliance of present attainment. Geographically expressed, “the History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning” (Hegel 2004, 103-104). The history of the world is said to be like a person’s development, from the childhood of Freedom’s incarnation in China through its adolescence in the Classical world, and coming to maturity in modern Western civilization, most fully in the self-legislating, rulegoverned states of the Germanic world. “The eastern nations knew only that one is free; the Greek and Roman world only that some are free; while we know that all men absolutely (man as man) are free” (Hegel 2004, 19). In contrast, Whitehead’s account is open ended. He sounds like Hegel when he calls the idea of human freedom “a hidden driving force, haunting humanity, and ever appearing in specialized guise as compulsory on action” (AI 16). But this idea is compulsory only “by reason of its appeal to the uneasy conscience of the age” (AI 16). It is a lure: “such ideas are at once gadflies irritating, and beacons luring” (AI 18), but they do not coerce, and even though they beckon persistently, they can be ignored or their partial attainments undercut. The aim upward is an urge, a disposition in the nature of things, but it is not an inexorable force. The dawn may promise the noontime sun but it does not guarantee it. For Spengler, history is “the marvelous waxing and waning of organic forms”: the budding, blooming, and withering of worlds that “grow with the same superb aimlessness as the flowers of the field” (Spengler 1965, 18, 17). Each world is unique and has no connection to the other worlds, but they all follow the same pattern. Each originates as a creative vital “Culture” struggling to actualize “the full sum of its possibilities;” then as this aim is attained, it “suddenly hardens, it mortifies, its blood congeals, its force breaks down and it becomes Civilization” (1965, 73, 74), entering into a decline leading inexorably to its destruction. Although every new world exhibits this same formal pattern, each does so uniquely. This uniqueness is the “soul” of a Culture, the common “world-feeling” focused through a “primary symbol” that is then expressed in all the various forms of a society’s life, from its art and philosophy to its economics and governance. For instance, Classical Culture is “Apollinian,” its primary symbol “the sensually-present individual body” exhibited in the balanced finite proportionality of its sculptures and temples. Western Culture, in contrast, is “Faustian,” its primary symbol the “pure and limitless space” expressed in the soaring spires of Gothic cathedrals pointing toward the infinite (1965, 97, 117). Freedom is “the freedom to do the necessary or to do nothing” (1965, 414), because it functions always within doubly closed parameters: the limits set by the formal pattern of rise and fall by which all worlds are bound, and the limits set by each world’s unique soul. Spengler liberates us from Hegel’s totalizing progressivism, finding no overarching structure to history, reveling in each new world’s creative and unpredictable uniqueness. The price of this liberation, however, is to impose a necessity at the civilizational level more constraining that Hegel’s. Whitehead like Spengler identifies general standards of civilized order—Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, and Peace—that are ideal features not only of Western civilization but of any civilization. Yet these are only criteria; they are regulative not constitutive principles. Whitehead is closer to Spengler in his description of how a new scheme of interpretation becomes obscurantist, how a vital “Culture” becomes a stultifying “Civilization.” For

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Whitehead, however, recovery, and even transformation, is always possible, even if it becomes less so as obscurantists consolidate their hegemony. The invention of a logic of discovery offers a way through the cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations to a more steadily progressive alternative. But the way need not be taken. Toynbee claims to offer a nondeterministic philosophy of history, even though the twenty-one civilizations he identifies all follow homologous trajectories. They emerge in response to some challenge threatening the ongoing routine course of things and are led by a “creative minority,” an elite from whom the majority take their cue, vesting it with authority to set the norms to which by “mimesis” the majority then conforms. Eventually, however, the creative minority is unable to respond effectively, due to the increased complexity of the challenges it faces or because it has become blinded by it own success. This “nemesis of creativity” can be overcome by a shift to a new creative leadership. Social “breakdown” occurs when this transition goes awry, when the old minority refuses to relinquish its authority, continuing to exercise its control by force instead of mimesis. The creative minority degenerates into a “dominant minority,” but the challenge still goes unanswered. Losing confidence in their leaders and their cohesiveness, the members of the civilization become increasingly desperate to solve their problems and increasingly inept at doing so. The society falls into a “time of troubles,” rallies temporarily by forming an imperial “universal state,” and then finally collapses. With the exception of the Egyptiac and Andean, Toynbee’s civilizations are related to each other in various ways: some by “affiliation,” others as “offshoots,” a few “apparented” to a successor civilization, and many influenced by “encounters” with their contemporaries. These relationships would seem to generate no progressive direction, however—until Toynbee notices the role of “universal churches” in the transition from the second to the third generation in apparented civilizations. He proposes that the relation between civilizations and churches be inverted, that we understand civilizations in their disintegration as serving as vehicles for the development of spirituality and its religious embodiments. From this new perspective, a progressive movement can be traced across these civilizations, leading to the emergence of the four higher religions: Christianity, Islam, Mahayana Buddhism, and Hinduism. The turning “chariot wheel” of the civilizations carries humanity forward toward a higher form of social order in which “Man catches in History a glimpse of the operation of the One True God,” in which mimesis of a creative God will replace mimesis of the creative minority in guiding human thought and action, a mimesis “immune against the tragedy inherent in any mimesis that is directed toward unregenerate human personalities” (1957, 2.106, 108). Toynbee claims to have reached his conclusions about the pattern to human history by a process of empirical generalization, and so struggles constantly to square his identifications with the concrete data upon which they rest, conveying nicely their tentative character as abstract hypotheses. To this degree, his understanding of history as lived and written is akin to Whitehead’s. Toynbee’s God is more traditionally Christian than Whitehead’s, but both need a divine power influencing human choices for history to be meaningful. And both come close to subordinating history to religion, Toynbee in his emphasis on the transfiguring power of God’s love, Whitehead by the everlasting significance given human achievement by its inclusion in God’s consequent nature.

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For Whiteheadians, however, the problem with Toynbee’s philosophy of history is that his civilizations are akin to instances of an Aristotelian natural kind. Toynbee avoids the deterministic trajectories of Hegel and Spengler, for any one of his civilizations might fail to fulfill its potential: aborted before it can mature, swallowed inopportunely by another civilization, stultified by an overwhelmingly hostile environment. Insofar as they fulfill their promise, however, they follow the same abstract trajectory from origin to end. The acorn need not sprout nor develop properly, but should it do so an oak is the only thing it can become. Human history for Whitehead is not without iterative patterns, but in contrast to the other philosophies of history these patterns lack predictive power because there is no necessity to their form, nor any generalizable reason for why they might be repeated. Every actual occasion traverses the same formal phases from initial aim to satisfaction, and I have argued that this structure can be applied analogically to civilizations—but not literally. The categoreal conditions describing our cosmic epoch determine no direction to its movement, provide no governing telos. History, as Whitehead understands it, can be interpreted in terms of threads of continuity but it has no overall shape or kind of shape. There are stories to be told but no overall story, journeys undertaken but no final destination to be reached. If Hegel, Spengler, and Toynbee are exemplars of what a philosophy of history entails, then we must conclude that Whitehead does not offer us a philosophy of history at all, even though we can find in his writings weak echoes and pale shadows of such a philosophy. Fittingly, on one of the few occasions when Whitehead discusses the work of an actual historian—Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—he writes that it “demonstrates a twofold tale” (AI 5). On the one hand, it traces in concrete detail the thousand-year decline of a civilization, showing the “greatness of that Empire” and the slow slippage from that greatness toward “the horrors” of its final collapse. On the other hand, however, Gibbon’s book is about “the dominant spirit of his own times,” eighteenth-century Western Civilization, “the silver age of the modern European Renaissance.” Like its Roman counterpart, Gibbon’s silver age was a period “oblivious of its own imminent destruction” by novel forces, senseless and intellectual, beginning to emerge at the fringes of a social order presumed inviolable. “Thus Gibbon narrates the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and exemplifies the prelude of the Decline and Fall of his own type of culture” (AI 5). There are enough strands of influence and patterns of repetition in history to justify the parallels, but they are functions of a specific historian’s standpoint and so shed as much light on where that historian stands as on the vista toward which it points us. Philosophies of history, so understood, are among the many schemata of interpretation by which in endlessly changing circumstances Truthful Beauty is endlessly sought by finite human beings, but never adequately attained.

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Works Cited and Further Readings Allan, George. 1986a. The Importances of the Past: A Meditation on the Authority of Tradition (Albany: State University of New York Press). Allan, George. 1986b. “The ‘Conning’ of History,” in Hegel and Whitehead: Contemporary Perspectives on Systematic Philosophy, edited by George R. Lucas, Jr. (Albany, State University of New York Press Press), 313-22. Brown, Delwin. 1975. “Hope for the Human Future: Neibuhr, Whitehead and Utopian Expectation,” Iliff Review 32. 3, 3-18. Creegan, Robert F. 1942. “The Actual Occasion and Actual History,” Journal of Philosophy 39. 10, 268-73. Feuer, Lewis S. 1952. “What is Philosophy of History?” Journal of Philosophy 49. 10, 329-40. Gibbon, Edward. 2000. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, abridged by David Womersley (New York, Penguin). Originally published in three volumes, 1776, 1781, 1788. Griffin, David. 2001. Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, Cornell University Press). Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 2004. The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree, introduced by C. J. Friedrich. Preface by Charles Hegel (New York, Dover). Originally published as Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 1837. Hocking, Richard. 1967. “The Polarity of Dialectical History and Process Cosmology,” The Christian Scholar 50. 3, 177-83. Johnson, A. H. 1946. “Whitehead’s Philosophy of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 7. 2, 234-49. Johnson, A. H. 1962. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Civilization (New York: Dover). Parsons, Howard. 1967. “History as Viewed by Marx and Whitehead,” The Christian Scholar 50. 3, 273-89. Porter, Dale. H. 1981. The Emergence of the Past: A Theory of Historical Explanation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Spengler, Oswald. 1965. The Decline of the West, abridged by Arthur Helps, translated by Charles Francis Atkinson (New York, Random House). Originally published in two volumes as Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Munich, C. H. Becksche), 1918, 1922; one-volume abridgement by Helmut Werner. Swabey, Marie Collins. 1954. The Judgment of History (New York, Philosophical Library). Toynbee, Arnold J. 1947, 1957. A Study of History, abridged in two volumes by D. C. Somervell (New York and London, Oxford University Press). Originally published in twelve volumes 1934-1961. Vögelin, Erich Hermann Wilhelm [Voegelin, Eric]. 1957-1987. Order and History, Five Volumes (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press). Williams, Daniel Day. 1949. God's Grace and Man's Hope (New York: Harper). Williams, Daniel Day. 1971. “Time, Progress, and the Kingdom of God,” in Process Philosophy and Christian Thought, edited by Delwin Brown, Ralph E. James, Jr., and Gene Reeves (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill), 441-63.

IX. Metaphysics Metaphysics and Cosmology Jorge Luis Nobo

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Whitehead defines speculative philosophy as “the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted” (PR 3). A careful study of Whitehead’s philosophical works reveals that, implicit in this definition, there is an important distinction between speculative metaphysics and speculative cosmology.1 In what follows, I first argue for and clarify the distinction; then I try to show that the distinction is an important one as it greatly affects the interpretation, critique, development, and application of Whitehead’s philosophical ideas.

1. The Distinction between Metaphysics and Cosmology Regarding Whitehead’s definition of speculative philosophy, we may take the distinction between metaphysics and cosmology to be an internal distinction between, on the one hand, the set of statements conveying the speculative system of general ideas considered apart from any application of any idea in the system to any element of our experience and, on the other hand, the set of statements conveying a speculative interpretation of all major elements of our experience in terms of all of the ideas in the said system. In this respect, Whitehead’s formulation, in Process and Reality, of the categoreal scheme of his philosophy of organism is an attempt (only partially successful) to convey his scheme of metaphysical ideas apart from any application to our experience. In turn, the rest of his philosophical writings—but particularly Science and the Modern World, Process and Reality, and Adventures of Ideas—are devoted to the interpretation of elements of our experience in terms of that metaphysical scheme.2 In this respect, then, the distinction between metaphysics and cosmology is a distinction between pure and applied theory. In a deeper and more important respect, however, the distinction between metaphysics and cosmology is the distinction between what a speculative philosophy theorizes to be the necessary features of any possible world and what it theorizes to be the contingent, though perhaps pervasive, features of the one and only actual world. Whitehead does make this distinction explicit, but only in intra-systematic terms. For he explicitly distinguishes between

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what must be true of all possible cosmic epochs and what is true only of our own cosmic epoch or, at most, also of those presupposed vaster epochs within which our own epoch is set (PR 3536, 90-92, 96-98, 197-99, 288-89). In this respect, note, first, that a cosmic epoch is any society involving a vast number of successive generations of occasions, and that “our cosmic epoch” is simply “that widest society of actual entities whose immediate relevance to ourselves is traceable” (PR 91). Note also that, for Whitehead, the actual world is an ever expanding universal nexus of actual occasions within which are set all narrower nexs, including all cosmic epochs. Whitehead’s general intention, therefore, is to distinguish between what must be true of any possible world and what, in addition, is true of the actual world. It must be admitted that Whitehead often blurs the distinction between metaphysics and cosmology. Indeed, in some contexts, he uses interchangeably terms such as “a scheme of cosmological ideas” (PR xii) and a scheme of “metaphysical first principles” (PR 4-5). Also, at times, the immediate context of a doctrinal discussion does not readily reveal whether the doctrine under consideration is metaphysical or cosmological—perhaps because, as he says, “it is difficult to draw the line distinguishing characteristics so general that we cannot conceive any alternatives, from characteristics so special that we imagine them to belong merely to our cosmic epoch” (PR 288). Nonetheless, it is clear that Whitehead in fact makes a distinction between principles and concepts that are indispensable for the description and analysis of any possible world, or at least of any possible cosmic epoch, and concepts and principles that are indispensable only for the analysis of our own immediate cosmic epoch. Thus, for him: “There can be no cosmic epoch for which the singular propositions derived from a metaphysical proposition differ in truth value from those of any other cosmic epoch” (PR 197). By the same token, there is, for him, such a thing as “a truth concerning this cosmos, but not a metaphysical truth” (PR 198). Accordingly, when clearly distinguished from metaphysics, “Cosmology is the effort to frame a scheme of the general character of the present stage of the universe. The cosmological scheme should present the genus, for which the special schemes of the sciences are species” (FR 76, emphasis added). But such a cosmological scheme of ideas must contain concepts and principles that are less general than those of the metaphysical scheme; for the cosmological scheme must be adequate to the contingent features of our cosmic epoch. It follows that it is the concepts and principles of the metaphysical scheme that truly have the widest conceivable generality and that they thus serve as the ultimate genera of which the concepts and principles of the cosmological scheme are the contingent species. For example, electronic and protonic societies are cosmological species of the metaphysical genus of social nexus. However, cosmology must deal with our cosmic epoch’s necessary features just as much as with its contingent ones. Indeed, it must indicate how some of its genera are contingent specifications of metaphysical ones. So the cosmological scheme presupposes and supplements the metaphysical one and cannot be separated from it without loss of meaning and explanatory value. But by the same token, the metaphysical scheme is rescued from the vagueness attending all ultimate generalities by its embodiment in the cosmological scheme. And the latter scheme itself gains meaning by its interpretation of the various elements of our experience and by its critical confrontation with the more specialized schemes of thought deriving from other

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philosophical systems and from science, religion, ethics, aesthetics, art, literature, history and common sense. But the application of the cosmological scheme to this task is also the application of the metaphysical scheme of which it is a contingent specification. In this very important sense, the cosmological scheme includes and exceeds the metaphysical scheme. For this reason, any reference to the cosmological scheme involves an implicit reference to the metaphysical scheme. Of course, the distinction between the two schemes of ideas is not the distinction between pure and applied theory. But the applied theory, the interpretation, cannot be torn from the theory being applied. In the end, therefore, the metaphysical and cosmological schemes respectively comprise ideas of ultimate and penultimate generality indispensably relevant to the understanding of every element of our experience and, hence, may be lumped together under the heading of pure speculative theory. In turn, the comprehensive interpretation or description of our experience in terms of the complete scheme of metaphysical and cosmological ideas is applied speculative theory, which we may think of either as concrete epochal cosmology or as full-bodied speculative philosophy or, simply, as philosophical cosmology. I next suggest some of the ways in which the distinction between metaphysical and cosmological ideas is important for the interpretation, critique, development, and application of Whitehead’s metaphysical ideas.

2. Implications for the Interpretation of Whitehead’s Speculative Scheme of Ideas Regarding the interpretation of Whitehead’s metaphysical ideas, we should bear in mind that the organic categoreal scheme presented by Whitehead in Process and Reality cannot be construed as a final and accurate formulation of the metaphysical principles and categories of the organic philosophy. In fact, as presented in PR, the organic categoreal scheme is both redundant and incomplete. In respect to its redundancy, Whitehead himself tells us that the third and fifth Categoreal Obligations can be eliminated from the scheme because they are only special cases of the second and fourth Categoreal Obligations, respectively (PR 227-28, 250). In addition, other instances of redundancy become obvious when we compare the twenty-seventh Category of Explanation with both the tenth and twelfth Categories of Explanation; the twenty-fourth Category of Explanation with the sixth through eighth Categories of Explanation; the twentyfifth, with the eighth, Category of Explanation; and the twenty-sixth Category of Explanation with the second Categoreal Obligation (PR 20-28). In respect to the incompleteness of the categoreal scheme of Process and Reality, Whitehead acknowledged, in conversation with A.H. Johnson, the omission from the scheme of metaphysical notions such as continuity, emergence, and God’s Primordial Nature.3 To these three omissions I would add, at a minimum, the omission of the Receptacle or eternal extensive continuum (AI 201-02; PR 72, 76-77, 308-09), the omission of supersession4 (IS 240), and the omission of objective immortality (IS 243). In this regard, I take the notion of continuity alluded to in Whitehead’s conversation with Johnson as a reference to the metaphysical doctrine of

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conformation and not as a reference to the eternal extensive continuum (AI 182-84, 252-55). In other words, I take Whitehead to have in mind the qualitative, rather than the extensive, continuity of nature. If I am wrong on this point, then the doctrine of conformation is also omitted from the categoreal scheme, and my views concerning the metaphysical theory of eternal extension are strengthened all the more (1986). The complete formulation of the organic metaphysical scheme, then, is unfinished business. In any attempt to complete its formulation, we must remember that Whitehead, in the prefaces of his various philosophical works, repeatedly tells us that his books are meant to complement and supplement each other in giving expression to his philosophical system. Of the more metaphysical works—SMW, PR, and AI—he says that they “can be read separately; but they supplement each other’s omissions and compressions” (AI vii). Of immediate relevance is his reference to the compressions of his thought; for he often achieves such a compression by discussing a metaphysical idea not in its full generality, but only in terms of its contingent cosmological specifications. One such idea, which for decades I have labored to save from interpretive neglect, and which I will use here by way of example, is that of the Receptacle, or metaphysical continuum of eternal extension. As I have argued in detail elsewhere (Nobo 1986, 1997, 1998), the eternal continuum of extension is an aspect of that ultimate reality of which the creativity is another aspect. As eternal, this continuum is not created by the becoming of actual entities; on the contrary, all actual entities presuppose and are conditioned by it. Actual entities come to be in it, each bounding, structuring, and embodying its own finite region of the continuum and thus converting what was merely a potential region into an actual, or proper, one. The metaphysical properties of this continuum are indispensable for understanding the becoming, being, and interconnectedness of actual entities. Three of those properties—separativeness, modality, and prehensiveness—are of particular relevance. By reason of the separative property of extension, proper formative regions, regions embodied by real occasions, must be each outside the others. Thus, the separativeness of extension amounts to a principle of mutual transcendence. It follows that the separativeness of extension is best understood as a metaphysical imposition of regional discreteness upon all actualities. All actual occasions are mutually transcendent because they embody mutually transcendent formative standpoints. This is true regardless of the supersessional relation obtaining between any two occasions. It should be noted that the separateness of proper regions does not preclude their possible extensive contiguity. Contiguous proper regions are said to externally adjoin each other, or, since internal adjunction does not apply to proper regions, simply to adjoin each other.5 Whereas separativeness is the reason why formative loci transcend each the others, modality is the reason why such loci are each projected into the others and, hence, as projections, are each immanent in the others. The projection of one region into another is termed the modal presence of the former in the latter. It is also termed the modal aspect of the former from the latter. The entire continuum of eternal extension is modally projected within each of its regions, but the projection is crystallized, or made permanent, only in actual, or proper, regions. Modality, then, is the reason why the formative region of each occasion reproduces within itself

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the extensive structure of the state of the universe by which it is begotten. Thus each region mirrors the state of the universe that gave it birth; and thus, too, every region of the universe is modally present in every other region and in itself. Modality thus accounts for the reciprocal immanence of any two occasions; for the modal presences of other regions in a given proper region serve as the niches for the three modes of objectification by which all occasions are present in it: causal, presentational, and anticipational. In other words, occasions are modally present in one another at least in respect to the extensive regions from which they have arisen, are arising, or will arise. Finally, the continuum’s property of prehensiveness, which is the integral wholeness of a region’s structure of modal presences, explains how “many objects can be welded into the real unity of one experience” (PR 67). Prehensiveness explains, in addition, how the achieved real unity remains in existence as a stubborn fact even after the experiential activity that engendered it has completely ceased. Of great importance for the critique, development, and application of Whitehead’s metaphysics is the fact that, in the nature of eternal extension, there is absolutely no metaphysical necessity that regions embodied by actual occasions should form with each other a continuum, or plenum, of actualized extension (PR 35-36). Nonetheless, sense-perception and classical physics alike suggest the existence of such a plenum. So Whitehead takes the continuity of actualized extension to be “a special condition arising from the society of creatures which constitute our immediate cosmic epoch” (PR 36). Indeed, the vastest cosmic epoch posited by Whitehead is defined by the relation of external extensive connection (PR 96-97). Any occasion in it externally adjoins, or is contiguous with, a finite set of other occasions. Within this cosmic epoch is another epoch defined by the fact that its occasions exhibit geometrical axioms allowing for the definition of straight lines (PR 97). Within this latter geometrical society is set our cosmic epoch, made up of four-dimensional occasions constituting a spatio-temporal continuum and such that the majority of them constitute electro-magnetic societies (PR 98). Many of Whitehead’s discussions of extensive continuity are primarily concerned with the continuum of actualized extension common to all the cosmic epochs whose respective defining characteristics we have just noted. But, in those discussions, many of the functions attributed to this ever-expanding plenum of actualized extension are really the metaphysical functions of eternal extension. This fact, however, can be discovered only by reading Whitehead’s books in terms of each other and by carefully looking to decompress his exposition to reveal the necessary metaphysical ideas lurking within the contingent cosmological ones. Only then, for example, will one notice that separativeness, modality, and prehensiveness—though discussed in SMW as, first, properties of space, then of time, and finally of space-time—are really properties of eternal extension (SMW 64-65, 69-74, 91, 103, 150-53); for physical time and physical space are, after all, only the spatialization and temporalization of extension (PR 28889). Similarly, only after one is aware of the distinction between metaphysics and cosmology will one notice that the metaphysical principle of the mutual immanence of occasions cannot be a function of a contingent continuum of actualized extension, but must be a function of a necessary, uncreated continuum of extension whose potential regions necessarily serve as the

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loci for the becoming, being, and interconnectedness of all occasions (AI 191-200; see Nobo 1986, 252-59).

3. Implications for the Use of Whitehead’s Speculative Scheme of Ideas Disengaging Whitehead’s metaphysical ideas from their cosmological specifications not only enables a better interpretation of Whitehead’s philosophy, but also facilitates the critique and development of the total speculative scheme and of its application to the interpretation of experience (Hättich 2004; Nobo 1986, 1997, 1998, 2004; Tanaka 1987, 1992). In particular, the interpretation of various elements of experience may be altered to fit new data, especially new scientific theories. Here we must remember that a significant portion of the cosmology must address the general character of physical reality, where physical reality is the cosmic epoch insofar as it is the subject matter of the various physical sciences. For that reason, the cosmology must, at the time of its formulation, agree with the prevalent scientific theories of its day (PR 323). It is true, in this last regard, that agreement does not mean slavish conformity; for “the cosmology and the schemes of the sciences are mutually critics of each other” (FR 77). In particular, the metaphysical resources of a speculative cosmology allow it to critique the concepts of a given science, to challenge its interpretation of empirical findings, and, most importantly, to offer alternative concepts and interpretations. Nonetheless, Whitehead interpreted our cosmic epoch in line with the deliveries of special and general relativity, though not without criticisms and divergences. Thus, his cosmology shares relativity theory’s emphasis on a spatio-temporal continuum of actuality, on continuous change, and on local causation. On the other hand, it was the then emerging field of quantum physics that seemed to him to be most in keeping with the metaphysics of actual occasions. Indeed, Whitehead greeted each advance in quantum theory with some comment to the effect that the theoretical development or the empirical discovery was just what his metaphysical theory would lead us to expect (PR 254, 238-39). He thus saw his cosmology as capable of doing equal justice to continuous quantities and changes, as required by relativity, and to discrete quantities and abrupt transitions, as required by quantum physics. Nonetheless, the more developed and technical aspects of his physical cosmology are explicitly designed to accord with relativity physics. In hindsight, some of those accommodations needlessly stretch, overlook, or even do violence to some of Whitehead’s most profound metaphysical insights. Whitehead’s first accommodation to relativity physics is precisely the cosmological doctrine that the formative loci of actual occasions are contiguous, each to some, and thereby constitute an ever-expanding continuum of actualized, or physical, extension. Moreover, in this physical continuum, all immediate predecessors of a given occasion must be extensively contiguous with it. In turn, it must be extensively contiguous with all its immediate successors. Thus, the continuum expands by the addition of new occasions, each adjoining its set of immediate predecessors. Moreover, because the formative locus of each occasion is a quantum of extension

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that is begotten all at once to constitute the occasion’s dative phase, and because the occasion embodying that quantum becomes causally efficacious all at once when the occasion is completed, the physical continuum grows by the addition of causally efficacious extensive quanta, one quantum for each occasion, or subject-superject. Whitehead is speaking of this physical continuum, and not of the presupposed eternal continuum, when he says that in our cosmic epoch there is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming (PR 35). A second accommodation to relativity theory is the specific number of dimensions attributed to the physical continuum. Accordingly, Whitehead claims that “the physical extensive continuum with which we are concerned in this cosmic epoch is four dimensional” (PR 305). Moreover, the four dimensions have the spatio-temporal structure and properties required by the physical theory. In our cosmic epoch, therefore, occasions are four dimensional, spatiotemporally structured, and spatio-temporally related. This means that any two supersessionally successive occasions will be mutually contiguous in physical time. In conjunction with the first accommodation, it means also that any significant relation of efficient causation can hold only between occasions that adjoin in physical time. From the cosmological point of view, this restriction means that an occasion’s only significant conformation is to the causal objectification within itself of its immediate predecessors or, equivalently, to those past occasions that adjoin it in physical time (PR 307). Of course the non-immediate predecessors also affect the occasion, but only by the mediation of immediate predecessors, and only as filtered, as it were, through chains of successive occasions leading up to the occasion in question (PR 307). From the physical point of view, the restriction in question means that all efficient causation is local. A final accommodation, relative to my limited purposes in this essay, is the emphasis on the extensive continuity of physical reality, and the attendant emphasis on the relation of extensive connection, where the term extensive connection means the immediate or mediate external adjunction of extensive regions. With this last twofold accommodation, the atomicity of actual occasions passes out of the picture, as does their autonomous self-definition (PR 292). The emphasis is on the coordinate divisibility of any one formative locus and also on the coordinate aggregation of contiguous formative loci (PR 286-87); for “just as for some purposes, one atomic actuality can be treated as though it were many coordinate actualities, in the same way, for other purposes, a nexus of many actualities can be treated as though it were one actuality” (PR 287). This accommodation to relativity theory, then, is justified because it is entirely “an empirical question to decide in relation to special topics whether the distinction between a coordinate division and a true actual entity is, or is not, relevant. In so far as it is not relevant we are dealing with an indefinitely subdivisible extensive universe” (PR 285).6 Therefore, for the purposes of relativity physics, the natural order exhibited by our cosmic epoch is a morphological scheme of extensive connection subject to the possibilities associated with certain abstractive hierarchies of eternal objects of the objective species (PR 292). In our world that scheme defines and limits all important physical relations. In considering this scheme, the atomicity of actual occasions “each with its concrescent privacy, has been entirely eliminated. We are left with the theory of extensive connection, of whole and part, of points, lines, and surfaces, and of straightness and flatness” (PR 292).

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None of these accommodations to relativity theory are required by the metaphysics of actual occasions. They represent an attempt to do justice to characters of the physical world that are apparently discerned by relativity theory and its empirical findings. But quantum theory, at least under some interpretations of it, discerns other characters that also need interpretation and accommodation: for example, foam-like space-time, discontinuous or abrupt changes, and holistic or non-local influences. These quantum characters seem much closer in nature to what Whitehead’s strictly metaphysical theory would lead us to expect in any cosmic epoch. This is not to say that the characters associated with relativity theory are only apparent; but it is to suggest that they may be more derivative than the quantum characters, and that they may represent physical reality at a lower resolution than do the characters of quantum theory. Fresh thinking is required to divine the proper relationships between the two sets of characters, and between both sets jointly and the characters of everyday human experience. From the perspective of Whitehead’s metaphysics, such thinking can be made all the more flexible by recognizing the metaphysical arbitrariness of the characters attributed to our cosmic epoch in light of the original theoretical prevalence of relativity physics. Whitehead provides frequent and explicit reminders of this arbitrariness. “The arbitrary, as it were ‘given,’ element in the laws of nature warn us,” he says, “that we are in a special cosmic epoch” (PR 91). He then adds the suggestive comment: “This epoch is characterized by electronic and protonic actual entities and by yet more ultimate actual entities which can be dimly discerned in the quanta of energy” (PR 91). The electromagnetic laws governing the various electronic and protonic societies are themselves arbitrary, and have evolved with the evolution of the societies as their constituent occasions evolved their various habits of conformation. “But the arbitrary factors in the order of nature are not confined to the electromagnetic laws. There are the four dimensions of the spatio-temporal continuum, the geometrical axioms, even the mere dimensional character of the continuum—apart from the particular number of dimensions—and the fact of measurability” (PR 91). It should be noted that even in his cosmological accommodation of relativity theory, Whitehead modifies that theory in ways dictated by the inherent association of his metaphysical scheme with the concept of quanta of action. There are, of course, differences in the mathematical formulation of the physical theory. But I now have in mind differences that are strictly due to Whitehead’s metaphysical outlook. Because of that outlook, he rejects the notion of empty space; for space, in his theory, can only be an abstraction from non-social nexs of occasions, so that real physical space is an ether of low-grade occasions or, in his earlier terminology, an ether of events. For the same reason, and to avoid the paradoxes that would result from the application of Zeno’s method, he rejects the notion of continuous transmission through empty space (PR 307). “Thus the notion of continuous transmission in science must be replaced by the notion of immediate transmission through a route of successive quanta of extensiveness. These quanta of extensiveness are the basic regions of successive contiguous occasions” (PR 307). The causal objectification of one occasion in another and the conformation of the latter to the former are then physically significant only when the occasions involved are supersessionally successive and extensively contiguous. As noted above, this cosmological doctrine makes causation a strictly local affair.

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A contemporary cosmological interpretation of quantum physics, however, can look to the truly metaphysical doctrine. Thus, immediately after the passage just quoted above, Whitehead adds: “It is not necessary for the philosophy of organism entirely to deny that there is direct objectification of one occasion in a later occasion which is not contiguous with it. Indeed, the contrary opinion would seem more natural for this doctrine. Provided that physical science maintains its denial of ‘action at a distance,’ the safer guess is that direct objectification is practically negligible except for contiguous occasions; but that this practical negligibility is a characteristic of the present cosmic epoch, without any metaphysical generality” (PR 307-08; emphasis added). Since quantum physics famously does not deny action at a distance, we are now free to explore the ability of Whitehead’s metaphysics to suggest explanations of holistic influences, entanglement, and other puzzling quantum phenomena. Explanations of this sort have been carried out already by, for example, Stapp (1975, 1979), Tanaka (1987, 1992), Nobo (2004) and, in by far the greatest detail, Hättich (2004), with the last three being very much influenced by the distinction between the metaphysical and cosmological doctrines of extension. But this essay is not the place in which to examine these explanations. My immediate concern has been to emphasize the metaphysical arbitrariness of cosmological doctrines expressly designed to accommodate relativity theory when that theory was still the last word in the physicist’s conception of reality. A different way of accommodating that theory is necessary in light of developments in quantum theory that Whitehead did not live to witness, but which make his metaphysical theory seem all the more relevant to a thorough revision of his organic physical cosmology. That relevance, I have been suggesting, is more likely to be noticed and put to use if we carefully separate Whitehead’s metaphysical doctrines from his cosmological ones.

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Notes 1

Much of my own work on Whitehead has been devoted to separating his metaphysics from his cosmology (1986). On that basis, I have critiqued and developed Whitehead’s metaphysical doctrines and supplemented them with doctrines of my own (1997, 1998). I have also made some suggestions for the application of the revised metaphysics to contemporary cosmological issues (2004). 2 I hold, but will not argue here, that aspects of the metaphysical scheme are implicitly very much at work in Whitehead’s earlier works in the philosophy of nature. 3 Johnson, A. H. (1952) Whitehead's Theory of Reality (reprint: New York, Dover, 1962, p. 177). 4 Supersession is one of the terms Whitehead uses to denote metaphysical time in contradistinction with physical time. The latter, as Whitehead understands it, is a contingent feature of our cosmic epoch. See IS 240-47 and as indexed in Nobo (1986). 5 I use this language, and not Whitehead’s language of external connection, to avoid the confusions generated by Whitehead’s use of the term connectedness to refer, on the one hand, to the metaphysical relation of mutual immanence that must obtain between any two proper extensive regions, and to refer also, on the other hand, to the purely topological relation that obtains between specified pairs of extensive regions. In the latter sense of the term, “no region is connected with all the other regions” (PR 295). For a discussion of the adjunction and injunction of events see PNK 102-03. Notice that separated events may adjoin but cannot injoin. Adjunction is the closest type of boundary union possible for a pair of separated events. Injunction is the closest type of boundary union possible between an event and an another event over which it extends, or, equivalently between an event and one of its proper parts. If restored to its presupposed metaphysical context, the relation of extending over is the relation of a later occasion including the objectification of an earlier occasion. An occasion’s formative locus extends over the entire universe as objectified for it; and the causal objectifications it contains are such that each contains other objectifications. The concerns of PNK are cosmological and assume a deliberately limited point of view. Accordingly, its exposition assumes, not without qualifications and misgivings, that events form an ever growing continuum of actualized, or physical, extension. 6 For high-grade occasions, such as those constituting streams of human experience, or for highgrade societies of occasions, such as living organisms, the distinction between an actual occasion and a coordinate division is all too relevant. But for low-grade occasions, such as those constituting empty space, and for low-grade societies, such as electronic and protonic societies, the distinction is irrelevant because the role played by the mental poles of the occasions involved is trivial, at least from our limited viewpoint (PR 285).

The Mystery of Creativity William Jay Garland

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1. The Principle of Creativity Creativity is the ultimate principle in Whitehead’s philosophy. This is clear from the opening chapter of his magnum opus, Process and Reality. Whitehead advances a general dictum concerning all philosophical systems, and then he applies this dictum to the basic concepts in his own system: In all philosophical theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed ‘creativity,’ and God is its primordial, non-temporal accident (PR 7). Whitehead goes on to say that we cannot claim that the ultimate [creativity] is more real than its “accidents” are, by which he means the “attributes” or particular “instantiations” of creativity, namely, the individual actual entities. Instead, Whitehead holds that actual entities are the basic facts in the universe and that creativity has no actuality of its own in abstraction from the actual entities in which it is embodied. This is what distinguishes Whitehead from an ontological monist such as Spinoza, who grants superior actuality to his ultimate, God or Nature. By contrast, Whitehead is firmly committed to ontological pluralism. Actual entities are his basic particulars, and he recognizes a plurality of these actual entities. Even when he proclaims creativity to be the ultimate principle in his metaphysics, there is a tension in Whitehead’s thought. If creativity is the ultimate principle, then why does it depend upon actual entities for its actuality? Whitehead is clear about the type of ontological monism he wants to avoid, but he is not as clear about the alternative viewpoint he espouses. More generally, what is the exact relationship between the ultimate principle of creativity and the ultimate units of fact (actual entities) in Whitehead’s thought? This is a question that has vexed many commentators on Whitehead’s metaphysics. Indeed, there is an element of mystery surrounding Whitehead’s principle of creativity. It is difficult to say positive things about creativity just because of its universality and ultimacy. Whitehead frames this issue as follows: Creativity is without a character of its own in exactly the same sense in which Aristotelian ‘matter’ is without a character of its own. It is that ultimate notion of the highest generality at the base of actuality. It cannot be characterized, because all characters are more special than itself (PR 31).

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Philosophy Department, The University of the South, 735 University Avenue, Sewanee, TN 37383; www.sewanee.edu; [email protected].

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The implication is that we cannot make any positive claims about what creativity is in its own right. Creativity is completely formless and indeterminate in itself; in this sense, it is analogous to Plato’s Receptacle in the Timaeus, although Whitehead himself never uses this analogy to illuminate creativity. Furthermore, creativity is not an actual entity, nor indeed any other kind of entity that Whitehead recognizes in his metaphysical system. Instead, Whitehead claims that “creativity,” “one,” and “many” are “the ultimate notions involved in the meaning of the synonymous terms ‘thing,’ ‘being,’ and ‘entity’” (PR 21). This indicates that creativity is the ground behind all specific entities in Whitehead’s system; indeed, he often refers to creativity as his “ultimate principle” (PR 21). Whitehead adds the qualification that creativity is not “an external agency with its own ulterior purposes” (PR 222). It is not an agent in the scene of world history alongside the multitude of actual entities which are constantly coming into being and then perishing into the past. Nonetheless, in another passage in Process and Reality, Whitehead refers to creativity as the “pure notion of the activity” which the actual entities condition and characterize when they come into being (PR 31); here he seems to indicate that there is indeed a positive way to talk about creativity. In some sense it is an agency, as Jan Van der Veken correctly observes; it is an “internal agency” that is intrinsic to each actual entity in which it is embodied (Van der Veken 1990, 182). Moreover, as I will later argue, creativity is not just an “internal” or “immanent” agency but also a “transcendent” agency, although not an “external” one with purposes of its own. Thus, we already see that an air of mystery or paradox surrounds Whitehead’s principle of creativity. In one sense, we cannot say what it is, and in another sense we can.1 The situation becomes even more complicated when we consider works other than Process and Reality. It is well recognized that Whitehead makes much stronger claims about the metaphysical status of creativity in Science and the Modern World. There he speaks of creativity as a “substantial activity” which is individualized into a multiplicity of “modes,” each of which is a single actual entity (SMW 177-78). Here Whitehead explicitly invites a comparison of creativity with Spinoza’s infinite substance, Deus sive Natura. Although he does not call his substantial activity “creativity” in this work, it is clear that it has all the functions that creativity assumes in his later writings. Whitehead first uses the term “creativity” in Religion in the Making; indeed, Lewis Ford reports that Whitehead may have coined this term, which has subsequently been used to refer primarily to human creativeness (Ford 1987, 179). Be that as it may, Whitehead no longer describes creativity as a “substantial activity.” Instead, it now becomes one of the three “formative elements” which account for the existence the actual temporal world, and its main function is to serve as the principle of novelty (RM 90). Whitehead cites creativity as the reason behind the temporal passage in the actual world, but he is careful to emphasize the interdependency between the principle of creativity and the individual actual entities in which it instantiates itself. Whitehead also introduces the notion of “transition” in his account of creativity (RM 92); this will become a crucial aspect of the creative process that he describes in Process and Reality. When we get to Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead again seems to change his attitude toward the nature of creativity. Here he gives a positive characterization of creativity as the “factor of

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activity” (AI 179) in the world, although he does not describe it as “substantial” anymore. He also assigns to creativity the function of “driv[ing] the world” (AI 179). Perhaps his best-known description of creativity is as follow: The creativity of the world is the throbbing emotion of the past hurling itself into a new transcendent fact. It is the flying dart, of which Lucretius speaks, hurled beyond the bounds of the world (AI 177). There may indeed be a rhetorical flourish to this passage, as Lewis Ford suspects (Ford 1987, 183). Nonetheless, it is clear that Whitehead now grants a stronger role to creativity in explaining the ongoingness of the universe than he does in his more cautious statements from Process and Reality. Furthermore, the passages from Adventures of Ideas emphatically affirm the active and energetic nature of creativity, in contrast with the weaker descriptions of creativity as a “metaphysical principle” in Religion in the Making and Process and Reality. It seems as though Whitehead was not satisfied with the more limited role of creativity in Process and Reality and accordingly decided to add greater “life and motion” to his ultimate principle.

2. Three Interpretations of Creativity Our next task will be to consider a representative sample of prominent interpretations of creativity in the literature on Whitehead. To organize this survey, I will focus on the “metaphysical description” that Whitehead presents in Chapter III of Religion in the Making. There he makes a significant distinction between the actual temporal world and the formative elements that are presupposed by this world. The actual temporal world consists of the procession of actual entities that come into being and then perish into the past. Whitehead calls these basic units of reality “epochal occasions” in Religion in the Making, but this is simply another term for what he will later call “actual entities.” He also describes these actual entities as the “creatures” of creativity. They are the final facts of which the actual temporal world is composed (RM 91). The first of the formative elements is creativity. Whitehead claims that creativity is the reason behind the “temporal passage to novelty” (RM 90) that forms such a prominent feature of the actual world. The second formative element is the realm of ideal entities, or forms, “which are in themselves not actual, but are such that they are exemplified in everything that is actual, according to some proportion of relevance” (RM 90). These are the entities that Whitehead will later call “eternal objects.” The third formative element is a non-temporal actual entity that imposes order and harmony on the temporal world; it does this by making certain eternal objects in the realm of possibility relevant to each new actual entity that arises. This non-temporal actual entity is what Whitehead calls God. In Religion in the Making, Whitehead refers exclusively to the primordial nature of God; he has not yet concluded that God must also have a consequent nature that develops along with the unfolding of the actual temporal world. I have concentrated upon Whitehead’s metaphysical analysis in Religion in the Making in order to establish a framework for situating the most prominent interpretations of creativity. My thesis is that some commentators have sought to interpret creativity as an eternal object, while others have sought to conflate the function of creativity with the function of God. The most

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common interpretation, however, seeks to treat creativity as merely a generic character of actual entities. Creativity is thought to designate the fact that each actual entity is self-creative or causa sui. Accordingly, these commentators have sought to minimize the role of creativity and to maximize the role of actual entities in Whitehead’s metaphysics. I consider all three interpretations to be deficient in some way and will highlight their deficiencies in the sections that follow.

2.1. Creativity as Eternal Object? The first interpretation we will consider claims that creativity should be seen as an eternal object that every actual entity must illustrate as it comes into being. What Whitehead calls “eternal objects” are more commonly designated as “forms” or “universals.” Whitehead also describes eternal objects as “Pure Potentials for the Specific Determination of Fact” and as “Forms of Definiteness” (PR 22). Both A.H. Johnson and R.J. Connelly defend the view that creativity should be interpreted as the universal characteristic which every actual entity must exemplify; this is what distinguishes creativity from the other eternal objects.2 There is textual support for this interpretation in the language Whitehead uses to describe creativity when he places it into the Category of the Ultimate: ‘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 (PR 21, emphasis added). To speak of creativity as the “universal of universals” certainly seems to align it with the eternal objects, which Whitehead at times calls “universals,” even though he dislikes this term. This designation also indicates that creativity occupies a special place in the realm of forms, in that it must always be exhibited by every novel actual entity. Johnson also provides anecdotal evidence to indicate that Whitehead himself agreed with his interpretation of the relationship between creativity and eternal objects. Johnson came to Harvard in 1936 to talk with Whitehead about various aspects of his metaphysics. Whitehead agreed to meet with him weekly in a tutorial session in his home, and Johnson presented him with a typed “basis for discussion” each week. Johnson provides a partial transcript of his discussion with Whitehead entitled “Some Conversations with Whitehead Concerning God and Creativity” (Johnson 1983, 3-13). Whitehead indicates general agreement with Johnson’s interpretation of creativity in these discussions. Johnson also provides a photostatic reproduction of some marginal notes Whitehead made on the rough draft of a manuscript he showed to Whitehead in 1937. Here again, Whitehead often signals his agreement with Johnson’s interpretation and (more importantly) does not offer many objections to it. Nonetheless, there are powerful reasons for rejecting the view of Johnson and Connelly that creativity should be seen as an exceptional eternal object. In his Categoreal Scheme in Process and Reality, Whitehead explicitly states that “creativity is the ultimate behind all forms, inexplicable by forms, and conditioned by its creatures [the individual actual entities]” (PR 20). It is difficult to see how creativity can be an eternal object (form) if it is indeed the ultimate behind all forms which resists all explanation by reference to forms (eternal objects). Indeed, throughout Process and Reality, Whitehead consistently places creativity into contrast with both

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actual entities and eternal objects (see especially PR 212f.). Likewise, in his “metaphysical description” in Religion in the Making, Whitehead distinguishes between the actual temporal world and the formative elements presupposed by this world. Here he explicitly contrasts creativity with what he calls the “realm of ideal entities, or forms” (RM 90), the entities he later calls “eternal objects.” I conclude that it is a mistake to think of creativity as some sort of exceptional eternal object. Whatever else creativity might be, it is clearly a dynamic activity that stands in opposition to the forms or eternal objects. In fact, creativity drives the universe forward by taking on the character of the actual entities which have come into being and perished into the past. This stands in stark contrast to the passive (or potential) nature of the eternal objects. Of course, it is possible to form a conception, “creativity,” which serves as an abstract representation of this dynamic creative activity. This conception could accurately be described as an eternal object that represents this activity in symbolic fashion. Nonetheless, this is quite different from the much stronger claim that creativity is nothing but an abstract property that characterizes all actual entities.

2.2. Creativity and God The next view we will consider emphasizes the metaphysical importance of God in Whitehead’s system in contrast with that of creativity. This view has been advanced by Charles Hartshorne and John Cobb. Hartshorne discusses the relationship between God and creativity in his influential essay, “Whitehead’s Idea of God.” There he argues that, despite some of Whitehead’s statements to the contrary, creativity should not be considered as an ultimate metaphysical ground beyond the self-creative decisions made by God and other actual entities. Instead, creativity is merely the “common property” or “generic name” for the various activities of specific actual entities. According to Hartshorne, creativity is merely an abstraction from the creative decisions that all actual entities make, a claim which comes strikingly close to Johnson’s description of creativity as an eternal object. Hartshorne concludes with the robust claim that “all creativity belongs to God.” By this, he means that God is creative both in his primordial valuation of all the eternal objects and in his reception of the outcomes of the activities of all finite actual entities into his consequent nature (Hartshorne 1941, 528). Hartshorne proceeds to exalt God at the same time at which he devalues creativity. Whereas creativity is merely an abstraction, God is the supreme existent which contains all truths within his nature. Hartshorne recognizes that each finite actual entity has its own measure of selfcreativity, and in this sense each finite actual entity transcends God. Nonetheless, he claims that God enjoys and possesses the decisions of each finite actual entity in his consequent nature, and in this sense God is the supreme instance of creative activity in the universe. John Cobb makes an even stronger claim about God’s role in directing the actual course of events in the temporal world. In particular, he points to the decisive role that God plays in providing the initial subjective aim for each new actual entity. Cobb argues that the initial aim is actually the “initiating principle” for the new occasion. Here he contrasts the role of the initial aim and the initial data, which are passive objects that must be appropriated by the activity of the new occasion. Cobb concludes:

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For these reasons we may properly think of the initial aim as the originating element in each new occasion. Since Whitehead regards God as the sole ground of the initial aim, he systematically attributes to God the all-decisive role in the creation of each new occasion, although he draws back from so strong a formulation [Cobb 1965, 205]. Cobb does add some qualifications to the role of God as creator. Most importantly, he acknowledges that the initial aim does not determine how a new actual entity responds to its data; instead, the new actuality makes its own creative response to its data, and in doing so it may modify the aim it has received from God. Moreover, God does not create the complex eternal object that he presents to a new actual entity as the ideal for its own process of concrescence. Cobb goes on to claim that creativity cannot explain why there is anything at all or why process is ongoing in the universe. This is because creativity is merely another expression for the change or the process in the world. The mere acknowledgement of process does not explain why various processes have taken place in the past or why they must continue to do so in the future. To give a reason for these general features of reality, Whitehead must appeal to God’s decisive action in initiating the becoming of each new actual entity in the temporal world. Cobb concludes, “God’s role in creation is more radical and fundamental than Whitehead’s own language usually suggests” (Cobb 1965, 211f.). Gene Reeves presents some persuasive reasons for rejecting Cobb’s view of the relationship between God and creativity. He agrees with Cobb’s claim that creativity cannot be the decisive reason why new actual entities come into being. Nonetheless, it does not follow from this that God is the decisive reason for the creation of a new actual entity. God is surely an important factor behind the coming-into-being of a new actual entity, since God supplies its initial subjective aim. Nonetheless, past actual entities are also necessary to explain the existence of new actual entities, since they supply the “initial data” to which the new concrescence must conform. Reeves concludes that Cobb claims too much when he asserts that God has an “alldecisive” role in the creation of new actual entities (see Reeves 1983, 242-47). I should mention that Cobb has modified his view of the relationship between God and creativity since the publication of A Christian Natural Theology. In response to his critics, he has recognized God and creativity as dual ultimates, and at times he has even added the world of finite actual entities as a third ultimate. This view is extensively developed and explained in Deep Religious Pluralism, edited by David Ray Griffin, a book of essays which incorporates a Whitehead-based approach to religious diversity (see especially Griffin 2005, 44-51). Also, Cobb has outlined his view of these three ultimates in a draft which he sent me of a revised version of the section on “Creativity and God” for a new edition of A Christian Natural Theology. The view that creativity, God, and the actual temporal world are equally ultimate for Whitehead is a much more defensible position. In fact, Whitehead says in one passage that “creativity,” “God,” and the “temporal creatures” are meaningless in abstraction from one another (PR 225). This exemplifies the criterion of coherence that Whitehead thinks should govern metaphysical systems; the fundamental concepts should be meaningful only when viewed in their interrelatedness. However, there are still reasons for questioning Cobb’s

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discernment of three ultimates. Throughout Process and Reality, Whitehead sets God and the actual temporal world into contrast with creativity. For example, one passage asserts that both God and the temporal world are “in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty” (PR 349). Here Whitehead explicitly uses the term “ultimate” to characterize creativity rather than God and the world of finite actual entities. In other passages he speaks of God (and a fortiori of finite actual entities) as an “accident” of creativity (PR 7) and a “creature” of creativity (PR 31). Cobb’s view that Whitehead really has three ultimates must face the challenge of explaining why we should not take Whitehead’s statements concerning the ultimacy of creativity at face value.

2.3. Creativity and Actual Entities We will now consider the prevalent view that creativity is merely a generic feature of actual entities. This view is expressed with great clarity by William Christian and Ivor Leclerc. There are numerous passages in Process and Reality that suggest such an interpretation. Although Whitehead calls creativity his “ultimate” principle, he is quick to add that creativity does not have “final” or “eminent” reality in comparison with its “accidents,” which are the individual actual entities (see PR 7, quoted in Section 1 above). Instead, these “accidents” become the “sheer actualities” of the universe, and it is only in virtue of its embodiment in actual entities that creativity has any actuality at all (PR 7). Unlike Spinoza’s God, creativity is not a substance or an “entity” of any kind. Instead, it seems that “creativity” is simply Whitehead’s expression for the most general trait that all actual entities have in common. Because each actual entity is causa sui, each exhibits the same metaphysical character of being a particular instance of creative activity. Accordingly, the ultimacy of creativity seems to coincide with the ultimacy of the act of self-creation by which each actual entity comes into existence. This is the interpretation that William Christian advances in his book and articles on Whitehead. Christian claims that creativity is a “pre-systematic” term which, for all purposes of “systematic explanation,” is superseded by the “systematic” terms that Whitehead introduces in his categories of existence, explanation, and obligation. By a “systematic” term, Christian means a term Whitehead uses to expound his metaphysical system in Part I of Process and Reality. “Pre-systematic” terms are those that describe the facts of everyday experience that Whitehead wants to interpret and explain in his metaphysical system (see Christian, 1961, 7386). Christian sees creativity as merely an unanalyzed notion drawn from common sense that we need to elucidate by means of systematic concepts. Thus, he asserts, “all that can be said about creativity can be put into systematic statements about the concrescences of actual entities” (Christian 1964, 183ff.). If Christian’s claim is correct, then in principle we could eliminate the concept of creativity from Whitehead’s metaphysics. “Creativity” could be regarded as merely a shorthand expression for the creative activities of particular actual entities. For example, Christian proposes to replace the statement “Creativity is unending” by the statement “There is an infinite and unending multiplicity of actual entities” (Christian 1961, 80, note 19). The problem with this proposal is that it does not clearly express the fact that novel actual entities are constantly coming into being. Yet this is certainly a fundamental feature of Whitehead’s doctrine of creativity (e.g., PR 21, 222). We need to be able to talk not just about

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the concrescences of particular actual entities but also about the transition from the completion of present actual entities to the becoming of future ones. Yet the concept of transition cannot be expressed solely in terms of the concrescences of individual actual entities, as Christian himself points out in discussing Whitehead’s categoreal scheme (see Christian 1963, 94ff.). In view of these considerations, we must modify Christian’s original rule of translation to read: “Any statement about creativity can be translated without loss of meaning into a statement about the concrescences of actual entities and the transitions between actual entities.” For example, “Creativity is unending” could be replaced by, “There is an infinite multiplicity of actual entities such that each member comes into being through a process of concrescence and then perishes so as to be superseded by and prehended by novel members.” Such a translation would express, however awkwardly, Whitehead’s doctrine of the ongoingness of time.3 Yet we may ask whether even this translation captures all that Whitehead intends to express in his doctrine of creativity. Upon analysis, we find that it does tell us that individual actual entities engage in creative functionings. Whitehead refers to the concrescence of an actual entity as an activity of “self-creation” (PR 85). When an actual entity completes its subjective experience and perishes, it passes into its function of “other-formation” or other-creation (see AI 193) in relation to the actual entities which succeed it. Thus, our translation conveys the doctrine that many different creative activities take place in the universe. Yet statements about multiplicities of actual entities cannot express Whitehead’s further claim that self-creation and other-creation are two different exemplifications of one creative process which permeates the universe. This is the point at which Christian’s project of translation must fail.4 Ivor Leclerc’s interpretation of creativity is similar to Christian’s and is subject to the same objections. Leclerc sees creativity as an ultimate generic activity that is progressively instantiated in new actual entities. He correctly observes that Whitehead recognizes two kinds of process, which he terms “macroscopic process” (transition) and “microscopic process” (concrescence); however, he goes on to claim that concrescence is fundamental and transition is derivative. Accordingly, he shows how particular acts of concrescence can be seen as instances of the generic creative activity of the universe. Leclerc then claims that his version of creativity can explain how the universe is ongoing because its ultimate character is that of self-creative activity (see Leclerc 1958, 87-90). However, this account of ongoingness is inadequate; the creative activity exemplified in a present actual entity cannot explain why new instances of creative activity must emerge in the future. Therefore, Leclerc’s analysis cannot show why processes of concrescence must be followed by processes of transition, a point which is crucial to Whitehead’s view that the universe is a creative advance into novelty.

3. Creativity: A Monistic Interpretation I will now present a positive interpretation of creativity that is designed to overcome the inadequacies of the interpretations discussed in the previous sections. This interpretation draws upon my previous articles and discussions in the literature by John Wilcox, Jorge Nobo, Jan

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Van der Veken, and Michel Weber. I will indicate my indebtedness to particular elements in their interpretations from time to time. The notion of process or flux is the basic intuition drawn from human experience which Whitehead intends to elucidate in his metaphysical system. His constant aim in his writings is to take time seriously. In his systematic analysis of temporality, Whitehead distinguishes between two different forms of process in the universe (see PR 211ff., 214ff.). One kind of process is concrescence, which signifies the coming-into-being of a new actual entity. During concrescence, the new actual entity constructs a determinate experience for itself out of the data it receives from the past and from God. This is when the new actual entity functions as the cause of its own creative synthesis (causa sui); Whitehead speaks of this as the “subjective immediacy” of the actual entity. The other type of process is transition, which signifies the shift from the completion of old actual entities to the coming-into-being of new ones. By means of transition, the determinate actual entities of the past, which now exist in the mode of “objective immortality,” become the initial data for new processes of concrescence. It is my contention that both concrescence and transition can be seen as the two complementary aspects of creativity, the ultimate principle behind all process. If this is the case, then there is indeed a way in which we can appeal to creativity to explain both the novelty and the interrelatedness in the universe. Concrescence is the growing together of many entities into a novel unit of experience, which is the new actual entity in its role of subjective immediacy. This is clear from Whitehead’s description of concrescence in the second category of explanation (PR 22). But creativity, as the principle of novelty, serves as the ontological ground of this “production of novel togetherness” (PR 21). Thus one role of creativity is that of an “underlying activity of realisation” (SMW 70) which individualizes itself into many specific instances of creative activity (i.e., the particular actual entities). In this way, Whitehead’s concept of creativity faithfully reflects the sense of the Latin verb creare, which means “to bring forth, beget, produce” (PR 213). The creative energy of the universe is constantly bringing forth new actual entities which synthesize the data they receive from the past and God. Yet I contend that creativity plays another role in Whitehead’s system. In addition to its role as the principle behind particular acts of concrescence, creativity also serves as the receptacle for the products of these activities. Creativity is not activity alone, but rather “the pure notion of the activity conditioned by the objective immortality of the actual world” (PR 31, emphasis added). Actual entities that have perished subjectively function in their new role as objectively immortal “superjects” which “constitute the shifting character of creativity” (PR 32). Thus, Whitehead’s doctrine that creativity characterizes actuality (PR 21) must be complemented by the further doctrine that actuality characterizes creativity. Michel Weber uses an appropriate term to express Whitehead’s meaning; he says that creativity is “reticulated” by the actual entities of the past (Weber 2005). As each actual entity reaches completion, it impresses its own characteristics onto creativity and adds to the network that has been formed by the products of previous actual entities. These actual entities provide creativity with a “character” that it will have from that time forward, a character that is constantly “shifting” as more and more actual entities perish and contribute to the pattern of reticulation. These past actual entities impose

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conditions that limit the creativity of each succeeding generation of actual entities; they determine both the possibilities and the limitations for future processes of concrescence. Creativity can receive the products of past concrescences because it is completely indeterminate or “protean” in itself (RM 92); it has no characteristics of its own that might distort the objectifications of past actual entities. In this sense, creativity is analogous to both Plato’s Receptacle and Aristotle’s prime matter. The main difference is that we cannot think of creativity as a passive receptacle, since activity is always a necessary feature of creativity (PR 31, AI 179). Instead, creativity must be conceived as a universal activity that “passes on” the products of previous concrescences as data to be synthesized by still more processes of concrescence. In this way, creativity serves as the ultimate ground behind the transition from the completion of old actual entities to the becoming of new ones. Transition is the link between the perishing of an actual entity’s “subjective immediacy” and its new role as an “immortal object” for subsequent concrescences. As Whitehead puts this point, “Thus perishing is the initiation of becoming. How the past perishes is how the future becomes” (AI 238). Passages from Whitehead’s writings indicate that creativity is the principle behind transition as well as the principle behind concrescence. He defines transition as “[t]he creativity in virtue of which any relative complete actual world is, by the nature of things, the datum for a new concrescence” (PR 211). This definition clearly gives transition a role in the creative advance that is distinct from concrescence and complementary to it. Moreover, transition is just as important to the creative process as concrescence, as Jorge Luis Nobo contends in his persuasive account of transition in “Transition in Whitehead: A Creative Process Distinct from Concrescence” (Nobo 1979). By contrast, many other commentators overlook the significance of transition, possibly because Whitehead discusses concrescence much more than he discusses transition. Also, he sometimes uses non-technical terms, such as “passing over” (PR 85) or “passing on” (PR 213), to describe the process of transition. Yet the fact that Whitehead does not discuss transition extensively must not obscure its significance for his theory of temporal ongoingness. Transition processes are necessary to initiate new processes of concrescence, for the past must be transcended in order for the future to arise. As Donald Sherburne points out, the two-fold nature of the creative advance can be succinctly expressed in terms of “one” and “many,” the two notions that appear in the category of the ultimate along with creativity (Sherburne 1961, 18-21; cf. Sherburne 1966, 32-35). In the concrescent phase of the creative process, the “many” entities in the universe at that moment become “one” through their synthesis in a new actual entity. There is thereby an advance from “disjunctive diversity” to “conjunctive” unity (PR 21). The final product of concrescence is a new actual entity, which adds one more entity to the “many” entities from which this process began. There is thereby a transition from conjunction to disjunction again. Consequently, Whitehead’s description of the creative advance is necessarily a dual one: “The many [entities] become one [entity], and are increased by one [entity]” (PR 21). The first clause of this statement expresses the movement of concrescence from disjunction [the initial data] to conjunction [the satisfaction], whereas the second clause expresses the transition from conjunction [the new actual entity] back to disjunction again [the initial data for a new concrescence]. Since we now have a new disjunction, the stage is set for creativity to produce a

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new concrescence. It is through this basic structural pattern that creativity drives the universe forward in an endless alternation between processes of concrescence and processes of transition.5 The interpretation of creativity I have outlined constitutes what John Wilcox describes as a monistic interpretation. That is, I claim that creativity has a reality of its own apart from the plurality of its instances, i.e., the actual entities in which it is instantiated. By contrast, the interpretations of Christian and Leclerc are pluralistic; they claim that creativity exists only in the plurality of actual entities through which it is actualized (see Wilcox, 1991a and 1991b). I am also in substantial agreement with Jorge Luis Nobo when he speaks of creativity as “an inexhaustible metaphysical energy at the base of all existence” (Nobo 1986, 175). Creativity is an eternal and universal activity that grounds both the concrescences of individual actual entities and the processes of transition that lead from one concrescence to the next. Nobo makes a fruitful distinction between “immanent creativity” (a term Whitehead rarely uses) and “transcendent creativity” (a term we often find in Whitehead: see PR 26, 43, 280). When an actual entity is coming-into-being through its process of concrescence, the universal creativity is immanent within that particular actual entity. This is when the actual entity exists as an experiencing subject with its own “subjective immediacy.” Nonetheless, there is a “principle of unrest” (PR 28, 32) which compels creativity to transcend that particular actual entity and instantiate itself in new processes of concrescence. This is the function of creativity in its transcendent role, when the particular actual entity in question has “perished” as an experiencing subject and become an object for future actual entities. Whitehead expresses this rhythmic process eloquently in a passage from Religion in the Making: Accordingly, the creativity for a creature becomes the creativity with the creature, and thereby passes into another phase of itself. It is now the creativity for a new creature. Thus there is a transition of the creative action, and this transition exhibits itself, in the physical world, in the guise of routes of temporal succession (RM 92, emphasis added). Here we see the intricate interplay between the transcendent creativity and the immanent creativity in relation to a particular actual entity, which I shall call A. The creativity for A (mentioned first in this passage) consists of the decisions made for A by all the actual entities in its causal past and God. This creative phase transcends A because it embodies a phase of activity which takes place prior to the concrescence of A. The creativity with A (mentioned next in this passage) consists of A’s self-creative activity in response to the data provided by its causal past and God. This phase of creative action is immanent in A and corresponds to Whitehead’s description of A as causa sui. Yet the creative force of the universe does not cease with the concrescence of A; instead, it “passes into another phase of itself.” Creativity now becomes the creativity for another actual entity (mentioned last in the passage), which I shall call B. This is creativity as it transcends a particular instantiation of itself (A) in its thrust toward the production of still further actual entities (B, C, D, and so forth). The point to be noticed is that creativity has a reality that transcends the existence of any particular actual entity, even though it always instantiates itself in particular actual entities. Jan Van der Veken aptly characterizes creativity as a “universal activity” that provides an explanation for both the ongoingness of time and the connectedness of all actual entities (Van der Veken 1990, 181).

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4. Conclusion I conclude with a brief evaluation of Whitehead’s decision to make creativity the ultimate principle in his metaphysical system, a decision I applaud for the following reasons. First, creativity brings continuity to Whitehead’s metaphysics, especially when we view creativity in relation to actual entities. Actual entities are the basic units of fact in Whitehead’s metaphysics, and each actual entity is a complex individual. Whitehead calls his actual entities “drops of experience” (PR 18) and “acts of becoming” (PR 69) which cannot be divided into components with the same degree of reality. Furthermore, each actual entity exists only briefly as a subjectively immediate unit of experience, although it then becomes an object that influences all subsequent acts of becoming. The problem with Whitehead’s choice of actual entities as his basic particulars is that this slants his metaphysics in favor of atomism over continuity. Whitehead acknowledges this problem when he claims that there is a “creation of continuity” in our present cosmic epoch, although this may be a special condition that does not hold true of other cosmic epochs (PR 35-6). Once we recognize the pivotal role of creativity, however, we can see that Whitehead has incorporated a principle of continuity into his metaphysics that serves as a corrective to his atomism.6 Each actual entity is internally related to its predecessors, as asserted in Whitehead’s “principle of relativity” (PR 22, 50) because there is but one creative process from which they all arise and to which they all make their final contributions. Each actual entity is internally related to its successors because it anticipates the impact it will have upon creative processes in the future. As Whitehead puts this point, “[T]he fact that each individual occasion is transcended by the creative urge, belongs to the essential constitution of each such occasion. It is not an accident which is irrelevant to the completed constitution of any such occasion” (AI 193). The principle of creativity also allows Whitehead to acknowledge the presence of chaos and irrationality in the universe as well as order and rationality. This is because the creative advance into novelty is essentially an innovative and unpredictable affair. Here the contrast between creativity as a dynamic activity and the various entities that Whitehead recognizes in his metaphysics is especially instructive. Whitehead recognizes eight different types of entities, which he lists in his Categories of Existence, and he outlines numerous principles that govern these entities in his Categories of Explanation and his Categoreal Obligations. The importance of these entities and principles is that they form the determinate referents of rational thought. They express the various structural features of the universe that enable us to comprehend it rationally. Yet creativity stands over and against all these entities as an inexhaustible metaphysical energy that by its very nature can never be captured in the static net of conceptual definition. Although this energy works through entities to drive the universe forward, it can never be reduced to any set of these entities. Instead, they remain the “creatures” it produces in its never-ending thrust toward novelty together with relatedness. Thus, creativity incorporates the mysterious, process-like features of existence that stand in sharp contrast with the order and rationality exemplified by Whitehead’s various entities and principles. This brings us back to the mystery of creativity. In the final analysis, we cannot explain why the many become one and are thereby increased by one. This is just the way creativity manifest itself in the process of the

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universe; as Whitehead puts it, “It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity” (PR 21). When all is said and done, the mystery of the creative process remains. Whitehead, I think, would be pleased.

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Notes 1

2

3

4

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6

Compare what Jorge Luis Nobo says about the paradoxical nature of Whitehead’s Category of the Ultimate (Nobo 1986, 129-137). Nobo’s interpretation of creativity resembles mine in significant ways, as I acknowledge in Section 3 below. However, I do not share Nobo’s view that the extensive continuum is just as ultimate as creativity is for Whitehead. See Johnson 1962 and Connelly 1981 for the details of this interpretation of creativity. I should add that this view has been roundly criticized in the literature on Whitehead. We must add that the concept of perishing does not apply to God. It is clear from the final chapter of Process and Reality that God is an actual entity that never perishes. Nonetheless, God is prehended by finite actual entities in his “superjective nature” and is “superseded” by them in the sense that each finite actual entity transcends God (see PR 88, 222). My discussion in this section draws heavily upon my previous critique of Christian’s interpretation of creativity in “The Ultimacy of Creativity” (Garland 1983). My constructive view of the nature of creativity in this section draws extensively upon my previous interpretation in “The Ultimacy of Creativity” (Garland 1983). Michel Weber gives a perceptive discussion of the way in which Whitehead synthesizes atomism with continuity in his introduction to After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, pp. 62-69 (Weber 2004).

Intensity and Subjectivity Judith Jones

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“Subjective intensity” is Whitehead’s description of the felt aesthetic self-organization which occurs in the concrescence of any actual entity. As an emerging unity of what Whitehead calls “prehensions,” an entity achieves some degree and form of “subjective intensity” of feeling in its arrangement of the array of prehensions “growing together” (the meaning of the Latinderived “concrescing”) under the aegis or lure of “subjective aim.” Introduced as a Categoreal Obligation in the laying out of the basic systemic notions in Part I of Process and Reality, “The Category of Subjective Intensity” is in fact the categoreal demand in which subjective aim is introduced in the organic cosmology Whitehead builds in that text. Thus the centrality of subjective intensity to our understanding of Whitehead’s metaphysics cannot be underestimated. As the rubric for subjective aim, subjective intensity expresses the centrally creative dimension of actuality in the universe of discrete atomic occasions that Whitehead terms “actual entities”. This essay on “subjective intensity” will address some matters of “subjective aim,” but will leave a more detailed treatment of that notion for other entries.

1. Background The technical term “intensity” is not used extensively in Whitehead’s work until Process and Reality. It subsequently drops out to some degree, as in later works Whitehead moves away from technical systematic vocabulary in an effort to generalize from the system in various topical areas. However, the relative absence of the term from texts prior to and after PR does not betoken an absence of the experiential reality betokened by the term, nor the centrality of aesthetic integration as the main commitment in thinking behind those texts. Oddly, the first instance of Whitehead’s use of “intensity” was in his very early Universal Algebra (UA), where he remarked that an element in a manifold may exist in varying degrees of 1 intensity, and is absent at an intensity of zero. This tying of existence to a concept of “degrees” expressed by “intensities” is both unusual for a work in Universal Algebra, and a foreshadowing of the uniquely experiential and aesthetic characterization of existence in Whitehead’s mature metaphysical works. By the time of Religion in the Making, where Whitehead was evolving the somewhat monistic “substantial activity” of Science and the Modern World into the avowedly pluralistic scheme of creative individual becoming that would characterize Process and 2 Reality, this notion of “degrees” of presence came to inform Whitehead’s central thinking about how entities affect and include one another. Religion in the Making (RM) introduces expressly axiological language in speaking about the “values” that entities achieve in themselves and that they provide for one another, and does so in pursuit of a notion of “depth of i

Society for the Study of Process Philosophy and Fordham University; [email protected].

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value” (RM 152) in creative processes of becoming (note the implied sense of “degrees” in the reference to “depth”). In RM, the term “intensity” emerges mainly in a discussion that is more or less a metaphysical and axiological application of its role in UA. In RM, Whitehead ties “value” to the “comparability” of feelings to one another as an entity merges novel possibilities with actualized fact. The possibility of this comparison hinges, according to him, on God’s “primordial envisagement” of the relevance of all forms of value to one another. Every concrescence is the creation of a specific degree of value woven from the comparison of values of those elements integrated in the concretion: This comparability grades the various occasions with respect to the intensiveness of value. The zero of intensiveness means the collapse of actuality. All intensive quantity is merely the contribution of some one element in the synthesis to this one intensiveness of value. Various occasions are thus comparable in respect to their relative depths of actuality. Occasions differ in importance of actuality. Thus the purpose of God in the attainment of value is in a sense a creative purpose (RM 103-104, emphasis added). We see here in the highlighted phrase the crucial association of actuality per se with “intensiveness.” Prior to its systemic role in Process and Reality (PR), then, we see intensity being identified in RM with the immediate actuality or experience of each occasion as such. We also see the connection between the way in which Whitehead is thinking about intensive aesthetic order, and the logico-mathematical concept of “intensive quantity” which remains through PR as a focus of Whitehead’s critique of the logic of substantialist, classificatory thinking from Aristotle down through Kant.3 “Immediate experience” in any given occasion, as constructed in RM, is a function of the ordering of values present in its “ground” (the basis in actual, achieved fact from which an entity emerges) in relation to the novel “consequent” (the new arrangement of forms of possibility/value that is achievable in that occasion) (RM 113-116). Whitehead refers to this relation of ground and consequent as the means of realization of “aesthetic experience” arising under conditions of “contrast under identity” (RM 115). This language of “contrast” merges in Process and Reality with the language of “intensity,” whereby intensity just is the felt arrangement of contrastive patterns of actual and possible forms of definiteness in concrescence. The notion of an ideal “consequent” of novel forms importantly foreshadows “subjective aim” as the ideal or “lure” for creative becoming in the mature system of PR. In fact, the ideal consequent is a main locus for Whitehead’s introduction of God as the “primordial envisagement” of the domain of possible forms of value, which primordial activity is the basis for subjective aims in the later text. In both texts, God’s role in process is to evoke the possibility of creative achievement via comparison and contrast of values that might be integrated in (or as) a given concrescent subject, given what the orders of nature have achieved up to that point. We might say that “God” names just that element in the universe where there is, precisely, a calling forth into actuality just what the comparability of values among the possible and the actual makes a real potentiality at a given point in field of organic becoming.

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2. Intensity in the Cosmology of Process and Reality The intimacy of subjective aim and intensity is, as indicated earlier, evident in the manner in which intensity is introduced into the line-up of Categoreal Obligations which appear as part of the “Categoreal Scheme” outlined in part One of Process and Reality. (viii) The Category of Subjective Intensity. The subjective aim, whereby there is origination of conceptual feeling, is at intensity of feeling (
) in the immediate subject, and () in the relevant future. This double aim—at the immediate present and the relevant future—is less divided than appears on the surface. For the determination of the relevant future, and the anticipatory feeling respecting provision for its grade of intensity, are elements affecting the immediate complex of feeling. The greater part of morality hinges on the determination of relevance in the future. The relevant future consists of those elements in the anticipated future which are felt with effective intensity by the present subject by reason of the real potentiality for them to be derived from itself (PR 27). In this categoreal statement emerge many of the more puzzling elements in the ontology Whitehead presents in PR. It is noted here that present subjects enjoy “anticipatory feelings” of certain dimensions of the future; that the “relevant future” is for any present construed as a scene of relative “grades of intensity;” that morality is basically an affair of intensity considerations; that morality and ontology in general include the notion that the future is present in the immediate complex of intensive feeling of any subject. This latter notion especially points to the seemingly paradoxical notion that an entity that is in the process of becoming (and thus is not yet a fully determinate subject) nonetheless has a relevant future felt with effective intensity in the present becoming of the entity despite its incompletion. While we cannot here unravel all the mysteries of the relations of past, present and future in Whitehead’s ontology, I will in what follows spell out how this array of unusual notions helps us unfold the systematic roles intensity plays in Whitehead's metaphysics. First, however, it would be helpful to make explicit exactly what “intensity” means as a main descriptor of the complex of feeling that is the concrescent subject. “Intensity of feeling” is the main objective shaping the processive coming-to-be of an entity, and describes the entity in two fundamental, connected ways. First, it names the force or emotional impact of the qualitatively complex and aesthetically organized array of feelings in an entity. Second, it names the ontological status of an entity in temporal processes of becoming transcendent of its own—in other words it names an entity’s place in the flow or “transmission of feelings” that is the changing texture of reality. Let us take each of these dimensions of intensity in turn, but resist the temptation to conceive of them as in any way separate. It would be intellectually simple, and consistent with certain mental habits born of the substance traditions in metaphysics, to say that a subject has feelings of the entities in its actual world, and of conceptual forms that might be married to its feelings of these entities, and then to treat the degrees of emotional impact of these feelings separately, as if the nature of feelings (substance) could somehow be distinguished from their emotional force (accident). But it seems to me that the construction of intensity by Whitehead, and the departure from substance metaphysics that it intends, demands that we precisely not perform this separation of something’s “nature” from the emotional forms of its appropriation in and by something else’s “nature.” In what follows I will spell out how the

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notion of intensity demands our apprehension of the fact that what an entity is is nothing but how it feels other entities and is felt by and in other entities. Indeed, I take this to be the meaning of Whitehead’s blunt announcement that his philosophy seeks precisely to describe what it means for entities to be in other entities—his insistence that being cease to be considered an affair of ontologically separate existences as was typical in the substance traditions he is transforming.

3. Intensity as Aesthetic Complexity The consideration of intensity as the way to understand the aesthetic complexity of feeling in subjective becoming requires that we first introduce a few more key systematic notions. We have already mentioned the idea of “contrast” when exploring the origins of intensive concepts in the crucial introduction of the “comparative” dimension of all value in RM. “Contrast” is the term used systematically (indeed, “contrasts” stand as one of the categories of existence in the Categoreal Scheme in PR) in the mature vocabulary of PR to designate the manner in which two or more qualitatively diverse feelings are felt in tandem—in some manner together—by an entity in concrescence. A contrast is different from an additive sum or a mere temporally coincident manifold: if prior actualities A and B are being felt by entity C, and the intensive aims of C allow/demand that A and B find mutual resolution in the individuated determinacy of C, then the feeling of A by C is modified by C’s feeling of B, and C’s feeling of B is modified by C’s feeling of A. “Contrast” is an affair of identity-in-difference in the concrescent unification process that is an actual entity. The degree and form of intensity achieved in any entity is a function of the array of contrastive unifications effected by and in—as—that subject; greater effective contrast means a higher degree of intensiveness. A successful “contrast” marks the achievement of positive inclusion of the entities and forms of definiteness thus felt, and is the alternative to dismissal of data offered for feeling from inclusion in concrescence. Dismissal (through what Whitehead calls “negative prehensions,” or determinate rejection of a potential for feeling) means that an entity has not effectively situated itself in regard to the actualities and possibilities constituting its creative scene of becoming; “contrast,” on the other hand, is how feeling includes diverse elements in a mutually enhancing rather than mutually exclusionary manner. The difference between successful contrast and mere dismissal will determine an entity’s relative role in the transmission of feelings constituting the broader field of processes transcendent to the entity. An entity that achieves effective contrasts, and hence greater intensive integration of its world, will be more fully situated and influential in the world that emerges subsequent to that entity and inclusive of that entity as “the many become one and are increased by one,” expressing the ultimately creative character of reality that Whitehead captures in the statement, “It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity” (PR 21). Thus it is critical to understand the texture of feeling characterizing how diverse entities “enter into complex unity” or contrastive unification. Whitehead outlines four basic conditions of contrastive feeling, which I have elsewhere labelled “structual conditions” of intensity,

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because they describe a sense of background and foreground arrangement of elements for integration in the concrescence.4 The full array of contrastive feelings issuing in an intensive complex of feeling is called the “satisfaction” of an entity. “Satisfaction” marks the “closing up” of an entity as its capacities for contrastive/intensive unification are exhausted. While I will return later to the ontological status of satisfactions in terms of intensity issues, here I will quickly sketch the four structural conditions of intensive feeling outlined in Whitehead’s discussion in PR of how satisfactions may be “classified,” or more generally, characterized. The four conditions affecting intensity of contrast are triviality, vagueness, narrowness, and width. Collectively these four notions describe the degree of “depth of feeling” achieved in a concrescence. Later I will argue that the notion of “depth of feeling” is a critical verbal clue to the necessity of not divorcing the force of feeling from the ontological nature of feelings as existences. Triviality and vagueness are complementary descriptions of how and to what extent data for concrescence are differentiated from one another. Triviality names the degree of excess of differentiation among the data to be integrated, and Whitehead notes that it “arises from lack of coordination in the factors of the datum, so that no feeling arising from one factor is reinforced by any feeling arising from another factor” (PR 111). This is, more simply, a naming of the degree of failure to contrast elements in the actual world of the entity. Rather than contrastive enhancement, the elements stand as mere diversities with no mutually reinforcing effect. C just feels A, C just feels B, but neither A nor B nor their common occurrence in C is enhanced by the mere coincidence of feeling. “Vagueness,” on the other hand, refers to the degree of nondifferentiation among data for concrescence. Like triviality, it marks a failure of contrast, but for opposite reasons: “In the datum the objectifications of various actual entities are replicas with faint coordination of perspective contrast. Under these conditions the contrasts between the various objectifications are faint, and there is deficiency in the supplementary feeling discriminating the objects from each other” (PR 111). Vagueness blurs differentia in items for feeling, while triviality differentiates to an extreme. Thus, the right balance of vagueness and triviality will betoken a balancing of available elements in the complex of feeling being pursued as “subjective aim at intensity.” This balance will affect the appropriate complexity internal to the concrescence by including as much genuine diversity as possible without trivialization of mere difference, and by allowing a vague blurring of relatively irrelevant background detail against which a focal center of value-novelty may emerge. Narrowness and width refer to the overall arrangement or balance of the factors included vaguely, trivially, or in any combination thereof, but in addition to referring to arrangement they also mark the content of the feelings that are included. Narrowness expresses something of a condition of “elegance,” a simplification in a common unity of a range of detailed content. With the bold claim that “Intensity is the reward of narrowness,” Whitehead drives home the idea of aesthetic unification of complex diversity as the basic goal of process. Just what is narrowly/intensively arranged? A great “width” of genuinely diverse content. While triviality might be said to measure the degree of diversity, width may be said to describe the actual content-diversity thus measured. While vagueness may betoken a dismissal of excess variety, narrowness expresses how variety is felt as a coherent diversity under some ideal of simplicity

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of integration. Much as a narrow beam of light focuses a wide array of light trajectories as one, a narrow satisfaction has balanced the feelings that have been positively and diversely included in the aesthetic unity of the subject. One way of understanding the concerted roles of triviality, vagueness, narrowness and width is to imagine them as the factors that determine the focal foreground in the subjective becoming-determinate of an entity, against a background of relative degrees of differentiated context. In this manner, we can see in PR the continuation of the ground/consequent model developed in RM, where an entity emerges as a significant novelty against a background of conditions that made the foreground of that entity possible and appropriate just there. With this “perspective” model of the accomplishment of novel becoming in mind, we can turn to the ontological consideration of “intensity” in Whitehead’s mature scheme.

4. Intensity and Whitehead’s Ontology I mentioned earlier that there were peculiarities evident in the categoreal statement about “subjective intensity” in as much the statement forwards “the seemingly paradoxical notion that an entity that is in the process of becoming (and thus is not yet a fully determinate subject) nonetheless has a relevant future felt with effective intensity in the present becoming of the entity despite its incompletion.” How exactly can something that is not strictly a fully determinate being nonetheless have a future that is capable of being felt as part of the becoming-determinate of that very entity from which that future is to be derived? This is either howlingly bad logic on Whitehead’s part, or a sign that we have left the realm of thinking about “individual existence” that has typified our logic and ontology for centuries. I believe we have a fairly clear statement that the cosmology of PR evidences the latter: It is fundamental to the metaphysical doctrine of the philosophy of organism, that the notion of an actual entity as the unchanging subject of change is completely abandoned. An actual entity is at once the subject experiencing and the superject of its experiences. It is subject-superject, and neither half of this description can for a moment be lost sight of (PR 29, emphasis added). In other words, the idea that an entity has to be a finished and subsequently unchanging individuality in order to be the kind of thing whose transcendent future is meaningful to it, or to be the kind of thing that is meaningful to the transcendent future (a superject), is rejected. While I suspect that this thinking is not without problems, it does demand that we eschew any sharp ontological distinctions between present becoming and past/future resonances of that becoming. The conceptual scheme built around the notion of “intensity” is Whitehead’s route of abandoning an ontology of unchanging finished facts once and for all. To understand this strange transformation in ontological conception, it is once again important for our discussion to recur to some fundamental notions. In its most basic sense, a concrescence is the intensive appropriation in a present entity (subject) of the intensive satisfactions (superjects) achieved by/in/as prior actualities (which are only to be understood as the subjects whose transcendent future the present actualities belong to). It is tempting to think that the avowedly atomic model of becoming in PR entails a view that the properly “actual” entities in

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the strictest ontological sense are those that are present subjects in process of becoming, and only that; and, correspondingly, to think that the present appropriation of an “object” (past actuality or superject) is a fundamentally different thing than the pastness of the actualities so appropriated. In fact, such a view is demanded by some scholars in order to render Whitehead’s 5 ontological atomism consistent with itself. To such critics, the description of “past” entities as in any way enjoying the “activity” or “agency” of present becoming is simply a mistake on Whitehead’s part, to be rejected in favor of a fully consistent atomism which restricts agency to the present subjectivity of present entities in process of concrescence, while denying agency of the “concreta” of becoming, or past entities. However, this version of a “consistent atomism” is contrary to the expressed intentions of the kind of atomism the philosophy of organism is designed to embrace, as we have met it briefly in some of Whitehead’s statements quoted above. If an entity is always to be considered “subjectsuperject,” and if present becoming is intrinsically affected by anticipatory feelings of a future to be derived from that becoming, then the sharp ontological distinction between present and past, or present and future, must be rejected in favor of a conceptuality that can blend these perspectives without reducing them to one another in some kind of monism in which time and space are merely phenomenal. Conceiving entities in terms of their “intensities” is the solution, if there is one, to this problem. A concrescence is a complex contrastive unification of feelings—an aesthetic unification of diverse elements in light of an integrating ideal (subjective aim) of how those diverse elements might be brought together just here and now in the continuum of processes constituting reality. The ultimate aesthetic union of the elements of feeling—both those obtained through the physical feeling of entities (superjects) in the actual world of the subject entity, and those conceptual feelings enlisted to effect the integration of possibilities emerging as the creative subject in question—is an intensity, a balanced complexity of contrasts. We must bear in mind that those entities being felt by the present subject are also nothing but intensities—organized agencies of feeling having achieved “satisfaction” or the balancing of considerations of triviality, vagueness, narrowness and width. To be a superject is to be a subject-superject, an intensive ordering of aesthetic, intensive elements which impose themselves on and in subsequent actualities which were, in the subjective process of those superjects initiation as intensities, the “relevant future” of those actualities. This notion captures a fundamental commitment that was in place as early as Science and the Modern World, where Whitehead wrote: The endurance of things has its significance in the self-retention of that which imposes itself as a definite attainment for its own sake. That which endures is limited, obstructive, intolerant, infecting the 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. The problem of evolution is the development of enduring harmonies of enduring shapes of value, which merge into higher attainments of things beyond themselves. Aesthetic attainment is interwoven into the texture of realization (SMW 94).

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It is my contention that a proper understanding of the version of ontological atomism or pluralism espoused by the philosophy of organism requires a non-metaphorical understanding of this passage; that is, it requires that the claim that “aesthetic attainment is interwoven into the texture of realization” really means that the intensities achieved (attained) in each subjective process actually do infect their environments, partially constituting the internal features of other entities in those environments. Agentive intensities become features of other agentive intensities, and are not merely externally referenced by them. The interweaving is actual, not phenomenal, in each entity and in all of them communally. The demand that an entity can only be itself as it is appropriated by and in other entities is a rejection of ontological discreteness in what is nonetheless self-conscious atomism. Thus, processive atomism does not preclude the lending and borrowing—the mutual penetration or interweaving, in other words—of felt harmonies. It does preclude notions of exclusive individuality of existence inherited from substantialist metaphysics. Intensity helps us cash out this notion of the subjective-superjective interweaving of aesthetic achievement by framing our conception in terms of the immediate texture of aesthetic contrast, rather than the abstractions about individuality that lead surreptitiously to the presumption of separated individuality more appropriate to a substance model than a processive one. If we bear in mind that the satisfied entity that is superjectively (objectively) available to subsequent actualities is nothing but an intensive harmony of feelings, we are free to say that that entity per se is present wherever and whenever that intensity manifests itself in its relevant future. Likewise, we see the emergence of that entity by looking at the prior actualities out of which it emerges and whose intensities have woven themselves into/as its aesthetic fabric. Two additional observations will help underscore the way in which intensity helps us understand the peculiar ontological properties of an emergent aesthetic harmony. First, we can hearken to claims made about entities as transcendent creators in Adventures of Ideas, the text immediately following Process and Reality in Whitehead’s development of his system. In Adventures of Ideas (AI), Whitehead describes actual entities as “provoking” features of their subsequent worlds (AI 176), and describes creativity as “the throbbing emotion of the past hurling itself into a new transcendent fact” (AI 177). In AI, the entire subject-object relation as it is enfolded into the processive description of actuality is cashed out in terms of the active provocation of the future by the past: “The subject-object relation can be conceived as Recipient and Provoker, where the fact provoked is an affective tone about the status of the provoker in the provoked experience. Also the total provoked occasion is a totality involving many such examples of provocation” (AI 176). Construing these claims in intensive terms allows us to understand how subjects can be in other subjects and yet remain themselves: if an entity as Provoker is essentially an intensity of contrasts, we can say that that entity is itself present in the Recipient agentively, so as to be Provoker of that new subject. Being an object is a mode of being a subject, if we understand the aesthetic texture of entities in exclusively intensive language. To be an object is to be an operative intensity constituting a dimension of the operative intensities of a novel subject; it is not ontologically separate from being the subject of the intensity that is being thus incorporated in a subsequent actuality. In this way we can better absorb the sense in which an entity is simultaneously subject/superject—the distinction between

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these is phasic, and not existential. The subject/superject distinction is the difference between an intensity and a repetition of an intensity in the aesthetic realization of a subsequent entity. This leads us to the second consideration that helps to drive home the shape of this internallyrelational atomism as intensively construed. Concrescence describes the emergence of the subject in the strongest possible sense of emergence: the subject emerges from the concrescence and does not in any way “underlie” it except in terms of the ideal of subjective aim energizing possibilities towards realization of the subject as superject. Whitehead writes, The operations of an organism are directed towards the organism as a ‘superject,’ and are not directed from the organism as a ‘subject.’ The operations are directed from antecedent organisms and to the immediate organism. They are ‘vectors,’ in that they convey the many things into the constitution of the single superject. The creative process is rhythmic: it swings from the publicity of many things to the individual privacy; and it swings back from the private individual to the publicity of the objectified individual. The former swing is dominated by the final cause, which is the ideal; and the latter swing is dominated by the efficient cause, which is actual (PR 151). Here I think it fair to think of the “operations of an organism” as the agentive, active dimension of their actuality per se. We are being instructed to think of these operations as aiming at the superject rather than their being the activities of the subject. In other words, the subject just is what it will be as appropriated by subsequent actualities. We should note, too, that this model should be extended to describe how the emergent entity emerged from its past, which is part of how it is emerging into its future. Intensively construed, again, this makes more sense than if we use the abstractions of individuality handed down in the substance tradition. A thing’s nature is nothing but an aesthetic mode of organization; that mode is present wherever that organization—the “operations of some organism”—are at work. An entity is an intensity that can be traced through all three of the temporal modes into which our conceptuality carves itself: past, present, future. We would have no entity to identify as an individual atom of any kind in the absence of this traceable trajectory of intensive contrast, emerging from an array of actualities and possibilities into further arrays of actualities and possibilities which its emergence helps to explain. Thus, it seems to be the case that the concept of “intensity” puts us on our guard against a substantializing of the present at the expense of the ontological status of past and future. Despite much talk of the intersection of the temporal modes in Whitehead’s model of internally related occasions, there is nonetheless a marked tendency in process literature to lionize the present as the definitive scene of actuality. But this lionizing undermines the “vibratory” character of existence qua intensity that Whitehead is building in a model where a subject only comes to be as aiming at its superjective status in the transcendent future. To be this present subject will be to be that future superjective influence in the world, and will have been to be the provocations that call forth these additional modes of provocation. I have elsewhere called this model an “ecstatic” characterization of existence, helpfully underscored by reading nothing into the ontology of an entity except the intensity of contrast that is the fully clothed feeling-complex of 6 the emerging satisfaction. An entity qua atomic occasion of contrast is present wherever and whenever the identifiable thread of intensive order is recognized such that we have occasion to postulate a subject or actuality in the first place. Intensive actuality might best be construed as

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“ecstatic” in order to break down the conceptual habits associated with individuality in substantialist thinking.

5. Intensity and Morality We noted that the categoreal introduction of intensity in PR included a reference to morality, which is notable given the relative scarcity of explicit claims about morality in Whitehead’s work. Despite the unremittingly axiological focus in his philosophy, Whitehead never developed an explicit ethics to go along with the metaphysical vision of the philosophy of organism. It is fitting to end the present essay by unfolding the intensive dimensions of moral reflection as Whitehead presents them. It is important to bear in mind, however, that the intensive discussion of morality is not a moral theory of any kind, as much as a description of some crucial dimensions of moral experience per se. We might work toward developing an ethical theory based on the concept of intensity, but such a philosophical application is not accomplished by Whitehead himself. In the Category of Subjective Intensity, and in our subsequent discussion, we have seen the importance of the relevant future in the characterization of the present intensive experience of a subject in concrescence. In the Categoreal statement we saw Whitehead observe that “The greater part of morality hinges on the determination of relevance in the future.” Morality is, in other words, a question about the intensive significance of present becoming in the future that will be derived from that present and which presently impinges on the felt contours of becoming. This does not in and of itself settle questions about the good, or normativity, or evil, but it does suggest a direction for our consideration of our actions in light of their internal intensive connection to the past (any future has a past in the present) and to the future. Indeed, Whitehead points out that moral experience is perhaps richly indicative of the kind of internal connectivity outlined above between entities and their transcendent future, when explaining what he means in saying that the feelings “aim at the feeler” rather than being aimed from the feeler: “In our own relatively high grade human existence, this doctrine of feelings and their subject is best illustrated by our notion of moral responsibility. The subject is responsible for being what it is in virtue of its feelings. It is also derivatively responsible for the consequences of its existence because they flow from its feelings” (PR 222). Intensity and responsibility are, thus, correlative notions. The integration of feelings effected as intensity of satisfaction for any given entity is simultaneously a determination of that entity’s existential role in future intensive satisfactions. An entity is agent/responsible wherever its intensity is realized. Again, this does not specifically norm our agentive actions, but it does suggest that the mere experience of responsibility is evidence of the capacity to be normed, to some extent at least, by the sheer fact of ecstatic intensive significance. That I experience the insinuation of my own intensities of satisfaction in situations transcendent of myself, is already an indication of realities beyond my mundane conception of myself as an alleged “individual” in which I am morally implicated. This begins to break down the binary opposition of

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“individual self” and “other” which has typified moral discourse at least since the advent of modernity. Notions of normativity enter into Whitehead’s discussion of the transcendent creative dimension of process in the form of a demand for “importance” in Modes of Thought. “Morality consists in the control of process so as to maximize importance. It is the aim at greatness of experience in the various dimensions belonging to it.… Morality is always the aim at that union of harmony, intensity and vividness which involves the perfection of importance for that occasion” (MT 13-14), though general notions of “control of process” also enters the discussion of the moral contours of experience in PR and AI. As early as RM, morality is fashioned as a concern to preserve finer intensities at the expense of lesser, narrower values that might be achieved in those creative actions over which we have some determinate control. Thus, Whitehead’s appeal to “greatness of experience” in MT marks a fairly persistent interest in the enrichment of experience as a primary goal of moral consideration. The role of the concepts associated with “intensity” in shaping our judgments about what might constitute maximum importance, or realization of value, is clear here: our capacity to direct intensive achievement towards maximal inclusiveness of value through the right balance of triviality, vagueness, narrowness and width, oriented towards eliciting “depth” of satisfaction, will determine the 7 shape and scope of our transcendent creation of the future. By themselves these considerations will not tell us what we should do in the strictly normative sense, but they will outline a good deal about what it means in the way of value achievement that we do one thing or another.

6. Conclusion Subjective intensity is simultaneously a technical systematic notion, and an extrapolation from ordinary experience—especially moral experience—for the purpose of elaborating a metaphysical vision that is both coherent in its detail and applicable to the human domain in which it emerges. It expresses the aesthetic unity of feeling constituting reality as process, as well as the ontological connectivity of the actualities emerging in process.

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Notes 1

A Treatise on Universal Algebra, With Applications (New York: Hafner, 1960). See Lewis S. Ford, The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics (New York: SUNY, 1984). 3 See Process and Reality, Part IV, 332-333. 4 See my Intensity: An Essay in Whiteheadian Ontology, “Chapter One: Intensity of Satisfaction” (Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, 1998). 5 See for example the excellent summary discussion of these issues by George Kline in the essay, “Form, Concrescence, Concretum,” in Explorations in Whitehead’s Philosophy, edited by Lewis S. Ford and George L. Kline, 104-108 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986). 6 Jones, 1998. 7 Some of the best discussion of the moral applications (as well as epistemic and metaphysical applications) of these “structural conditions” of intensity are to be found in the work of Robert Neville. See his Reconstruction of Thinking, Recovery of the Measure, and The Puritan Smile. 2

Extension and the Theory of the Physical Universe Leemon McHenry

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Whitehead’s theory of the physical universe is unique in the history of philosophy, and for this reason difficult to comprehend. His attempt to provide a cosmology was a major concern from his earliest work in mathematical physics inspired by Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Beginning with “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World” (1905) to the view finally expressed in Process and Reality (1929), one finds a progressive refinement of his theory of extension. Once the ancient trinity of space, time and matter, along with the idea of one cosmic temporal order, was replaced by the fourdimensionality of the theory of relativity, Whitehead’s task was to explain space-time from the happenings of basic events. A major change of view occurs when he discovers that process is the fundamental idea and the extensiveness of space derivative. In this chapter I provide an elementary exposition of the development of Whitehead’s view of objectivity and his theory of extension, with particular focus on explaining how macroscopic objects of ordinary perception and the whole structure of space-time arise out of the units of his ontology, namely, the actual occasions. I will also review the scholarship on Whitehead’s view of extension and discuss the major problems that arise in connection with the theory in Process and Reality.

1. Historical Perspective The essence of Whitehead’s theory of the physical universe is perhaps best grasped in connection with the affinities and contrasts with the founders of the seventeenth-century cosmology, i.e., Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. They advanced the doctrine of mechanistic materialism, the clock-like view of the universe as matter in motion. The centerpiece of this view is the independence of space and time as defined by Newton in the Scholium of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). Objects in motion are therefore understood within a three-dimensional arena existing at different times. As Newton defined time in his Principia, he writes: “Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equally without regard to anything external […].” “Absolute space,” he said, “in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.”1 As time advances from one instant to another, the whole universe is conceived to exist at once, complete and determinate. This is the concept of the cosmic now or absolute present.

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Department of Philosophy, California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, California 91330-8253; [email protected].

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A concept of absolute time and space implies that the temporal and spatial relations among objects are external. This means that the spatio-temporal relations have no effect on the essential nature of the things in space and time. On this score, Newton’s view is sometimes called the “billiard-ball model” of the universe.2 Both Galileo and Newton held variations of the old doctrine of atoms and the void revived from the ancient Greek philosophers, Democritus and Epicurus. Space is a receptacle for matter in motion, they believed, since bodies can move only when there is a void that allows their passage by giving way and offers no resistance. Newton makes his view clear in his “De gravitatio et aequipondio fluidorum” when he defines the terms “place,” “body,” “rest,” and “motion” in opposition to Descartes’ view, such that: (1) space is given as distinct from body, and (2) motion is determined with respect to the parts of space, instead of positions of contiguous bodies.3 Extension, for Newton, is understood to be neither substance nor accident; nor is it “simply nothing” but “it has a certain mode of existence proper to itself which suits neither substances nor accidents.”4 By contrast, Descartes had argued against the void by conceiving of the extended universe as one physical substance having the properties of motion, divisibility, mutability and flexibility. Descartes makes the point in his Principles of Philosophy (1644) as follows: As regards a vacuum in the philosophical sense of the word, i.e. a place in which there is no substance, it is evident that such cannot exist, because the extension of space or internal place, is not different from that of body. For, from the mere fact that a body is extended in length, breadth, or depth, we have reason to conclude that it is a substance, because it is absolutely inconceivable that nothing should possess extension, we ought to conclude also that the same is true of the space which is supposed to be void, i.e. that since there is in it extension, there is necessarily also substance.5 In this way, space and bodies in space are thought of as a matter of degree rather than of kind, as thin and thick regions of extension. According to Descartes, space or extension is a plenum. The mechanistic theory together with advances in mathematics seemed securely on the path to unlocking the secrets of nature. At almost every step of the way for succeeding generations, all parts of the physical puzzle appeared to come together ultimately confirming Newton’s grand cosmological scheme. With the revolution in physics that occurred with Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity, however, it was clear that the whole foundation of physics needed rethinking. As Whitehead says in the Preface to The Principle of Relativity, his alternative rendering of the theory of relativity “takes its rise from that ‘awakening from dogmatic slumber’—to use Kant’s phrase—which we owe to Einstein and Minkowski” (R, v) Whitehead opposed the doctrine of mechanistic materialism on every point. First, as opposed to the mechanical conception of the universe, Whitehead’s view of reality is more thoroughly organic (SMW, 75). From the beginning of his foray into philosophy, he had in mind a unification of biological and physical phenomena. Second, in contrast to the absolute theory of space and time, he advanced a relative theory following Leibniz and Einstein. Third, in place of the primacy of instants of time and points in space, Whitehead argues that all perception of nature occurs within durations. Fourth, the theory of substance or the materialist doctrine underlying the seventeenth-century cosmology is replaced with an ontology of events. Process replaces substance as the basic idea. Fifth, as Whitehead’s theory evolves, his understanding of

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events is refined such that the basic entities are conceived as atoms of experience. This, he claimed, is a repudiation of the doctrine of “vacuous actuality” (PR, xiii).

2. Pan-Physics and Four-Dimensionality The three books of Whitehead’s middle period, The Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919), The Concept of Nature (1920) and The Principle of Relativity (1922), attempt a unification of the natural sciences, or a “pan-physics” based on the theory of events (R, 4).6 He writes: “Modern speculative physics with its revolutionary theories concerning the natures of matter and of electricity has made urgent the question, What are the ultimate data of science?” (PNK, v). The main trouble with the ontology of the classical view, according to Whitehead, is that it does not stand up to empirical examination. His task therefore is to replace this view with one that advances the interconnection of events discriminated in perceptual experience. He then builds up the extended physical universe from this new foundation. Instants of time and points of space quite simply do not appear in our experience of nature. They are abstractions of thought falsely believed to be the basic entities of the extended universe. Events, however, he argues are known in durations of immediate experience and each event is essentially a quantum of extension that is both spatially and temporally thick. Extension, at this point in Whitehead’s system, is the primary feature of actuality, and the basic relational property is the whole-part relation of “extending over.” He writes: “Every event extends over other events, and every event is extended over by other events” (CN, 59). By inference, we construct the total picture of nature, inwards and outwards, by the doctrine of “significance” which explains the interconnected network of events. In this way, we understand how events form a uniform structure from the inside of an atom to the galaxies beyond the Milky Way. Within events we discriminate “objects” which are repeatable characters discerned within events. As Whitehead puts it, objects are the “recognita amid events” (PNK, 81). The repetition of objects in events is what makes science possible. The discovery of the laws of nature, for instance, is due to the fact that the characters of events repeat themselves in some fairly stable fashion (PNK, 87). The theory of periodicity crucial to the mathematical analysis of nature finds its basis in this important aspect of objects. Whitehead distinguishes three kinds of objects: “sense-objects” such as individual colors, “perceptual objects” such as ordinary macroscopic objects, and “scientific objects” such as electrons and molecules (CN, 149). “Things” as we ordinarily understand them, are relatively monotonous patterns in event sequences. They are bundles of energy that more or less maintain their characteristics and consequently form “space-time worms” (or following Minkowski, “world-lines”) in the fourdimensional manifold. The doctrine of significance is Whitehead’s replacement of the theory of external relations. The central feature of an event is its relatedness within a system of whole-part relations forming the entire system of the extended universe. It is not what it is in isolation, but has its existence only as a part of a network. This doctrine also plays an important role in the relational theory of space because instead of conceiving things as first in space and then as acting upon one another,

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the theory of significance requires us to think of space-time as arising out of the relations of events. When Whitehead now considers the problem of the geometry of space-time, he constructs instants, points, lines, planes, and volumes from his method of extensive abstraction—the logico-mathematical procedure of deriving such abstractions by a progressive narrowing of events from immediate perception. The resulting structure is a geometry of the four-dimensional manifold. A central feature of this theory is the notion of stratified time-systems within spacetime. This sets up the basis for his explanation of the relative motion of objects. A frame of reference occurs within one time-system constructed from what Whitehead calls a “family of parallel durations.” The indefinite number of families of parallel durations constituting different time-systems is one of the main distinguishing features of the theory of relativity. By contrast, there is only one absolute time-system in the Newtonian theory (PKN, 113; CN 190). Whitehead’s system agrees with the Einstein-Minkowski formulation of relativity theory in that there is no unique cosmic “Everywhere-Now” or absolute simultaneity. Whitehead’s view of extension here approximates Descartes’ concept of the plenum in that both reject the very idea of empty space (PR, 73). In accordance with Einstein, however, space is fused with the fourth dimension of time.7 So-called empty space is, for Whitehead, a uniform electromagnetic field including the vast regions between planets and galaxies and the vast regions between subatomic particles in the atom (here understood as objects ingredient in event structures). The alternative theory proposed by Whitehead differs most from Einstein in that Whitehead argued for a uniform structure of space-time constructed from his ontology of events. Einstein held that the structure of space-time varied with its contents because of the peculiarities in the distribution of matter throughout the universe; the presence of matter distorts the uniform space-time structure and results in a curved space-time. But since Whitehead rejected the traditional concept of matter and substituted this with the concept of objects ingredient in events, the space-time of perception is conceived as continuously uniform with the more refined space-time of scientific objects.

3. The Metaphysics of Process In Note II to the second edition of The Principles of Natural Knowledge, Whitehead said of the first edition that: The book is dominated by the idea […] that the relation of extension has a unique preeminence and that everything can be got out of it. During the development of this theme, it gradually became evident that this is not the case, and cogredience […] had to be introduced. But the true doctrine, that ‘process’ is the fundamental idea, was not in my mind with sufficient emphasis. Extension is derivative from process, and is required by it (PNK, 202). This is the beginning of Whitehead’s excursion into a much more comprehensive system of nature. Contrary to much of traditional metaphysics, easily ridiculed as grandiose armchair speculation detached from scientific advance, Whitehead sees metaphysics as a generalization

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from the special sciences. This I have identified as “naturalized metaphysics” as opposed to “pure metaphysics.”8 The former involves no attempt to defend metaphysics as a discipline that has some special grasp of truth apart from scientific investigation. Rather, it accepts science as a starting point and risks its dignity in the revisable and fallible manner of hypothetico-deductive systems. Whitehead sought the most general principles from advancing knowledge in physics, biology and psychology in what he calls the “philosophy of organism” (PR, xi). In fact, his whole project in Process and Reality was to make coherent the diverse and fragmentary theories of the special sciences, including evolution, genetic inheritance, psychology, electromagnetic phenomena, quantum phenomena and relativity via general metaphysical principles of process and creative advance. Since “process” replaces “extension” as the basic idea in his metaphysics, Whitehead’s conception of nature undergoes radical revision; the holistic conception of events interconnected by whole-part relations is developed into a pluralistic temporal atomism. In other words, the geometrical and primarily spatial thinking of his earlier preoccupation with relativity gives way to a theory that takes time seriously.9 This does not mean that Whitehead abandoned relativity for his new system, but modifications were necessary to reconcile relativity with temporal becoming. In the transitional theory of Science and the Modern World and in the fully-developed metaphysics of Process and Reality, the dualism of events and objects is replaced by “actual occasions” and “eternal objects” which function more or less as particulars and universals.10 Actual occasions are micro-events or atoms of becoming that synthesize their immediate predecessors to create novel entities. Eternal objects are “Pure Potentials for the Specific Determination of Fact, or Forms of Definiteness,” Whitehead says in his “Categoreal Scheme” of Process and Reality (PR, 22). The relationship between these two pairs of entities is a difficult problem to sort out. But aside from the addition of the subjective nature of actual occasions, the important point to bear in mind is that an event becomes a nexus of actual occasions in the metaphysics. The nexus is a succession of actual occasions forming our experience of continuity and change in ordinary perception. What we perceive as change is the differences between the individual characters of occasions forming such an event. Since the subjective character of the actual occasions has been the focus of the preceding chapter, I shall discuss the aspects of occasions that result in the solidarity of the world. Whitehead’s central task is to explain process, change and novelty. All actualities are more or less creative via the prehensive activity of actual occasions. Each creates itself from its own subjective aim. In the beginning of the concrescent process, an actual occasion inherits the eternal objects that are given from the past. If the occasion has a “dominance in its physical pole,” there is simply a brute inheritance of the same data presented by the immediate past and the occasion terminates in what Whitehead calls “physical purposes” (PR, 184). In other words, while the occasion is a new creation, the amount of novelty it contributes is negligible. Occasions of this sort make up the vast regions of space-time or the things identified in perception as inert matter or low-level organisms. But as occasions become more and more sophisticated in higher-level organisms or in consciousness, there is more opportunity for originality. Such an occasion has what Whitehead calls a “dominance in its mental pole,” i.e.,

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the opportunity of introducing novelty into the world via conceptual feelings of a new eternal object that becomes integrated with the inherited physical feelings. Once an occasion completes its concrescence, it contributes its data to future occasions and perishes. What the occasion contributes at its “satisfaction” is an “object” or “superject.” Whitehead is using the term “object” here to refer to what becomes public fact at the outcome of an occasion’s concrescent process. An object in this sense is what is perceived in the immediate past and is prehended as a unity by a present occasion. So, just as the light received from a star is originating from an object that might in fact be long gone, any perception of an object in the immediate present involves the transmission of light from an event in the past of the perceiver’s experience. Instead of taking years, as in the case of a distant star, in ordinary perception it occurs in a fraction of a second. The idea that the perceived object is never a contemporary one can be generalized for all actual occasions in the sense that the genetic process of concrescence involves the prehension of what is completed by the immediate past occasion just before it perishes. The crucial task of Whitehead’s theory of extension in Process and Reality is to explain how the microscopic actual occasions form the base of enduring things of perceptual experience— rocks, plants, animals, planets, stars, galaxies and the whole structure of space-time within what he calls our “cosmic epoch” and beyond. He retains the idea of space as a plenum and explains the structure of extension via a corpuscular theory of “society.” Actual occasions form societies by their prehensions of a common complex eternal object. These are typically aggregates of mutual contemporaries with common lines of inheritance. Whitehead defines a “society” as follows: A nexus enjoys ‘social order’ where (i) there is a common element of form illustrated in the definiteness of each of its included actual entities, and (ii) this common element of form arises in each member of the nexus by reason of the conditions imposed upon it by its prehensions of some other members of the nexus, and (iii) these prehensions impose that condition of reproduction by reason of their inclusion of positive feelings of that common form (PR, 34). Our observations and theoretical models from physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, cosmology, etc., explain how societies are arranged into various levels of organisms and environments or systems within systems. In this manner, we have societies of societies of societies forming subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, bodies, planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, cosmic epochs and beyond. Whitehead makes the transition from the microscopic world of actual occasions to the macroscopic world of our perceptual experience by his notion of “transmutation,” whereby occasions in any particular physical body are prehended as a unity. When we perceive any macroscopic entity, he argues that we prehend an aggregate of many occasions as one final unity. An individual is discerned in the mass of actual occasions present to consciousness by the way the perceiver integrates the many members of the society and produces one transmuted feeling. This is possible because the members of the society share a certain dominance of characteristics or the identity of pattern of the ingredient eternal objects. Societies can be simple or vastly complex. The simplest ones are those with “personal order,” in which the members are ordered serially. The most specialized cases of these societies are the

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routes of electronic or protonic actualities. Electrons and protons are societies that form the first level of physical activity (now quarks and leptons, unknown in Whitehead’s time). In laboratory conditions the physicist observes effects of subatomic particles resulting from multiple interactions of events with an electromagnetic character. These societies must be conceived as the base of the hierarchy of social order “of increasing width of prevalence, the more special societies being included in the wider societies” (PR, 92). Molecules and cells are more complex societies or what Whitehead calls “structured societies;” that is, societies that include subordinate societies and/or nexs (plural of nexus). Whitehead thus explains: A structured society consists in the patterned intertwining of various nexs with markedly diverse defining characteristics. Some of these nexs are of lower types than others, and some will be markedly higher types. There will be ‘subservient’ nexs and the ‘regnant’ nexs within the same structured society. This structured society will provide the immediate environment which sustains each of its subsocieties, subservient and regnant alike (PR, 103). A cell, for example, is structured in the sense that it is a society that harbors the existence of lower, more specialized societies—at one level molecules, at another atoms, and so on. So the higher society (the cell) is regnant, and functions as an environment for the lower level (the molecules), while the lower societies are subservient and function as organisms for the higher level. This reciprocity of whole and part applies throughout various levels of order in Whitehead’s theory of extension—working outward in terms of environments or inward in terms of organisms. Each special science restricts itself to investigations within some focused region of what he calls “the extensive continuum,” namely, the entire abstract system of wholepart relations. As we reach the limits of astronomical observation, Whitehead speculates that there are three further levels of social order necessary to complete his theory of extension: societies forming “cosmic epochs,” the geometrical society and the society of pure extension. Cosmic epochs are the widest societies in which a particular set of laws of physics reign. Our expanding universe from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch11 corresponds to what Whitehead calls “that widest society of actual entities whose immediate relevance to ourselves is traceable. This epoch is characterized by electronic and protonic actual entities, and by yet more ultimate actual entities which can be dimly discerned in the quanta of energy” (PR, 91). What is typically called “the universe” is for Whitehead only our immediate cosmic epoch that is contemporary to other cosmic epochs, each having different types of order and different laws of physics describing that order (PR, 97). The Big Bang is merely the beginning of our electromagnetic cosmic epoch, not the beginning of the universe. We must suppose there was a preceding cosmic epoch that generated our cosmic epoch and a succeeding cosmic epoch into which ours will pass. This multi-verse of cosmic epochs is nestled within a more general structured society that is the basis for the axioms of geometry and any possibility of measurement. Whatever the dimensionality of the cosmic epochs within this geometric society, they must conform to the more general geometrical order established by this society. Beyond the geometrical society, Whitehead says “we discern the defining characteristic of a vast nexus extending far beyond our immediate cosmic epoch […] the fundamental society in so far as it transcends our own epoch seems a vast confusion mitigated by the few, faint elements of order contained in its own defining

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characteristic of ‘extensive connection’” (PR, 97). This he calls “the society of pure extension,” namely, the widest conceivable society, but not the final society, since “there is no society in isolation” (PR, 90). In Part IV of Process and Reality, Whitehead presents the most general abstract features of extension. He distinguishes between cosmological and metaphysical laws. The cosmological laws apply to our cosmic epoch such as those discovered about the quantum world, weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity or the number of dimensions of space. The metaphysical laws are more ultimate and apply to all cosmic epochs such as explained in his Categoreal Scheme or by the very general features of the extensive continuum—extensive connectedness and the relation of whole and part (PR, 288). In axiomatic fashion, Whitehead states the general principles for the connectedness of extensive regions and for inclusion, the latter being defined in terms of the former. (This should be understood as Whitehead’s modification of his views on extensive abstraction in The Principles of Natural Knowledge where the relation of whole and part was primary.) He then proceeds to define the geometrical elements via the notion of extensive sets. This gives him the laws of geometry or what he calls “the investigation of the morphology of nexs” (PR, 302). In this manner, he attempts to formulate the logical structure of the extensive continuum and the geometrical principles that constitute the geometrical society. It should be clear that macroscopic objects and the whole scheme of extensive connection in Whitehead’s metaphysics are abstractions from the actual occasions that are fully concrete and atomize the extensive continuum. In other words, the societies are the things that endure in the temporal process but they are nonetheless derivative from the basic ontological category. This is his main difference from Aristotle, who took primary substance as the basic ontological category and viewed events as secondary or dependent.12 This dependency is reversed in Whitehead’s system such that societies (or what Aristotle called “substances”) are dependent on basic events and not vice versa. The tendency in philosophy and science to mistake the abstract for the concrete, he called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (SMW, 51).

4. Interpretations of the Past The problem of the past has been one of the most formidable aspects of interpreting Whitehead’s theory of extension. If, as we have maintained, physical objects are perceived as the immediate past of a concrescing occasion, then the understanding of the ontological status of the past is crucial to sorting out Whitehead’s real view. Presented quite simply, does he espouse a view that all of existence is the present becoming of actual occasions and the past exists only as objects of the present becoming? Or does he view physical reality as a growing block universe in which the past exists objectively as past? When Whitehead modified his earlier theory of a four-dimensional block view to the temporal atomism underlying the process view, he clearly advanced a view in which the future is entirely open to the creative activities of the present occasion. Yet it is unclear just exactly how this works out given his acceptance of the theory of relativity and the denial of a unique cosmic present. As he says in Process and Reality: “I shall always adopt the relativity view; for one reason, because it seems better to

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accord with the general philosophical doctrine of relativity which is presupposed in the philosophy of organism […]” (PR 66). And in a passage that clarifies his rejection of absolute time, he writes: “There is a prevalent misconception that ‘becoming’ involves the notion of a unique seriality for its advance into novelty […]. In these lectures the term ‘creative advance’ is not to be construed in the sense of a uniquely serial advance” (PR, 35). According to the traditional or prevailing interpretation of commentators such as Leclerc (1958), Christian (1959), Sherburne (1966), Johnson (1976) and McHenry (1992, 2000), we are to take literally Whitehead’s claim that time is a “perpetual perishing” (PR, 29, 340). It is necessary for the past to perish in order for novelty to occur in a creative universe. Process, Whitehead says, entails loss. “The present fact has not the past fact with it in any full immediacy” (PR, 340). But “perishing” does not mean that an occasion that has completed its concrescence ceases to exist as an object; on the contrary, the perishing of subjective immediacy is the point in which the occasion becomes available as an object for successors (Johnson, 1976). Objects, however, exist only in so far as they are objects for the present concrescing subjects. Beginning with Nobo (1974, 1978, 1986), this interpretation has been challenged by the idea that Whitehead’s real view involves the notion that the objects produced in the process of becoming of actual occasions are actual and remain so for the potentiality of every new concrescing subject. According to Whitehead’s Principle of Process, an actual occasion’s being is produced by its becoming. How an actual occasion becomes constitutes what that actual occasion is (PR, 23, 166). His Principle of Relativity likewise asserts: “it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming’ (PR, 22). Nobo argues that commentators have failed to appreciate the true meaning of these doctrines, for Whitehead holds that entities are actual even if they are no longer subjectively immediate. Thus, Whitehead writes as an account for the solidarity of the universe: “To be actual must mean that all actual things are alike objects, enjoying objective immortality in fashioning creative actions; and that all actual things are subjects, each prehending the universe from which it arises” (PR, 56-57). Such passages in Process and Reality lend great support for Nobo’s interpretation. Moreover Nobo contends that Whitehead’s view is a cumulative theory of actuality. When a region of the extensive continuum becomes determinate, it remains so. In this way it can function in later occasions where the data of that entity is projected into successors. The solidarity of the universe is the reality of the past. Lango has made a similar revisionist argument by focusing attention on Whitehead’s philosophy of time in the context of relativity theory (2006). Beginning with a distinction between “presentism” and “eternalism” as for example one finds in McTaggart’s A-series and B-series, presentism holds that only the events that are happening in the present exist, while eternalism holds that just as there is no metaphysically privileged point in space, there is no metaphysically privileged present.13 For the eternalist then, temporal passage is “unreal” because all events in time are eternally present or have the same ontological status in the fourdimensional manifold. As Einstein famously made the point: “[…] the past, present and future are an illusion, even if a stubborn one.”14 The distinction between presentism and eternalism corresponds roughly to the three-dimensional and four-dimensional views of extension, but

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neither captures Whitehead’s distinctive view. Lango therefore proposes to see Whitehead’s view as a third alternative, described by C. D. Broad as the “growing block universe.” On such a view, the past has real existence. Broad, for example, writes: “Whatever is has become, and the sum total of the existent is continually augmented by becoming. There is no such thing as ceasing to exist; what has become exists henceforth for ever. When we say that something has ceased to exist, we only mean that it has ceased to be present […].”15 Lango calls this view “past-and-presentism.” What is past and present exist, but not what is future. Past, present and future, however, are always defined relative to an actual occasion. Lango argues that the growing block interpretation fits best with Whitehead’s view because: (1) it replaces the unique serial order of creative advance with the notion of durations (sets of actual occasions in unison of becoming) that are not uniquely serial; and (2) we would have no way of understanding Whitehead’s concept of nexus if past objects are not actual. The reality or actuality of the past provides a way of understanding how an actual occasion temporalizes extension by occupying a basic region that is mediately connected to the basic regions of temporally earlier actual occasions. Understanding Whitehead’s theory of extension requires seeing how topological properties of temporal order and metaphysical properties of extensive connection are coherently interwoven.

5. Conclusion Whitehead’s view in Process and Reality appears to involve an inconsistency, and this is not merely a slip of terminology as in other cases where he used terms such as “interdependent” for what is an asymmetrical process. The inconsistency is substantive in that Whitehead is retaining elements of his earlier four-dimensionality while advancing doctrines of novelty and process. In other words, he held a view of the reality of temporal passage within the context of a relativity theory that denied temporal passage. The difficulty of attempting to reconcile the theory of epochal becoming within relativity theory finds a parallel in one of the greatest obstacles of achieving a grand unification of physical theory, namely, the indeterminacy of quantum theory with the determinism of the large-scale structure of gravity in relativity theory. Einstein, in fact, rejected quantum theory for this reason. Whitehead’s metaphysics suffers the same difficulty in that the indeterminacy of his theory of epochal becoming is incompatible with the determinacy of relativity theory. This is revealed in the debate on the status of the past where the traditional interpretations focus primarily on Whitehead’s theory of epochal becoming and the revisionist interpretations focus primarily on Whitehead’s theory of extension or the theory of relativity. The revisionist interpretations reveal the complexity of Whitehead’s system that has been overlooked by the traditional interpretations. While I cannot explore these issues here in any detail, I will end by simply pointing out some difficulties for the revisionist views. (1) When Whitehead explained time or the past as “perpetually perishing,” he appears to be speaking literally. In an essay published in 1947 in which he summarizes his view, he writes: Almost all of Process and Reality can be read as an attempt to analyse perishing on

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the same level as Aristotle’s analysis of becoming. The notion of the prehension of the past means that the past is an element in the state beyond, and thus is objectified. That is the whole notion. If you get a general notion of what is meant by perishing, you will have accomplished an apprehension of what you mean by memory and causality, what you mean when you feel that what we are is of infinite importance, because as we perish we are immortal. That is the one key thought around which the whole development of Process and Reality is woven […]. (ESP 117) (2) If the past is seen to be actual as being, we have an ontological duplication in Whitehead’s system which appears rather implausible especially as a violation of Occam’s Razor and the principle of identity. (This objection applies more directly to Lango’s view since Nobo has argued for an interpretation of Whitehead that involves repeatable particulars.) In the “Final Interpretation” of Process and Reality, Whitehead makes it clear that the past is objectively immortal in God’s consequent nature (PR 340, 351). That is, while the past is never wholly contained in the present, the past is positively prehended in the divine being, not merely as a copy of what was actual but rather as determinate being. But the past cannot exist in two places at once—in the actual past as determinate being and in the being of the divine actual entity. (3) If the revisionist view is correct, past events remain eternally there in the past but deprived of their status as subjectively immediate. Just exactly how are we meant to envisage this realm of past events without subjectivity is puzzling at best. Like geological strata of the earth full of dinosaur bones and clay pots, the past must be seen as dead but not quite gone. But according to Whitehead’s ontological principle, everything must be somewhere in actuality. Outside of the creative activity of actual occasions, there is nothingness (PR, 19, 24). This helps us understand more fully the sorts of claims Whitehead makes regarding extension or objectivity as an abstraction from the concreteness of actual occasions. It also sheds light on the necessity of the one divine actual entity which contains the whole past world as objectively immortal. As he puts it: “the actual world is built up of actual occasions; and by the ontological principle whatever things there are in any sense of ‘existence,’ are derived by abstraction from actual occasions” (PR, 73). (4) Finally, each occasion’s becoming is a present but clearly not the present. This means there will be occasions earlier than the present becoming that will be causally objectified in it, contemporaries that will be in a unison of becoming with the present occasion and occasions that are future. While this is surely a consequence of Whitehead’s acceptance of relativity theory, it is not at all clear how this view squares with the notion of a growing block universe or the modern concept of the expanding universe. The problem is that it appears to reverse Whitehead’s discovery that extension is derivative from process because becoming happens in a pre-existing framework of extension.16

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Isaac Newton, 1995, 13. Achinstein 1991, 156-57. 3 Newton 1962. 4 Newton 1962, 99. 5 Descartes 1931, 262. 6 For a more detailed exposition of Whitehead’s philosophy of physics, see my chapter on “PanPhysics: Whitehead’s Philosophy of Natural Science, 1918-1922,” in Lowe 1990. 7 Einstein 1920, 137. 8 See McHenry 1992, 16-17. 9 See especially Mili apek, 1991, 324-343 (“Time-Space Rather Than Space-Time”). 10 For a thorough explanation of the development of this transitional theory, see Ford 1984. 11 See Hawking 1988, Chapter 8; cf. Greene 2004, Ch. 13 where he discusses cyclic cosmology. 12 In this connection, see my 1996 article, “Descriptive and Revisionary Theories of Events.” 13 McTaggart 1927, Chapter XXXIII. 14 Hoffman and Dukas 1972, 258. 15 Broad 1959, 66. 16 I wish to thank Pierfrancesco Basile and John Lango for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2

Speculative Metaphysics with Applications: A Whiteheadian Way Forward Peter Simons

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A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. Matthew xiii, 57

1. Metaphysics since Whitehead Whitehead wrote his finest and most difficult work Process and Reality in the 1920s, as one of a rash of grand metaphysical treatises, including Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity and McTaggart’s The Nature of Existence. But in the same decade the Vienna Circle was putting forward its anti-metaphysical programme: scientistic positivism and the deflationary effects of later linguistic philosophy contrived to keep metaphysics down for the best part of half a century, at least in analytic philosophy. The slow recovery came through the rise of logical and linguistic semantics, and through Whitehead’s student Quine’s discussion of ontological commitment. Metaphysics Lite re-emerged in Britain with Strawson’s Individuals, while other recalcitrant metaphysicians such as the Iowa school in the USA and the Australian materialists more unabashedly broached metaphysical themes. As the dampening influence of Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy waned, metaphysics began to re-emerge. The work of Kripke and others on the semantics of modal logic brought the philosophy of language and metaphysical speculation closer together. The direct confrontations of David Armstrong with the metaphysics of universals and of David Lewis with the metaphysics of modality finally saw metaphysics shake off its dependence on the linguistic turn, its subservience to semantics and the philosophy of language, and over the past quarter century there has been a spectacular flowering of metaphysical discussion of all kinds. Analytic metaphysics is one of the liveliest and healthiest branches of philosophy, but all is not well within the analytic house. This is not because there is controversy and lack of agreement: these are endemic in philosophy, and generally welcome in the free market of ideas. Rather it is because of the culture of analytic philosophy itself. The very success of analytic philosophy in the anglophone world, and its widespread influence in other linguistic communities, has had some undesirable side-effects.1 One has been to encourage a puzzle-solving culture in philosophy. Analytic philosophy was born in a welter of puzzles and paradoxes, and earned its spurs taming them. There has been no i

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shortage of puzzles to replace the old ones about sets and liars and the unreality of time: vague objects, personal identity and survival, time-travel and the metaphysics of persistence and change have all called forth vast literatures of considerable wit and intelligence. But the optical effect of philosophers spending time on what from outside may easily seem frivolities rather than serious problems is demeaning. Surely such an old and noble subject cannot have been reduced to the level of Sudoku? Of course there is often seriousness to the issues debated, but it can easily become lost in the excitement and the attendant vocabulary. Secondly, the tendency among many analytic philosophers has been to imitate the method of natural science and try to do work “at the cutting edge”, relying only on the latest literature. This is a recipe for wheelreinvention. Philosophy is not a natural science, and the theories and concepts of its less recent past are not absorbed and superseded by its latest developments. Thirdly, not all good philosophy is done in English, even today, when English has come to hold a place not unlike that of Latin in the Middle Ages. Good philosophy regularly appears in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, and in other languages. And finally, the cut-throat competition for academic positions in philosophy practically ensures that the only way aspiring young philosophers can get a start is to specialize minutely, whether in some corner of philosophy, or in some corner of its history. All of these factors, while they reflect welcome high technical standards and professionalization, both characters Whitehead exemplified, militate against just those other personal requirements for doing metaphysics that Whitehead represented to near-perfection in his person: long and slow maturation, cross-disciplinary competence, historical depth, synoptic breadth, the willingness to balance local precision with global approximation, and above all, that equilibrium between clarity and importance that signals wisdom. It is then perhaps little wonder that Whitehead is no prophet with honour in his own country, Britain, or among his own kin, analytic philosophers. His former student Bertrand Russell, who himself advocated that we “stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible”,2 and a swift developer, damned Whitehead’s mature philosophy with the faintest of praise, once their ways had parted. The whole culture of anglophone analytic philosophy is inimical to Whitehead. And this is not healthy for metaphysics, because Whitehead is the greatest metaphysician of the twentieth century. His example and work, difficult and at times frustrating though it is, cannot be ignored if metaphysics is to take the next major step forward and not fall back into the ineffectual chatter of mini-factions, ignored by the wider world.

2. The Method of Speculative Philosophy In ‘Speculative Philosophy’, the notoriously abstract and difficult first chapter of PR, Whitehead sets out the requirements on speculative philosophy, in particular metaphysics, with a clarity and boldness that seeks its equal anywhere in philosophy. The validity of these requirements, in effect Whitehead’s Prolegomena, can be maintained irrespective of whether Whitehead’s own process philosophy is materially correct or not. I happen to think Whitehead is indeed materially correct in several important respects, and incorrect in others. But this is not

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the place to go into content. Even those who disagree wholesale with Whitehead (whether or not they have taken the trouble to try to understand him), if they take metaphysics seriously as a fundamental discipline of philosophy, would do well to read his chapter through carefully, several times, and absorb its message. Before proceeding to Whitehead’s positive characterization of the speculative method, it is worth dwelling on two negative aspects of his account, criticising extant or previous approaches to metaphysics. Well-taken as they are, they help to explain why Whitehead’s work was not well received by philosophers, a fate he presciently foresaw. The first is that everyday language is inadequate for metaphysics. Everyday language exists and is the success it is because it serves practical uses: we can say (Whitehead did not) that it confers evolutionary advantage. It must do, otherwise there would not be so many humans on the planet. That does not make it suitable for metaphysics, because as Whitehead points out, the principles of metaphysics have to be applicable to everything, so there can be no circumstances where its principles “take a holiday” and are conspicuous by their absence (PR 4). By contrast, elephants are sometimes around and sometimes not, and when they are, it matters. So Mill’s Method of Difference cannot be used to ferret out the metaphysical concepts and principles as it often can in special sciences, and the background metaphysical generalities will not be discerned by examining the tacit presuppositions of everyday language. So much for ordinary language philosophy and descriptive metaphysics. Secondly, and more surprisingly, coming from a mathematician, Whitehead denies that the mathematical or axiomatic method can be simply wheeled out for metaphysics. Whether or not Whitehead had absorbed the revolution in understanding of axiomatics brought about by Hilbert—and he would certainly have known it, and considered the issue in connection with the axioms of Principia, whether he agreed or not—he was adamant that the self-evidence or obviousness supposedly necessary for a good axiom set must be lacking in the case of metaphysics, which consists not in rigorous deductions from objective certainties but in a crabwise groping towards the expression of ultimate generalities we grasp at best imperfectly. Any actual axiomatic metaphysics is bound to be false, and that goes for his own system as well. The importance of logical deduction is considerable: only when a speculative scheme is stated as boldly and exactly as possible, can its logical consequences be teased out and tested against scientific and everyday experience. The true method of metaphysics then cannot be other than that practised by good natural science: it is abductive. Explanations are framed in terms of concepts borrowed or constructed, and checked against the testimony of experience. If the explanatory framework holds up under the strain better than any rivals, it is provisionally acceptable; if not, revision is required. But unlike science, metaphysics is a theory of absolutely everything, and cannot be allowed to leave problematic issues on one side for another science to deal with. Whitehead therefore at the beginning of PR sets out four interlocked requirements on a metaphysical system. It must be (1) consistent, (2) coherent, (3) adequate, and (4) applicable. Consistency means that the system does not entail any contradiction, formal or material. But as Whitehead knew from the paradoxes of mathematics, inconsistencies may lurk undetected in apparently consistent theories. Once again, surprisingly for a logician, Whitehead is relatively

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less concerned about consistency than the other requirements. It is a desideratum, certainly, and an inconsistent theory cannot be completely true, but Whitehead cautions against drawing overdramatic conclusions from inconsistencies. All an inconsistency shows is that some premises or other in one’s reasoning are incompatible with one another. It does not highlight which, nor does it signal the remedy, which must be discerned by careful thought. Others of Whitehead’s conditions being satisfied, it is better to have a coherent, adequate, applicable and inconsistent theory than a consistent theory which fails one or more of the other conditions. Coherence is a most important requirement and is peculiar to metaphysics. It is required that the primitive concepts of the theory form a collection such that none of them makes sense in the absence of the others: “the fundamental ideas, in terms of which the scheme is developed, presuppose each other, so that in isolation they are meaningless” (PR 3). This marks out metaphysical from everyday concepts, which are typically relatively independent of one another. It is a requirement that even today most metaphysicians seem neither to know or care about. It is generally assumed in metaphysics that a sort of generalized Ockhamist parsimony principle obtains, so that other things being equal, one should attempt to get by with as few primitive notions as possible. Coherence is much stronger than parsimony: it requires the fundamental ideas to form a unified conceptual bloc, so that each one is intelligible only in terms of the others. This means we cannot exit the bloc to define the concepts in terms of more primitive ones, which is simply the metaphysical predicament. If a fundamental metaphysical idea seems to dangle loosely from the system, it is either redundant, or not fundamental, or the system is still incomplete. Fulfilling the coherence condition is perhaps the hardest single intellectual task a metaphysician faces, but as long as coherence is not attained, there is work still to be done. Adequacy is the requirement that everything in the world be tractable in the terms of the system. It should be a platitude, following from the definition of metaphysics, but Whitehead goes out of his way to praise Locke for the adequacy of his philosophy, to which no subject is alien (PR 51). Whitehead is not one of those facile critics of Locke who fancy themselves clever because they can point out the latter’s petty inconsistencies. On the contrary, in line with his own mature attitude to the inevitability of error and inconsistency in any comprehensive metaphysical system, Whitehead elevates Locke far above his critics. Applicability is a sort of converse to adequacy, since it requires that every part of the metaphysical system find some use somewhere. There are to be no emptily turning wheels in the mechanism. Obviously metaphysical applicability may be something that takes times and effort to turn up, just as it does in mathematics sometimes. But the requirement of applicability is again one to which the majority of metaphysicians pay at best lip-service, most being content to worst their metaphysical rivals in debate and occasionally look to a philosophical debate to try their theory’s mettle. Whitehead really does mean application to non-philosophical areas. Obviously his own main interests centred on natural science, though he also wrote at some length about the history of culture and education. However, qua theory of everything, metaphysics should be in principle able to go anywhere and consider whether metaphysical concepts can bring enlightenment or conceptual clarity. We shall consider certain unusual areas of application later.

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Overarching all these important conditions is the general methodological requirement that metaphysics like natural science be revisable in the light both of recalcitrant experience and of exposed conceptual weakness. Metaphysicians are by comparison with other thinkers especially prone to go wrong. The reasons are various: human intellectual limitations, the difficulties of being comprehensive, the need to attend to detail as well as system, stubbornness and irrational attachment to pet ideas, as well as fashion and vanity, and the ridiculous and unscientific cult of the individual genius, which means that philosophers who practise solid collaboration get less credit than high-profile zanies. When done properly, metaphysics is supremely hard, and that is one reason why it advances so slowly and uncertainly. It also means that a really outstanding metaphysician like Whitehead is worth his weight in gold as an example to be cherished and, with due care, imitated.

3. The Centrality of Categories to Metaphysics Whitehead wrote, “Philosophy will not regain its proper status until the gradual elaboration of categoreal schemes, definitely stated at each stage of progress, is recognized as its proper objective. There may be rival schemes, inconsistent among themselves; each with its own merits and its own failures. It will then be the purpose of research to conciliate the differences. Metaphysical categories are not dogmatic statements of the obvious; they are tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities.” (PR 8) Whitehead’s assessment of the importance of categories to speculative metaphysics is as true today as it was when he wrote it, and if anything it is heeded even less today than then. Modern analytic philosophy takes less notice of questions of classification than earlier philosophical epochs. Partly this is because the subject developed out of concerns in the philosophy of mathematics, where classification is not a serious issue; partly (and not unconnectedly) it is because the ubiquity of sets, those ontological jacks-of-all-trades, means there seems to be no shortage of “classes” to classify things; and partly it is because the legacy of ordinary language philosophy was to stress the contours of language constrained by everyday usage rather than systematic intent. The linguistic turn, whether logic-driven or ordinary-language-driven, has been uniformly disastrous for philosophical consideration about classification in general and categories in particular, so it is small wonder that anyone intent on reviving this interest has to look back to the work of pre-turners such as Whitehead, Samuel Alexander, C. S. Peirce, H. W. B. Joseph and John Anderson for inspiration. The point about having an account of categories in one’s metaphysics is not to stress classification for its own sake, but because it is conducive to the requirements of coherence, applicability and adequacy. Without the drive to system, metaphysics, no matter how locally insightful, becomes mere dabbling. A conceptual framework for metaphysics can only stand a chance of being systematic and relatively robust by working with a system of categories as envisaged by Whitehead, since it is by their exhaustiveness and their mutual interrelation that the categories allow us to check that in an ontological assay of any subject matter nothing essential has been omitted and no special case has been overlooked.

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Whitehead somewhat savagely overextends the term ‘category’. His category of the ultimate is no category in any traditional sense, simply the epitome of the basic cell of creation, the becoming of a new actual occasion. The eight categories of existence are categories in the traditional Aristotelian sense, the basic kinds of entity. His categories of explanation and categorial obligations are best considered as explanatory, heuristic and definitional principles. Aristotle’s categories are intended to divide reality at the joints and give us fundamental classes of thing. They presuppose a harmony between language and the world which can no longer be taken for granted. Kant’s categories on the other hand range more widely and cover logical features such as negation, universality and modality, but are not intended to divide reality in itself. In fact we seem to need both Aristotelian, ontic categories, which do divide reality, and Kantian, auxiliary categories, which are concepts we find indispensable to our cognitive commerce with the world, even though they correspond to nothing in the world itself.3 Typical auxiliary categories are existence, identity, negation, universality and other logical constants, and necessity, while typical ontic categories are the relational oppositions part/whole, one/many, dependent/independent, causation, and the spatiotemporal relations. Auxiliary categories are extended by certain general-purpose cognitive operations which generate novel objects of thought for cognitive ease, notably abstraction, which is very familiar, and the less familiar operation of complexification. The multifarious results of applying these cognitive operations include the sets, numbers and other abstract items investigated by pure mathematics, as well as the means and other weighted moments of statistics. Philosophical ontologies are particularly prone to accept what appear to us to be auxiliary categories as real: typical popular modern instances are sets, universals, states of affairs and possible worlds. These and their combinations are in considerable demand to provide ample models for various domains of discourse. The distinction between ontic and auxiliary categories, a distinction too rarely made, is difficult not because the distinction itself is difficult but because it is highly difficult in practice to decide of a putative category whether it is ontic or auxiliary. Negation is one case in point: its assumption among entities caused a near-riot in Harvard in 1914 when Russell assumed there are negative facts, and most philosophers consider their robust sense of reality to exclude real negation, but its exclusion from the world, in the light of its cognitive ubiquity, always remains aspirational rather than proven. A more clearly controversial example is provided by various forms of modal realism such as Lewis’s concrete possible worlds. These are both hard to accept and yet appealingly useful. If category schemes were just lists of top-level classes, as is often assumed in philosophy, then they would indeed be of only marginal interest. One would simply in principle wait until the disputes about the most indispensable high-level concepts had been resolved, and publish the table somewhere as an appendix. But that is not how categories should work. In any ontological theory barring one which is monocategorial, there is a plurality of categories, and the question arises as to what really keeps items in the categories apart from one another. Assuming we are not going to subscribe to some form of linguistic or other relativism, there are really only two reasonable answers. The first is that the ontic categories are brutely distinct: no explanation or account is possible, they are simply and brutely different. The trouble with this is that when

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discussing how the items in the different categories differ we are never reduced to mere silence. Rather we are able to continue the discussion. For example the traditional distinction between substances and their accidents is discussed in terms of the relative independence of substances by comparison with the one-sided dependence of accidents on their substances. Also substances are often considered independent wholes, their accidents as partial. This and other examples compel us to consider a range of concepts which characterize the ontological differences among the basic classes of entity as formal generators of the classes, more ontologically fundamental than the classes themselves.4 The idea is not new: Aristotle’s oppositions in a subject/not in a subject and said of a subject/not said of a subject are the factors setting up the substance/accident and universal/particular distinctions in the Categories, while the more elaborate system of existential moments employed by Roman Ingarden in his Controversy over the Existence of the World are precisely such formal factors underpinning the more traditional classification of entities into things, properties, relations, states of affairs etc. in that work. The fundamental ontic categories are therefore formal (topic-neutral) factors, not classes of entity. They are however involved in the delimitation of classes of entity. They are all what Whitehead would call “ultimates which are actual in virtue of their accidents” (PR 7) that is, they exist not autonomously but only in so far as they inform the division of actual entities. Unlike Whitehead, we consider there to be several such fundamentals, and they are not entities but formal relations (part–whole, numerical difference, ontic dependence, causation, spatiotemporal location). For category systems to “bite” in reality they have to feed into the actual account of entities found in everyday discourse and in the schemes of the sciences. Fortunately, the ontic categories of part–whole and number, dependence, causation and location are obviously ubiquitous, and the same goes for whatever auxiliary categories such as negation, existence and modality need to be brought to bear to discourse intelligently about any subject matter. By digging beneath the surface to formal factors rather than resting with lists of entities, category theory clearly retains its importance despite the upheavals caused by scientific revision. Apart from systematic biology and librarianship, few sciences expend much effort on considering the formal principles of classification or taxonomy generally, but simply forge ahead. This is a pity, as with some little effort the general requirement of adequate taxonomy can be matched to the extant taxonomic practices, which in the natural sciences at least, are relatively robust. Like Whitehead’s categories of explanation, a system of categories should embody not just a list of items but a catalogue of fundamental principles applicable to the categories, taken singly and together. It is indeed their working together which constitutes fulfilment of the requirement of category coherence. Some progress has been made on several of our ontic categories, notably part–whole,5 dependence,6 one/many 7 and spatiotemporal location.8 Causation has proved a harder nut to crack, and it may be that the common-or-garden concept of causation is too ambiguous or multi-faceted to remain undivided and unrevised. Nevertheless the ideal of a closed axiomatic treatment of the categories remains before us as an aspiration.

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4. Grand Speculative Hypotheses Metaphysics consists on the one hand of formal ontology, the go-anywhere conceptual framework, and on the other of what we may call systematics. As biological systematics is the study of the diversity of organisms, so metaphysical systematics is the study of the diversity of all things, of no matter what kind. Formal ontology is a relatively tightly circumscribed area concerning the proposal and appraisal of systems of categories, ontic in particular. As such it is subject to the kinds of detailed debate in which analytic metaphysics excels. Systematics is somewhat different. Being metaphysics, and not a special science, it cannot rest content with piecemeal development and addition, but must take place within a more speculative framework, since it is indeed intended to cover all being. A good systematic metaphysician can therefore not shy away from making bold speculative conjectures, since without them there is little prospect of systematicity, just a hodge-podge. Let us consider some examples, starting of course with Whitehead. Whitehead’s metaphysics embodies several such speculations. The first is his assumption that the concrete has priority over the abstract. This informed his nature philosophy before being transferred to his mature process philosophy. Another is his acceptance of indeterminism for actual occasions. A third is his assumption that actual occasions are monads which are “all window”, i.e. whose nature is determined by the entities they prehend. A fourth is his atomism: the actual occasions have no parts. This, a revision over the “gunky” atomless event theory of his middle period, seems to have been a response to Zeno, one I personally do not think he was forced to make. A fifth is his panpsychism or pan-experientialism, according to which all creatures are crypto-mental and their concrescence is a subjective development. This is the aspect of Whitehead’s metaphysics that I most highly deplore. I think it is an evasion of the problems about mentality and when feeling uncharitable I consider it little more than Victorian sentimentality. Further speculations are the acceptance of eternal objects and of God, with both of which I likewise disagree. So we can see that Whitehead is not afraid to speculate, and as we know he is duly modest about his chances of success. But it would be wrong to castigate Whitehead for speculating. Speculation is unavoidable: what matters is how well it is done and what the results are. In the end, metaphysical systems are not compared at the level of detail but as wholes. In this regard Whitehead’s is a contender, albeit on my view a failed one. Whitehead’s one-time student Quine, who in his youth disdained metaphysics, and under the influence of Carnap never took it with undue seriousness, in the end did offer a speculative metaphysical scheme, albeit one of considerable plainness. In Quine’s view the world consisted of sets, and possibly of the objects of fundamental physics as well. This parsimonious platonistic ontology was defended as of a piece with his semantic holism, and it is quite hermetic and difficult to criticise in its own terms. This is indeed the mark of a systematic thinker, and Quine was certainly that, despite his generally antimetaphysical bent. The only sensible response to Quine’s metaphysics is either immersion or rejection, and I join everyone else in the latter, while marking my admiration for Quine’s Konsequenz as a logician–

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metaphysician. It was Quine more than anyone who broke down the barrier of apartheid between science and metaphysics that allowed the subject to go on and flourish in the later twentieth century. Quine’s one-time student David Lewis had an equally uncompromising metaphysical vision and like Quine was extremely adept at both securing it against criticism and exploring its internal ramifications. Lewis’s extreme concretism and realism about possible worlds coupled with his generally Humean view of the worlds’ inhabitants as separate mutually unconditioned individuals surely represents the late twentieth century’s most impressive metaphysical system. Like Quine’s before it, it has inspired much admiration and controversy, and little emulation. Perhaps speculative metaphysicians are generally destined to be loners. Another outstanding metaphysician who has driven towards system is David Armstrong. Armstrong’s metaphysical career has been less one of expounding a single blinding vision than of working diligently from solid empiricist and materialist beginnings through argument and counterargument to an overall metaphysical position which amalgamates aspects of Aristotelian realism about universals and laws of nature with Russellian logical atomism about states of affairs as truthmakers. Armstrong is a physicalist but like his mentor Russell he is prepared to be led where arguments lead him, if need be to revisions of his own position. Armstrong was not the first late 20th century metaphysician to reject the linguistic turn,9 but he has been perhaps the most influential. In the metaphysically post-glacial climate of early post-positivism is was relatively easy for the timorous to be an ontologist, since that could be neatly linked to “acceptable” areas of philosophy such as logic and philosophy of language, equipped with model-theoretic semantics and an account of “ontological commitment”. But that compromise was always unstable and the transition to franker acceptance of speculative hypotheses in the traditional grand manner has affected me just as much as it is now unquestioned second nature for my younger colleagues. My own speculative hypotheses are particularism (sometimes unhappily called ‘nominalism’) and naturalism. Both sound harmless enough but are quite far-reaching. The former is the weaker and less firmly held of the convictions, since it may be that some abstraction reveals rather than constructs, but it is consonant with aspects of naturalism. As I understand naturalism, it is not physicalism, the attempt to say everything in the language of physics, but the more sober yet still radical rejection of any actual entities not ontologically generable from entities falling within the bounds of nature. Naturalism accepts no unbridgeable ontic gulfs such as that between abstract acausal ideas and the concrete goings-on of the world, so it is antiplatonistic. It accepts no realm causally apart from or inexplicable in terms of the physical, such as the phenomenal or qualitative spaces beloved of mind-body dualists. It denies that life or mind are ontically emergent, i.e. require new ontic principles not otherwise discoverable in reality. Their complexity may be epistemically beyond us, now and maybe for evermore, but epistemic emergence is not the same as ontic. Anything as complicated as we are may have to be beyond our own comprehension. Finally it denies all supernatural agency, so is atheist. The source of major new knowledge is scientific investigation practised freely in an open society, and long may these flourish. So while being naturalist sounds flat and platitudinous, it entails

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views which in other times and places would get one burnt at the stake. Metaphysical speculation is not just an academic exercise.

5. Applications Much of modern metaphysical discussion is taken up with what one might call chunky middlesized theories, being about such issues as persons and survival, persistence and change, endurance vs perdurance, atomism vs gunkiness, determinism, presentism, absolute vs relational spacetime, the nature of laws and dispositions, the nature of causality and causal powers, whether there is ontic vagueness, whether qualia or other mental items are reducible to physical phenomena, and many more. This is in addition to traditional disputes about the necessity or dispensability of this or that putative ontic category such as possible worlds, substances, sets, states of affairs and so on. It is in these areas that the majority of metaphysical discussion goes on, and quite rightly so since they are internal philosophical issues. However, just as Whitehead was interested throughout his career, as mathematician, philosopher of nature and metaphysician, in the potential applications of his theories, so I think metaphysicians cannot and should not hide themselves away solely among other philosophers, but should get out into the world and proclaim the news that metaphysics is applicable outside philosophy. They will meet with some bemusement elsewhere in other subjects, but also some respect, interest and even gratitude; they will meet more regularly with amusement and on occasion derision from their peers in philosophy, as I have. No matter. Metaphysicians who do not think their theories have anything to say to anyone other than other metaphysicians, or at best to other philosophers in adjacent fields, simply do not understand or take seriously the relationship of their subject to other subjects. They should get out more. In the following I shall mention just a few perhaps unexpected applications, they being ones where I have worked myself. Standard areas of application like physics and biology will be left on one side, though of course physics in particular drew Whitehead’s close attention. Of the physical sciences, it is of course physics which claims most of the attention of the philosopher of science, because physics is fundamental, difficult and challenging. But sciences such as geology and physical geography have their ontologies just as does physics, and despite the much lesser technical difficulty of these subjects they can on occasion benefit from an ontologist’s attention. In the jumble of upland terrain, for example, the clear-cut features such as peaks, cliffs and corries 10 which are so beloved of textbook illustrators are frequently unforthcoming. What the geographer and cartographer finds is a much greater crowding of ontically ambiguous features with attendant difficulty of feature recognition and location, and insecurity of where to assign the names of features. These uncertainties are compounded by the fact that much uncharted and inaccessible terrain is nowadays mapped not by the traditional methods of ground surveying, but by the use of satellite photography and radar. Algorithms for converting raw height data on a rasterized terrain into maps with named features are variable in quantity and sensitivity, so a basis of fundamental types and recognition of how these shade into one another would appear to be a strong desideratum. When maps are no longer pieces of paper

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but large databases, it is more important than ever before that a sensible ontology of the features they portray should be able to cope with issues such as ambiguity, vagueness, transitional states, seasonal variation, changes in land use and much more. One of the more unexpected ways in which metaphysics can play a positive and beneficial role outside its own subject area is in the monitoring and criticism of the ontology inherent in large databases, of which Geographical information Systems (GIS) form just one. Early database design had no benefit of philosophical input and yet as the demand for automated storage and control of large amounts of data grew it became increasingly important to the design of such databases that the ontology they describe should be accurate. Much design embodied such fundamental errors as confusing objects with their names, which is an error easier to commit than one might expect, since the machine storage of names and other data take similar forms in either case. Large database ontologies in medicine, genomics and other areas require careful design and monitoring to make sure that they are capable of fulfilling the tasks envisaged for them.11 Another area in which metaphysics turns out quite surprisingly to be of interest are in the practical disciplines of engineering and manufacture. The electronic documentation governing the design and manufacture of complex artefacts such as buildings, aircraft and ships is typically a very large hierarchical database organised along mereological principles. Engineering constraints mean that there are frequently considerable discrepancies between different versions of these databases used at different production stages: it takes a clear ontological assay of the discrepancies to allow project managers to cope with the differences other than by making the adjustments by hand or mentally.12 In greater generality, philosophical reflection on the ontology of engineering turns out to be of interest both for engineers, who gain a seasoned general vocabulary, and for metaphysicians, who gain examples of real-life complexity against which to test their theories. A final surprising area where ontological expertise can prove useful is in the design of complex enterprises themselves. Business models, no matter how strongly marketed by their proponents, are far too faddy and ephemeral to be of more than passing assistance to an enterprise designer or manager intent on adapting their organisation to the rigours of the global market and the rapid changes required of modern enterprises. Paradoxically, the relative stability and unexcitingness of philosophical ontology, its concern to maintain the perennial verities of Moorean common sense when dealing with everyday entities (as distinct from the revisionism properly required for fundamental ontology), provides a conceptual framework which is unlikely to be swept into oblivion by the next Harvard Business Review and so can be relied upon for long enough to actually plan, implement and monitor intelligent change. If metaphysics is to to be taken seriously outside its own tight esoteric circle, at least some of its practitioners have to be prepared to venture outside the Philosophy Room. This does not require metaphysicians to lose their professional scruples and become mere popularizers, or leave their rigour behind them. On the contrary, they can best serve those who can benefit from their familiarity with abstract and difficult concepts by maintaining those standards. What they cannot do is expect those with complementary expertise to love their intricate controversies or acquire their vocabulary. Provided they can find sympathetic people who appreciate the

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enhanced clarity they can bring to difficult areas of disciplines that can use the help, they can show that, paradoxical though it may seem, even the most abstract of sciences can be of practical use.

Notes 1

For more on the malaises of contemporary philosophy see Mulligan, Simons and Smith 2006. Russell 1956, 47. Russell’s injunction applied to logic and not necessarily to philosophy in general. 3 Simons 2005. 4 Cf. Simons 2004a. The idea is that the basis of ontological differences is not to be found among the entities divided is also supported by Jonathan Lowe: cf. Lowe 2006. 5 Simons 1987 6 Fine 1994, Lowe 1994. 7 Simons 2007a. 8 Simons 2004b. 9 Other notable exceptions include Gustav Bergmann, Roderick Chisholm and Wilfrid Sellars. 10 Cf. Simons 2007b. 11 See among his many other papers on this issue Smith 2004. 12 Simons and Dement 1996. 2

The Unifying Moment: Toward a Theory of Complexity Craig Eisendrath

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What impresses one with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead is his vision of an active universe structuring itself, rather than being determined. Although, as we will see, his break with traditional determinism, and the ideas which support it, is not clean, Whitehead nevertheless helped to point philosophy in a new direction.

1. The Responsibility of the World for its own Order and Novelty In doing this, Whitehead drew on a number of sources. One was the field theory of Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell had established in 1873 that the Newtonian idea of simple location, of objects which are “self-sufficient,” or which have the limited parameters of their spatial and temporal outlines, simply does not describe the physical world. Rather, Maxwell stated, objects are the loci of their electro-magnetic and gravitational fields, and integrate their entire universes in their location. Thus, new inputs into the object’s field produce novelty in the resulting integrated object. Another important influence was William James’ description of the integration of the conscious field, a notion further refined by the American psychologist, Harry Stack Sullivan. In this mode of thinking, a threatening bear which we perceive in the woods is at the center of a conscious field which includes the bear’s surroundings, particularly highlighting our routes of escape. The idea of an integrated conscious field is clearly opposed to Locke’s isolated objects or Hume’s separate sensations.1 In drawing on these sources, Whitehead creates a sense of an active universe which effects its own integrations. He begins by using organisms, rather than things, or inert matter, as his basic unit, a notion suggested by Aristotle, Locke and William James. Whitehead attempts to build the physical and mental worlds out of his understanding that each such element of the world experiences itself. This is as true for the simplest element, such as an electron, as for the most complex, a human being. By ascribing experience to all being, Whitehead breaks down the metaphysical wall between the physical and biological worlds. For Whitehead, the Platonic description of experience, with its ideas like red and round—what some contemporary philosophers call qualia—is inadequate because they are the conceptual forms which feelings take, and are thus an abstraction. The description of experience using qualia is also inadequate because it ignores the integration of the sensations or objects into i

Temple University; [email protected].

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larger wholes, a notion, as we have noted, that is based on field physics and on William James’ depiction of the conscious field. For Whitehead, unlike Plato, Locke or Hume, perception is not just a mental activity, but a physical one, what Whitehead calls a “prehension,” a notion which connects his and William James’ psychology with physical field theory. For example, for Whitehead, a proposition is embedded in an “environment” out of which it comes, and to which it initially relates. However, like objects, it does not exist by itself. “All men are created equal” had an original environment, the experience of Thomas Jefferson in the eighteenth century, to which it initially referred, however its reference might be extended later, say, to social relations in the twentieth or twentyfirst centuries. It relates to this entire environment, rather than existing as a self-sufficient statement. Perception ultimately rests on our absorbing energy, for example, photons, from another source. Expressed in field theory, that source becomes part of our physical field. In this sense, a stone which we see or prehend is both part of our field, and therefore is part of us. The percept is then not just a “representation” of the object, as Descartes maintained. The mind is not, for Whitehead, as it was for Descartes, a substance—a soul—which requires nothing but itself in order to exist, and which can then simply entertain itself with its own Platonic ideas, such as round and red. Rather, the mind consists of its physical constituencies, including neurons, blood, and, at an even more basic physical level, its electromagnetic and gravitational fields, which sometimes includes the prehended stone. In this way, Whitehead attacks the discontinuity between mind and body, and between the mental and physical worlds. But perception, for Whitehead, is not direct, as it is for Locke and Hume. We do not directly perceive ideas like “round” or “red.” Rather, the perceiver’s body will transform the original energetic stimuli into high-level perceptions, which Locke and Hume called “simple ideas.” For Whitehead, such ideas are, then, abstractions and cannot adequately describe our full experience. Integration of the physical energetic particles constituting the active brain is reflected in our capacity to relate disparate elements into wholes, or to unite the world aesthetically.2 Whitehead sees the same processes involved in creating purpose as in perception. He believes that what produces the body’s purpose or subjective aim, to the extent it is centrally controlled, is a qualitative adjustment of the Platonic ideas of the impulses contributed by the cells, as mediated and re-enacted by the nerves and the brain, and of the Platonic ideas of the impulses generated by the integrating brain without direct relation to the rest of the body. The mixture of perception and purpose, as these are centralized, is the organism’s “presiding personality.” This transformation of energy into mentality and purpose is a core notion in Whitehead’s thought. Here novelty does not require an additional outside force, a point which Whitehead himself sometimes argues, as we will see. Rather by the integration of the physical elements, a new object is produced, which has both a physical and mental aspect. In this way, novelty is created naturally by the world. Whitehead holds that what distinguishes living things from the inert world is this working of purpose or direction. Whitehead writes: “In the case of an animal, the mental states enter into the plan of the total organism and thus modify the plans of the successive subordinate organisms

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until the smallest organisms, such as electrons, are reached” (SMW 111). An example is thirst. There is a physical feeling, and there is a conceptual form which the physical feeling takes. This form is an urge toward the future realization of a fact, the drinking of water, a change which, in this case, will stimulate the complex of cells, called the organism, to seek water, and will eventually involve the absorption of new elements into the organism’s constitution. Whitehead is also concerned with how organisms respond to external stimuli with a certain originality. He explains this by saying that as the external stimuli or data come in, they are objective; when they are integrated into the organism, they are private and subjective. They can then prompt the organism to some new response. The capacity for novelty is a function of the organism’s capacity for integration into complexity. Novelty is here the integration of the novelties of the physical field, or the neural field. A living organism may passively perceive data, for example, the organism’s realization of a “green tree out there.” Whitehead would call such a realization a “positive prehension.” But negative prehensions, that is, experiences which are instigated by but not realized directly in the data, are ways he believes the world advances into novelty. For Whitehead, human consciousness generally involves negative prehensions which can be translated as propositions. Consciousness always includes some realization that looks beyond the body’s immediate delivery. Even a statement such as “This ball is red” carries the idea that the ball might be some other color—a notion, incidentally, which Freud also advances. Other propositions, such as “This ball is not red,” or “This ball might be blue,” or “I’d like to be a doctor,” more clearly show the relation between consciousness as mere awareness and consciousness as the vehicle of purpose, or what Whitehead calls the “subjective aim.” Again, Whitehead shows his profound debt to philosophers like William James and John Dewey who speak of the purposefulness of conscious integration, which James sums up in Pragmatism (1907). For Whitehead, this integration of objects is built into the very nature of the world, and acts as a guiding principle. Whitehead’s explanation of the creation of novelty applies not only to appetites, intentions, and behavior, but also to the formation and evolution of organisms. Whitehead explains that a new subjective form arises to guide the composition of the organism’s felt Platonic ideas as they readjust to new inputs from the environment. Such inputs might be a high-speed particle altering a genetic molecule, or a new element in the organism’s chemical environment. This would be Whitehead’s explanation of how pleiotropic adjustment occurs, in which the total organism reconfigures itself in response to small genetic changes. Today, scientists are increasingly using complex computer models to represent mental or organic processes. The models show how adjustments at the informational or symbolic level predict and direct adjustments or reconfigurations at the material or energetic level. If one substitutes the more modern idea of “information” for Whitehead’s Platonic ideas, and then attempts to determine how information adjusts in the organism to organize organic processes, as in the quenching of thirst, or to configure the organism, as in pleiotropy, Whitehead’s thought has a quite contemporary ring.3 Whitehead also suggests that the adjustments in the organism which organize organic process are essentially aesthetic. This aesthetic valuation of symbolic adjustment is what

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mathematicians, he tells us, frequently refer to as “beautiful” proofs.4 He explains the world’s advance into novel complexity as aesthetic, writing that “the teleology of the world is directed to the production of Beauty” (AI 341).5 Whitehead here suggests that there is some genuine analogy between the integration of a mathematical system, the readjustment of a biochemical balance as in the quenching of thirst, the way an organism creates a new composition as a result of slight alterations of the genes (pleiotropy), and the way an artist alters an entire painting to adjust to changes of color or shape in a small section, or creates the art work itself from paint and canvas. Art, which, in Whitehead’s phrase, is “deficiently real,” projects the full realization of concrete fact in the physical world, just as a diagram or blueprint of a building anticipates its construction. Whitehead writes: “It requires Art to evoke into consciousness the finite perfections which lie ready for human achievement” (AI 346; cf. 271). This advances not only the organic roots of art, but also its prophetic role in the world’s historic progress. Whitehead suggests that standards of beauty may not be merely cultural, but also reflect their relation to organic integration and complexity, an idea which lifts artistic standards out of total cultural relativism. Finally, Whitehead holds that organisms create not only their own internal organization and consequent forms, but also their regular modes of interaction, which are called the natural laws. In both these ways, the world advances into novelty. That this is done spontaneously throughout the universe, what Whitehead calls the “creative advance,” is Whitehead’s supreme insight. The origin of creativity and order is implicit in the very nature of the world. Whitehead takes this idea partly from William James, partly from biology, and partly from his own work in physics, in which objects create their own ordered fields, which reflect their constituents’ interaction. Objects thus do not follow God’s laws, as Newton said they did; rather, Whitehead believes, they create them. In physics, this notion seems an enormously useful corrective to Newtonian determinism. In biology, by emphasizing the way in which an organism achieves integration in itself and with its larger environment, Whitehead points to what may be the weakness of present-day Darwinian theory.6 When Whitehead surveys the world, he finds evidence everywhere for the creative advance, that is, the growth of complexity or “intensity of experience.” This is, Whitehead believes, the world’s indisputable progress as it transforms chaotic nature into all its complex forms and laws. The progress toward complexity is apparent at every level, from quantum particles, through molecular structures, to biological organisms and human beings. There is no doubt that complexity is growing on this planet, if not throughout the reaches of the universe. Four billion years ago there was no life here at all; today there are highly complex organic forms. Whitehead attempts to explain this phenomenon through a philosophy based not on traditional ideas of creation or even Platonic notions of a permanent ideal order, but on self-generated process.

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2. The Role of God, or the Second Explanation At times, however, Whitehead seems to believe that this explanation of the creation of organic forms or systems does not suffice. In this “second explanation,” Whitehead believes he must go beyond the data and their interrelations to find an ultimate source for the world’s novelty. In this “second explanation,” he says that purpose, or the subjective aim, instead of emerging from an integration of feeling, and more basically from the integration of its physical constituents, guides the organism from the outset. For Whitehead, this guidance comes prefigured from the “primordial nature of God,” which contains all possible combinations of ideas. God’s “judgment” is his supplying the emerging subjective aim which is particularly relevant to that organism. Whitehead writes: “Thus an originality in the temporal world is conditioned, though not determined, by an initial subjective aim supplied by the ground of all order and of all originality” (PR 164). In raising this second mode of explanation, Whitehead reverts to notions of order which lie at the base of Western thought from Plato to Hegel, and to the monotheistic religion of his youth. Whitehead, like many modern philosophers, as the American philosopher Joseph Margolis argues (1993), here seems simply unwilling to carry through on the primary thrust of his ideas. In many ways, Whitehead’s “primordial nature of God” looks very much like Plato’s God. It also resembles the single, unified, and absolute mathematics which began to dissolve in the nineteenth century, and which Whitehead and Bertrand Russell attempted to save through their Principia Mathematica, completed in 1910. Subsequent developments have made this unity even less persuasive. If the unification of ideas is highly questionable in mathematics, the unification of all ideas in the world is even more so. What is the relation between 2 + 2 = 4 and Jefferson’s idea that all men are created equal, although both are ideas? Assumed coexistence or membership in the class of God’s mind does not imply a necessary relation. Our idea of integration is based on structure and limit—precisely what seems missing here. As the notion of God expands to include any possible relation, or the inclusion of any entity, it loses any semblance to this ideal. As if anticipating Whitehead’s thought, William James writes: Yet if… we assume God to have thought in advance of every possible flight of human fancy in these directions, his mind becomes too much like a Hindoo idol with three heads, eight arms and six breasts, too much made up of superfoetation and redundancy for us to wish to copy it.7 For Whitehead, in his second mode of explanation, God’s nature forms the basis for all potentiality in the world, as it does for Kant and Hegel. Whitehead asks: How can novelty enter the world if it is not already somewhere? As Whitehead seems here to be denying the possibility of novelty altogether, he must find its source in the mind of God. It is God who supplies the plan or set of eternal ideas which persuades each organism to achieve what complexity or organic beauty it is capable of, and which guides the organism toward novelty. Each “judgment” of God is relevant particularly to that organism and represents a particular selection from the infinite interrelation of ideas which constitutes God’s nature. Accordingly, in

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Whitehead’s second mode of explanation, “proximate relevance” of eternal objects, as a guide to an organism in the process of becoming, “means relevance as in the primordial mind of God” (PR 315, 73). At first blush, this is not how evolution proceeds, at least as Darwin explains it. Rather than a purposeful operation involving the total organism, the evolution of individuals and eventually of species proceeds by random variation of genetic material, which then produces a phenotype that is supported by the environment—that is, when the organism survives and multiplies. Purposefulness seems curiously absent, and would seem closer to what Aristotle would call accident, or randomness. But the rearrangement of the total organism following relatively minor genetic changes, or pleiotropy, suggests a drive for order which is not accidental, but which may not be inconsistent with Darwinian evolution. Equally, the organism’s choice of organic development following regular mathematical forms suggests that more than accident is involved, and that the drive for integration seems built into the system of the universe. What does not seem evident, however, is any central direction for the universe as a whole. The sheer proliferation of forms belies any such central vision. How many different tries there have been in the biological world, how many false starts? As the biologist Stephen Jay Gould points out, whole genera have perished irrevocably in the Paleozoic past (1989). Even in Whitehead’s time, one could walk through a biological museum, with its glass cases of fossils and preserved species, from mollusks to mammals, and sense the energy and fecundity of the biological world, but also its seeming lack of unified direction. Is it meaningful, as Whitehead suggests, to think that this variety achieves unification in the mind of God? By invoking God as the initiator of organic compositions, and the world’s aesthetic unifier, Whitehead thereby re-establishes determinism, a problem faced by philosophers from Plato to Hegel. In Whitehead’s “second explanation,” God is immanent in the world, guiding each organism. Although Whitehead says there is freedom, this mechanism for limiting it seems enormously powerful. As God is necessarily ubiquitous, God would also be responsible for results which are clearly destructive, or Whitehead would be forced to parcel out good results to God and bad results to other agencies. The first position would sully Whitehead’s notion of God; the second would make attributing results to God dependent on Whitehead’s moral or aesthetic judgments. Whitehead must here deal with the problem raised by Hume, of arguing from an imperfect creation to a perfect Creator. How does Whitehead deal with the related problem of evil? It is not reassuring. He writes: The revolts of destructive evil, purely self-regarding, are dismissed into their triviality of merely individual facts; and yet the good they did achieve in individual joy, in individual sorrow, in the introduction of needed contrasts, is yet saved by its relation to the completed whole (PR 532). If one thinks of evils such as the Holocaust or Rwanda, this becomes patently wishful thinking, although Whitehead is right, for example, that stealing may be satisfying for the thief, however destructive it is for the victim. Yet to say, as Whitehead seems to be doing here, that premature

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death, suffering, or genocide are somehow “saved” by being absorbed into God’s nature, is to argue them away. Such salvation occurs, Whitehead says, because the world, as a completed fact, is God’s “consequent nature,” a concept close to Hegel’s. In this sense, God is the entire world, which constitutes an ultimate theory of immanence. Not only is God in everything, but everything is God. In this sense, the world is a holy place. Every effort is part of a divine effort, and nothing is lost or wasted. Here the distinction between God and the world dissolves, as do Whitehead’s arguments for God’s separate role. It then does not matter whether one sees the world’s complexity as the work of God, or of the world itself. For if the world is God, or is infused with God through and through, if it is holy and charged with divine energy, the problems for thought created by the Hebraic God who is metaphysically separate from the universe, or the distant God of Isaac Newton, do not arise. Here we are tempted to conceive of a very different nature of God, one suggested by Gnostic thought,8 the writings of Meister Eckhart or Jacob Boehme, suggested at times by Kant and Hegel, and stated outright by the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson; it is also a concept found in Eastern thought with the ideas of the Self or Brahmin. This is the notion of an immanent God, who is present in all creation as a well of creative energy, to be tapped by the organic world and the religiously adept. Whitehead’s ultimate argument for God’s persuasive work in the world, like Plato’s, is the intuition which artists know as art, and moralists know as right, and workmen know as effective, and statesmen know as just, and organisms know, or feel, as healthy. All men seek the Good, Plato tells us, and all men choose it, if they know what it is, for when they find it, it is supposedly persuasive. But not all effects in the world are benign; this persuasion does not always work. However, the world’s general growth toward complexity, and the role of ideas and art in history and culture, would argue that a drive toward complexity is perhaps in the nature of things. Whether this drive comes from God or from the universe remains open in Whitehead’s thought, and continues to haunt modern religion and philosophy. While denying a sectarian religious purpose, Whitehead’s “second explanation” seems generally to be concerned with reformulating the Judeo-Christian tradition in the light of the modern world so it can continue to deliver its principal object—an abiding sense of permanence in the midst of the world’s flux and evolution. While concerned with process, Whitehead here posits an eternal, unified set of ideas; a God who unifies these ideas and guides each occasion; a God who sanctions every aesthetic and moral act in God’s nature; and the permanent deposit of all effort in God as well.

3. The Legacy of Whitehead Despite these problems, Whitehead, particularly in his “first explanation,” provides a wealth of suggestion as to how the universe moves toward complexity and beauty, and thereby provides a physical-psychological model which looks surprisingly useful in reconfiguring contemporary thought. While his “second explanation” reinstalls God as the ultimate cause of the process, it is

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also possible to see in Whitehead’s philosophy, in his “first explanation,” how the universe itself takes responsibility for its own advance. Whether or not the universe is holy; whether it is useful to speak of the universe as divine, or its drive toward complexity and beauty as God’s, seems less important than Whitehead’s overall vision in which intelligence, embedded in all beings, drives the universe forward to whatever perfections it is capable of achieving. His awe before the universe is indeed like that of Plato or Kant. Lucien Price recorded Whitehead saying, “Here we are with our finite being and physical senses in the presence of a universe whose possibilities are infinite, and even though we may not apprehend them, those infinite possibilities are actualities” (Price 1954, 11). It is this sense of wonder which filled the scientists of the twentieth century, and provided for many of them, and for those who read their work, the spiritual equivalent of an earlier religion. It is this legacy which we inherent today, and which, drawing upon new findings in physics and biology, only vaguely discerned by Whitehead, can form the basis of a new integration of thought.

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Notes 1

For the relation of William James to Whitehead, and a general explanation of their thought, see Eisendrath’s The Unifying Moment (1971). For James’s psychology, see his Principles of Psychology (1890) and Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912). James anticipated a number of developments in cognitive psychology which would not become current until the 1960s (see Neisser 1967). For the relation of Whitehead and James to more modern developments in physics and biology, see Eisendrath’s At War With Time (2003). 2 Whitehead also asserts plainly, as did Locke, that we feel influence, or, technically, a vectorial, or directional, reference to an outside cause—e.g. a blow on the head which sends us reeling, or a candle flame which burns our hand. We should note that such direct evidence of causation contradicts Hume, and also questions Kant’s need to designate causation as a category of the mind. However, Whitehead would also say that due to the complexity of the human brain, the neurons probably mimic causality, rather than directly experience it, as lower organisms may do. 3 For a complex discussion of these ideas, see Kauffman 1933; Prigogine 1997; and Edelman 1987, 1988, 1989 (a trilogy of works). 4 See in particular MT. 5 This notion also emerges in the last works of Sigmund Freud with his concept of the integrating work of Eros. 6 For a full-scale attack on these weaknesses, see Kauffman 1933. 7 Jottings of 1903-1904, quoted in Perry 1935, Vol. II, p. 384. 8 See, for example, Pagels The Gnostic Gospels (1979).

Pragmatism and Process George Allan

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1. Overview This sketch of the relation of Whitehead’s thought to Pragmatism begins by limiting itself to American pragmatism, presuming it to be a single definable position with Josiah Royce, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead as its exemplars, and also presuming that Whitehead’s ideas comprise a single coherent position. Both assumptions are false, of course, but they reflect fairly well standard received opinion and so are a useful place from which to begin. Eventually, a more complex picture will emerge, although never a definitive nor even a clear one. As Whitehead famously remarks about philosophizing, even this meager sketch’s worth of it, and as any pragmatist worthy of the label would agree, “the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly” (PR xiv). In the Preface to Process and Reality, Whitehead says that he is “greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey,” and that one of his “preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it” (xii). However, there are no other references in the book to Dewey and only two brief ones to James. Elsewhere, Whitehead speaks not of the influence of these and other pragmatists on his own thought but rather of their cultural importance (SMW 143, 147; ESP 128, 129, 132; MT 2, 174; Lowe 1990 Vol. 2, 346; Young 1952, 276). Whitehead was notoriously generous in his judgments about other philosophers and their influence on him. “He loved to savor, and to express his appreciation of, the many and varied intellectual adventures of his contemporaries” (Lowe 1949, 295). It should be no surprise, therefore, to discover that commentators are hardly sanguine about the degree of similarity between Whitehead and the American pragmatists, either in general or specifically. Section Two discusses some of the general comparisons that have been made. Section Three turns to specific issues and specific philosophers.

2. General Comparisons 2.1. Finding the Right Pigeonhole Pragmatism can be defined solely as a style of philosophizing, a method for determining truth: “the attitude,” as William James puts it, “of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking toward last things, fruits, consequences, facts” i

Philosophy Department, Dickinson College, Carlisle PA 17013; www.dickinson.edu; [email protected]

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(1907, 29). Such an approach, however, can lead to, or be entailed by, more than one ontology, epistemology, or axiology. Whitehead not being a pragmatist in this limited methodological sense, any comparison has to be made on the basis of a decision regarding how best to categorize pragmatism as a full-blown metaphysical system. Herbert Schneider includes among the founders of “American realism” the pragmatists Peirce, Dewey, and Mead, along with W. J. E. Woodbridge, C. I. Lewis, Morris R. Cohen, and Whitehead. These men “laid the foundations for a realistic philosophy of logic and natural law, and a realistic social philosophy, including both a theory of social change and a theory of the organization and communication of intelligence” (1963, 517). Realism is here taken to mean an emphasis on scientific method and techniques of empirical verification, with logic, natural law, and moral value all understood as abstractive generalizations from sense experience. Indeed, Schneider notes, most of these thinkers were suspicious of James’s notion of pure experience because it seemed to imply that subjective feelings were “closer to reality” than scientifically established concepts. Although “a few metaphysicians, notably Whitehead,” tried to make scientific use of James’s idea, “the great majority of American realists repudiated it because of its subjective and romantic taint” (1963, 501). Elizabeth Flower and Murray Murphey turn this taint of the emotional into a central feature of Whitehead’s thought, which they call “organic idealism” (1977, xx) and associate with Royce’s absolute pragmatism. Craig Eisendrath also celebrates the taint, praising the philosophies of James and Whitehead for their “reassertion of romanticism,” the essence of which “is the belief that ideas stir the depths,” that “all existence is emotional in some way” (1971, 234). Victor Lowe chastises those who insist that the only legitimate road to knowledge is the “experimental road of the scientist” (1990 Vol. 2, 168 note), and who therefore favor Dewey’s strategy of “simply applying the scientist’s experimental method of thinking to questions of values” rather than Whitehead’s more profound attempt “to overcome the dualism between science and values by developing a [metaphysical] system” (1985 Vol. 1, 4). John Smith builds on this line of interpretation, arguing that the classical pragmatists did not have the “standing” to provide an effective critique of the general tendency of Americans to embrace science and technology uncritically. Royce was too much the idealist, James too tender-minded, Dewey too “unwary” of the limits of science. “The situation demanded someone who combined special scientific competence with philosophical depth” and Whitehead was “perfectly fitted” for playing that role, for “explaining the nature of science” and “interpreting its proper place in modern life and thought” (1983, 162). According to Smith, Whitehead was “too much a Platonist” to be comfortable with Dewey’s instrumentalist approach to knowledge. Problem-solving interests may be the stimulus to thought and the practical consequences of thinking may be at the heart of its importance, but “the process of rational support” for a concept “has its own integrity and is not dependent on our interests” (1983, 177). So Smith associates Whitehead with Peirce and Royce, who like him were deeply interested in formal logic and mathematics and insisted on “the universal character of thought” and its “independence of individual plans and purposes” (1983, 189-90). Other commentators focus on how the pragmatic marriage of science and philosophy has been a benefit for metaphysics. “Whitehead’s categoreal scheme,” says Steve Odin, “is an extension

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of pragmatism in that it applies the scientific laboratory method to speculative metaphysics so as to be characterized by fallibilism, experimentalism, and nonfoundationalism” (1996, 177). Charles Morris calls this kind of philosophizing “empirical cosmology,” a “non-metaphysical […] equivalent to what has usually been called metaphysics.” It is based on the “method of descriptive generalization” explicitly formulated by Whitehead in Process and Reality (1935, 281). Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead are said to share this commitment, which is “simply the hypothetical-deductive-observational method of science, generalized in the attempt to get a system applicable to all experienced reality whatsoever” (Morris 1935, 282). So whereas Lowe and Smith characterize Deweyan pragmatism as too empirical to find a place for Whitehead’s cosmological speculations, Odin and Morris think speculative formalism and empiricism are “complementary phases of the scientific temper” (Morris 1935, 285).

2.2. Developing the Right Schema George Lucas proposes that any philosophy qualify as a “process philosophy” if it meets three criteria: (1) its primary ontology stresses events or occasions of experience; (2) it employs a pluralistic and organic form of teleological explanation; (3) it finds an “immanent pattern or principle of organization which is generally exhibited in all processes of change” (1983, 10). Lucas groups the philosophies that meet these criteria into four kinds and sketches the historical routes of influence that justify their location in one kind rather than another. “Process rationalism,” in which Whitehead is located, originated in response to relativity and quantum theory in physics and so is “self-consciously rationalistic in the Spinozist (mathematicaldeductive) sense.” It emphasizes “the coherence and generality of metaphysical first principles,” but in a way that puts “an uncompromising stress upon metaphysical pluralism and temporalism” (1983, 11). Lucas identifies the three other kinds of process philosophy as “Evolutionary Cosmology,” with Bergson and Teihard as salient members, “Hegelian Idealism,” and “Realism.” Lucas argues that attempts to link American pragmatism and Whiteheadian process rationalism founder because the alleged metaphysics of pragmatism is “a conglomeration of views drawn either from evolutionary cosmology or from the neo-realist resurgence against idealism” (1983, 143). Pragmatists like James and Dewey are realists metaphysically, others like Peirce are emergent evolutionists. “Reference to pragmatism in the historical development of the process tradition thus masks the contributions of two distinct schools, neither bearing any necessary systematic relationship to pragmatism” (1983, 139). Lucas further expands and deepens this discussion of the fourfold division of process philosophy in The Rehabilitation of Whitehead, Chapters II-IV. Stephen Pepper in World Hypotheses fashions a set of four kinds of philosophies, each based on a “root metaphor”: Formalism, Mechanism, Organicism, and Contextualism. The root metaphor on which Contextualism is based is that of “the historical event” or “the act in context” (1942, 232); Bergson, Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead are located among its members (1942, 141). Whitehead is said to be “eclectic,” oscillating among all the kinds but Mechanism. In a later essay on “Whitehead’s ‘Actual Occasion,’” however, Pepper identifies a fifth world hypothesis, Aesthetic Creationism, based on the root metaphor of a “creative purposive act such

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as that of an artist, inventor or imaginative scientist” (1942, 86), and locates Whitehead as its paradigmatic member. Odin is quick to point to Mead as also properly belonging to this fifth kind of philosophy (1942, 12). Walter Watson proposes an “archic matrix” of “possible starting points for the constitution of meaning” (1985, 150), which is elaborated by David Dilworth with respect to texts promulgating worldviews (summarized in 1989, 173-74). They identify four “archic variables”—perspective, reality, method, principle—and categorize philosophies by how they instantiate each. Whitehead is said to take a “disciplinary” perspective, i.e., he “presupposes an ideal community of like-minded readers” for whom he writes (Dilworth 1989, 28; see Watson 1985, 111); an “essentialist” view of reality, i.e., he “sees ideal forms and general, continuous, or enduring traits of nature and experience in the form of gradated patterns, functions, and values” (Dilworth 1989, 28-29; see Watson 1985, 67); a “dialectical” method, i.e., “partial, abstract views are subsumed and reconciled […] in an emerging whole” (Dilworth 1989, 29; see Watson 1985, 87); and a “creative” grounding principle governing the development of his subject matter, i.e., he “emphasizes making a difference […] in which the new replaces the old” (Dilworth 1989, 30-31; cf. Watson 1985, 110). Dewey is the pragmatist whose archic elements are closest to Whitehead’s, differing only in having a “problematic” rather than dialectical method. Peirce, Royce, and James share one of Whitehead’s elements, although each a different one: for Peirce, the essentialist view of reality; for Royce, the dialectical method; for James, having a creative grounding principle. Mead is only mentioned in passing, as sharing with Peirce, James, and Dewey the problematic method of philosophizing. For Dilworth, Whitehead has more affinities with Heidegger and with the Biblical worldview (Dilworth 1989, 133; Watson 1985, 111) than with the pragmatists other than Dewey. Perhaps Robert Neville’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek categorization is as helpful as any. He notes that process philosophers and pragmatists were “tangled with one another in many common causes throughout twentieth-century philosophy,” both theoretical and practical ones (2004, 19). Yet their approaches differ in tone and emphasis because of a difference in social class. Whitehead and Hartshorne were Anglicans associated with Harvard University and the sophistication of an upper-class elite, the “ambiance” of whose thought was that of “high civilization in which religions play defining roles. The ‘adventures of ideas’ relates to civilization, not society” (2004, 20). In contrast, the Pragmatists “flourished in the unpolished Midwest, and in New York with all its immigrants.” They were interested in society not civilization, wanting to “change the world through social reform and education.” Their naturalism meant anti-supernaturalism and hence anti-religion (2004, 20-1). As an aperçu into the nature of their differences, Neville’s interpretation in terms of what William James called “temperaments” seems just right.

2.3. Whitehead and Pragmatism: The Fundamental Chasm Sandra Rosenthal has cut through this miasma of comparisons and put her finger on the key difference between Whitehead and the American pragmatists. She argues that these two versions of process philosophy are rooted in “divergent intuitions” about the nature of time and therefore “diverse perceptions of the nature and interrelation of continuity, discreteness, and

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contingency” (1996, 542; see Rosenthal 1999 and Neville 2004, 24-26). Whitehead’s intuition is of time as a “fusing-together-of” elements into “discrete” atoms of actuality, whereas the pragmatist’s intuition is of time as a process of “emerging-elements-within” a dynamic continuum, emerging “quasi-discretes” (1996, 553). For Whiteheadians, Rosenthal argues, time is therefore discontinuous. Process is understood as the concrescence of diverse past elements, a harmonizing of differences. The resulting actuality must be fully determinate and, as determinate, perish in order for a new process of actualization to begin. The arrow of time is defined by the contrast between “a fully fixed, unchanging past” and the novel occasions that succeed it and add to it. Temporality is therefore not a feature of actual entities but rather “their atomic succession gives rise to time” (1996, 543). Rosenthal finds fault with this view of time because it means that change is not a process but a contrast between settled determinates and novelty is possible only by the infusion into time of something a-temporal, eternal objects made available to nascent actual occasions by prehensions of God. It is an attempt “to deal with what is inextricably temporal in tenseless terms, introducing by the back door what was kicked out of the front” (1996, 546). Whitehead’s atomic theory of time is “an instance of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (1996, 553). For the pragmatists, Rosenthal argues, “continuity is primary.” “Interacting portions of a processive concrete universe” give rise to never fully determinate persisting individuals and to temporal modes which are also never definitively settled” (1996, 553). Temporal intervals are unbounded although brief durations, open to vague novel possibilities, such that “the movement from one interval to another is not a movement over discrete units but a spreading out of a continuous process of becoming other” (1996, 556). What is concrete is not fully determinate but always in process of adjustment: “every new present brings about a new past oriented toward a new future” (1996, 559). Time’s arrow is not a succession of fixed events, but rather “the directional flow of processive concreteness is the flow of temporality” (1996, 561). So Rosenthal thinks that despite their shared rejection of substance metaphysics and embrace of a view of reality as organistic and dynamic, Whiteheadians and pragmatists have taken “fundamentally disparate paths” (1996, 561). The pragmatists take time seriously, the Whiteheadians do not.

3. Specific Issues 3.1. The “Pragmatic” in Whitehead Whitehead’s best known reference to pragmatism is his characterization of it in The Function of Reason as a practical method, associated with the wily Ulysses, that is only interested in shortrange results, in the “emphatic clarification” of “current practice.” If “the method works” then “Reason is satisfied” (FR 17). Whitehead deplores the resulting “obscurantism,” its “inertial resistence” to change, its “refusal to speculate freely on the limitations of traditional methods” (FR 43). The antidote lies in speculative Reason, associated with Plato, which in “transcending all method” provides “that touch of infinity which has goaded races onward” toward “the unattainable” (FR 65).

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However, Whitehead is as critical of the merely speculative as he is of the merely pragmatic. He advocates instead the “logic of discovery,” the marriage of the two kinds of Reason, each exposing and correcting the limits of the other. Scientific theories and philosophical cosmologies are necessary to progress in understanding the world and improving the human condition, but unless they are tested constantly against the empirical evidence they claim to interpret, they are of little worth. “The supreme verification of the speculative flight is that it issues in the establishment of a practical technique for well-attested ends” (FR 80). Reason as a “pragmatic agent,” engaged in transforming vague notions into workable techniques issuing in useful and enduring results, is “the practical embodiment of the urge to transform mere existence into the good existence, and to transform the good existence into the better existence” (FR 28-29). Whitehead uses the term “pragmatic” in the opening pages of Process and Reality as a synonym for the adequacy criterion assessing the worth of metaphysical systems. A metaphysics must be of sufficient scope that nothing found in “practice” is excluded. If some practice is not adequately covered, the system needs to be revised to take account of it. “Metaphysics is nothing but the description of the generalities which apply to all the details of practice,” although, Whitehead hastens to add, “no metaphysical system can hope entirely to satisfy these pragmatic tests” (PR 13). Later, while explicating his epistemology of two modes of perception and their correlation through symbolic reference, Whitehead raises the question of how to assess the adequacy of that correlation. To claim that the precise sensa of presentational immediacy provide evidence for the concrete world felt through the vague percepta of causal efficacy is a matter of “conscious judgment.” There is some “direct check” of this judgment by bodily feelings, but otherwise “the appeal is to the pragmatic consequences, involving some future state of bodily feelings which can be checked up” (PR 179). The linguistic and other symbols we use in our correlations are ones that have served us and our ancestors well; we continue to use them because the judgments they guide have proven trustworthy in the past. Our ways of judging have “led to a route of inheritance […] which constitutes a fortunate evolution” (PR 181). Whitehead’s somewhat Darwinian claim, therefore, is that propositional judgments about what is or is not the case are ultimately justified by whether or not they work pragmatically: “the very meaning of truth is pragmatic” (PR 181). The conceptual airplane of the daily pattern of commonsensical and scientific meanings by which we live, just as the airplane of metaphysical generalization, must come frequently back to its base in concrete immediate experience if it is to guide us fruitfully over the long run. This positive view of the pragmatic should come as no surprise to anyone recalling Whitehead’s criticism of educators who equate learning exclusively with “book-learning.” “The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity. It is tame because it has never been scared by facts” (AE 51). An education “carries with it the decadence of civilization” if it is not based on the fact that “action and our implication in the transition of events amid the inevitable bond of cause to effect are fundamental” (AE 47).

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3.2. Whitehead, Peirce, and the Modes of Being Charles Hartshorne, as co-editor with Paul Weiss of Peirce’s papers, was always interested in harmonizing Whitehead and Peirce. In one of his last books, Creativity in American Philosophy, he has a chapter on “A Revision of Peirce’s Categories” in which he modifies slightly Peirce’s Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness so that they apply to, and clarify, Whitehead’s ontology. In terms of kinds of relations, Firstness for Peirce involves independence, but Hartshorne argues that nothing actual depends on nothing else. So he amends Firstness to mean independence of some other things. Secondness is then taken as dependence on some other things rather than, according to Peirce, on a single other (1984, 78). Thirdness is then not dependence on two others, but rather both independence regarding some definite particulars and dependence regarding generic structures (1984, 79). Expressed ontologically and in Whiteheadian language, actual occasions are Firsts with respect to their successors because their achieved actuality is not dependent on what follows them. Actual occasions are Seconds with respect to their prehensive relation to the past, on which they are dependent. And actual occasions are Thirds with respect to the future, which outlines the general features of their character through the societal patterns of influence that set limits to what can occur. “With the above revisions,” says Hartshorne, “Peirce’s scheme achieves far greater clarity. His Secondness is then equivalent to Whitehead’s prehension, or feeling of (previous) feeling. His Firstness is any such feeling as bound to be felt by suitable subsequent subjects as feelers. His Thirdness includes “Whitehead’s ‘symbolic reference’ or, more generally ‘mentality,’ propositions and other real possibilities” (1984, 81). William Reese similarly attempts to bring Peirce and Whitehead together by tinkering with their categories, but he maps the systems on to each other in a slightly different way. Reese interprets Secondness as having to do with the temporal present, which is the mode of actuality. Firstness is the mode of possibility, which is the realm of eternal objects and the temporal future. Thirdness is the mode of process, which refers to the temporal past, to Creativity as the “operative generality” by which the continual emergence of new actualities involving newly realized possibilities is explained (1952, 232). For Reese, Peirce is a through-going realist: present, future, and past are fundamental objective realities, all of which are needed in formulating an adequate ontology. Whitehead’s ontological principle, Reese argues, melds this realism with “the nominalistic principle of common sense” (1952, 237), that “whatever is real other than an actual entity must be an aspect of an actual entity” (1952, 236). Robert Neville’s work is an interesting and important merging of Peirce and Whitehead. He accomplishes this feat by taking their ideas as stimuli for his own, not attempting to blend their differing metaphysical systems but instead fashioning one that, although it stands on the shoulders of both philosophies, has its own unique identity and therefore its own integrity. Neville is deeply influenced by Whitehead’s account of concrescence and transition, the process by which a new value is created through the harmonizing of inherited contrasting values. Individuals are thus “discursive”: on the one hand, deeply relational, fundamentally dependent on an environment that constrains and shapes what they can become; on the other hand, fundamentally unique, exhibiting essential features that transcend that environment (1989, 193201, 230-33). Neville’s account of this process of harmonizing essential and relational features

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involves an extension of Peirce’s theory of signs. Truth is “the carryover of value from object to interpretation” (1989, 164; see 65-67) because the creation of new actualities is the carryover of value from past determinants to present concrescence. Peirce’s realism is evident in Neville’s theory of time, in which the modalities of past, present, and future are affirmed as ontologically objective. They have the same structure as all other actualities: they are harmonies of essential and conditional features, each mode interrelated with the other modes but none reducible to the others. This objectivity of time is grounded in God as “the act of creation,” which act is primordial and provides “a context of mutual relevance in which the essential features of the present (decision-making, etc.), those of the past (objective fixity, etc.), and those of the future (normativeness, etc.) are together” timelessly (1989, 182).

3.3. Whitehead, James, and Immediate Experience In his Principles of Psychology, William James interprets conscious experience as a “stream of thought” (1983, 220), not “a string of bead-like sensations and images, all separate” (1983, 570). It is not a “knife-edge, but a saddle-back,” an awareness of “duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were—a rearward- and a forward-looking end” (1983, 574). Experience is a stream of temporally thick interrelated but distinct moments. Appropriately, Whitehead in defense of his epochal theory of time quotes James on how experience grows in “buds or drops of perception” that come as totalities (PR 68). Lowe insists that Whitehead nonetheless did not derive his theory from James. “We have here a case not so much of influence, as of sympathy” (1949, 289). Whitehead addresses a problem that James, “prejudiced by the traditional empiricism in which he had been reared, rejected—the problem of how pulses of experience are formed” (1949, 290). Whitehead did the metaphysical work; “James’s unmatched psychological observations provide the chief outside evidence to show that Whitehead’s theory of prehensions is not a castle in the air” (1949, 290-91). Craig Eisendrath develops this notion, arguing that the two philosophers complement each other, that they “offer together a single philosophy” (1971, xiii). Whitehead’s highly abstract philosophizing needs the concrete exemplification James provides, and conversely Whitehead provides “the full sweep of general application” James’s observations suggest. “Key to a merging of their philosophies is their shared belief “that the universe is not opaque, that it is all of the same stuff as we are, and so is open to thought” (1971, 229). And from this it follows that “ideas are efficacious in the world.” They are not only “the forms of experienced fact” but also an “incitement for changes in the future” (1971, 230). A particularly interesting use of James and Whitehead is found in Bernard Meland’s notion of “appreciative consciousness.” Meland argues that nurturing in students an appreciative consciousness should be among the important goals of a liberal arts education. An education limited to teaching the knowledge skills that give people power to control nature for their own benefit is seriously deficient. This knowledge needs to be grounded in the broad sympathy, constructive understanding, and imaginative interpretation that equip a person to deal with “large-scale problems of human destiny” (1953, 29), a “reorientation of the human spirit for a deeper probing of the meaning of existence and for the meaning of man” (1953, 45). Meland suggests that Whitehead and James justify the importance of an appreciative consciousness

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because they both articulate “a sense of the-more-than-the-mind-can-grasp as well as a sense of expectancy concerning every event, knowing that creativity is occurring, that time is real” (1953, 77). The functional power of scientific knowledge and its technological applications is a great good but it is dangerous unless rooted in a recognition that its findings are “tentative and subject to revision before the great on-going mystery in which our lives are cast—a drama of existence in which wonder, inquiry, and the appreciative mind play the creative roles” (1953, 77).

3.4. Whitehead, Dewey, and the Method of Inquiry John Dewey interprets Whitehead’s philosophy in a way “deliberately emphasizing” his own approach, and he thinks that in doing so he has captured its “skeleton” or “backbone,” the “general structural condition of his thinking” (1942, 650). This aspect, of course, is the empirical side of “Whitehead’s basic method,” which emphasizes observation leading to generalizations based on “distinctions that arise in and because of inquiry into the subject-matter of experience-nature” (1937, 175). Dewey agrees: “descriptive generalization of experience is the goal of any intelligent empiricism” (1937, 170). It should attempt to provide a “genetic” or “functional” account of experience, “an experimental effort at purification, continuation and extension of those elements of things already experienced that commend themselves to critical judgment” (1942, 659). According to Dewey, however, two problems arise in how Whitehead effects this basic method. The first problem is about homologies. It makes good sense—indeed it shows “courage of imagination” (1937, 173)—for Whitehead to start from the physical sciences and then, as he does in his earlier philosophy of nature books, to generalize those ideas so that human experience is seen as “a specialization of the traits of nature.” And it makes equally good sense, as Whitehead does in his later metaphysical writings, to use the specialized traits found in human experience to interpret physical occurrences (1942, 656). Unfortunately, Dewey argues, Whitehead treats these homologies as identities in content rather than in function (1942, 653), which leads to “obscurantion of what is philosophically important” (1942, 660). For instance, treating physical quanta and human feelings as similar in content converts “moral idealism, the idealism of action”—by which Dewey means the way in which ideals function in guiding the choices individuals and groups make in their pursuit of fulfillment—into “ontological idealism or ‘spiritualism.’” Dewey thinks these sorts of conversion have been shown to be the “fatal weakness” of Western philosophizing since Plato and Aristotle (1942, 661). Dewey’s second problem with Whitehead’s approach is that when he affirms the method of descriptive generalization he adds that the aim of it is to frame “a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted” (PR 4; AI 222). For Dewey, this smells of “traditional Rationalism,” in which primacy is given to “mathematical method” (1937, 173) and philosophy endeavors to identify “the ultimate metaphysical or ontological structure of the universe.” The result, inexorably, is an “assignment of ontological priority to general characters and essences, and subordination to them of the existences actually observed in nature” (1942, 657). “The resulting generalizations” from this

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way of philosophizing are “necessarily morphological and static” (1937, 175). “Abstract logical connectedness” is substituted for “concrete existential temporal connectedness” (1942, 658). Dewey picks out one of Whitehead’s basic categories to illustrate his criticism: eternal objects. The relation of eternal objects to actual occasions is that of “ingression,” which suggests their “independent and ready-made subsistence.” They stand apart from concrete temporal things, and so Whitehead needs “some principle” with the capacity to “act selectively in determining what eternal objects ingress in any given immediate occasion” (1937, 176). God is introduced into his system in order to play this role, mediating the gap between the ontologically nontemporal and the ontologically temporal. Dewey suggests that if “the engression [sic] of natures, characters, or universals” were taken as the result of generalizations from immediate experience, made in order to direct an entity’s “further movement and its consequences,” then “intelligence” rather than a God would suffice to accomplish the mediating (1937, 176). Dewey finds “a certain irony” that Whitehead’s thought should be interpreted as giving primacy to the mathematical and therefore to “the static over process” (1937, 177). And he rejects a balanced approach in which the mathematical and experiential models are “coordinate”: “One, I think, must lead and the other follow” (1937, 174). Dewey’s plea is that Whitehead “lean” away from the “dogmatic and imposed systematizations” of the mathematical style of philosophizing, that he lean toward the genetic style with its emphasis on experimental inquiry, “the play of free critical intelligence” (1942, 661). Whitehead declines making such a choice: “The historic process of the world, which requires the genetic-functional interpretation, also requires for its understanding some insight into those ultimate principles of existence which express the necessary connections within the flux” (ESP 94). William Myers seems typical of most Whiteheadians, arguing that the mathematical-formal aspects of Whitehead’s metaphysics do not undermine the centrality of process, of taking time seriously. Myers notes that Whitehead takes rationalism as a “hope” but “not a metaphysical premise”: “It is the faith which forms the motive for the pursuit of all sciences alike, including metaphysics” (PR 42). So Myers suggests that “Whitehead’s faith is perhaps best described as faith in system,” that the result of any adequate metaphysical inquiry should “reveal reality as exhibiting fundamental orderliness” (2001, 249). Nonetheless, Myers worries that the mathematical method is “at odds” with Whitehead’s empirical starting point, for the method “already assumes that the world exhibits systematic order, coherence, and intrinsic reasonableness” and therefore downplays the “disorder, incoherence and unreasonableness” found in experience (2001, 253). “In the end, Whitehead’s methodology leaves him open to the real possibility of doing injustice to his own starting point, and to the possibility of falling into incoherence” (2001, 254). Robert Mack suggests a way to avoid this problem, by distinguishing between Whitehead’s earlier and later work. In the philosophy of nature books, Whitehead understands the task of philosophy to be “abstraction,” moving from immediate experience to general concepts that deploy a system of extensive general patterns that are then “read back” into immediate experience as what it instantiates (1968, 48). This is the mathematical-formal method at work, and its problem is its “inability to get away from the immediate experience with which you

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start” (1968, 48). Mack argues that Whitehead, in his metaphysical books, abandons this approach for a genetic one that is very similar to Dewey’s. Philosophy, functioning genetically, “builds on” immediate experience rather than abstracting from it. The generalizations become not covering laws but “principles of intelligibility.” The categoreal scheme is “to be criticized and verified by immediate experience, not found in it as something simply there to be seen” (1968, 49). For Mack, Whitehead begins in Bradley’s camp but ends up in Dewey’s; his early mistaken scientific Idealism gives way in his later work to a thorough-going Deweyan pragmatism. One cannot leave a consideration of Dewey and Whitehead without mentioning education, but there is little to be said. Both philosophers are quoted constantly by educators, but when developing educational theories and practical strategies of their own most writers use Dewey or Whitehead but not both, and no one has systematically melded their approaches. George Allan comes close in Higher Education in the Making, developing the notion of a “pragmatic educational canon” based on metaphysical ideas drawn from Whitehead, James, and Dewey. William Doll in A Post-modern Perspective on Curriculum makes vague mention of Whitehead and Dewey along with a number of other thinkers, ranging from Heidegger to Prigogine, in formulating what he calls “transformative transactions” as the core aim of education. Brian Hendley has written an informative book on Dewey’s and Whitehead’s (and Bertrand Russell’s) actual practices as educators and how these were informed—or not—by their theories. Hendley’s conclusion is that testing education theories by their applicability is a useful “model” for stimulating the development of better philosophies of education (1986, 123), but he does not develop such a philosophy himself.

3.5. Whitehead, Mead, and the Social Self George Herbert Mead accepts most of the key concepts from Whitehead’s Principles of Natural Knowledge concerning the implications of Einstein’s relativity theory in a world composed of event quanta. Motion is an objective fact in nature, but it implies rest and “rest in nature implies co-gredience, i.e., a persistent relation of here and there with reference to some individual” percipient event (1964, 275). These “consentient set[s] of patterns of events that endure” constitute “slabs of nature” (2002, 172). Where the perspective does not preserve an enduring pattern of here and there, it is in motion; and space and time are distinguished by the differences between these two kinds of perspectives. Thus nature is “stratified into perspectives, whose intersections constitute the creative advance of nature” (2002, 172). In this way Whitehead’s “philosophy of relativism” establishes what Mead calls the “objectivity of perspectives” (2002, 172) or, accepting a coinage of Arthur Murphy, “objective relativism” (1938, 524; see Murphy 1927). If times and distances are functions of some specified reference system, and if any and every standpoint uniquely defines such a system, then there can be no single nonrelative overarching spatio-temporal order, no single objective world, no single metaphysically ultimate reality. Instead, a plurality of objective perspectives exist, and nature as a whole is nothing other than their intersections. Perspectives are not distorted versions of a perspectivally neutral pattern of relationships, but rather the natural objective world itself. “They are in their interrelationship the nature that science knows” (2002, 173). The

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“seemingly timeless character of our spatial world and its permanent objects” are recurrent characteristics of consentient sets and “we abstract time from this space for the purposes of our conduct” (1964, 277). Mead goes on to explore the implications of objective relativism for an understanding of self and society. In doing so, he leaves behind the Whitehead he knows. It is unclear whether Whitehead’s ideas about societies of enduring objects could have been helpful as Mead developed his theory of a compound self, an I and a Me, and his theory of the “generalized other.” For a group to come into existence, Mead argues, each member “must in some sense take the attitude of all of them,” which each does by “getting the attitude which each assumes in relation to the common ends which each has” (1938, 612). “Sociality is the capacity of being several things at once” (2002, 75). Thus a society is an organism in the same functional sense that an individual person is: its unity is the adjustment of the various perspectives of its constitutive elements, through the development and recognition of common features such as the ends their actions envision. Mead is critical of Whitehead’s theory of perspectives because he fails to see how it can be reconciled with “the fixed geometry of space-time” that Whitehead also accepts (2002, 42). It closes “the door to the contingent” and undermines the reality of emergent novelty (2002, 70). Mead also dislikes Whitehead’s notion of Creativity, which he takes to be a “Bergsonian edition of Spinoza’s underlying substance that individuates itself in the structure of events,” nor does he like Whitehead’s “Platonic heaven of eternal objects” (2002, 173). As for Dewey, so also for Mead: Whitehead’s mathematical propensities are thought to undermine rather than strengthen the experiential genetic grounding required of an adequate philosophy. William Miller suggests that Whitehead is not as far from Mead as Mead thinks, that there is a functional homology such that “the principle of sociality is for Mead what the principle of concrescence is for Whitehead.” Sociality and concrescence have to do with what is present, with a reality “characterized by novel events, which as emergents “must make an adjustment to both a past and a future or later system which their emergence heralds” (1973, 191). Most Mead scholars, however, agree with Richard Burke’s insistence that for Mead “‘metaphysics’ was a dirty word,” an appeal “to a principle beyond any possible experience, a realm of independent being” that offers itself as an alternative to scientific method (1962, 82). It is “misleading” to call Mead a metaphysician and “confusing” to group him with Bergson, Whitehead, and Husserl, as many do, because “in spirit and purpose he belongs with the positivists.” In a “pragmatic-dialectical” and therefore fundamentally anti-metaphysical way, Mead sought “to explain experience without going beyond experience” (1936, 87).

3.6. Whitehead, Pragmatism, and Asian Thought Brief mention should be made of recent efforts to enlarge the scope of the conversation between pragmatists and Whiteheadians to include Asian philosophers. Neville underscores the reason: the philosophical public is now global and it is embarrassingly parochial to discuss modes of process thinking without including approaches rooted in traditions other than those found in the West (2004, 23). Neville is himself an excellent example of this enlarged scope, especially as he develops it programmatically in Normative Cultures and specifically in Boston Confucianism.

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Warren Frisina weaves together the approaches of Whitehead, Dewey, and the sixteenthcentury Neo-Confucian Chinese philosopher Wang Yang-ming. Indeed the title of his book, The Unity of Knowledge and Action, is a translation of Wang’s central term chih hsing ho-l. Frisina offers a pragmatic interpretation of Whitehead’s cosmology by likening Dewey’s transactional metaphors to Whitehead’s organismic ones (2002, 127). Wang’s views are similar, Frisina argues, for he also takes concrete things to be “nodes of causal relatedness rather that fixed substances” and understands “cognition as a specific kind of relational activity” (2002, 141). For Wang, metaphysical inquiry is “active, aesthetic, and hypothetical” (2002, 141), a “threestep system of expectation-problem-new expectation” (2002, 134), an activity rooted in “the erotic desire for aesthetic satisfaction” (2002, 138). Steve Odin relies on an metaphysical framework integrating Mead and Whitehead in developing an interpretation of Zen Buddhism’s understanding of the social self. The objectivity of perspectives yields a world in which each individual should be seen as “a living mirror reflecting its entire universe from a unique perspectival locus in nature” (1996, 225). Odin argues that Nishida Kitaro, a Japanese philosopher who was roughly a contemporary of Whitehead and of Mead, developed such a “perspectivist cosmology” with special emphasis on how the self “reflects its world as an individual microcosm of the social macrocosm” (1996, 347). Odin finds similar themes in the work of Watsuji Tetsuro, Yuasa Yasuo, and Kimura Bin, all of whom emphasize the “symbiotic” character of the “human-nature relationship” (1996, 401).

Phenomenology and Metaphysics William S. Hamrick

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The subject here is some important aspects of the relationship between phenomenology and the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. Because this is a very large topic, the discussion will be narrowed to the central question of the limits of phenomenology beyond which its methods are surpassed by metaphysics. As regards phenomenology, it is the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty that will be compared and contrasted with Whitehead’s metaphysics, along with appropriate references to certain influential thinkers in their backgrounds, especially F.W.J. Schelling. Merleau-Ponty will be at issue here because of his instructive intellectual trajectory that carried him from phenomenology to the beginnings of an ontology consonant with that of Whitehead, by whom he was somewhat influenced. To speak of the relationship between phenomenology and metaphysics must not be misinterpreted as implying the absence of standard metaphysical topics in phenomenological philosophies themselves. In truth, it is quite the opposite. To mention only two prominent examples, one can think of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, the subtitle of which is “Essay in Phenomenological Ontology.” Even so, these and other phenomenological texts that take up positions on metaphysical topics still do so from within phenomenological perspectives and methodologies. Moreover, we will see that there is a certain sense of metaphysics that the Merleau-Ponty takes to be consistent and even synonymous with phenomenology. Yet, the central question of this essay is where phenomenology reaches its own limits and becomes metaphysics as Whitehead understood it.

1. The Early Phenomenology To follow this development, Merleau-Ponty’s conception of phenomenological method and then something of the content of that phenomenology must be clarified. At the very beginning of his major early work, Phenomenology of Perception (1945), he explicitly positions his conception of phenomenology against that of Husserl. The latter is correct to see it as a “study of essences,” he says, but this philosophy also requires that study to maintain the connection of those essences with their “facticity.” Phenomenology suspends the “natural attitude” in order to better understand it, but it also insists that the world is “already there” before our reflections on it, and it seeks “to recover this naive contact with the world” by relearning to see it. Phenomenology is a philosophy that does strive to be a “strict science” (Husserl), but it is also “an account of ‘lived’ space, time, and the world. Phenomenology attempts “a direct description of our experience such as it is” independently of any scientific explanation or construction.1 “It is a i

Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, U.S.A.; [email protected].

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question of describing, and not of explaining or analyzing.”2 In this respect, Merleau-Ponty preferred Eugen Fink’s conception of the phenomenological reduction as an “‘astonishment’ before the world.”3 Phenomenology is a philosophy of consciousness, and Merleau-Ponty saw it as “en route” long before Husserl—in the proto-phenomenology, so to say, of Descartes and Kant.4 However, he also insists that phenomenological descriptions of perceptual objects, other people, the world around us, and even ourselves, in no case consist of an “idealist return to consciousness.”5 The intentionality of consciousness means, among other things, that consciousness is always linked to the world, that consciousness and its objects are given together and meant to be studied together, and that, consequently, a perceptual object, for example, has the “paradoxical” status of being an “in-itself—for us.” Thus, Merleau-Ponty writes, “The most important achievement of phenomenology is without doubt to have united extreme subjectivism and extreme objectivism in its notion of the world or of rationality.”6 In turn, the phenomenological notion of world is of one that is “already there” before any experiences of it, but which is only the one lived by others and myself: “The thing and the world only exist as lived by me or through subjects such as me, because they are the concatenation [enchaînement] of our perspectives, but they transcend all perspectives because this chain is temporal and unfinished.”7 There is a corollary of this phenomenological attempt to chart a middle path between realism and idealism, namely, that objects and the world as such can have no meaning apart from the consciousness(es) from which that meaning emerges. On this view, as Jan Van der Veken has pointed out, if meaning emerges in the intersection of human beings and the world, then meaning cannot appear outside of that encounter.”8 It is the relationship that is primary for Merleau-Ponty: consciousness is not an inner stage on which meanings appear, but rather, in conjunction with the world at which it aims, their source. Although meaning is ubiquitous, the world itself is not meaningful. Nor, at the opposite extreme does consciousness simply bestow meaning on the world. Rather, for Merleau-Ponty, since meaning emerges in the interaction of consciousness and world, the “fundamental metaphysical fact is [… that] I am sure that there is being—on condition that I not search for another sort of being that being-for-me.”9 The unity of the subjective and the objective applies as well to the conscious subject. One of Merleau-Ponty’s main arguments against the Cartesian dualism is based on a great deal of experimental and experiential evidence from Gestalt psychology. This evidence shows that perception, far from being a passive response to environmental stimuli, actively structures our perceptual fields prior to any overlay of intellectual acts such that perceiving and perceived, subject and object, are indissolubly bound up with each other. This is to say that they are not independent, isolable relata that can be understood apart from each other. Rather, they are twin aspects of a concrete experience. Since the body thus reveals itself to be intelligent prior to the imposition of any intellectual acts, body and mind cannot conform to Descartes’s clear and distinct ideas of them. The body can be actively mixed up with, and “take account of” perceptual stimuli “only if we introduce beside the objective body the phenomenal body, if we make of it a knowing-body and if, finally, we substitute for [a Cartesian] consciousness as the subject of perception, existence, that is to say, being in the world through a body.”10

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This “phenomenal” body, designated by Merleau-Ponty as the “lived body” (le corps propre) stands over against the objective body studied by science as the life-world does to the objective world of science, and these relationships have decisive consequences for understanding relationships between phenomenology and metaphysics. In Merleau-Ponty’s early work, Sens et non-sens (1947), phenomenology is roughly synonymous with one sense of metaphysics because the philosopher uses “metaphysics” as the contrast to treating the world and the body as scientific objects. “There is metaphysics,” he tells us, “starting from the moment when, ceasing to live in the evidence of the object—whether it be a question of a sensory or scientific object— we apperceive the radical subjectivity of all our experience as inseparable from its truth value.”11 The lived world stands over against the world of science that “always presupposes an absolute observer in whom all points of view are summed up and, correlatively, a true projection of all perspectives.”12 Further, Merleau-Ponty argues in the same text that, following Fink’s description of the phenomenological reduction, philosophy should open us up to and preserve our wonder at all of the things that appear to us with their mysteries, opacities, nuances, ambiguities, and paradoxes—their “fundamental strangeness for me and the miracle of their appearing.”13 If we understand metaphysics in that fashion, it is “the opposite of system. If system is an arrangement of concepts which makes all the aspects of experience immediately compatible and compossible, then it suppresses metaphysical consciousness.”14

2. The Beginnings of an Ontology and Process Thought Three intertwined factors contributed to Merleau-Ponty’s move away from the primacy of consciousness and, therefore, of phenomenology—which he had earlier even identified with philosophy as such—and of its relationship with metaphysics just described. The first factor was a relentless self-examination about the philosophical adequacy of his view of an embodied consciousness as the origin of meaning. This question, as Erreur ! Contact non défini. points out, “forced Merleau-Ponty to have a greater sensitivity to the fundamental and equally undeniable givenness of both the subject and the world.” In his later writings, as Van der Veken goes on to say, “Man and world are sustained through and through by a more encompassing mystery, which itself is the possibility of their mutual dialogue […]. There is something to see and to say. The word is solicited by reality.”15 The second factor was also a problem of relationships, namely, that between the objective and the lived body. In his unfinished last manuscript, posthumously published as Le Visible et l’invisible, he wrote: “The problems posed in Ph.P. [Phénoménologie de la perception] are insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’-‘object’ distinction.”16 What could not be explained about the relationship between the objective and lived body was how “a given fact of the ‘objective’ order (a given cerebral lesion) could entail a given disturbance of the relation with the world—a massive disturbance, which seems to prove that the whole ‘consciousness’ is a function of the objective body.”17

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The third factor consisted of a rediscovery of, and finely detailed interest in, nature. It is true that there are many references to nature and to the natural world in Merleau-Ponty’s early writings, but his interest in both is still enveloped in a phenomenological perspective. However, this is not true in his nature lectures at the Collège de France that date from 1957and in L’Œil et l’esprit (1960).18 In this last stage of his thought, what was primary was “a metaphysical reflection that searches for the relation between Being itself and that which is revealed in man, namely, the mystery of truth, of rationality, of humanity.”19 These three factors, then, decentered Merleau-Ponty’s early phenomenology of an embodied consciousness. He clearly did not repudiate the truth of its descriptions of the lived body and the life world, but he did come to hold that our relationship to Being could not be understood adequately if subject and object, consciousness and all the possible objects that it can intend, are the ultimate terms of the explanation. Instead of a philosophy of consciousness, MerleauPonty’s later work plunged deeper, so to say, to begin to seek the source of consciousness by developing an ontology of “flesh” (la chair). Without any name in traditional philosophy, flesh for Merleau-Ponty “is not matter, is not mind, is not substance. To designate it,” he writes, “we should need the old term ‘element,’ in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea.”20 As the primary explanatory category, flesh is that from which my flesh and the flesh of the world emerge. Consciousness itself also emerges from flesh, and it is this that for Merleau-Ponty marks the boundary of phenomenology’s transcendence into a metaphysics—or, as he usually says, ontology—more like that of Whitehead than those which Merleau-Ponty approved and rejected in Sens et non-sens. On his view, nature, as one of the fundamental manifestations of flesh considered as the ultimate ontological category, is “an object from which we have arisen” instead of a “mere accessory of consciousness in its tête-à-tête with knowledge.”21 In turn, my body, even the earlier lived body, is a natural object: “Visible and mobile, my body is of the number of things” that “form part of its full definition and the world is made of the same stuff as the body.”22 If not as an object of consciousness, how is it for Merleau-Ponty that we are to understand our relationship with nature? The answer is an “intertwining,” or “chiasm,”23 that makes of my flesh and that of the world an essential “reversibility,” which is “the ultimate truth.”24 This means that to see is to be seen, to touch is to be touched, and in general, to feel is to be felt. Sartre rightly characterized this reversibility as envelopment: [T]he understanding of existence and life, for Merleau, is conditioned entirely by this cardinal principle: envelopment. He makes us understand by that […] that Nature is right up in us and, so that to see but the moon or a neon advertisement, what is required is a natural appropriation of internal and external being. We are in being, it envelops us, it is in us […]. In us it makes itself flesh—the word is Merleau’s himself—and when we perceive the world through our body, we make it flesh and in turn, we make ourselves its flesh.25 Two important metaphysical consequences follow immediately from the chiasmatic reversibility of flesh. The first is our indivisibility from nature and the concomitant rejection of Cartesian or Cartesian-like dualisms, and the second consequence concerns the meaning of nature and the

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nature of meaning. As well, the first consequence has the corollary that Merleau-Ponty also rejected what Alfred North Whitehead criticized as “the bifurcation of nature” (CN 30) into “nature apprehended in awareness and the nature which is the cause of awareness” (Ibid., 31). On this view, what passes into our eyes, light waves, is not visible, and what is visible—colors and other “secondary” qualities—is not there. Thus, we have “two systems of reality” (Ibid., 30), nature as scientific object and nature as perceived, the one being “true and not perceived” and the other “perceived and not true.”26 With respect to the bifurcation of nature and on other related subjects, the Nature lectures demonstrate that Merleau-Ponty was, like Whitehead,27 influenced substantially by the work of F.W.J. Schelling. He considers that, of all his predecessors, it was Schelling who most successfully overcame the bifurcation of nature. He also finds support in Schelling’s rejection of the Cartesian dualism, and in his endorsement of our indivisibility from nature. On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty rejected Schelling’s own interpretation of that indivisibility as identity, as when he states, “Because I am identical to Nature, I understand it just as well as my own life.’”28 For Merleau-Ponty, there is differentiation as well as indivisibility, negativity in addition to positivity, inscribed in our perceptual life, that create a disruption (écart) of identity. In all these respects, Whitehead was similarly influenced by Schelling, though the influence was more indirect. As Braeckman shows nicely, the causal chain extended from Schelling to Coleridge, then to Wordsworth, and finally to Whitehead. The Nature lectures also show us clearly that Merleau-Ponty’s view of our indivisibility from nature was influenced to some extent by his reading of Whitehead’s The Concept of Nature, Science and the Modern World, and the long middle chapter on Whitehead in Jean Wahl’s Vers le concret. The thirteen-page essay in La Nature on “The Idea of Nature for Whitehead” is too complex to articulate here, and I have described elsewhere the main themes of that essay.29 However, in rapid summary, what he finds insightful in Whitehead’s account of nature are the following six points. First, he rejects the bifurcation of nature. Second, he discards atomistic accounts of space and time as exemplified by, say, Descartes, Newton, and Laplace, and praises Whitehead’s critique of “simple location” (SMW 49). Third, Merleau-Ponty is attracted to, and seeks a greater understanding of, Whitehead’s view that nature is not passive substance arrayed before an active, constitutive mind, but rather something within which there is processive activity. Fourth, in conjunction with the rejection of “simple location,” he endorses Whitehead’s account of the “unity of events, their inherence in each other.”30 Merleau-Ponty applies this concept and the rejection of “simple location” to express the relationship of my flesh and that of the world as “overlapping” and “encroachment.”31 Fifth, following from the rejection of dualisms, he agrees with Whitehead’s view that mental awareness “shares in the passage of Nature” and, consequently, that consciousness cannot be a spectator over against nature as object. The sixth point concerns the nature of meaning and the meaning of nature. As with Whitehead, for the later, unlike the earlier, Merleau-Ponty, nature overflows with meaning that does not depend for its being on consciousness. Meaning is thus organic and carnal. At one level this means that mind and body, idea and flesh, comprise two sides of the same chiasmatic unity. “There is a body of the mind, and a mind of the body and a chiasm between them.”32 On

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his view, ideas are not the contrary of the visible; they are in-[the]visible, as Proust showed, as “its lining and depth.”33 At another level, on Merleau-Ponty’s view, the same relationship between the visible and the in-[the]visible meaning also permeates non-human nature. It is the in-visible that generates the unique style of the visible through its latent possibilities. For example, “As the vein bears the leaf from within, from the depths of its flesh, ideas are the texture of experience, its style, at first mute, then uttered. Like every style, they are elaborated within the thickness of being.”34 Merleau-Ponty conceives of the meaningfulness of nature in terms of a logos endiathetos and a logos proforikos. The former is the “silent Logos of perception,” the “Logos of the natural, esthetic world,” that which makes it possible for the logos proforikos to express it. The logos proforikos is “the Logos in the sense of language,” all the forms of cultural elaboration of “the natural, esthetic world.”35 This is why, as noted earlier citing Erreur ! Contact non défini., “The word is solicited by reality.” In the fundamental il y a of nature, there is something there to say, an overabundance of meaningfulness to articulate, that does not originate in consciousness. And we can say it—that is, incarnate a logos proforikos—because our flesh and the flesh of the world are in some way fitted for each other such that there is an intelligible empiétement between our bodies, perceptual objects, other people, and the world around us.

3. Some Conclusions about Consonance Merleau-Ponty was not able to develop his ontology fully before his tragically early death. However, two of its aspects seem clear: he was following his intuitions in working toward an alternative to a philosophy of consciousness, subjects and objects as he understood them, and that what he was writing at the end of his life was more and more consonant with Whitehead’s process metaphysics. This is so even with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the logos endiathetos because for Whitehead, any idea manifested in what Merleau-Ponty would term the flesh of the world constitutes a form of definiteness, an eternal object, that has achieved ingression into some occasions of experience. They are also in-visible as either the objective form according to which a given occasion of experience prehends its predecessors, or as the subjective form that characterizes the way that an occasion of experience prehends its past and anticipates its future transcendence. These “subjective” and “objective” species of eternal objects (PR 291) are all invisible, carnal ideas in Merleau-Ponty’s sense. Now one might think that Merleau-Ponty would object to conceiving the logos endiathetos in terms of eternal objects because of his resistance to eternal truths, a-historical forms of order, and a God who is a disengaged spectator of the world. One would also think that his suspicions would have been heightened if he had known of Whitehead’s view that eternal objects are the referents of God’s conceptual vision. It is highly doubtful that he did know of this view, but he was certainly familiar with its Augustinian version. However, Merleau-Ponty’s disagreement with Whitehead on this matter might well be much less than it appears. In the first place, the phrase “Eternal object” is a misnomer because its referent is neither eternal nor an object. It cannot be an object because it is a mere possibility, a

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possible form of order. Its “metaphysical status […] is that of a possibility for an actuality” (SMW 159). According to the seventh Category of Explanation in Process and Reality, “an eternal object can be described only in terms of its potentiality for ‘ingression’ into the becoming of actual entities […]. It is a pure potential” (PR 23). And since an eternal object has no objective existence, it cannot be an object, and because it is not an object, it cannot be eternal. Nor, of course, qua possibility alone, could it be temporal. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Whitehead often refers to eternal objects in terms that suggest or imply that they are objectively existing entities. Furthermore, “Eternal Objects, or Pure Potentials for the Specific Determination of Fact, or Forms of Definiteness” (PR 22; emphasis in the original) comprise the fifth Category of Existence. Thus, these possibilities do exist in some sense prior to their ingression. Exactly how this can be is most unclear and is, in my view, an unnecessary inconsistency with Whitehead’s speculative scheme. Nor is it of any help to say that eternal objects exist somehow in God’s conceptual vision because God would also prehend them only as pure potentialities. As Whitehead is at pains to point out, God should not be conceived as an exception to the system. In any case, however this dispute might be resolved, Merleau-Ponty would certainly limit potentialities, and thus the logos endiathetos, to what is revealed within flesh—in Whitehead’s language, possible forms of order that have already achieved ingression.36 There is at least one other way in which Merleau-Ponty’s ontological reflections converge on Whitehead’s process metaphysics, and that is in terms of method. “The task of a philosophy of nature,” Merleau-Ponty wrote at the end of his essay on Whitehead, would be to describe all the modes of process, without grouping them under certain titles borrowed from substance thinking. Man is a mode as well as animal cells. There is no limit to the proliferation of categories, but there are types of “concrescence” which pass by shading off from one to another.37 This is to say that, instead of describing phenomena as they appear within consciousness in order to arrive at their essential structures, the method appropriate for ontology is the same as for Whitehead’s metaphysics: descriptive generalization. However, given Merleau-Ponty’s statement in Sens et non-sens that metaphysics is “the opposite of system,” and given that he continued to think of nature as an openness that cannot be captured adequately in concepts, how compatible in the end is his ontology with that of Whitehead? From all that appears, there is a substantial convergence. First, the type of system that Merleau-Ponty had in mind was much more like that of Hegel than of Whitehead’s adventurous speculation. Second, both thinkers hold that, in Whitehead’s words, “The elucidation of immediate experience is the sole justification for any thought” (PR 4). Third, consider Whitehead’s well-known characterization of metaphysical discovery as “the flight of an aeroplane” that “makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization” before landing again “for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation” (PR 5). Even this image is far less opposed to Merleau-Ponty’s thought than it might seem. For, this exercise in speculative thinking, like all thinking for both philosophers, takes place, as noted above, within the flux of nature rather than from the perspective of a disengaged spectator. Fourth, a lack of certainty and dogmatism and a corresponding openness and a general reticence about claiming success, characterize the thinking of both philosophers. Merleau-Ponty

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is hesitant to the point of diffidence in asserting the truth of diverse claims, and it is striking to see throughout every chapter of The Visible and the Invisible how its author constantly questions the meaning of philosophy itself. As for Whitehead, four times before the seventeenth page of Process and Reality he asserts the necessity of philosophical humility in terms such as the following: “There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly” (p. xiv). Finally, fifth, both Merleau-Ponty and Whitehead are committed to considering all of the evidence (PR 337, 338) and a convergence of their thought is beneficial to both. Whitehead states that “Intensity is the reward of narrowness,” and “In describing the capacities, realized or unrealized, of an actual occasion, we have, with Locke, tacitly taken human experience as an example upon which to found the generalized description required for metaphysics” (PR 112). Yet, the disadvantage of his narrow focus on the microcosmic level of atomism in Process and Reality is the lack of the richness of life at the macrocosmic level at which we live—details that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and later ontology provide. Conversely, as the Nature lectures show, M-P himself pursued his interests in nature and life right down to the level of cells and their life processes. Perhaps in time he would have arrived at Whitehead’s conception of nature as spatially and temporally overlapping, chiasmatic, internally related, actively creative, and meaningful occasions of experience: the unity of nature and logos. He would have arrived, that is, at a metaphysics that he envisaged when he was a candidate for the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France. He wrote of a creative expression, […] a spontaneity which accomplishes what appeared to be impossible when we observed only the separate elements, a spontaneity which gathers together the plurality of monads, the past and the present, nature and culture into a single whole. To establish this wonder would be metaphysics itself and would at the same time give us the principle of an ethics.38 It is a pity that he did not live long enough to accomplish his goal and that he did not realize of how much more help Whitehead’s metaphysics would have been to him.

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Notes 1

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. i. Translated by Colin Smith as Phenomenology of Perception (New York: The Humanities Press, 1962), p. vii. Hereafter, references to Merleau-Ponty’s texts will provide English pagination first followed by the original French pagination. Corrected translations, where necessary, will be noted. 2 Ibid., p. viii/ii. Similarly, Merleau-Ponty writes, “The real is to be described, and not to construct or constitute.” Ibid., p. x/iv. 3 Ibid., p. xiii /viii. The English translation of “étonnement” is “wonder,” which is not nearly forceful enough. 4 Ibid., p. xvii/xii. 5 Ibid., p. ix/iii. 6 Ibid., p. xix/xv. 7 Ibid., 333/384-385. 8 “Merleau-Ponty on the Ultimate Problems of Rationality,” in Ultimate Reality and Meaning: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of Understanding 12:3 (1989), p. 203. 9 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sens et non-sens (Paris: Nagel, 1948), p. 164. Translated by Hubert L Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus as Sense and Non-Sense (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 93. 10 Phenomenology of Perception, p. 309 n.1/357n. 11 Sense and non-sense, 93/163. 12 Ibid., 93/162. “a true projection of all perspectives” is not the best translation of “un géométral de toutes les perspectives.” A “flat projection” would be more accurate since “géométral” means a design that shows the precise dimensions and form of some object without regard to perspectives. 13 Ibid., 94/165. 14 Ibid., 94/166. 15 Van der Veken, p. 204. 16 Le Visible et l’invisible, suivi de notes de travail. Edited by Claude Lefort. Paris: Gallimard, 1964, p. 253. Translated by Alphonso Lingis as The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by Working Notes. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 200. 17 Ibid. 18 Merleau-Ponty gave three separate lecture courses on the subject of nature: January-May 1957 on “Le Concept de Nature,” January-May 1958 on “Le concept de Nature (suite). L’animalité, le corps humain, passage à la culture,” and January-May 1960 on “Nature et Logos: le corps humain.” Student notes from these courses appear in La Nature, Notes, Cours du Collège de France. Edited by Dominique Séglard. Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1995. Translated by Robert Vallier as Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003. This text will be referred to hereafter as the Nature lectures. MerleauPonty’s own retrospective summaries of these courses were published in Résumés de cours, Collège de France 1952-1960. Paris: Gallimard, 1968. Translated by John O’Neill as Themes from the Lectures at the Collège de France, 1952-1960. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. 19 Van der Veken, 205. 20 The Visible and the Invisible, p. 139/184. 21 Résumés de cours, Collège de France 1952-1960, p. 64/94. 22 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit (Paris: Gallimard 1964), p. 19. Translated by Carleton Dallery as “Eye and Mind” in The Primary of Perception and Other Essays on

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Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Edited by James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 163. 23 Le Visible et l’invisible, p. 130/172. 24 Ibid., p. 155/204. 25 “Merleau-Ponty [I],” translated by William S. Hamrick, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. XV, No. 2, May 1984, p. 132. This was a previously unpublished manuscript, the initial version of the well known memorial article for Merleau-Ponty that appeared in the October 1961 issue of Les Temps modernes and was reprinted in Sartre’s Situations IV. 26 Jean Wahl, Vers le concret, Études d’histoire de la philosophie contemporaine William James, Whitehead, Gabriel Marcel, Avant-propos de Mathias Girel (Paris: J. Vrin, 2004 [1933]), p. 121. Whitehead’s rejection of the bifurcation of nature in his process metaphysics arrives at what is effectively a chiasmatic conception of occasions of experience. Through the vector character of prehensions, each new act of concrescence unites the internal and external because it begins by taking up its predecessors and ends by bequeathing its becoming to its successors. 27 See Antoon Braeckman, Antoon Braeckman, “Whitehead and German Idealism: A Poetic Heritage,” Process Studies, Volume 14, Number 4 (Winter 1985), pp. 265-286. 28 Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, translated by Errol E. Harris and Peter Heath, with an Introduction by Robert Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 36. MerleauPonty quotes this sentence in La Nature, p. 40/63. 29 William S. Hamrick, “A Process View of the Flesh: Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty,” Process Studies 28, no. 1-2 (Spring-Summer): 117-129 and “Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty: Healing the Bifurcation of Nature,” in Janusz A. Polanowski and Donald W. Sherburne, eds. Whitehead’s Philosophy: Points of Connection (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004, pp. 127-142. 30 La Nature, p. 117/159. 31 The Visible and the Invisible, p. 248/302. The words that Merleau-Ponty uses to express this relationship are “empiétement” and “enjambement.” 32 Ibid., p. 259/313. 33 Ibid., p. 149/195. 34 Ibid., 119/159, translation altered. I have used “vein” for “nervure,” where the existing translation has “nervure.” 35 La Nature, p. 212/274. 36 There is a related but separate issue about possibilities and their mode of existence, if any, that should be mentioned here, though it lies beyond the limits of this essay. For Henri Bergson, to conceive possibilities as already somehow existing and waiting, as it were, to be actualized, is to be guilty of a “retrospective illusion,” “the retrograde movement of the true.” For Bergson, it is the other way around: something becomes possible and can be known as such only after it is actualized. See La Pensée et le mouvant (Paris: F. Alcan, 1934), Introduction Part I and Chapter III, “Le possible et le réel.” Translated by Mabelle L. Andison as The Creative Mind, An Introduction to Metaphysics (New York: Replica Books, Baker & Taylor, 1999. 37 Ibid., pp. 121-122/165. 38 “Un inédit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, no. 4 (1962), p. 409. Translated as “An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His Work,” in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Edited by James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 11.

Whitehead’s Interpretation of Zeno Gottfried Heinemann

i

1. Zeno of Elea This Presocratic philosopher (5th cent. BCE), inventor of dialectic (i.e. the art of refutation) according to Aristotle (fr. 65 Rose, DK 29 A 10), must not be confounded with Zeno of Citium (4th -3rd cent. BCE), the founder of Stoicism. Given the account in Plato’s Parmenides (127B ff.), Zeno of Elea was about two decades older than Socrates and, hence, contemporary with such leading figures in post-Parmenidean cosmology as Anaxagoras, Empedocles and (perhaps) Leucippus. The pioneers of the Sophistic movement, Gorgias and Protagoras, may have been a decade younger. Being a disciple of Parmenides, Zeno published a series of arguments which, according to Plato (Parmenides 127E ff.), were designed to indirectly support the Parmenidean claim that Being is one by deriving contradictory conclusions from the assumption that there are many things. Other Zenonian arguments, such as the paradoxes of motion reported by Aristotle, may also have been directed against plurality. Verbatim quotations have only survived (via Simplicius, 6th cent. CE) from two arguments on plurality, demonstrating that, “if there are many things,” they must be (N)both “limited” and “unlimited” in number (DK 29 B 3), and (M)”both small and large; so small as not to have magnitude, so large as to be unlimited” (DK 29 B 2 and B 1), respectively. Only secondary reports are available in all other cases, including the paradoxes of motion which, following Aristotle, may be referred to and summarized as follows. (D)

Dichotomy (or Stadium). There is no motion since “before reaching the goal” the runner must arrive at the half-way point,” and so forth ad infinitum (Phys. VI 9, 239b11-13, see also Top. VIII 8, 160b8-9 and Phys. VI 2, 233a21-23). Two variants of this argument may be distinguished (see Phys. VIII 8, 263a4-11).

(DG)

In Dichotomyg, infinite division takes place towards the goal of the race-course. The runner first traverses half the race-course, then another quarter, and so forth, thus (if the race is from 0 to 1) successively arriving at 0, 1/2, 3/4, 7/8, … .

(DS)

In Dichotomys, by contrast, infinite division takes place towards the starting point of the race-course. Before having traversed the whole course, the runner must have traversed its first half, and before that its first quarter, and so forth, thus successively arriving at … 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1.

i

Universität Kassel, FB 01, Philosophie, 34109 Kassel; [email protected].

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Aristotle first comments that there is no question of passing through an infinity in finite time since the infinities involved are the same concerning space and time (Phys. VI 2, 233a24-31). Later, he adds that it makes a difference whether the divisions in question are taken as potential or actual: difficulties arise only in the latter case which, however, requires that the movement in question be interrupted (Phys. VIII 8, 263a15-b9). In both cases, an infinity of actions are exhibited which the runner must perform. Dichotomyg makes it hard to see how the overall task can be completed. Dichotomys, by contrast, makes it hard to see how it can be taken up at all since there is nothing to be done first. In a sense, therefore, Dichotomys is particularly puzzling. (AC)

Achilleus. “In a race, the slowest is never caught up by the quickest” since “the pursuer must first reach the point where the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead” (Phys. VI 9, 239b14-18). It is generally agreed that this is a mere restatement of Dichotomyg.

(AR)

Arrow. Assume that (i) “everything either is at rest or moves whenever it occupies a position equal to itself” and (ii) “the moving thing is always in the now.” Then the flying arrow is (iii) “motionless” and, therefore, (iv) “stands still” (Phys. VI 9, 239b5-7, b30).1 It may be fairly agreed that instantaneous motion is a contradiction in terms and, hence, (v) “nothing moves in the now” (Phys. VI 3, 234a24). (ii) and (v) entail that (iii) the arrow is always “motionless” (and evidently occupies a space equal to itself). Taken together with (i), (iii) entails that (iv) the arrow “stands still”. Aristotles comments that (vi) “time is not composed of nows” (Phys. VI 9, 239b8, b30-31). His point is that, on the one hand, “always” in (ii) and hence in the whole argument (insofar as it is valid) only refers to “nows,” i.e. indivisible positions in time. But since, on the other hand, “time is not composed of nows,” nothing follows concerning the extended lapses of time required by motion and rest. In particular, instantaneous rest is as much as instantaneous motion a contradiction in terms. For instance, neither motion nor rest take place in the very moment when something has finished its movement, and will thereupon be at rest (Phys. VI 3, 234a31-b9). Since at that moment the thing in question undeniably occupies a space equal to itself, (i) is false and, hence, Zeno’s argument is fallacious.

(MR)

Moving rows. This argument is particularly difficult to reconstruct from Aristotle’s discussion (Phys. VI 9, 239b33-240a18). It may be dismissed here since it plays no role in Whitehead.

2. Zeno's Influence Reactions to Zeno are already traceable in contemporary cosmology (Anaxagoras and especially the Atomists) and in the Sophists. The major part of Plato’s Parmenides is a dialectical “exercise” formed of a series of Zeno-like arguments. Aristotle’s analysis in Physics VI of motion and the continuum is evidently designed to avoid the difficulties exhibited by Zeno’s paradoxes. Diodorus Cronus, on the other hand, is reported to have developed Zeno’s arguments and explicitly endorsed the formula “never moves, but has moved” which in Aristotle indicates

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the absurdity to which the assumption is reduced that time and magnitude are composed of indivisible parts (Diodorus Cronus in Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. 10,85 ff.; Aristotle, Phys. VI 1, 232a10-1). Subsequent philosophy was usually aware of Zeno’s arguments. In particular, the “new science” of Galileo and his followers required a reconsideration of the infinities involved in continuity. “The whole labyrinth about the composition of the continuum,” wrote Leibniz (Loemker, 159), “must be unravelled.” Kant’s antinomies, in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft reflect Zeno’s Dichotomy. Given the contradictions exhibited by “the old dialecticians,” Hegel was happy to conclude that “motion is contradiction in actu” (“der daseiende Widerspruch,” Logik II, 76). Modern scholarship, on the one hand, has been deeply influenced by Tannery’s claim that Zeno’s arguments were not directed against common sense but, rather, against a Pythagorean doctrine describing space and time as composed of indivisible units. Only after the 1950s was this interpretation seen to be ill-founded (see Vlastos 1967, 366 ff.). On the other hand, Aristotle’s eliminative strategems against Zeno were successfully resumed. Thus, Russell and, more recently, Grünbaum and others argued that modern mathematics, based on set theory, provides consistent accounts of continuity and motion, including the infinities involved. But it should be also noted that modern mathematics gives rise to such novel paradoxes as Cantor’s proof that the concept of cardinal number does not apply to the universe (i.e., in mathematics, the class of all classes). Surprisingly, the similarity between this result and Zeno’s paradox of number is rarely observed. In particular, Russell pointed out that Zeno’s argument that “there is no such thing as a state of change” (CP 3, 370) does not prevent a body from being “in one place at one time and in another at another” and, hence, to “move” in the only relevant sense of that term (CP 3, 371 f.). Bergson objected that this “cinematographical” description is inevitable in retrospect but fails to account for the unity of the movement which spans a duration of time and is only grasped by “installing oneself in the change” (L'évolution créative, 307 ff.). For Bergson, Zeno’s arguments boil down to rendering absurd the notion of movement being “made of immobilities” (ibid.). Similarly but in a far less sophisticated way, James employed Zeno to confirming his view that, just as perceptual experience “grows by buds or drops,” so do time, change, etc. (Some Problems …, p. 80-95; quotation on p. 80). James mentioned Zeno’s Arrow in passing (p. 81) and amply discussed the Achilleus (p. 81-82, 87, and 91-93: unsuccessfully attacking Russell).

3. Zeno in Whitehead The relevant passages are: a section in Whitehead’s Harvard Lectures for 1924-25 (March 31— April 11; Ford 1984, 275-286), SMW 124-127, and PR 68 ff.2 In what follows, I will first examine these passages (in reverse order) in their relation to the traditions and topics described above (Section 3.1). In the second place, then, I will describe Whitehead’s use of Zeno’s arguments, starting in the Harvard Lectures (Section 3.2) and successively including SMW (Section 3.3), and PR (Section 3.4).

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3.1. Relevant Passages In Process and Reality, Whitehead rightly dismisses James’s argument concerning the Achilleus as not “allow[ing] sufficiently for those elements in Zeno’s paradoxes which are the product of inadequate mathematical knowledge” (PR 68.14-16) and, in particular, of Zeno’s “ignorance of the theory of infinite convergent numerical series” (PR 69.4 f.). His own “consideration of Zeno’s arguments” (PR 68.6) solely relies on Dichotomys (cf. PR 68.18-69.2 and 69.17-26), which he, however, mistakes for the Arrow (cf. Chappell, p. 72). James mentions the Arrow only in passing (p. 157/81) and amply discusses the Achilleus (p. 157 ff., 171, 179 ff. / 81 f. 87, 91 ff.; unsuccessfully attacking Russell). One gets the impression that Whitehead’s citation of the Arrow (instead of Dichotomys) is a slip that serves the purpose of finding something in James’ “argument from Zeno” to “agree with” (if only “in substance,” cf. PR 68.13 f.). Similarly, only Zeno is cited but something similar with Dichotomys is employed in Science and the Modern World (Chapter 7) to exhibit an inconsistency in Kant’s attribution to space and time of both extensiveness (i.e., to be adequately represented by “producing all its parts one after the other,” KrV A162 f. / B203) and continuity (i.e. that “space consists of spaces only, time of times,” KrV A169 / B211; as quoted SMW 125 f.). It should be noted that Whitehead does not only misrepresent Kant by neglecting the assignment to intuition (“Anschauung”) and to reality (“das Reale…”, KrV A166), respectively, of extensiveness and of continuity. He also claims that Kant’s account of space and time as continuous “is in agreement with Plato as against Aristotle” (SMW 127) which, of course, is quite the opposite of the truth. Still earlier are Whitehead’s Harvard Lectures of March 31-April 11, 2005 (Ford 1984, 27586) where Zeno is credited with “something permanently true” (Ford 1984, 277) but no particular argument of Zeno’s is cited.3 Whitehead’s starting points are relativity theory (Ford 1984, 275) on the one hand and Bergson (Ford 1984, 276) on the other; quotations from Kant (Ford 1984, 277 and passim) are the same as in Chapter 7 of SMW. “Aristotle’s idea” (in dealing with Zeno’s question: “how is generation possible?” and/or with a “Pythagorean difficulty” concerning “infinity” and “limitations”) is described as follows. “We ought to start with points and moments and avoid all these difficulties. Points and moments with external relations” (Ford 1984, 278). Both in the Harvard Lectures and in SMW, Whitehead presents himself as being totally unaware of Aristotle’s discussion, in Phys. VI, of Zeno’s arguments. It is hard to believe that he ever had a piece of relevant contemporary scholarship before his eyes.4 His neglect of scholarship contrasts conspicuously with Russell's painstaking discussion in Chapter 6 of his Our Knowledge of the External World (of which, again, no traces are to be found in Whitehead).5 Russell thus presents himself as really caring about the issues raised by Zeno's arguments. Whitehead, by contrast, seems to merely harness Zeno for his own purpose, i.e. to exhibit “the epochal character of time” (SMW 126).

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3.2. Zeno in the Harvard Lectures for 1924-25 Three interrelated difficulties are presented in the first lecture, of March 31 in the relevant part of Whitehead's Harvard Lectures for 1924-25. First, difficulties in “the idea of alternative time systems” with which relativity theory replaces “the linear idea of becomingness” (Ford 1984, 276). Second, difficulties in Bergson's claim that “Durée is indivisible” (Ford 1984, 276). Third, such difficulties in “the old idea of the flux of time” as are exemplified by the above-mentioned quotations from Kant and by Zeno’s arguments. Whitehead’s remark concerning the former points to the desideratum of “hav[ing] some theory of the parts and the wholes” (Ford 1984, 277). A modification of the latter is adumbrated by Whitehead’s remark that “Zeno made an unfortunate choice in dealing with motion and space—muddling up time and space together” (Ford 1984, 277). Rather, Zeno should have dealt with time alone (see the corresponding passage in SMW, 127). Accordingly, the point in Zeno’s arguments is represented by Whitehead as follows. Zeno: How are you going to move forward into the future? How is process possible?6 If you conceive it unter the guise of a temporal transition into the nonexistent, you can’t get going. There is nothing you can point to into which there is a transition, or is there and then created (Ford 1984, 277). In the lecture of April 2 Whitehead remarks that “Kant’s statement that the parts are antecedent to the whole” (that is, his description as extensive magnitudes of space and time, ) leads into a “vicious regress” (Ford 1984, 277; both the lecture of April 9, p. 283, and the corresponding passage in SMW 126, attribute this objection to Zeno). The rest of the lecture is mainly devoted to Whitehead’s claim that temporal relations are “internal” (Ford 1984, 278) and, accordingly, “that moment” is duly equated with “that particular concrete relatedness of that past to that future” (Ford 1984, 279). The next lecture, of April 4, presents itself as a series of historical remarks of which the relevant two have been already mentioned (Ford 1984, 279-281). In the lecture of April 7, “an atomic theory of time” (Ford 1984, 281) is presented.7 Whitehead’s starting point is the “distinction between temporality and extensiveness” brought out by the observation that “the idea of extension doesn’t include time-direction” (recall that relativity theory “presents us with the notion of alternative progressions in time,” 275). Extension is only temporalized via realization of the potential, i.e. the individualization of each event into a peculiar togetherness […]. An event as present is real for itself. It is this becoming real which is temporalization (Ford 1984, 281). Here, Whitehead continues, “we bump up against the atomic view of things, also the subjective view” (Ford 1984, 282). A “subject” is on the one hand, “a parallelogram” in the extensive structure described by relativity theory. On the other hand, its reality is the realization of something as entering into its own being. “The pulling together of a duration from its own viewpoint, i.e. as entering into its own essence.” […] The subject is what that grasping together is (Ford 1984, 282f). The clue to “atomicity,” then, is Whitehead’s claim that “the becoming real is not the production via the parts of the duration—contradicting Kant” (Ford 1984, 282); that is, contradicting Kant’s description of time as extensive, with successive parts “antecedent to the

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whole” (Ford 1984, 277), which, Whitehead claims, is inconsistent with Kant’s own description of time as continuous (Ford 1984, 283).8 Accordingly, “the time transition” must not be conceived as a succession in becoming but, rather, as “a transition within what is already there. […] There is no relation between something and nothing” (Ford 1984, 283). Zeno is not mentioned in this lecture. But the result just stated corresponds to the principle, attributed to Zeno by Whitehead, that “process” must not be conceived “under the guise of a temporal transition into the non-existent” (Ford 198, 277). The impact of Zeno’s arguments is only adumbrated by a remark in the lecture of April 9 which summarizes the previous lectures as follows:9 Starting with events, and bringing the future and past into it, didn’t give enough differentiation. Had to introduce ‘reality’ as ‘real togetherness’, bringing in the time-idea. If you take time as merely generating the event, Zeno gets at you. There is no such thing as a moment. What must be real is the togetherness of the content of the event (Ford 1984, 283).

3.3. Zeno in Science and the Modern World How and why does Zeno “get at you”?—The extant lecture notes are silent on this. In the corresponding passage in SMW,10 just after quoting Kant on extensive and continuous magnitudes, Whitehead claims that Zeno would object that a vicious infinite regress is involved in the former description. Every part of time involves some smaller part of itself, and so on. Also this series regresses backwards ultimately to nothing; since the initial moment is without duration and merely marks the relation of contiguity to an earlier time. Thus time is impossible, if the two extracts are both adhered to. I accept the later, and reject the earlier, passage (SMW 126). I take it that “Zeno gets at you” in the Harvard Lectures just in the same way as he gets at Kant in SMW. Accordingly, I suggest that in the Harvard Lectures, the description of “time as merely generating the event” (April 9, 283) corresponds to the claim, attributed to Kant, that “the becoming real is […] the production via the parts of the duration” (April 7, 282). It should be noted, however, that Whitehead “is in complete agreement with the second extract” only “if ‘time and space’ is the extensive continuum.” (SMW 126). The qualification is essential since Whitehead is, of course, not at all willing to equate time with extension. Rather, Whitehaed affirms the doctrine of the Harvard Lectures (p. 281) that extension is only temporalized “via realization of the potential” as follows. Realization is the becoming of time in the field of extension. Extension is the complex of events, qua their potentialities. In realization the potentiality becomes actuality. […] Temporalization is realization. Temporalization is not another continuous process. It is an atomic succession (SMW 126). In order to understand this passage, Whitehead’s observation in the Harvard Lectures that “the idea of extension doesn’t include time-direction” should be adduced. I take it that “timedirection,” for Whitehead, must take the form of there being “succession,” i.e. of there being earlier and later events. Given Whitehead’s claim that extension is only temporalized and, hence, time-direction is only imposed on the extensive continuum “via realization of the potential” (Ford 1984, 281), two candidates present themselves for the succession in question. (i) Assuming that “the becoming real is […] the production via the parts of the duration” (Ford

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1984, 282) a succession of temporal parts might be supposed to correspond to that production. (ii) The transition in question is in the nature of what has become real […] and, hence, is a transition from one duration to another. If (i) is refuted by Zeno’s arguments, “the time transition” is easily seen to give rise to a succession of durations each of which is atomic, that is, hasn’t become real because of the [i.e.: any internal] transition (Ford 1984, 283).

3.4. Zeno in Process and Reality The “epochal theory of time” of SMW is reaffirmed at PR 68.3. In Process and Reality, “Zeno’s method” is employed to prove that, though “there is becoming of continuity”, “there can be no continuity of becoming” (PR 35.32-4) and to bring out “the principle that every act of becoming must have an immediate successor” (PR 69.17 f). The “epochal theory of time” of SMW is thus reaffirmed (PR 68.3).11

Notes 1

Modern interpreters usually follow Zeller in deleting from (i) the clause “or moves” (ê kineitai, b6). Two more mentions of “Zeno’s method” are PR 35.32 and 307.22. 3 It should be noted that only W.E. Hocking’s notes of Whitehead’s lectures, with scarce verbatim quotations (marked in the sequel by […]) survived. 4 A telling exception is Heath’s Euclid in Greek (cited SMW 127n1). This book (by an eminent scholar, of course) contains a Greek text of Elements, Book I, with introduction and notes. It is addressed to a general public (p. vii: “senior boys at school,” etc.). The notes, being designed “to make the schoolboy […] think” (viii), contain much additional information about ancient philosophy and mathematics, but the author has found it appropriate to omit all references. In the “note on Points” (i.e., to Euclid's definition of “point”) mentioned at (SMW 127n1), Heath tacitly quotes Aristotle’s Metaphysics, I 9, 992a19-24 as follows: “Plato, we are told, objected to recognising points as a separate class of things at all, and regarded them as a ‘geometrical fiction.’ He preferred to conceive a point as being merely ‘the beginning of a line;’ alternatively, he spoke of ‘indivisible lines.’ But, as Aristotle says, even indivisible lines must have extremities: hence an indivisible line […] must contain at least two points […].” (Heath 1920, 115) The only thing Whitehead seems to have learned from this is that Plato, as opposed to Aristotle, denied the existence of points—which, of course, is misleading since Aristotle only insists that points are no more abstract as Plato’s lines and planes are. But Whitehead is even unaware of Heath’s description in the same note (114) of Aristotle’s account of continuity. 5 In his earlier work on Zeno, by contrast, Russell relied on one article grasped from the debate among French scholars (i.e. Noel 1893, cf. Russell 1903, 348n). 6 Zeno is also represented as asking: “how is generation possible?” (April 2; p. 278). The context, however, is different. 7 See also Ford’s summary (1984, 54). 8 The relevant passages in Kant are KrV A162 f. / B203 and KrV A169 f. / B211, respectively. See p. 277 in the lecture notes; SMW 125ff has the full quotations. 9 The addenda presented in the lectures of April 9 and April 11 (p. 283-86) throw no additional light on Whitehead’s interpretation of Zeno. 10 Nothing is added to this by a preliminary mention of Zeno at SMW 125 and by the summary at SMW 127. 11 Unfortuately, there is no more space here to go into any details; see my webpage at www.unikassel.de/philosophie. 2

Works Cited and Further Readings Achinstein, Peter. 1991. Particles and Waves (New York, Oxford University Press). Allan, George. 1986. The Importances of the Past: A Meditation on the Authority of Tradition. Albany: State University of New York Press. Allan, George. 2004. Higher Education in the Making: Pragmatism, Whitehead, and the Canon (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Bergson, Henri. 1999. The Creative Mind, An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Mabelle L. Andison. (New York: Replica Books, Baker & Taylor). Originally published in 1934 as La Pensée et le mouvant (Paris: F. Alcan). Bracken, Joseph A. 1989. “Energy-Events and Fields.” Process Studies 18 (Fall): 153-165. Braeckman, Antoon. 1985. “Whitehead and German Idealism: A Poetic Heritage.” Process Studies, Volume 14, Number 4 (Winter): 265-286. Broad, C.D. 1959. Scientific Thought (Patterson NJ, Littlefield, Adams and Co.). Burke, Patrick and Jan Van der Veken, Editors. 1993. Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers). Burke, Patrick. 1999. “Creativity and the Unconscious in Merleau-Ponty and Schelling”. In Cloots and Sia, Framing a Vision of the World, Essays in Philosophy, Science and Religion, pp. 183-208. Burke, Richard. 1962. “G. H. Mead and the Problem of Metaphysics,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 23.1, 81-88. apek, Mili. 1991. The New Aspects of Time (Dordrecht, Kluwer). Christian, William. 1959. An Interpretation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics (New Haven, Yale University Press). Christian, William. 1961. “Some Uses of Reason,” in The Relevance of Whitehead, edited by Ivor Leclerc (London, Allen and Unwin; New York, Macmillan). Christian, William. 1963. “Whitehead’s Explanation of the Past,” in Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy, edited by George L. Kline (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall). Christian, William. 1964. “The Concept of God as a Derivative Notion,” in Process and Divinity: Philosophical Essays presented to Charles Hartshorne, edited by William L. Reese and Eugene Freeman (LaSalle IL, Open Court). Cloots, André and Sia, Santiago, Editors. 1999. Framing a Vision of the World, Essays in Philosophy, Science and Religion (Leuven: Leuven University Press). Cobb, John B., Jr. 1965. A Christian Natural Theology: Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead (Philadelphia, Westminster Press; second edition, 2007). Connelly, R. J. 1981. Whitehead vs. Hartshorne: Basic Metaphysical Issues (Lanham MD, University Press of America). Dastur, Françoise. 1993. “Merleau-Ponty and Thinking from Within.” Translated by Paul B. Milan. In Burke and Van der Veken, pp. 25-35. Descartes, René. 1931. Principles of Philosophy, Volume I, edited by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Dewey, John. 1937. “Whitehead’s Philosophy,” Philosophical Review 46.2, 170-77. Dewey, John. 1942. “The Philosophy of Whitehead,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (New York, Tudor), 643-61. Dilworth, David A. 1989. Philosophy in World Perspective: A Comparative Hermeneutic of the Major Theories (New Haven, Yale University Press). Doll, William E. Jr. 1993. A Post-modern Perspective on Curriculum (New York, Teachers College Press). Eastman, Timothy E. and Keeton, Hank (eds). 2004. Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process, and Experience (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Edelman, Gerald M. 1987. Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (New

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York, Basic Books). Edelman, Gerald M. 1988. Topology: An Introduction to Molecular Embryology (New York, Basic Books) Edelman, Gerald M. 1989. The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness (New York, Basic Books). Einstein, Albert. 1920. Relativity: The Special and General Theory (London, Methuen & Co.). Eisendrath, Craig R. 1971. The Unifying Moment: The Psychological Philosophy of William James and Alfred North Whitehead (Cambridge, Harvard University Press; second edition: New York, toExcel, 1999). Eisendrath, Craig R. 2003. At War With Time: The Wisdom of Western Thought from the Sages to a New Activism for our Time (New York, Helios Press). Emmett, Dorothy C. 1986. “Creativity and the Passage of Nature.” In Whiteheads Metaphysik der Kreativität, edited by Freidrich Rapp and Reiner Weihl, 71-80. (Munich: Alber). Fine, K. 1994. “Ontological Dependence”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95, 269-90. Flower, Elizabeth and Murray G. Murphey. 1977. A History of Philosophy in America, Vols. 12 (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons). Ford, Lewis S. 1984. The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics 1925-1929 (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Ford, Lewis S. 1987. “Creativity in a Future Key,” in New Essays in Metaphysics, edited by Robert C. Neville (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Ford, Lewis S. 2000. Transforming Process Theism (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Frisina, Warren G. 2002. The Unity of Knowledge and Action: Toward a Nonrepresentational Theory of Knowledge (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Garland, William J. 1969-70. “The Ultimacy of Creativity,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 7, 4, 361-76. Garland, William J. 1983. “The Ultimacy of Creativity” (revised and expanded version), in Explorations in Whitehead’s Philosophy, edited by Lewis S. Ford and George L. Kline (New York, Fordham University Press). Gould, Stephen Jay. 1989. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York, W.W. Norton). Greene, Brian. 2004. The Fabric of the Cosmos (New York, Knopf). Griffin, David Ray. 2005. “John Cobb’s Whiteheadian Complementary Pluralism,” in Deep Religious Pluralism, edited by David Ray Griffin (Louisville KY, Westminster John Knox Press). Hartshorne, Charles. 1941. “Whitehead’s Idea of God,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (LaSalle IL, Open Court). Hartshorne, Charles. 1972. Whitehead’s Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1935-1970 (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press). Hartshorne, Charles. 1984. Creativity in American Philosophy (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Hättich, Frank. 2004. Quantum Processes: A Whiteheadian Interpretation of Quantum Field Theory (Münster, Agenda). Hawking, Stephen. 1988. A Brief History of Time (New York, Bantam Books). Heidegger, Martin. 1967. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (London: SCM Press, Ltd.). Originally published in 1927 as Sein und Zeit. in Edmund Husserl, ed. Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung, Band VIII. Edition cited published in 1967 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag). Hendley, Brian Patrick. 1986. Dewey, Russell, Whitehead: Philosophers as Educators, Forward by George Kimball Plochman; Introduction by Robert S. Brumbaugh (Carbonale IL, Southern Illinois University Press). Hoffman, Banesh and Dukas, Helen (eds). 1972. Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (New York, Viking).

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James, William. 1912. Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York, Longmans, Green and Co.). James, William. 1981 [1907]. Pragmatism (Indianapolis IN, Hackett). James, William. 1983 [New York, Henry Holt, 1890]. The Principles of Psychology, introduced by George A. Miller (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press). Johnson, A. H. 1962. Whitehead’s Theory of Reality (New York, Dover Publications). Johnson, A. H. 1983. “Some Conversations with Whitehead Concerning God and Creativity,” in Explorations in Whitehead’s Philosophy, edited by Lewis S. Ford and George L. Kline (New York, Fordham University Press). Johnson, Charles M. 1976. “On Prehending the Past,” Process Studies, 6, 255-69. Jones, Judith A. 1998. Intensity: An Essay in Whiteheadian Ontology. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press). Kauffman, Stuart A. 1933. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press). Kline, George L. 1983. “Form, Concrescence, Concretum.” In Explorations in Whitehead’s Philosophy, edited by Lewis S. Ford and George L. Kline, 104-108. (New York: Fordham University Press). Lango, John. 2000. “Whitehead’s Category of Nexs of Actual Entities,” Process Studies, 29, 16-42. Lango, John. 2006. “Whitehead’s Philosophy of Time Through the Prism of Analytic Concepts,” Les principes de la connaissance naturelle d'Alfred North Whitehead, edited by Guillaume Durand and Michel Weber (Frankfurt, Ontos). Leclerc, Ivor. 1958. Whitehead’s Metaphysics: An Introductory Exposition (London, Allen and Unwin; New York, Macmillan). Leclerc, Ivor. 1963. “Whitehead and the Problem of Extension,” in Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy edited by George L. Kline (Englewood Cliffs NJ, PrenticeHall), 117-23. Leclerc, Ivor. 1983. “Being and Becoming in Whitehead’s Philosophy.” In Ford and Kline. Lowe, E. J. 1994. “Ontological Dependency”. Philosophical Papers 23, 31-48. Lowe, E. J. 2006. The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lowe, Victor. 1949. “The Influence of Bergson, James and Alexander on Whitehead,” Journal of the History of Ideas 10.2, 267-96. Lowe, Victor. 1962. Understanding Whitehead (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press). Lowe, Victor. 1985, 1990. Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work. Vol. I: 1861-1910; Vol. II: 1910-1947, ed. J. B. Schneewind (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press). Lucas, George R. Jr. 1983. The Genesis of Modern Process Thought: A Historical Outline with Bibliography (Metuchen NJ, Scarecrow Press). Lucas, George R. Jr. 1989. The Rehabilitation of Whitehead: An Analytic and Historical Assessment of Process Philosophy (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Mack, Robert D. 1968 [1945]. The Appeal to Immediate Experience: Philosophic Method in Bradley, Whitehead, and Dewey (Freeport NY, Books for Libraries Press). Margolis, Joseph. 1993. The Flux of History and the Flux of Science (Berkeley, University of California Press). McHenry, Leemon. 1990. “Pan-physics’: Whitehead’s Philosophy of Natural Science, 19181922,” in Victor Lowe, Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work, Volume II: 1910-1947 (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press), 105-130. McHenry, Leemon. 1992. Whitehead and Bradley: A Comparative Analysis (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). McHenry, Leemon. 1996. “Descriptive and Revisionary Theories of Events,” Process Studies, 25, 91-103. McHenry, Leemon. 2000. “The Ontology of the Past: Whitehead and Santayana,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 14, 219-31. McTaggart, J.M.E. 1927. The Nature of Existence, Volume II (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).

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Mead, George Herbert. 1938. The Philosophy of the Act, edited and introduced by Charles W. Morris (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Mead, George Herbert. 1964. Selected Writings, edited and introduced by Andrew J. Reck (Indianapolis IN, Bobbs-Merrill Library of Liberal Arts). Mead, George Herbert. 2002 [Chicago, Open Court, 1932]. The Philosophy of the Present, edited and introduced by Arthur E. Murphy, with Prefatory Remarks by John Dewey (New York, Prometheus Books). Meland, Bertrand Eugene. 1953. Higher Education and the Human Spirit (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. [1947]. “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences.” in The Primary of Perception, pp. 12-42. Originally published in 1947 as “Le primat de la perception et ses conséquences philosophiques, in the Bulletin de la société française de philosophie, Vol. 49 (December), pp. 119-153. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. [1962]. “An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His Work.” in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, pp. 3-11. Originally published in 1962 as “Un inédit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, no. 4, pp. 401-409. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. [1964]. “Eye and Mind” in The Primacy of Perception, pp. 159-190. Translated by Carleton Dallery. Originally published in 1964 as L’Œil et l’esprit. (Paris: Gallimard). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Originally published in 1945 as Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964a. The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Edited with an Introduction by James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1970a. The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by Working Notes. Translated by Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press). Originally published in 1964 as Le Visible et l’invisible, suivi de notes de travail. Edited by Claude Lefort (Paris: Gallimard). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1970b. Themes from the Lectures at the Collège de France, 19521960. Translated by John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press). Originally published in 1968 as Résumés de cours, Collège de France 1952-1960 (Paris: Gallimard). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1996. Notes de cours, 1959-1961. Edited by Stéphanie Ménasé (Paris: Gallimard). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2003. Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France. Translated by Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern University Press). Originally published in 1995 as La Nature, Notes, Cours du Collège de France. Edited by Dominique Séglard (Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1995). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Sense and Non-Sense. 1964b. Translated by Hubert L Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press). Originally published in 1948 as Sens et non-sens ( Paris: Nagel); reprinted in 1996 (Paris: Gallimard). Miller, David L. 1973. George Herbert Mead: Self, Language, and the World (Austin TX, University of Texas Press). Morris, Charles W. 1935. “Philosophy of Science and Science of Philosophy,” Philosophy of Science 2.3, 171-86. Mulligan, K. Simons, P. M. and Smith, B. 2006. “What’s Wrong with Contemporary Philosophy?” Topoi 25, 63-67. Murphy, Arthur E. 1927. “Objective Relativism in Dewey and Whitehead,” Philosophical Review 36.2, 121-44. Myers, William T. 2001. “Dewey and Whitehead on the Starting Point and Method,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 37.2, 244-55. Neisser, Ulric. 1967. Cognitive Psychology (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts).

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Neville, Robert C. 1981. Reconstruction of Thinking. (Albany: State University of New York Press). Neville, Robert C. 1987. The Puritan Smile. (Albany: State University of New York Press). Neville, Robert C. 1989. Recovery of the Measure: Interpretation and Nature (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Neville, Robert C. 1995. Normative Cultures (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Neville, Robert C. 2000. Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Neville, Robert C. 2004. “Whitehead and Pragmatism,” in Whitehead’s Philosophy: Points of Connection, edited Janusz A. Polanowski and Donald W. Sherburne (Albany, State University of New York Press Press), 19-39. Newton, Isaac. 1962. “De gravitatio et aequipondio fluidorum,” in Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, edited by A. R. Hall and M. Boas Hall (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 121-56. Newton, Isaac. 1995. The Principia (New York, Prometheus Books). Nobo, Jorge Luis. 1974. “Whitehead’s Principle of Process,” Process Studies, 4, 275-284. Nobo, Jorge Luis. 1978. “Whitehead’s Principle of Relativity,” Process Studies, 8, 1-20. Nobo, Jorge Luis. 1979. “Transition in Whitehead: A Creative Process Distinct From Concrescence,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 19, 265-83. Nobo, Jorge Luis. 1986. Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Nobo, Jorge Luis. 1997. “Experience, Eternity, and Primordiality: Steps Towards a Metaphysics of Creative Solidarity,” Process Studies 26, 171-204. Nobo, Jorge Luis. 1998. “From Creativity to Ontogenetic Matrix: Learning from Whitehead’s Account of the Ultimate,” Process Thought 8, 90-97. Nobo, Jorge Luis. 2004. “Whitehead and the Quantum Experience,” in Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process, and Experience, edited by Timothy E. Eastman and Hank Keeton (Albany, State University of New York Press Press), 223-57. Northrop, Filmer S. C. 1951. “Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, 2nd ed., edited by Paul A. Schilpp (New York, Tudor), 167-207. Odin, Steve. 1996. The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Pagels, Elaine. 1979. The Gnostic Gospels (New York, Random House). Palter, Robert M. 1960. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Pepper, Stephen C. 1942. World Hypotheses (Berkeley CA, University of California). Pepper, Stephen C. 1961. “Whitehead’s ‘Actual Occasion,’” Tulane Studies in Philosophy 10, 71-88. Perry, Ralph Barton. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James, 2 Vols. (Boston, Little, Brown and Co.). Philippe Devaux. 2007. La cosmologie de Whitehead. Tome I, L'Épistémologie whiteheadienne, édité par Thibaut Donck et Michel Weber (Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions chromatika). Plamondon, Ann L. 1979. Whitehead’s Organic Philosophy of Science (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Price, Lucien. 1954. Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (Boston, Little, Brown and Co.). Prigogine, Ilya. 1997. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature (New York, Free Press). Reese, William. 1952. “Philosophical Realism: A Study in the Modality of Being in Peirce and Whitehead,” in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Philip P. Wiener and Frederic H. Young (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press), 225-37. Reeves, Gene. 1983. “God and Creativity,” in Explorations in Whitehead’s Philosophy, edited by Lewis S. Ford and George L. Kline (New York, Fordham University Press). Rosenthal, Sandra B. 1996. “Continuity, Contingency, and Time: The Divergent Intuitions of

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Whitehead and Pragmatism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 32.4, 54267. Rosenthal, Sandra B. 1999. “Neville and Pragmatism: Toward Ongoing Dialogue,” in Interpreting Neville, edited by Harley Chapman and Nancy K. Frankenberry (Albany, State University of New York Press Press), 59-76. Russell, B. 1956. “On Denoting”. In Logic and Knowledge. London: Allen and Unwin, 41-56. Saint Aubert, Emmanuel de. 2004. Du lien des êtres aux éléments de l’être. Merleau-Ponty au tournant des années 1945-1951 (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin). Saint Aubert, Emmanuel de. 2005. Le scénario cartésien. Recherches sur la formation et la cohérence de l’intention philosophique de Merleau-Ponty (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin). Saint Aubert, Emmanuel de. 2006. Vers une ontologie indirecte. Sources et enjeux critiques de l’appel à l’ontologie chez Merleau-Ponty (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin). Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness, An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Translated with an Introduction by Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library). Originally published as L’Être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard). Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1984. “Merleau-Ponty [I].” translated by William S. Hamrick, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. XV, No. 2 (May): 123-54. Schelling, F.W.J. 1988. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Translated by Errol E. Harris and Peter Heath, with an Introduction by Robert Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Schmidt, Paul F. 1967. Perception and Cosmology in Whitehead’s Philosophy (New Brunswick NJ, Rutgers University Press). Schneider, Herbert W. 1963. A History of American Philosophy, Second Edition (New York, Columbia University Press). Sherburne, Donald W. 1961. A Whiteheadian Aesthetic (New Haven, Yale University Press). Sherburne, Donald W. 1966. A Key to Whitehead’s Process and Reality (New York, Macmillan). Reprinted 1982, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Simons, P. M. 1987. Parts. Oxford: Clarendon. Simons, P. M. 2004a. “Pourquoi presque tout—mais non pas exactement toute chose—est une entité”. In J.-M. Monnoyer, ed., La Structure du monde: Objets, Propriétés, Etats de choses. Renouveau de la métaphysique dans l'école australienne. Paris: Vrin, 2004, 265-276. Simons, P. M. 2004b. “Location”. Dialectica 58 (2004), 341-7. Simons, P. M. 2005. “The Reach of Correspondence: Two Kinds of Categories”. Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 44, 551-562. Simons, P. M. 2007a. “What Numbers Really Are”. In R. E. Auxier and L. E. Hahn, eds., The Philosophy of Michael Dummett. La Salle: Open Court, 2007, 229–247. Simons, P. M. 2007b. “Cliffs and Buttes: Metaphysics and Physical Geography”. In M. LutzBachmann and T. M. Schmidt, eds., Metaphysik heute—Probleme und Perspektiven der Ontologie / Metaphysics Today—Problems and Prospects of Ontology. Freiburg/Br: Alber, 196-213. Simons, P. M. and Dement, C. W. 1996. “Aspects of the Mereology of Artifacts”. In R. Poli and P. Simons, eds., Formal Ontology. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 255-276. Smith, B. 2004. “Beyond Concepts: Ontology as Reality Representation”. In A. Varzi and L. Vieu (eds.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems. Proceedings of the Third International Conference (FOIS-2004). Smith, John E. 1983. The Spirit of American Philosophy, Revised Edition (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Stapp, Henry P. 1975. “Bell’s Theorem and World Process,” Nuovo Cimento 29, 270-76. Stapp, Henry P. 1977. “Theory of Reality,” Foundations of Physics 7, 313-23. Stapp, Henry P. 1979. “Whiteheadian Approach to Quantum Theory and the Generalized Bell’s Theorem,” Foundations of Physics 9, 1-25. Tanaka, Yutaka. 1987. “Einstein and Whitehead: The Principle of Relativity Reconsidered,”

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Historia Scientiarum 32, 45-61. Tanaka, Yutaka. 1992. “Bell’s Theorem and the Theory of Relativity—An Interpretation of Quantum Correlation at a Distance Based on the Philosophy of Organism,” The Annals of the Japan Association for the Philosophy of Science 8, 1-19. Van der Veken, Jan. 1989. “Merleau-Ponty on the Ultimate Problems of Rationality.” in Ultimate Reality and Meaning: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of Understanding 12:3: 202-209. Van der Veken, Jan. 1990. “Creativity as Universal Activity,” in Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Creativity, edited by Friedrich Rapp and Reiner Wiehl (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Van der Veken, Jan. 2000. “Merleau-Ponty and Whitehead on the Concept of Nature.” in Interchange, Vol. 31/2&3: 319-334. Watson, Walter. 1985. The Architectonics of Meaning: Foundations of the New Pluralism (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Weber, Michel. 1999. “An Argumentation for Contiguism,” Streams of William James, Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 1999, pp. 14-16. Weber, Michel. 2004. “Introduction: Process Metaphysics in Context,” in After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, edited by Michel Weber (Frankfurt, Ontos). Weber, Michel. 2005a. La dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead: sensation pure, pancréativité et contiguïsme. Préface de Jean Ladrière (Frankfurt / Paris, ontos verlag). Weber, Michel. 2005b. “Concepts of Creation and Pragmatic of Creativity,” in Whitehead and China, edited by Wenyu Xie, Zhihe Wang, and George Derfer (Frankfurt, ontos). Weber, Michel. 2006a. Whitehead’s Pancreativism. The Basics. Foreword by Nicholas Rescher (Frankfurt / Paris, ontos verlag). Weber, Michel. 2006b “La virtualité en procès. Relativisation de l’acte et de la puissance chez A. N. Whitehead”, Revue internationale de Philosophie, vol. 61 n° 236, 223-241. Weber, Michel. 2006c. “La vie de la Nature selon le dernier Whitehead”, Les Études philosophiques, sept. 2006, T. 60, Vol. 3, 395-408. Wilcox, John R. 1991a. “A Monistic Interpretation of Whitehead’s Creativity,” Process Studies, 20, 3, 162-74. Wilcox, John R. 1991b. “Whitehead on Values and Creativity,” Philosophy and Theology: Marquette University Quarterly, Fall 1991, 39-53. Wirth, Jason M. 2003. The Conspiracy of Life, Meditations on Shelling and His Time (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Young, Frederic H. 1952. “Charles Sanders Peirce: 1839-1914,” in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Philip P. Wiener and Frederic H. Young (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press), 271-76. Zeno: The standard edition of the evidence concerning Zeno is DK, Chapter 29 (A: testimonia, B: fragments). More comprehensive editions, with translation and commentary, are Lee [1936] and Caveign [1982]. Both KRS and Mansfeld [1983-86] present good selections of, and introductions to, the evidence. None of the many survey articles available goes without any complaint, but Vlastos [1969] and Makin [1998] nevertheless are outstanding.

X. Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind Process Metapsychology John H. Buchanan

i

My intellectual endeavors have focused especially on trying to understand my experiences with altered states of consciousness, which powerfully shook me out of my dogmatic slumber. Beyond psychological explanations and phenomenological descriptions, what I ultimately was seeking was a way of incorporating these extraordinary experiences into a new worldview that made sense also of science and the everyday life-world. I finally discovered the paradigm I was looking for in the writings of Alfred North Whitehead and the related area of thought known as process philosophy. This essay briefly explores some of the ways that Whitehead’s philosophy might usefully serve as a foundation for the field of psychology. To illustrate this contention, I draw upon my own special areas of interest, including neuropsychology and transpersonal psychology: the study of spirituality and other extraordinary states and experiences. Of central importance to psychology is Whitehead’s metaphysical generalization of “experience” to account for the fundamental make-up of all real entities in the universe. This is “radical empiricism,” in the Jamesean sense of the term (James 1996). By understanding experience in terms of the primitive reception, transformation, and unification of past activity into a new pulse or moment of “feeling,” Whitehead is able to use a single mode of interpretation for the many levels and types of entities that comprise our world—for example, subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, and the various combinations they generate to make up the universe. Here, Charles Hartshorne drives home the significance of Whitehead’s philosophical innovation: “Causality, substance, memory, perception, temporal succession, modality, are all but modulations of one principle of creative synthetic experiencing, feeding entirely upon its own prior products. This I regard as the most powerful metaphysical generalization ever accomplished” (Hartshorne 1983, 107). Whitehead’s notion of prehension— the direct “feeling” of the feelings of other past actualities, or the feelings from within one’s own experience—provides a single unifying concept for understanding the essential nature of energy, sensation, memory, emotion, thought, and perception: this I regard as a metapsychological tour de force. To have one’s ideas flow seamlessly between the energy pulsations of physics, chemistry, and biology, and on through the human activities of memory, i

Independent Scholar [Ph.D. Emory University 1994], 2865 Lenox Road NE, #409, Atlanta, GA 30324; [email protected].

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emotion, thinking, and perception and their objects, all within one coherent system of rationally interconnected concepts, is precisely what is needed in a discipline like psychology, which spans the diverse phenomena ranging all the way from molecular brain activity to mystical experience. By interpreting the universe in terms of mostly unconscious, synthetic experiential activity, it is possible to understand not only the interactions between the molecular and cellular activity within the human body, but also how the body and mind, and the mind and world, can be in coherent relationship. In Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, the mind—or, more accurately, the psyche, or “dominant occasions”—is conceived of as a series of moments of experience synthesized primarily out of feelings of the brain’s neural activities. The dominant occasion is not merely the summation of brain activity, it is a novel subjective event with an existence beyond the brain matrix out of which it rises and falls. And although the dominant occasion is based primarily upon its feelings of neural activity, it also draws upon feelings from the entire body, its own past moments of experience, and the world at large. The key point is that through these interflowing feelings (“prehensions”) the dominant occasion is in continuous interaction with the brain’s neural events, and the rest of the body, albeit more vaguely. Through these feelings the brain and body exert causal influence on the dominant occasion and, reciprocally, the dominant occasion exerts a causal influence on them. Philosophically speaking, this is a monistic theory of substance, where all enduring entities are comprised of moments of “creative synthetic experiencing” in constant interaction with each other. (Perception of the outside world is similarly understood in terms of data transmitted by pulses of atomic and molecular events, which are then felt and synthesized by the neural occasions of the body’s sensory system.) These questions of mind/body interaction, and how we have access to an objective world outside our minds, represent two of the most vexing metapsychological issues of the last several hundred years. Usually they are simply ignored by the field of psychology and declared beyond science’s province. This attitude seems wrongheaded and defeatist to me. By providing a coherent way of envisioning the basic relationship between our bodies and our psyches, as well as how we can obtain objective information about the world, I believe that Whitehead puts psychology on a solid foundation, something that until now has been sorely lacking. By using a generalized notion of human experience as the metaphysical paradigm of reality, Whitehead places psychology at the heart of scientific and philosophic inquiry. Whitehead conceives of the nature of consciousness along the same lines as William James, America’s greatest psychologist, but in a more metaphysically coherent fashion. As with James, consciousness is understood not as a “thing,” but rather as a way of experiencing reality. Consciousness is defined as a mode of feeling, which occasionally arises out of the unconscious experiential activity of certain high-grade organisms. Therefore, Whitehead’s variety of “panpsychism” attributes primitive (unconscious) experiential activity to all actualities, but conscious experience only to highly complex organisms. This helps circumvent such problems as whether simple animals, or even plants and rocks, possess consciousness, which have been the undoing of less sophisticated panpsychist philosophies. Also bearing on this issue is Whitehead’s important distinction between the many types of social organization in the universe. For example, while animals generally possess a centrally organized social order, a tree

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is a more diffuse society, and a rock even more so. In the case of a rock, the question of experience is more accurately addressed to the true enduring individuals that make up the rock: its unified experiential centers—namely, the individual atoms and molecules composing the rock aggregate. While this may seem a bit far-a-field and philosophical for an essay on psychology, the question of how to define consciousness or experience takes on great relevance when, for example, similarities are drawn between human and computer intelligence. From a Whiteheadian perspective, the similarities are interesting, but not fundamental: a matrix of computer elements seems simply incapable of generating the central or dominant occasion that arises from the rich nexus of neural feeling found within the human brain. Thus a computer inherently lacks the kind of synthesizing and unifying center that is capable of generating complex experience. This is primarily a matter of “feeling”: the highest experiential activity composing a computer “brain” (atomic and molecular feelings) is much more primitive than the neural activity found in a human brain (complex cellular feelings). One involves the electrical flow of data through circuitry; the other involves the transmutation and creative synthesis of feelings from other entities in the environment. One produces information for the benefit of human activity; the other produces the activity of human experience. Since most psychologists are still debating what consciousness is, it is not surprising that they might have difficulty distinguishing a machine from a human being. This is not a good situation, to my way of thinking, and I find it extremely useful to have Whitehead’s ideas to sort out and clarify such issues at a foundational level. Whitehead refers to these increasingly complex levels of organized centers of subjective experience in terms of “organisms of organisms of organisms.” Charles Hartshorne has made more explicit this crucial Whiteheadian insight with his theory of the compound individual. In the example above, the human dominant occasion is an individual that “compounds” itself out of past subatomic, atomic, molecular, and, especially, cellular events from its neural matrix. At each new level of compounding of organisms—from the atomic, to molecular, to cellular, to human—there is a heightening of capacity for intensity and complexity of feeling. This compounding occurs through the internal relations established by the occasion’s direct feelings of the feelings of other past events, via Whitehead’s notion of prehension. Prehensions provide a metaphysical mechanism to account for the kind of “compounding of consciousness” argued for—but not coherently explained—by Fechner and James (James 1977, 83-100). Thus in a computer, the flow of feeling between events is a “horizontal” transmission of information similar to the kind that transfers incipient sensory data from an object to the human sensory organs. Computer “thinking” involves the highly complex routing and organization of this data transmission. However, this “lateral” flow of information does not begin to provide the kind of heightened intensity of experience that results from the “vertical” compounding of organisms occurring in the human brain. It is not simply the extraordinary number of neural pathways that generate the complexity of human experience; it is the capacity for compounding levels of increasing complex organisms that gives human experience its distinctive character. Another matter in the area of neuroscience deserves comment, one directly related to the mind-body problem discussed above. To the extent that neuroscientists leave the human psyche

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out of the picture, that field will be hard pressed to account for the true nature of brain activity. From the perspective of process psychology, the psyche’s dominant occasion creates the final integrative unification found in human experience, drawing primarily on neural activity or feelings. However, the dominant occasion also influences brain activity: directly and causally impacting neural activity through its achieved experiential integrations. To the degree to which this crucial interaction between brain and psyche is left out of the equation, neuroscience will remain impoverished and incomplete. A similar criticism might be directed at the study of memory and brain function. I should note that cognitive psychology has been much more inclined to consider the role of human awareness in memory consolidation and retrieval, probably motivated largely by experimental necessity. Nonetheless, from a process perspective, there still remains a major omission in their approach. Attributing all memory to various types of neural storage mechanisms ignores the fundamental source of human memory, according to Whitehead: namely, the psyche’s direct feeling of past events, which is the metaphysical basis of all memory. Of course, the brain and its neural networks represent an important dimension of the past events that are being felt by the dominant occasion, and certainly play a crucial role in human memory; but another dimension of memory is the psyche’s direct perception or “prehension” of its own past occasions of experience. Helping to determine how the brain and psyche interact to produce the unique and complex phenomena of human memory could be a revolutionary contribution of process psychology. Neuropsychology, with all its associated biological specialties, is perhaps the area where Whitehead’s ideas will prove most fruitful. Imagine the possibilities of scientifically mapping the details of how prehensions occur and interact at the cellular and molecular levels within the human nervous system. Imagine understanding in experimental detail how neurons store and transmit the flow of causal feeling, as well as articulating the actual transmutation of this data into the final synthesis of human experience, as the prehensions of the dominant occasion tap into the pooled data of key brain areas. The possibilities here seem almost unlimited. Understanding human experience and consciousness as arising out of the flow of past feelings from one’s world, one’s body, and one’s own past moments of experience has many other important implications for psychology. Turning to the opposite end of the spectrum from neuroscience, we find transpersonal psychology. This field studies those experiences that lie beyond the realm of our average everyday lives, for example, psychical phenomena such as telepathy and telekinesis, mystical revelation and spiritual insight, out-of-body experiences, and near-death experiences. By envisioning the human psyche as creating itself not only out of its brain activity, but also from its vague intuitions of the entire past universe, Whitehead’s metaphysics makes process psychology take seriously the extraordinary range of transpersonal phenomena that appear within human experience. Whitehead himself suggests in several passages that telepathic communication is a real possibility in his philosophy (PR 308, SMW 150). More generally, this “telepathic” intuitive potential (i.e., physical prehensions), characteristic of all moments of experience, offers a mode of experiential access to all entities and processes in the universe. This, by itself, opens up a powerful point of departure and grounding for the serious investigation of transpersonal and spiritual experiences, which are so

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often ignored or marginalized in modern scientific and philosophic practice—and even in psychology. Generally speaking, transpersonal psychology investigates the significance and validity of spiritual and nonordinary experiences and tries to understand their meaning and implications for our world and for ourselves. Its approach is broadly phenomenological, in that it is open to experience as it presents itself; its methodology is determined by what is most appropriate and effective for the phenomena being studied. Thus it is fully empirical: both in its subject matter and in its deference to the integrity of the experience itself. While some subject matter, such as parapsychological phenomena, can to some extent be studied profitably through conventional scientific procedures involving controlled and repeatable experiments, phenomena such as nonordinary states of consciousness and mystical experiences are not amenable to strict control or repetition; they therefore need to be approached through subjective reporting, clinical observation methods, and other approaches more appropriate to the phenomena at hand. Thus transpersonal psychology, which is deeply involved in investigating novel dimensions of reality and developing new methodologies attuned to these novel elements, is necessarily thrust into questions of philosophy, metaphysics, and cosmology. It also tends to seek a unifying framework within which to locate its emerging worldview. A reliance on philosophy by a field such as transpersonal psychology should not demean its scientific status. According to Whitehead, all new scientific undertakings require this sort of philosophical clarification: “in the infancy of science, when the main stress lay in the discovery of the most general ideas usefully applicable to the subject-matter in question, philosophy was not sharply distinguished from science. To this day, a new science with any substantial novelty in its notions is considered to be in some way peculiarly philosophical” (PR 10). I believe the field of psychology still qualifies as a “new science” and would benefit from rigorous philosophical scrutiny of its “most general ideas.” Transpersonal psychology is not wedded to any particular philosophical position, including the strictures of Western science—especially its materialistic and mechanistic dimensions that at times can drive modern science into dogmatic scientism. In fact, transpersonal research has raised serious questions about any strictly deterministic or materialistic interpretation of reality. My own belief is that transpersonal psychology, and the field of psychology generally, is best served by working explicitly within a Whiteheadian philosophical orientation. Such a move offers many benefits, of which I will mention only a few of the most important for a psychology of spirituality and nonordinary experience. First of all, Whitehead’s philosophy is specifically built upon the notion that its primary value arises from its ability to unite science and religion within one coherent metaphysical system: philosophy “attains its chief importance by fusing the two, namely, religion and science, into one rational scheme of thought” (PR 15). At its heart, process thought seeks a way of interpreting spiritual experience, in all its manifestations, that is at once philosophically and scientifically sound. Secondly, Whitehead’s philosophy is empirical in the broadest sense possible. It seeks to find a system of ideas capable of interpreting all experience. And all of reality is understood in terms of a metaphysically generalized notion of human experience: experience is paradigmatic of

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reality. Thus spiritual experience is of real importance for understanding our world, and not to be simply dismissed as epiphenomenal, reduced to brain activity, or diagnosed away as psychiatric symptoms. Thirdly, Whitehead’s theory of experience describes a mode of perception, “causal efficacy,” that provides a direct means of access to the world. Perception in the mode of causal efficacy, as the direct feeling of other entities in the universe, offers a mode of “nonsensory” perception underlying our everyday conscious sensory experience. I generally conceive of transpersonal manifestations of this process in terms of an increased flow of primitive feeling from the unconscious—resulting from elevated neural and psychological stimulation or a heightened permeability in the psyche’s repression barrier, or a combination of the two—producing a flooding of conscious awareness by normally unconscious elements and data (originally derived from “physical feelings”). This nonsensory intuition of reality forms the basis for possible explanations of spiritual phenomena ranging from telepathy, to true empathic intuition, to mystical revelation. It also gives objective credibility to these phenomena by locating them within a coherent, realistic epistemology. In sum, Whitehead’s theory of perception is encompassing enough to account for our everyday sensory experience of the world and for those special moments of conscious intuition and insight into a deeper spiritual reality pervading our universe. This openness to the world—occurring primarily through enhanced perceptions in the mode of causal efficacy being successfully raised into conscious awareness—is the key to experiencing the vast array of spiritual possibilities available to humankind. Transpersonal psychology studies the experiences thus revealed, what they tell us about our universe and ourselves, and how to enhance and intensify authentic experiences of spiritual openness. Whitehead’s process philosophy provides a metaphysics for understanding how spiritual experiences occur and a cosmology for understanding what these spiritual experiences reveal. For Whitehead, the depth unconscious ultimately consists of the entire past universe: the unconscious is the past. Each moment of experience originates from a flood of primitive feelings from the events of its past world. This formulation coincides well with mystical insights concerning the universe as an interrelated whole to which we are all intimately related, while avoiding the paradoxes and contradictions that arise in most attempts to articulate theories of the Absolute or the “One.” It also meshes well with Stanislav Grof’s cartography of the human psyche, in which the personal and perinatal levels of the unconscious are embedded within a transpersonal dimension that opens up to all of reality (Grof 1988, 3-160). Thus in dreams, meditation, trance, and other nonordinary states, it is possible to move beyond the personal unconscious of our memories, our subconscious, and our body, in order to access more distal aspects of the past universe that reside in the depths of our most primitive feelings. Finally, the empirical evidence uncovered by transpersonal psychology is (with due caution and rigor) considered to contain real data about the world in which we live. This evidence is not merely “subjective,” but can reveal important information concerning our universe and the nature of reality. Whitehead’s metaphysics and cosmology provide a philosophical context for understanding how transpersonal experiences may occur and why they are capable of accessing extraordinary data from the objective universe. In turn, this evidence from transpersonal

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psychology supports some of Whitehead’s more controversial notions, such as memory without a material substrate and experiential access to data from the universe via modalities other than normal sensory perception (Grof 1988, 161-62). This exemplifies Whitehead’s view of science and philosophy as mutually supportive endeavors: philosophy provides inspiration and interpretation for science’s fundamental terms and concepts and facilitates communication between the various disciplines; science renders evidence and theories that challenge and correct inadequate philosophical generalizations. Thus speculative philosophy is always in the process of refining and revising its concepts in light of new empirical evidence in accord with its search for greater generalizations and a more accurate representation of reality: “Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought, progressive and never final. But it is an adventure in which even partial success has importance” (PR 9). In the area of psychotherapy, Whitehead offers a synthetic way of thinking through the contributions made to the psyche by its present social relationships, the body, and the enduring effects of past relationships and experiences. All of these sources of feeling flow together from the depths to contribute to the formation of each new occasion of experience. Personality deviations and behavioral disorders can be envisioned in terms of habitual patterns of emphasizing, or blocking (“repressing”), these various sources of feeling through more or less effective strategies, mostly unconscious in operation. Thus a Whiteheadian perspective suggests at least three preliminary avenues to pursue for approaches to psychotherapy: one’s relationship with one’s own past moments of experience, one’s relationship with one’s body, and one’s connection with one’s world of ongoing social relationships. All three have served as therapeutic paradigms in the West, individually and in combination. For example, various types of body-oriented psychotherapy are aimed at restoring the body’s natural vitality and spontaneity of movement through freeing up the blockages formed in the past as character armor, to use Wilhelm Reich’s phrase. Of course, in Reich’s view, the muscular armoring of the body is a direct correlate of the individual’s psychological defense mechanisms, while releasing these blockages and the related defense mechanisms allows the individual greatly increased freedom and creativity in their contemporary social life. The overlap and interplay of these various dimensions of causal influence is readily apparent, as is the need for theoretical clarity to adequately deal with these psychological complexities. Whitehead’s theory of past feeling flowing into new occasions of experience, thereby synthesizing and unifying the world, our bodies, and our own past, provides a useful way of understanding how these various sources contribute to our psychic structure and also offers clues for how to resolve problematic modes of adaptation. Many of these differences between therapeutic models and styles involve a matter of emphasis on which of these three dimensions to use as the starting point for initiating psychological change. Whitehead’s ideas can be helpful for sorting out these questions of therapeutic emphasis, methods, and goals. In an essay in Searching for New Contrasts, John Cobb makes some insightful suggestions in this regard (Cobb 2003, 207-24). The complexity of the interaction between the flow of feeling from the body, the past psyche, and the larger social environment leads Cobb to argue for “a complementarity of healing

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practices through body and soul for both bodily and psychic problems,” as well as for the employment of “alternative approaches” or strategies to these problems (212). A human being is such an enormously complicated organism that there is no single system of healing fully capable of taking into account this complexity. Thus a variety of psychotherapeutic methodologies are called for. Cobb also refers to the interplay (within a process model of psychology) that occurs between the causal influences of the past, the freedom of each new occasion to help determine how these influences will be integrated, and the spiritual dimension—a “force operative in all living things that works for healing and growth” (218). Here Cobb has delineated two sources of psychotherapeutic change: the creativity and freedom inherent in each new moment of human experience; and the spiritual influence underlying and guiding all affairs in the universe. Cobb concludes with a word of caution about problems that may arise in psychotherapy from the use of substantialist—versus process—modes of understanding, which can lead “in some cases to encouraging self-centeredness, in others to seeking a lifelong, fixed potential, and in still others, to celebrating the autonomous individual” (224). I have focused on areas of process psychology that are of special interest to me: namely, philosophy of psychology, neuroscience, transpersonal psychology, and psychotherapy. However, a quick review of the process psychology bibliography, compiled by the Center for Process Studies (in Claremont, CA), reveals that I have barely scratched the surface of the work already started in applying process thought to various psychological issues. Permit me to illustrate this diversity with a partial summary of some other areas where process psychology is underway: psychiatry and psychoanalysis (Brown 1998), Jungian thought and Archetypal psychology (Griffin 1989), feminist theory (Keller 1986), pastoral counseling (Brizee 1998), chemical dependency treatment (Crawford 1990), cognitive psychology (Brown 1977), evolutionary psychology (Birch 1973), physiological psychology (Wolf 1981), developmental psychology (Flynn 1995), personality theory (Regan 1990), artificial intelligence (Barbour 1999), nonhuman experience (Armstrong-Buck 1989), consciousness studies (Sperry 1970), parapsychology (Griffin 1993), and phenomenology of time and space (Bagby 1957). One area that might be particularly ripe for development within a process perspective is “ecological psychology,” as originated by Ulric Neisser. The fundamentally organic and relational nature of Whitehead’s philosophy should make it readily amenable to most any authentic ecological theory. While this list of current applications of process psychology is impressive, there remains a great deal of work to be done. The task of constructing a unifying theoretical basis for process psychology has barely begun, and despite all that has been accomplished, it will be no easy job. Hopeful signs are appearing, though, such as the rapid rise in interest in process thought in China, and the resurgence of Whitehead’s ideas in Europe—where much excellent work in process psychology has recently appeared, in no small part to the efforts of the editor of this volume. But I believe the horizon holds much greater possibilities: both for the articulation of a process psychology and for embedding such a psychology within a wider interdisciplinary paradigm growing out of the insights and continuing development of process thought.

Consciousness and the Physical World Max Velmans

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Physicalists commonly argue that conscious experiences are nothing more than states of the brain, and that conscious qualia are observer-independent, physical properties of the external world. Although this assumes the “mantle of science,” it routinely ignores the findings of science, for example in sensory physiology, perception, psychophysics, neuropsychology and comparative psychology. Consequently, although physicalism aims to “naturalize” consciousness, it gives an unnatural account of it. It is possible, however, to develop a natural, nonreductive, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and the physical world. This paper introduces such a model and how it construes the nature of conscious experience. Within this model, the physical world as perceived (the phenomenal world) is viewed as part of conscious experience, not apart from it. While in everyday life we treat this phenomenal world as if it were the “physical world,” it is really just one biologically useful representation of what the world is like and may differ in many respects from the world described by physics. How the world as perceived relates to the world as described by physics can be investigated by normal science (e.g. through the study of sensory physiology, psychophysics and so on). This model of consciousness appears to be consistent with both third-person evidence of how the brain works and with first-person evidence of what it is like to have a given experience. It also views consciousness as an integral part and natural expression of the world—in a manner true to the spirit (if not to the detail) of Whitehead’s philosophy.

1. Defining Consciousness There are many differences of opinion about how to define consciousness. This uncertainty about how to define consciousness is partly brought about by the way global theories about consciousness (or even about the nature of the universe) have intruded into definitions. For example, “substance dualists,” such as Plato and Descartes, believed the universe to consist of two fundamental kinds of stuff, material stuff and the stuff of consciousness (a substance associated with soul or spirit). “Property dualists” such as Sperry and Libet take consciousness to be a special kind of property that is itself nonphysical, but which emerges from physical systems such as the brain once they attain a certain level of complexity. “Reductionists” such as Crick (1994) and Dennett (1991) believe consciousness to be nothing more than a state or function of the brain. Within cognitive psychology, there are many proposals which identify consciousness with some aspect of human information processing, for example with working memory, focal attention, a central executive, and so on. According to Michel Weber (2005),

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Dept of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW.http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/psychology/staff/velmans.php; [email protected].

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Whitehead proposes a nuanced vision that distinguishes the (conscious) soul from the brain but does not establish a difference in kind between them, only a difference of degree in intensity and complexity. His vision is neither dualistic nor interactionistic; it is a monism of sorts, but neither idealistic nor materialistic. It actually exploits a pluralistic monism that aims at relativizing the physical and mental aspects of the world with the help of a broadened understanding of subjectivity. Technically speaking, consciousness is the subjective form of the feeling of a contrast between a fact and a possibility about that fact. Such a “subjective form” occurs only in high grade occasions of experience (see especially PR 241, 261). Fortunately, definitions need not be final for research to get under way. It is enough, for given investigative purposes, that definitions are sufficiently similar for different investigators to be able to agree that they are investigating the same thing. As science begins to unravel the causes of consciousness, the functions of consciousness, how consciousness relates to non-conscious processing in the brain and so on, our understanding of what consciousness is will deepen, because such relationships form part of the meaning of the term (its connotative meaning, or sense). Such mutual focusing of attention followed by exploration of the nature of what is attended to (and how it relates to other things) is fundamental to how phenomena come to be understood in a socially shared way. In this respect, understanding consciousness is not different from understanding the nature of anything else. Nevertheless, before any investigation can begin, one has to “point to” or “pick out” the phenomena to which the term refers and, by implication, what is excluded. In everyday life there are two contrasting situations which inform our understanding of the term “consciousness.” We have knowledge of what it is like to be conscious (when we are awake) as opposed to not being conscious (when in dreamless sleep). We also understand what it is like to be conscious of something (when awake or dreaming), as opposed to not being conscious of that thing. This everyday understanding provides a simple place to start, and it is here that Whitehead himself starts. Persons or other entities are conscious if they experience something; conversely, if persons or entities experience nothing, they are not conscious. Elaborating slightly, we can say that when consciousness is present, phenomenal content is present. Conversely, when phenomenal content is absent, consciousness is absent. This stays very close to everyday usage and for present purposes, this everyday meaning is sufficient. Similarly, in common usage, the term “consciousness” is often synonymous with “awareness” or “conscious awareness”; we will follow this usage. The “contents of consciousness” encompass all that we are conscious of, aware of, or experience. These include not only experiences that we commonly associate with ourselves, such as thoughts, feelings, images, dreams, bodily sensations and so on, but also the experienced three-dimensional, phenomenal world outside the body. Of course, to learn what something is, it is useful in the initial instance to know where it is, so that one can point to it—enabling different investigators focus on it. But where does one point, when one is pointing at phenomenal consciousness?

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2. Where Dualists and Reductionists Think Consciousness to Be According to Descartes the material world is composed of res extensa, a substance that has both location and extension in space. Consciousness is formed out of res cogitans a substance which thinks, but which has no location or extension in space. If so, one cannot point to consciousness but can at best point only to the place where consciousness interacts with the material world. Descartes locates this place in the pineal gland in the center of the brain. Physicalist and functionalist philosophers (e.g. Searle 1992; Dennett 1991) argue that consciousness is nothing more than a state or function of the brain. It might be difficult to point with any precision at such states or functions, as they are likely to be distributed properties of large neuronal populations (cf. Dennett & Kinsbourne 1992). Nevertheless, if one had to point, one would point to the brain. In short, classical dualists and reductionists disagree vehemently about what conscious is, but they agree (roughly) about where it is. In so far as consciousness can be located at all, it is located somewhere in the brain.

3. A Common-Sense View of Conscious Phenomenology As I have argued (Velmans 1990, 2000), this currently popular view has no basis either in science or in everyday experience. In order to decide where consciousness is (or whether it has any location), one has to attend to its actual phenomenology. It is true that there are some experiences which seem to be poorly localized in space, or at best localized somewhere in the head or brain, just as dualists and reductionists claim; some such experiences might include vague feelings and inchoate thoughts. However, most experiences have a very different phenomenology, for example experiences of the body or of the external world. Let me illustrate with a very simple example. Suppose you stick a pin in your finger and experience a sharp pain. Philosophies of mind often take pain as a paradigmatic case of a conscious, mental event. But where is the pain? This is a rather difficult question for dualists and reductionists, hampered as they are by their theoretical presuppositions. However, if forced, they would point (vaguely) in the direction of the brain (see comments by Nagel, Harnad, Searle, Marcel, and Dennett, following Velmans 1993). In my view, on the other hand, the question has a very simple answer: the pain one experiences is in one’s finger. If one had to point to the pain, one would point to where the pin went in. Any reader in doubt on this issue might like to try it! Let me be clear that this sharp difference of opinion is about the experienced pain and not about the antecedent physical causes (the deformation and damage to the skin produced by the pin) or about the neural causes and correlates of pain. The proximal neural causes and correlates of pain are undoubtedly located in the brain. But the neural causes and correlates of a given experience are not themselves that experience. In science, causes and correlates are not

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ontological identities. Velmans, 1998 and 2000 contain detailed analyses of how causes and correlates relate to ontological identities. This subjective location of pains in parts of the body rather than “nowhere” or “in the brain” exemplifies a general principle that leads one away from both dualism and reductionism towards a “reflexive” model of how consciousness relates to the brain and the physical world (cf. Velmans 1990). In many respects, there is no difference between these theoretical positions. For example, dualism, reductionism and the reflexive model agree that there are physical and neurophysiological causes and correlates of a given experience within the brain—and that we can leave it to science to discover what these are. But they disagree about the nature and location of the effects (the resulting experiences). Dualists claim that, since experiences are constructed out of res cogitans, they have no location or extension in space (although they interface with the brain). Reductionists claim that, as brain states or functions, all experiences must be in the brain—even though this seems to contradict everyday intuitions. According to the reflexive model, the only evidence about conscious phenomenology comes from first-person sources. Consequently, the properties of that phenomenology can only be determined from firstperson sources. For conscious appearances, the appearance is the reality (Searle, 1992). Consequently, if a pain appears to be in the finger, then that is where the pain is. The damage produced by a pin in the finger, once it is processed by the brain, winds up as a phenomenal pain in the finger, located more or less where the pin went in. That is why the entire process is called “reflexive.” Notice that if one stabs one’s finger with a pin, and one attends to the consequent pain phenomenology, one has no additional, experience of pain that is either “nowhere” or in the brain. Nor can any phenomenal pain that is “nowhere” or in the brain be observed by an external observer: from a third-person perspective only its neural causes and correlates can be observed. Given that there is no first- or third-person evidence for phenomenal pain “nowhere” or in the brain, I suggest that this is a theoretical fiction, introduced by dualist and reductionist thinkers in order to make their models work. Only the reflexive model is consistent with the evidence of common sense. To put the basic principle in a more general way: experiences are where we experience them to be. Figure 1, for example, illustrates a similar process with a phenomenal cat. As before, some entity or event innervates sense organs and initiates perceptual processing, although in this case the initiating entity is located beyond the body surface in the external world. As before, afferent neurons, and cortical projection areas are activated, along with association areas, longterm memory traces and so on; neural representations of the initiating event are eventually formed within the brain—in this case, neural representations of a cat. But the entire causal sequence does not end there. The subject S also has a visual experience of a cat and, as before, we can ask what this experience is like. In this case, the proper question to ask is, “What do you see?”1 According to dualism, S has a visual experience of a cat “in her mind.” According to reductionists there seems to be a phenomenal cat “in S’s mind” but this is really nothing more than a state of her brain. According to the reflexive model, while S is gazing at the cat, her only visual experience of the cat is the cat she sees out in the world. If she is asked to point to this phenomenal cat (her “cat experience”), she should point not to her brain but to the cat as-

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perceived, out in space beyond the body surface. In this, S is no different from an external observer E. The cat as perceived by S is the same cat as perceived by E (albeit viewed from S’s perspective rather than from E's perspective). That is, an entity in the world is reflexively experienced to be an entity in the world.

Figure 1. A reflexive model of perception. Of course, not all the entities and events we experience have such a clear location and extension in three-dimensional phenomenal space. We also have “inner” experiences such as verbal thoughts, images, feelings of knowing, experienced desires and so on. Such inner experiences really do seem to have a phenomenology of the kind that characterizes Descartes’ res cogitans. One might argue that verbal thoughts have a rough location, in that they seem to be “in the head” (in the form of inner speech) rather than in one’s foot, or free-floating out in space, but they are not clearly located in the manner of pains and cats. However, the reflexive process is the same. The cognitive processes which give rise to thoughts, feelings of knowing and so on originate in the mind/brain, although these processes are unlikely to have a precise location in so far as they engage the mass action of large, distributed, neuronal populations. Consequently, in so far as these processes are experienced, they are reflexively experienced to be roughly where they are (in the head or brain). There is far more to be said about conscious phenomenology and its relation to the brain and physical world. But, if I am right so far, even a cursory examination of what we actually experience poses a fundamental challenge to dualist and reductionist presuppositions about what it is that they need to explain. Both dualism and reductionism assume experiences to be quite different from the perceived body and the perceived external world (perceived bodies and worlds are out-there in space, while experiences of bodies and worlds are “nowhere” or in the brain). But the reflexive model suggests that in terms of phenomenology there is no actual separation between the perceived body and experiences of the body or between the perceived external world and experiences of that world. It goes without saying that when one has a conscious thought, there isn’t some additional experience of a thought “in the mind.” But neither is there a phenomenal pain “in the mind” (without location and extension) in addition to

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the pain one experiences in the finger if one stabs it with a pin. And there isn’t a phenomenal cat “in the mind” in addition to the cat one sees out in the world. Applying Occam’s razor, the reflexive model gets rid of them. But the reflexive model does not get rid of conscious phenomenology. Thoughts, pains and phenomenal cats are experienced to have very different “qualia” (along with different locations and extensions), but they are nevertheless aspects of what we experience. Together, such inner experiences, bodily sensations, and external experienced entities and events comprise the contents of our consciousness—which are none other than our everyday phenomenal world. Who else says this? To those immersed in dualist or reductionist modes of thought, this proposed expansion of the contents of consciousness to include the entire phenomenal world may seem radical and the notion that many experiences have a precise location and extension might appear strange. But, thus far, this proposal is hardly new. In one or another form it appears in the work of George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, C.H. Lewes, W.K. Clifford, Ernst Mach, Morton Prince, William James, A.N. Whitehead, Charles Sherrington, Bertrand Russell, R. Brain, Wolfgang Köhler and Karl Pribram. Similar analyses of what consciousness seems to be like have also recently been given by Jason Brown, Antti Revonsuo and Michael Tye. William James (1904) for example, suggests that to convince oneself about where experiences are the observer only needs to begin with a perceptual experience, the ‘presentation’, so called, of a physical object, his actual field of vision, the room he sits in, with the book he is reading as its centre, and let him for the present treat this complex object in the commonsense way as being ‘really’ what it seems to be, namely, a collection of physical things cut out from an environing world of other physical things with which these physical things have actual or potential relations. Now at the same time it is just those self-same things which his mind, as we say, perceives, and the whole philosophy of perception from Democritus’s time downwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer space and in a person’s mind. ‘Representative’ theories of perception2 avoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the reader’s sense of life which knows no intervening mental image but seems to see the room and the book immediately just as they physically exist (1912, 11). Whitehead similarly rejects any clear separation between what we normally think of as “physical” things and “perceived” things and anticipates the “reflexive model” (in somewhat anthropocentric fashion) when he suggests that, The mind in apprehending also experiences sensations which, properly speaking, are projected by the mind alone. These sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies in external nature. Thus the bodies are perceived as with the qualities which in reality do not belong to them, qualities which in fact are purely offsprings of the mind. Thus nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves; the rose for its scent; the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colorless, merely the hurrying of material, endless, meaningless (SMW 54). One insight, of course, does not make a theory. While the philosophers and scientists mentioned above agree that some experiences appear to have location and spatial extension, there is widespread disagreement about what this implies about the nature of consciousness and its

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relation to the physical world. Berkeley, for example, is an idealist, James a neutral monist, Whitehead a process philosopher, and Tye a physicalist. I have developed a version of reflexive monism, which is not identical with any of these positions, although it incorporates elements and insights of many thinkers (Velmans 2000). Here it is only possible to discuss briefly a few consequences of the reflexive model and how this translates into the broad position of reflexive monism. So, by way of introduction, we will focus here on just one fundamental issue: how it makes sense of conscious intentionality, and the demand that consciousness be consciousness of something. What do experiences represent? In dualism and reductionism it is easy to see what experiences of the external world represent. Percepts of objects “in the mind” or “in the brain” represent the objects we see out in the world. But, at first glance, the intentionality of conscious experiences would seem to be a problem for the reflexive model. If experiences of objects and objects as-perceived are phenomenologically identical, as argued above, then what do experiences of objects represent? One might ask the same question about the experienced body and about “inner” experiences. According to the reflexive model, what we commonly refer to as the “physical world” is just the world we experience. However, this clearly remains very different to the world described by physics (the world of quantum mechanics, relativity theory, grand unified theory and so on). So how does the phenomenal, “physical world” relate to the world described by physics? This is a crucial question for Whitehead, as is reflected in his well-known criticism of the “bifurcation of nature.”

4. A Reflexive Model of How Consciousness Relates to the Brain and the Physical World The reflexive model shown in Figure 1 suggests that all experiences result from a reflexive interaction of an observer with an observed. To illustrate how this interaction works to produce different kinds of experience, these can be subdivided into three categories: (1) experiences of the external world which seem to have location and extension (2) experiences of the body which seem to have location and extension (3) “inner” experiences (thoughts, images, feelings of knowing and so on) which seem to have no clear location and extension in phenomenal space, although they can be loosely said to be “in the head or brain.” Figure 1 illustrates one example of a reflexive interaction resulting in an experience (a visual percept) of a cat. In this case, the initiating stimulus (the observed) is an entity located in space beyond the body surface that interacts with the visual system of the observer to produce an experienced entity out in space beyond the body surface. As noted above, a similar reflexive interaction takes place when the initiating stimulus is on the surface of (or within) the body, or within the brain itself to produce experienced entities and events that appear to be on the surface of (or within) the body, or in the head or brain itself.

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What is going on? Following current conventions in the psychology of perception, I assume that the brain constructs a “representation” or “mental model” of what is happening, based on the input from the initiating stimulus, expectations, traces of prior, related stimuli stored in longterm memory, and so on (cf. Rock 1997). Such mental models encode information about the entities and events that they represent in formats determined by the sensory modality that they employ. Visual representations of a cat, for example, include encodings for shape, location and extension, movement, surface texture, color, and so on. In addition, I suggest that the way information (in a given mental model) appears to be formatted depends on the observational arrangements. The information appears in different forms to the subject (S) and an external observer (E) for the reason that the means available to S and E for accessing the information in that mental model differ (cf. Velmans 1991). An external observer, inspecting a subject’s brain, has to rely on his own exteroceptive systems (typically vision) aided by physical equipment (PET scans, fMRI and so on). Viewed in this way (from this third-person perspective), a visual mental model in the subject’s brain might appear in the form of neural activation in a series of relatively distinct feature maps distributed throughout the subject’s visual system. We do not know precisely what is required to make such neural representations conscious. However, given the integrated nature of visual experiences, it is reasonable to assume that when such distributed neural activities do become conscious they must be bound together in some way, perhaps through synchronous 40Hz oscillations. We may also expect there to be observable (physical) influences on the pattern of activity embodied in the mental model from existing memory traces (corresponding to the effects of expectation, stored knowledge and so on). Whatever the fine detail turns out to be like, viewed from E’s perspective, the information (about the cat) in S’s mental model is likely to take a neural, or other physical form. In terms of what E can directly observe of S’s mental model, that is the end of the scientific story. However, the observational arrangement by which the subject accesses the information in her own mental model is entirely different. As with E, the information in her own mental model is translated into something that she can observe or experience—but all she experiences is a phenomenal cat out in the world. While she focuses her attention on the cat she does not become conscious of having a “mental model of a cat” in the form of neural states. Nor does she have an experience of a cat “in her head or brain.” Rather, she becomes conscious of what the neural states represent—an entity out in the external world. In short, the information encoded in S’s mental model (about the entity in the world) is identical whether viewed by S or by E, but the way the information appears to be formatted depends on the perspective from which it is viewed Let me illustrate with a simple analogy. Let us suppose that the information encoded in the subject’s brain is formed into a kind of neural “projection hologram.” A projection hologram has the interesting property that the three-dimensional image it encodes is perceived to be out in space, in front of its two-dimensional surface, provided that it is viewed from an appropriate (frontal) perspective and it is illuminated by an appropriate (frontal) source of light. Viewed from any other perspective (from the side or from behind) the only information one can detect about the object is in the complex interference patterns encoded on the holographic plate. In

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analogous fashion, the information in the neural “projection hologram” is displayed as a visual, three-dimensional object out in space only when it is viewed from the appropriate, first-person perspective of the perceiving subject. And this happens only when the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness are satisfied (when there is “illumination by an appropriate source of light”). Viewed from any other, external perspective the information in S’s “hologram” appears to be nothing more than neural representations in the brain (interference patterns on the plate). The “projection hologram” is, of course, only an analogy—but it is useful in that it shares some of the apparently puzzling features of conscious experiences. The information displayed in the three-dimensional holographic image is encoded in two-dimensional patterns on a plate, but there is no sense in which the three-dimensional image is itself “in the plate.” Likewise, there is no sense in which the phenomenal cat observed by S is “in her head or brain.” In fact, the 3-D holographic image does not even exist (as an image) without an appropriately placed observer and an appropriate source of light. Likewise, the existence of the phenomenal cat requires the participation of S, the experiencing agent, and all the conditions required for conscious experience (in her mind/brain) have to be satisfied.3 Finally, a given holographic image only exists for a given observer, and can only be said to be located and extended where that observer perceives it to be!4 S’s phenomenal cat is similarly private and subjective. If she perceives it to be out in phenomenal space beyond the body surface, then, from her perspective, it is out in phenomenal space beyond the body surface.

5. Perceptual Projection Unconscious mind/brain processes construct experienced realities in which our phenomenal heads appear to be enclosed within three-dimensional, phenomenal worlds, not the other way around. But the mental models that encode information about these 3D experienced realities are “in the head or brain.” Given this, how do phenomenal cats and other phenomenal objects that are perceived to be located and extended in space get to be out there? It is clear that nothing physical is projected by the brain. There are for example no light rays projected through the eyes to illuminate the world, contrary to the beliefs of ancient Greek thinkers such as Empedocles (Zajonc 1993). Rather, “perceptual projection” is a psychological effect produced by unconscious perceptual processing. The projection hologram has a number of features that might be usefully incorporated into a causal explanation of such effects, but it is not intended to be a literal theory of what is taking place in the mind/brain. Right now, we just don’t know how it is done. Of course, not fully understanding how it happens does not alter the fact that it happens—and the experimental and clinical evidence for perceptual projection is considerable.5 Clinical and experimental examples include phantom limbs, hallucinations and virtual realities. A particularly striking example is reported by the neurologist Peter Brugger (1994) in a clinical case history of a seventeen year-old man suffering from epilepsy caused by a lesion in his left temporal lobe. He was being treated with anti-convulsant drugs to control the condition and was

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scheduled for surgery, when he experienced an “heautoscopic” episode (a visual hallucination of his body combined with an out-of-body experience) which was disturbing in the extreme: The heautoscopic episode, which is of special interest to the topic of this report, occurred shortly before admission. The patient stopped his phenytoin medication, drank several glasses of beer, stayed in bed the whole of the next day, and in the evening he was found mumbling and confused below an almost completely destroyed large bush just under the window of his room on the third floor. At the local hospital, thoracic and pelvic contusions were noted […]. The patient gave the following account of the episode: on the respective morning he got up with a dizzy feeling. Turning around, he found himself still lying in bed. He became angry about “this guy who I knew was myself and who would not get up and thus risked being late for work”. He tried to wake the body in bed first by shouting at it; then by trying to shake it and then repeatedly jumping on his alter ego in the bed. The lying body showed no reaction. Only then did the patient begin to be puzzled about his double existence and become more and more scared by the fact that he could no longer tell which of the two he really was. Several times his body awareness switched from the one standing upright to the one still lying in bed; when in the lying bed mode he felt quite awake but completely paralysed and scared by the figure of himself bending over and beating him. His only intention was to become one person again and, looking out of the window (from where he could still see his body lying in bed), he suddenly decided to jump out “in order to stop the intolerable feeling of being divided in two”. At the same time, he hoped that “this really desperate action would frighten the one in bed and thus urge him to merge with me again”. The next thing he remembers is waking up in pain in the hospital (Brugger 1994, 838-39). In short, this patient mistakenly judged the hallucinated body on the bed to be his real one and tried to get rid of his real body (which he judged to be the hallucination) in order to become unified again—a powerful example of the constructed, projected nature of the body asexperienced. But we do not really need such striking examples to demonstrate that there is something interesting going on that needs explanation. The simple fact that this WORD appears to be out here on this page (rather than in your brain) illustrates that the phenomenon is both ubiquitous and real. The world as-perceived is part-of the contents of consciousness. Some initial principles that follow from the analysis above should now be clear. Within the reflexive model the physical world as-perceived is part of the contents of consciousness. The contents of consciousness are not in some separate place or space “in the mind or brain.” That is, in terms of phenomenology no clear separation exists between what we normally think of as the “physical world,” the “phenomenal world,” and the “world as-perceived.” That said, the everyday physical world asperceived does have to be distinguished from the more abstract world described by physics (and other sciences). According to the reflexive model, the physical world as-perceived is just one, biologically useful representation of the world that science might describe in many alternative ways. But, with our eyes open, what we normally call the “physical world” just is what we experience. There is no additional experience of the world “in the mind or brain.”

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6. How does the Phenomenal, “Physical World” Relate to the World Described by Physics? I have described the process by which the mind/brain system translates the energies described by physics into a world-as-experienced (Velmans 2000, Chapter 7). The details are complex and here I can only note that the data from physics, sensory physiology, perception and psychophysics makes it clear that the perceived world “models” only a selection of the events and energies that physics describes. There are electromagnetic energies of many kinds that permeate space and even penetrate our bodies, to which our eyes (and other sense organs) are blind. There are signals produced by animals and insects to which our ears are deaf. Each sensory system has its own limits of resolution. Changes in light intensity of less than around 5%, or in sound intensity of less than around 20% are not perceived as changes. A change in sound frequency from 1000 Hz to 1005 Hz produces a just noticeable rise in pitch, while a change from 4000 Hz to 4005 Hz goes unnoticed. A change in electromagnetic wavelength from 480 to 481 nanometers will produce a noticeable change in hue, but not a change from 550 to 551 nanometers. Our sense of smell and taste monitor, but tell us little of the chemistry of the substances we inhale and ingest. Sensation and perception are limited in their spatial resolution to detect events of a size and distance that are relevant to normal human action and survival— beyond this we need microscopes and telescopes. Our sensory systems are also structured to detect events of a given duration. Light bulbs, for example, actually flash fifty times per second (the frequency of the AC mains voltage). However, this “flicker frequency” is faster than the visual system can resolve which makes the light seem continuous. By contrast, the movement of a flower out of the earth is too slow to see, so one needs time-lapse photography to “see” the movement. The data from comparative psychology, and zoology also suggests that the “physical reality” perceived by humans is only one of many possible perceived realities. The precise mix of sensory, perceptual, cognitive and social capacities in each species is unique. Human sensory and perceptual systems perform functions broadly to those of other animals. But the sensitivity of sense organs, the range of energies to which they are tuned, and the way information detected by the sensors is subject to perceptual processing vary considerably from species to species. Consequently, the “physical reality” that we perceive is actually a peculiarly human world.

7. Conclusion Reductive physicalism rejects first-person evidence, arguing that conscious experiences are nothing more than states of the brain, however they might seem. Having reduced conscious states to brain states, they commonly try to externalize their “qualia,” claiming these to be observer-independent, physical properties of the external world. Although reductive physicalism drapes itself in the “mantle of science,” it routinely ignores the findings of science. For

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example, it ignores the evidence for the highly specialized nature of human sense organs (sensory physiology), the constructive nature of perception, the complex relationship of experienced qualia to the energies described by physics (psychophysics), the ability of the brain to generate experiences in the absence of the physical energies that those experiences would normally represent (neuropsychology) and the many ways in which human perception differs from that of other animals (comparative psychology). In short, reductive physicalism ignores both the first-person phenomenological evidence regarding the nature of consciousness and the third-person evidence about how it relates to world described by physics. It is ironic that a philosophy of mind intended to naturalize consciousness gives such an unnatural account of it. However, it is possible to develop a reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and the physical world that is consistent with both third-person evidence of how the brain works and with first-person evidence of what it is like to have a given experience. Within this model the physical world as perceived (the phenomenal world) is viewed as part of conscious experience not apart from it. While in everyday life we treat this phenomenal world as if it is the “physical world,” it is really just one biologically useful representation of what the world is like that may differ in many respects from the world described by physics. How the world as perceived relates to the world as described by physics can be investigated by normal science (e.g., through the study of sensory physiology, psychophysics and so on). While this is an entirely “natural” account of consciousness, it is nonreductive. That is, conscious experiences are really how they seem.

Notes 1

For the purposes of this example we are concerned only with the phenomenology of visual experiences, not with feelings about the cat, thoughts about the cat, and so on. 2 For James, “representative” theories are those that propose the existence of some inner mental image which represents the physical room “in the mind.” 3 One does, of course, have to distinguish the phenomenal cat from the entity itself. The existence of the entity itself is observer-independent. When S gazes at it, it appears as a phenomenal cat—and it is this appearance which is observer-dependent. 4 The position of the image relative to the plate, for example, changes slightly as the observer moves around the plate. Nevertheless, the image is sufficiently clear for the observer to (roughly) measure its width and how far it projects in front of the plate (e.g. with a ruler). 5 I have reviewed this in Velmans 1990, 2000.

Mind-Body Problem and Panpsychism Pierfrancesco Basile

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Panpsychism (from pan and psyche, the Greek for all and soul, respectively) is the doctrine that what exists is sentient or made up of sentient parts; sometimes, but perhaps less clearly, the doctrine is formulated as the claim that experience is a fundamental feature of all reality. In this context such words as “sentient” and “experience” do not mean anything as complex as the reflective experience or sense experience which human beings enjoy: what is meant is that the ultimate constituents of reality possess some awareness of the surrounding environment, however vague and indistinct that awareness may be and however difficult it may be for us to imagine its specific nature. Early versions of the doctrine may be traced back to the origin of Western philosophy. Process philosopher Charles Hartshorne, one of its most powerful advocates, mentions in this connection Plato’s notion that the soul is the principle of all motion as well as Aristotle’s idea that all things are moved by their love of God (Hartshorne 1950, 443). On a widespread interpretation, the most important exponent of panpsychism in modern times is Leibniz, and indeed most versions of the doctrine, including the one put forward by Whitehead, can be viewed as more or less sophisticated modifications of the theory of monads which Leibniz advanced as an alternative to the modern conception of matter as constituted by bits of insentient stuff. Panpsychism acquired momentum in the second half of the nineteenth and in the first decades of the twentieth century, as a spiritual and religious reaction against materialism, which in the eyes of many deprived human life of significance and value. But the theory was also a serious philosophical attempt at solving theoretical problems in the foundations of the natural sciences. Discoveries in the physical sciences, eventually leading to the development of quantum physics, suggested that the traditional conception of the atom as an inert substance, a thing-like entity existing in its own right, had to be replaced by a conception of the ultimate constituents of reality as internally related events. At the same time, a consistent application of evolutionary theory made it inevitable to ask how life could have emerged out of lifeless matter. Finally, the impetus towards panpsychism was strengthened by biological observations, which showed that small organisms invisible to the human eye, such as amoebas or paramecia, display a surprising variety of behaviour (see Jennings 1906, for example, for a description of the behaviour of single-celled organisms). Cumulatively, these factors conferred credibility on metaphysical views that depicted reality as dynamic and organic—as an animated living whole. In A Pluralistic Universe (1909) James speaks of “the great empirical movement toward a pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe, into which our own generation has been drawn” (270). And indeed philosophers as important as Hermann Lotze, Gustav Fechner, James Ward, Charles Sanders Peirce and Josiah Royce endorsed a version of the theory. Interestingly, James’s expression in the quoted passage is “pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe” [my i

Institut für Philosophie, Universität Bern, Länggassstrasse, 3000 Bern 9; [email protected].

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emphasis]. Although the characterization of panpsychism as the theory that what exists is sentient or made up of sentient parts naturally suggests a close link between panpsychism and pluralism, the doctrine can be incorporated within a quite different metaphysical framework. Royce, for example, held that reality is filled with centers of experience, each of which is an aspect of a larger unified totality: the entire universe is a cosmic center of experience, which articulates itself into a plurality of lesser centers. Philosophers who, like James in his later works, adopted a version of panpsychism (Ford 1982), struggled to remain within a pluralistic framework: the problem they had to face was to explain how distinct individuals could be interrelated so as to constitute one cosmos, while at the same time retaining a significant degree of independence. The following discussion consists of four sections. In Section 1, attention will be devoted to some main arguments urged in support of panpsychism and to some of the objections that can be raised against it: panpsychism will here be treated as a general philosophical position and no direct reference will be made to Whitehead’s version of the theory, which is discussed in Section 2. Section 3 provides some additional information as to the fortune of panpsychism in recent philosophical discussions, while Section 4 brings the exposition to a close by speculating as to why panpsychism strikes many as a highly implausible position—one that can be rejected simply on the ground that it flies in the face of common-sense.

1. The Case for Panpsychism Among the arguments used by panpsychists in support of their position, three stand out with a certain prominence. In the first place, it is argued that panpsychism provides a way of understanding what things are “in themselves,” as opposed to what they are when considered from the standpoint of natural science. Secondly, panpsychism is supposed to avoid the shortcomings of Cartesian dualism and of materialism with respect to the mind-body interaction. Thirdly, it is contended that panpsychism provides a very straightforward account of the evolutionary origin of consciousness, and perhaps even the only intelligible one. The first argument advanced by panpsychists, sometimes referred to as the “intrinsic nature argument,” is that science deals with quantitative determinations, but says nothing about the inner nature of the basic constituents of reality. On this view, science provides a detailed and certainly true description of what there is, yet only of its skeleton. As one panpsychist has put it: [W]e are throughout dealing with quantitative relations among abstract possibilities. The whole of mechanical science deals with such relations. It is in no way concerned with the inner qualitative nature of the real existences on which these possibilities depend (Frankland 1881, 117). What can we say about the nature of the basic individuals of which reality is composed, if this is something upon which science remains silent? Following what they take to be Leibniz’s teaching, panpsychists argue that the only clue as to the intrinsic nature of reality is provided by our own mind, which is the most complete instance of individuality we are acquainted with, as well as the only actuality we know from within. “The self of which we are conscious,” one of panpsychism’s advocates writes, “furnishes us with our first paradigm of what we are to

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understand by the individuals of our plurality” (Ward 1911, 52). By an act of imaginative generalization, we are then led to the conception of reality as a network of centers of experience: “It is assumed that there exists an indefinite variety of selves, some indefinitely higher, some indefinitely lower than ourselves” (Ward 1911, 52). The idea underlying this gigantic step is very simple: if the mind is part of nature and all constituents of reality are of the same ontological type, then we are justified in taking our mind as exemplifying what actuality amounts to. To be sure, the panpsychist does not claim to have proved his view. The claim is weaker and amounts to the proposition that panpsychism is the only positive hypothesis we can formulate about the intrinsic nature of reality. The alternative is admitting that reality’s inner nature is entirely unknown to us, an option that the logic of the panpsychist’s argument would indeed seem to leave open. In the second place, panpsychism looks attractive in the light of the difficulties that alternative views encounter in dealing with the mind-body interaction. On a Cartesian understanding of the nature of the mind and of the body as utterly different in kind, the nature of that interaction is incomprehensible. How could a spiritual substance, such as the mind is supposed to be, exert an influence upon an extended one? Attempts at solving this problem have led to a variety of artificial solutions, like Malebranche’s occasionalism, according to which God mediates between the mind and the body, or various forms of parallelism, according to which there is a synchronism between changing states of the body and changing states of the mind. The panpsychist regards these theories as a reductio ad absurdum of the basic assumption involved with Cartesian dualism, the bifurcation of nature into a realm of spirit and a realm of matter. Panpsychism offers a much more plausible way of thinking of existing actualities as being equally parts of nature, for on that hypothesis our minds, our bodies and the entire environment are all constituted by subject-like centers of experience. The problem of how different substances can interact does not arise in the traditional form associated with Cartesian dualism, for all basic constituents of reality are identical in kind. Thirdly, a strong drive behind panpsychism has been evolutionary theory. If we take evolution seriously, it would seem that we will have to postulate the existence of experience at the very bottom of things, for how could mind have emerged out of insentient bits of matter? According to the panpsychist, evolutionary continuity implies ontological continuity: we can understand the transition from matter to mind only if mind and matter are instances of the same ontological kind, i.e. what is required in order for a transition to occur is that there is a genus of which mind and matter are both species. Panpsychism assumes that the higher genus must be “experience”: yet if the genus is not to be identified with experience, what remains? Once more, the alternative seems to be that of holding an agnostic position. Before entering into a discussion of Whitehead’s own version of panpsychism, it might be useful to consider two main objections that panpsychism has to face. William James states one of these in a chapter of his Principles of Psychology (1890) entitled “The Mind-Stuff Theory.” A very influential version of panpsychism had been put forward by W. K. Clifford, who postulated that each atom of matter was associated with a quantum of experience, a small piece of “mind-stuff.” This piece of mind-stuff, an “atom” of experience amounting to something less than a complete thought or feeling, was held to be capable of constituting thoughts and feelings

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by way of combination. “When molecules are so combined as to form the brain and nervous system of a vertebrate,” Clifford wrote, “the corresponding elements of mind-stuff are so combined as to form some kind of consciousness.” Analogously, he argued that “[w]hen matter takes the complex form of a living human brain, the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of a human consciousness, having intelligence and volition” (Clifford 1878, 65). Clifford’s theory is a dual aspect theory: the “mental” and the “physical” are regarded as the opposite sides of the same natural event. This theory raises problems of different sorts. One first difficulty is that the theory assumes the possibility of there being experiences which are not owned by any subject, such as the smallest pieces of mind-stuff will have to be. Secondly, it is doubtful that anything is explained by arguing that mind is “the other side” of matter or that “mind” and “matter” are aspects of the same event; after all, these are just metaphors awaiting to be cashed out in terms of clear-cut concepts. But the greatest difficulty for the mind-stuff theory is the problem of composition. James conveys the point with a compelling example: Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence. We talk of the “spirit of the age,” and the “sentiment of the people,” and in various ways we hypostatise “public opinion.” But we know this to be symbolic speech, and never dream that the spirit, opinion, sentiment, etc., constitute a consciousness other than, and additional to, that of the several individuals whom the words “age,” “people,” or “public” denote. The private minds do not agglomerate into a higher compound mind (James 1890, 160). Replace “men” with “neurons” and you have the problem: how could the experiences of the neurons coalesce so as to form the unified experience that constitutes the human mind at any one moment? As Thomas Nagel has more recently put it, “we lack the concept of a mental partwhole relation” that would enable us to see how distinct experiences could fuse into one (Nagel 1986, 59). Many philosophers believe that this difficulty amounts to a conclusive refutation of panpsychism. It is important to note, however, that James did not think that the composition problem proved that all versions of panpsychism are false, for he was only concerned with criticising Clifford’s mind-stuff theory. “All the ‘combinations’ which we actually know,” James also wrote, “are effects wrought by the units said to be ‘combined’, upon some entity other than themselves” (158, James’s emphasis). James’s idea in this passage is that it is possible to make a positive use of this notion of combination as the conjunct effect of many causes, by thinking of the mind as numerically distinct from the cells in the brain and at the same time as capable of collecting and integrating their experiences. It is not necessary to think of the mind as an N+1st experience which emerges out of the N experiences in the neurons, for the mind could just be one of the N experiences in causal interaction with the others. Now, James is right in arguing that such a theory, which he refers to as a version of Leibnizian monadism (James 1890, 180), does not have to deal with the composition problem. Nevertheless, the question remains open as to how the dominant center, which on this view constitutes the mind, integrates the many experiences of the brain cells. The composition problem is avoided, but only to be replaced by what, for want of a better expression, may be called the “integration” problem.

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Another powerful objection against panpsychism is that the problem of the evolution of human mentality is not solved by ascribing experience to the ultimate constituents of reality. The experience that could be ascribed to such ultimate units must be very simple and most panpsychists would draw a distinction between conscious experience, meaning by this the highlevel form of experience enjoyed by human beings and the higher animals, and unconscious experience, a low-level form of experience whose nature we cannot grasp except as the hypothetical limit of a continuum of experiences. With this distinction, however, the problem of explaining the transition from insentient matter to consciousness reappears in the form of the problem of accounting for the transition from unconscious or low-level to conscious or highlevel experience. A. C. Ewing states the problem very clearly: Can it be consistent dogmatically to deny the possibility of the conscious having developed out of the unconscious (in the sense of the totally unfeeling), and yet to assert the development of the humanly intelligent out of what is quite incapable of reasoning? If we are to reject the former supposition on the ground of unintelligibility, it seems that we ought to reject the latter too (Ewing 1934, 412). This problem shows that the panpsychist needs to provide a theory of degrees of experience to explain on what general principles higher forms of experience develop out of lower ones. Otherwise, panpsychism stands in no better position than materialism and the way is open for a supernatural intervention: if neither materialism nor panpsychism can explain the emergence of mind, why then not hold to dualism and supplement it with a theistic doctrine? Why not argue that God infuses matter with spirit? The point of making this remark is not to defend the theistic move but rather to emphasize that, despite its somewhat perplexing designation, panpsychism is an attempt to remain within a naturalistic framework. The arguments and ideas that have just been exposed had been amply discussed by philosophers when Whitehead begun to develop his metaphysics; as will appear shortly, they exerted a strong influence upon his own version of panpsychism.

2. Whitehead’s Panexperientialism Whitehead advocates panpsychism in Adventures of Ideas, Modes of Thought and Science and the Modern World. In Process and Reality, his commitment to panpsychism is manifest in his rejection of what he terms the doctrine of “vacuous actualities” (PR xiii), the idea that there may be actualities wholly devoid of experience. “[A]part from the experiences of subjects,” he writes, “there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness” (PR 167). Notwithstanding this categorical statement, Whitehead never called himself a panpsychist: when his student and biographer Victor Lowe asked him whether he was one or not, he is reported to have answered with “a rather evasive ‘Yes’ and ‘No’” (McHenry 1995, 2). How is this to be explained? Following a suggestion made by process philosopher David Ray Griffin, it is possible to speculate that Whitehead believed that the term “panpsychism” was apt to produce serious misunderstandings. In particular, the experience that can be ascribed to the ultimate constituents of reality must not be conceived as having in all cases the complexity of a human mind or

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“psyche.” “Panexperientialism,” Griffin suggests, could be used as a better designation for Whitehead’s theory of reality (Griffin 1998, 78, 107). The term “panpsychism” also carries with it the misleading suggestion that the ultimate constituents of reality are substances with a continued existence through time. In Whitehead’s ontology, however, reality’s basic individuals are not continuants, but occurrents or events, serially ordered and linked in such a way that a common pattern is transmitted from one occurrent to the next: a simple enduring object A, such as an electron, is conceptualized as a route of occurrents a1, a2, … an; other sorts of enduring objects, such as the macroscopic physical objects of every-day life, are viewed as complex structures of many such routes. Taking the mind as the paradigm of individuality, Whitehead conceives of each occurrent as a unified moment of experience—as a single yet internally complex psychical whole. Each such whole comes into being as the result of a process that begins with the retention and appropriation (prehension) of aspects of occasions in the immediate past. The appropriated contents are then integrated the one with the other in the course of a synthetic process (concrescence), whose final product is a wholly determinate moment of experience (satisfaction): The ultimate attainment [of the synthetic process in the course of which a moment of experience comes into being] is “satisfaction”. This is the final characterization of the unity of feeling of the one actual entity […] which is familiarly termed the “subject” (PR 166). When the final unity of experience has been achieved, the occasion is superseded by a novel one. Most importantly, the process generating the unified moment of experience is partially determined, i.e. subject to the limitations set by the nature of the appropriated contents, and partially “spontaneous” or “free”: together, determination and self-creativity account for the final synthesis achieved in the satisfaction. Although Whitehead writes that he arrived at his view of reality by reason of his reflections on the foundation of physics (SMW 152), there is no doubt that his panpsychism is largely indebted to James’s psychology. James holds in the Principles that our enduring self is not an underlying substance, but a construction out of a series of interconnected momentary selves. Whitehead’s discussion of the mind-body problem, moreover, is strongly reminiscent of James’s critique of Clifford’s mind-stuff theory. Consider, for example, what Whitehead says concerning the mind-body problem in the following passage from Process and Reality: It is obvious that we must not demand another mentality presiding over these other actualities (a kind of Uncle Sam, over and above all the U.S. citizens). All the life in the body is the life of the individual cells. There are thus millions upon millions of centres of life in each animal body. So what needs to be explained is not dissociation of personality but unifying control, by reason of which we […] have […] consciousness of a unified experience (PR 108). This passage addresses the composition problem: if the body, and specifically the brain, is a complex of occasions of experience, how do we explain our “consciousness of a unified experience”? The collection of all American citizens does not give rise to the higher entity “Uncle Sam;” analogously, the N experiences in the brain do not give rise to the N+1st experience that is supposed to be the human mind. Again, James had observed that the composition problem could be avoided by holding the doctrine of the dominant monad,

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according to which the mind is one of the already existing N experiences in causal interaction with the others. This is Whitehead’s own theory: “in an animal body the presiding occasion […] is the final node, or intersection, of a complex structure of many enduring objects” (PR 109). In other words, the enduring object we call mind is a society of serially ordered occasions of experience, each of which is capable of collecting and integrating the experiences of the occasions constituting the other parts of the brain. On this theory, there is neither a mind existing independently of the body nor a living body independent of mind; the real individual is the entire psycho-physical organism, viewed as a complex of occasions, some of which perform a leading role in virtue of their position relative to all others. This theory nicely accounts for our common intuitions concerning the mind’s relationship with the body, for we think of our mind and our body as distinct and yet at the same time we are aware that they are inextricably linked. In the first place, Whitehead explains our sense of personal identity by arguing that the occasions constituting our present unit of mentality are capable of retaining aspects of the experiences of the occasion constituting our mind in the immediate past. Secondly, as an explanation of our sense of intimacy with the body, he holds that the present occasion constituting the mind prehends aspects of the occasions in the brain. Thirdly, when the mind prehends aspects of the occasions constituting the brain, contents are transferred from the brain to the mind, which explains the body’s power to act upon the mind; when occasions in the brain prehend aspects of the occasion constituting the mind, contents are transmitted in the opposite direction, which accounts for the mind’s power to act upon the body. In the light of the distinction between complexes with and complexes without a dominant stream of occasions, moreover, the common objection that panpsychism is inherently implausible appears to be based upon a misunderstanding. To argue that panpsychism cannot be true because macroscopic objects such as chairs and tables do not have experiences is to be guilty of the fallacy of composition—the mistaken belief that if a whole does not have a property, then its parts must lack it too. Only in the case of complexes with a dominant stream is it appropriate to ascribe experiential states to the whole as well as to its parts; in the case of complexes devoid of a dominant monad, there is experience in the parts but no such thing as the experience of the whole. Interestingly enough, the objection could be reversed and used as an argument against materialism. Starting with centers of experience, the panpsychist accounts for the existence of insentient objects, which can be conceptualized as societies of occasions without a dominant center: can the materialist do the same and explain the existence of sentient beings starting with insentient stuff? The discussion of the preceding section has shown that there are two problems which panpsychism must overcome. First, since he holds a version of the Leibnizian theory of the dominant monad, Whitehead has to explain not composition but integration: how are the many experiences collected and integrated by the dominant occasion of experience? Secondly, there is the problem of providing a theory of degrees of experience: how does conscious experience evolve out of unconscious one? These questions can be answered solely by entering into a close discussion of Whitehead’s notion of an actual occasion and especially of his theory of concrescence. In the course of the concrescence integration takes place, and at some stage during the process consciousness emerges, activated in the case of a high grade occasion

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sustained by a proper environment. An explanation of the different phases the occasion goes through during the process of concrescence lies outside what can be accomplished within the range of the present article: Griffin (1998) provides a careful reconstruction as well as a vigorous defense. Before concluding this section, however, it is worth pointing out that the notion of experience as having degree, apart from having a long philosophical history, is intuitively very plausible. We just need to compare our experiences when we are first awake in the morning with our experiences when we are fresh and fully concentrated to see how much variation our experiences go through in the course of a single day. Since experience comes in many shapes and gradations, the emergence of higher forms of mentality from lower ones would seem to be less difficult to understand than the emergence of the sentient out of the insentient.

3. After Whitehead Whitehead’s metaphysics has not been very popular, except among a certain blend of US theologians such as Hartshorne, Cobb and Griffin. A theory that depicts nature as constituted by subjects of experience, each of which is partially spontaneous or self-creative, makes it possible to think of the world’s ultimate constituents as capable of entering into communication with God. This advantage is exploited by Whitehead in his account of divine causation. According to him, the process of concrescence leading to the formation of a unified moment of mentality aims at the realization of an ideal presented by God to the creature when still in the phase of becoming. God is therefore constantly operative in the world as a structuring power, yet not in the guise of an entirely determining force, for Whitehead also thinks that the creature is free to modify the divine ideal in the process of its becoming. Considered from a purely theological perspective, Whitehead’s theory of reality is therefore very appealing, even though it is rather strange to conceive of God as presenting ideals to such things as electrons and protons: the charge of anthropomorphism would seem here to be entirely justified. At the same time, it is not clear that the reality of free-will is vindicated by simply ascribing an iota of spontaneity to the concrescing occasions, for certainly one still has to explain how spontaneity differs from mere chance. In the second half of the twentieth-century, the strongest case in support of panpsychism is probably the one provided by Timothy Sprigge in The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (1983). Sprigge summarises his panpsychistic conviction with the following words: I believe that the world ultimately consists of innumerable flows of experience, some of them of the high level which constitutes our own streams of consciousness, others streams of mere dumb feeling with a certain volitional charge. As all these intermingle, they constitute a system with a certain overall structure which is what science seeks to capture in its description of the natural world, and of which our life-world gives a less precise indication (Sprigge 1998, 216). As a matter of fact, this passage provides a nice statement of Whitehead’s own vision of the world. However, Sprigge disagrees with Whitehead as to whether such a view can be regarded as ultimately valid. Since Sprigge rejects Whitehead’s notion that past occasions of experience

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become objects for novel ones, he believes that Whitehead has failed to explain how many occasions could be related to each other. The only way to explain the unity of many centers of experience into one reality, he concludes, is to abandon Whitehead’s pluralistic assumption and conceive of the many centers as aspects of a single overarching Reality. “But how,” he asks, “do these streams form any kind of unitary world within which they can exchange mutual influence?” The only solution is “to suppose them united in an absolute experience, and to interpret space and time as either the sensory presentation of, or the abstract structure of, one main way in which they belong together there” (Sprigge 1988, 261). A panpsychistic view akin to Whitehead’s thus gives way to the Spinozian view of a single static reality outside of time and space, which appears as temporal and spatial to the many centers into which it individualizes itself. Process theologians and absolute idealists are unusual appearances on the contemporary philosophical scene. Within mainstream analytic philosophy, Whitehead’s philosophy of mind has been marginalized. In the last few decades, however, there has been a revival of interest in both panpsychism and Whitehead’s philosophy. Thomas Nagel (1979) has provided an updated version of James’s discussion of panpsychism in the Principles of Psychology. According to Nagel, who rejects radical emergentism, it is inconceivable that a purely physical system, like the human brain is commonly believed to be, could sustain consciousness. Unfortunately, he contends, the composition problem makes it impossible to adopt panpsychism, which must therefore be considered as one more failed attempt at understanding how the mind is related to the physical world. Another philosopher who has taken panpsychism seriously is William Seager (1995, 1999), who has argued that a possible solution to the combination problem may come from quantum physics, which in his view provides useful conceptual resources for explaining how the experiences in the brain cells can fuse into one mind. But the strongest case for panpsychism in recent years is the one set up by David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind (1996). Reductive explanatory models derived from psychology, neurobiology and cognitive sciences explain how systems function, but why should there also be experiences? We can understand how biological systems process information derived from the environment, but why should such processes be associated with a phenomenology? Chalmers’s tentative hypothesis is that physical states and phenomenological states are parallel ways in which information-systems are instantiated. Since all physical states can be viewed as states of information-systems, he concludes that “it is not just information that is ubiquitous. Experience is ubiquitous too” (293). Eventually, however, none of these authors endorses panpsychism. Gregg Rosenberg has recently tried to work out a panpsychist theory along Whiteheadian lines in A Place for Consciousness (2004) and Galen Strawson has vigorously defended it in the essay "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism" (2006), yet it seems correct to say that panpsychism still tends to be easily dismissed as “absurd,” “outrageous” or “intrinsically implausible.” Most recently, for example, Searle has criticised panpsychist philosophers in the following words: Panpsychism is the view that consciousness is everywhere. This view is seldom stated explicitly, but it is implicit in several authors particularly among the mysterians who think that if we are going to explain consciousness in terms of microprocesses, then, somehow or other, some form of consciousness must already

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be present in the microprocesses (Searle 2004, 148). This attitude is very disappointing, for if philosophers refuse to pay attention to bold speculative interpretations of reality, who else is supposed to do it? And if philosophers shy away from rationally controlled speculation about the ultimate nature of what there is, how does their work differ from that of the scientist? At any rate, since we experience inert objects such as chairs and tables as well as our own experiences in the form of sensations, thoughts and emotions, it is not prima facie clear why panpsychism should be regarded as more absurd than materialism, which enjoys on the contrary a very wide acceptance.

4. Concluding Remarks It has been argued in the above that there are fully coherent lines of argument conducive to panpsychism, even though they lack the force of a full demonstration. It may be useful to conclude the present discussion by addressing the question why panpsychism—and Whitehead’s panexperientialism in particular—is regarded with suspicion, striking philosophers and common sense alike as a highly implausible theory. A first reason is probably guilt by association. Since panpsychism is a form of metaphysical idealism, it might be easily mistaken with views that deny that the physical world “truly” or “fully” exists. Berkeley’s subjective idealism, for example, ascribes to the natural world an ideal existence, conceiving of physical objects as clusters of ideas generated in our minds by God. The sort of idealism involved with Whitehead’s panpsychism is not of the subjective sort: nature does not exist as an idea within the mind, but is actually composed of occasions of experience; these are real constituents of objects whose existence is independent from that of an external observer. Another reason is probably panpsychism’s allegedly unscientific character. Panpsychism is not a scientific theory, however, but a metaphysical one. Some philosophers might argue that metaphysics is a meaningless enterprise, but then it is difficult to see the alternative positions one inevitably ends up taking—dualism, various forms of materialism, neutral monism—as being other than metaphysical claims. There is, however, a more serious reason for scepticism. Panpsychism is supposed to make a positive claim as to the inner nature of the basic constituents of reality, yet it is not so clear that this is true: how, for example, is the experience of an electron to be conceived? In order to avoid being charged with anthropomorphism, the panpsychist will have to say that the electron’s experience is radically different from the experience of a human being. The problem is how far we can stretch ordinary language without loss of meaning, and this is implicitly recognized by Whitehead: “This word ‘feeling,’” he writes, “is a mere technical term; but it has been chosen to suggest that functioning through which the concrescent actuality appropriates the datum so as to make it its own” (PR 164). Commenting upon his use of the expression “conceptual prehension,” which refers to an occasion’s grasping of an eternal object or ideal form, he also remarks: “The technical term ‘conceptual prehension’ is entirely neutral, devoid of all suggestiveness. But such terms present great difficulties to the understanding, by reason of the fact that they suggest no particular exemplification. Accordingly, we seek equivalent terms which have about them the suggestiveness of familiar fact” (PR 33, see also PR 211). In light of

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passages such as these, how literal is the panpsychist’s use of the word “experience” supposed to be? With respect to the example of an electron’s experience, panpsychism seems to retreat to the claim that there is some unknown property or nature in the electron, which under suitable conditions might give rise to higher forms of mentality. At this point, it is not easy to see that panpsychism is really helpful: to call an unintelligible nature “experience” is to name a problem, not to solve it. Does this imply that panpsychism provides a verbal solution to a real problem? Despite its rhetorical overtones, this question is not so easy to answer. Written more than one century ago, the following words from William James summarise the status quaestionis while also providing the best apology for philosophical tolerance: [In reflecting about panpsychism, we] dive into regions inaccessible to experience and verification; and our doctrine, although not self-contradictory, becomes so remote and unreal as to be almost as bad as if it were. Speculative minds alone will take an interest in it; and metaphysics […] will be responsible for its career. That the career may be a successful one must be admitted as a possibility—a theory which Leibnitz, Herbart, and Lotze have taken under their protection must have some sort of a destiny (James 1890, 180).

Hypnosis: Panpsychism in Action Michel Weber

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Hypnosis ranks amongst the most fundamental ideas that made the Victorian age. Together with progress, creativity, techno-science and industrialization, evolutionism and its by-product eugenism, and, last but not least, the emergent feminist movement, it gave a peculiar flavor to its main trait: the faith in the superiority (if not the superior rationality) of Western civilization and in its colonial duties.1 Although for the vulgus pecum, it was (and to a great respect remained in popular media) at best a new form of entertainment and at worst a form of dangerous manipulation, it attracted the attention of major thinkers of that time, who got a clearer grasp of the stakes. For renowned scientists and philosophers such as J. Ward, W. James and H. Bergson, hypnosis and the socalled paranormal events were facts of the highest speculative interest. As such, the question of its nature and of its conditions of possibility deserve to be raised in this Handbook—especially since hypnotic phenomena bring to the fore conundrums that are unlikely to be settled without a panpsychism of sorts. The argument proceeds in four main steps. First, we define the normal state of consciousness, that we choose to call “zero-state” in order to avoid the derogatoriness of the concept of “normality” and to suggest straight away the existence of a hierarchy of states. We furthermore underline, on the one hand, the presupposed non-dualism of common-sense and the consequent theoretical dualism of substantialism. Second, we peruse again the same three steps, but this time from a process standpoint. Consciousness-zero is then relativized with the help of a genetic perspective that is anchored in the presupposed common-sense through what has been called the “biological theory of knowledge.” The consequent processism is sketched as a theoretical non-dualism. Third, the main consequences of this processualization of the concept of consciousness are specified in three steps: the existence of a field of consciousness, that is structured by the concept of threshold, and that can be cautiously interpreted with the introduction of a scale of consciousness and of a spectrum of vigilance. Fourth, the main consequences of this processualization of the concept of consciousness is implemented in three steps: Whitehead’s panexperientialism is differentiated from panpsychism, the nature of hypnosis is envisaged, and socio-political issues are discussed.

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Centre de philosophie pratique “Chromatiques whiteheadiennes,” Brussels; Visiting Professor at the New Bulgarian University (Sofia); www.chromatika.org; [email protected].

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1. Consciousness-zero and Substantialism Our discussion must, inevitably, start with a heuristic definition of consciousness that will provisionally collapse all intensities of experiences and shades of meaning displayed by our everyday interactions with our human and non-human environment.

1.1. Definition of Consciousness-zero Let consciousness-zero be defined by (solely instantiated in) public debate or conversation. It thus demands at least two interlocutors, present in person and sharing the same rationality, i.e., language. In other words, it is unsurprisingly characterized by two main dimensions: rational and physical. This is no doubt a very restrictive definition that is likely to be found prima facie unacceptable: is it not obvious indeed that our conscious experience is far more ambivalent and rich than the one put up here for interrogation? Far from neglecting this variegatedness, our argument actually exploits it systematically—but the need for a precise starting point nevertheless remains, especially in light of the definitional sfumato fostered by most psychologists, experimental or otherwise. On the one hand, consciousness-zero per se demands the extensive use of a refined form of language; on the other, it requires intersubjectivity in a particular environment, the key-concept being the Agora. A perfect historical exemplification is indeed available: the Greek citizen debating political issues with his peers in the Market-place. The use of reason is as essential as the actual presence of the individuals. Neither the public use of irrationalities nor the private use of reason (for familial—biological?—or rumination purposes) qualify. The physical requirement is rather straightforward, but the rational one is far more nebulous, hence the following propositions: what is congruent with a set of given rules of relevance is rational; what is not thus congruent is irrational, but could become congruent if properly revised; what is definitely incommensurable with reason is non-rational.2 In other words, there is always a measure of contingency in all rational systems. The simplest way of exemplifying this in the case of consciousness-zero is to give a quick look at Aristotelian logic with the help of the three “principles” or “laws” defined by Boole3 (independently of Leibniz’ conceptual renovation in terms of principle of sufficient reason and identity of indiscernibles and of Schopenhauer’s synthesis). The principle of identity states that we come to know all things in so far as they have some unity and identity.4 It has naturally to be linked with the substanceattribute ontology granting permanence amid flux. The principle of contradiction is somehow the negative side of the principle of identity: it claims that the same attribute cannot, at the same time and in the same respect, belong and not belong to the same subject.5 According to the principle of excluded middle (or tertium non datur), there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories: of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate.6 There is no third possibility: either it rains or it does not. Consequently, any proposition that does belong to the territory marked out by these three principles is, from an Aristotelian perspective, rational; if it does not, it is irrational. A contradiction is not irrational, since it possesses a clear status in the system: it is a statement that is always false and everybody agrees that it is so because some

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mistake must have occurred in the chain of reasoning. A paradox, however, is irrational: as its etymology shows, it is a contradiction that has the appearance of truth, with the result that there are numerous opinions regarding the way of understanding them; no consensus prevails. The arational is for him matter (the complementary of form in his hylomorphism). In sum, our prolegomenal argument is somewhat reminiscent of Aristotle’s double definition of the human being (“anthropos” is gender-neutral like Latin “homo”) qua zoon logôn echon and zoon politikon: objectifying rationality and political environment circumscribe together consciousness-zero and its practical dualism. To define consciousness with the help of the concept of intentionality (cf. Husserl after Brentano and the Scholastics) or with the concept of contrast between a fact and a possibility (cf. Whitehead in Process and Reality)7 lures us too quickly towards a sophisticated understanding of consciousness (or even towards an idealist if not solipsistic one—remember Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations and Whitehead claiming a proximity with Bradley 8). According to the basically common-sense interpretation developed here, it is primarily an intersubjective phenomenon. Without intersubjectivity, no consciousness-zero.

1.2. Common-sensical Non-Dualism When the conscious interplay of embodied rational citizens is contextualized, we find, in one direction (uphill) a practical non-dualism and, in the other (downhill), a theoretical dualism. The threefold meaning of sensus communis is helpful to name and specify the non-dualism that is presupposed in practice: according to Arendt’s fresh reading of Aquinas, common sense is made of three threads: the concerted functioning of the five senses (more precisely, cœnæsthesia); the sharing with other humans of the world qua context; and the sharing with other living creatures of the world as environment.9 Let us also pin-point a similar attempt in Whiteheadian studies: Griffin speaks of hard-core common-sense notions10 to qualify the universal and primordial beliefs that human beings do not question in practice: humans share an “animal faith” of sorts in their fundamental freedom, in the causal efficacy of their actions, in the existence of values and of a temporal drift. All these occur in a realistic atmosphere: idealism is not to be found at this pre-rational level. Softcore common-sense notions belong for their part to doxa: they are culturally contingent and philosophically (and scientifically) insignificant. In conclusion: the dualism at work in consciousness-zero is buttressed on a “world-loyalty” that is commonly ignored and philosophically obliterated by substantialistic dualism. The goal of the process ontological renewal is to firmly anchor everyday consciousness in this deep experiential structure and, thereby, to re-enchant the world (cf. M. Berman and D. R. Griffin).

1.3. Substantialist Theoretical Dualism Whereas, volens nolens, consciousness-zero springs from a non-dualistic social network (in the broad, experiential, sense of the word), it brings forth, by the sheer power of its abstractions, a fully-fledged dualistic theory otherwise known as substantialism. Here also a quick overview of Aristotle is relevant to specify its applicability.

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Most of Aristotle’s categories—starting with the category of substance itself—are based on (even wedged to) consciousness-zero. In other words, they are adequate to depict the type of rationality exploited in everyday life (cf. Piaget), not the Ultimate. If one follows Boole’s definition again, we obtain an acute depiction of the raw understanding of consciousness presupposed in most literature. The principle of identity requires that there is only one such thing as “consciousness;” the principle of contradiction claims that one cannot, at the same time and in the same respect, be conscious and not-conscious; the principle of excluded middle adds that there is no third possibility: one has to be either conscious or unconscious. The overall intuition of consciousness substantialism is a two-states system of the “on/off” type: the subject is either totally conscious or totally unconscious. It pervades the well-known anecdote of Russell: I began to develop a philosophy of my own during the year 1898 […]. It was Whitehead who was the serpent in this paradise of Mediterranean beauty. He said to me once: "You think the world is what it looks in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep." I thought this remark horrid, but could not see how to prove that my bias was any better than his. At last he showed me how to apply the technique of mathematical logic to his vague and higgledy-piggledy world, and dress it up in Sunday clothes that the mathematician could view without being shocked.11 In conclusion, the virtue of Aristotle’s system has to be reframed. On the one hand, his ontological pretensions have to be limited to the mesocosmos, that names the world of “middle dimensions” where humans dwell (i.e., neither the microcosm nor the macrocosm)—and process thought has thus to provide a way of recovering them; on the other, one can show that concepts such as Poiesis/Praxis and Dynamis/Energeia possess a broader applicability than their substantialist cradle, i.e., that they are crucial to all forms of philosophical systematization and, as such, constitute the true Aristotelian legacy.12

2. Consciousness in Process The process understanding of consciousness not only aims at doing justice to all the facets evoked so far (to consciousness-zero as it is empirically available, to its presupposed nondualism and to its consequential theoretical dualism): it enlarges the scope of the discussion with the help of a premise shared with radical empiricism (all experiences—including relations—have to be taken at face value). By doing so, it enables itself to systematically analyze all these facets. The focus on the Agora necessarily remains but at the same time it is relativized with the help of the concept of mesocosm. In order to understand what is at stake, a short Jamesean digression is needed. James’ insistence on the difference between two basic type of philosophical thinking is well-known: on the one hand, rationalism and its monistic trend; on the other empiricism and its pluralism. But the exact significance of his radical empiricism is often taken for granted. A close reading of rationalists’ and empiricists’ arguments reveals that both philosophical streams share the exact same presupposed substantialism. Accordingly, James’ radical empiricism is designed to overcome both rationalism (with its innate general ideas formatted by calculus) and empiricism

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(with its acquired particular ideas put together by association). It claims that primitive experience is not equivalent to elementary experience: empiricists have mixed up the source or origin and the element. Experience qua experience—“pure experience” as James calls it—does not have at all the simplicity, the atomicity, the individuality that is presupposed by rationalists and empiricists alike: it is vague, confused (neither clear nor distinct), above all relational (neither subjective nor objective).13 In the same way that Locke has improperly imported in psychology Boyle’s corpuscular paradigm, Spencer has wrongly used Laplace’s cosmogenetic model of the solar system to understand psychogenesis. We do not prehend parts but the Whole in its complex opacity. From that prehended Whole, we discriminate parts that are eventually organized by a triple genesis (onto-, phylo- and koino-).14 In brief: fragmentary experience is not amalgamated by calculus or by association from simple to complex, but emerges from complex to simple. Parts are not given from the beginning because they do not exist independently of the relations which unite them.

2.1. Re-definition of Consciousness-zero: Relativization of Practical Dualism Our heuristic definition of consciousness-zero underlined its intersubjectivity and its rationality: in a word, its public or political dimension (in the Greek sense). There are two direct correlates to this very limited view: first, the physical kinship, second the rational one. Consciousness-zero takes place among individuals for whom reason is a shared faculty. (Typically: the Greek citizen and his cosmos ruled by one single logos.) The first move that is required by process radical empiricism is to acknowledge the relativity of our own conscious standpoint. This requires to substitute the Market-place by Hans Reichenbach’s (1891–1953) mesocosm. The evolutionary process of adjustment of the cognitive forms to the general structure of reality is only partial: it is (somewhat) adequate only to the mesocosm. By doing so, one opens the public sphere: consciousness-zero is a function of the interaction between emergent rational creatures whose practical dualism has to be recontextualized. Whitehead inherits from Bruno and Darwin the destruction of the cosmos (i.e., the opening of the world, first spatially and second temporally) 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—Whiteheadian organicism seeks to re-animate it. In sum, the process standpoint opens a new perspective that has two main modes. First, the perspective: We must get rid of the notion of consciousness as a little box (R 16-17). or, in the words of James: To deny plumply that “consciousness” exists seems so absurd on the face of it—for undeniably “thoughts” do exist—that I fear some readers will follow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function.15 Second, the functional modes constituting the basic sophistication of our intersubjective understanding of consciousness-zero: the neutral monism of the pure flux (cf. James’ Principles of Psychology or Whitehead’s London epoch) and the neutral pluralism of the bud-like

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eventfulness (James’ Pluralistic Universe and Whitehead’s “epochal theory” during his Harvard years). In both cases the pure experience thesis holds: we have a direct, indiscriminate experience of the world (by acquaintance16), i.e., discriminations between perceiving “subject” and perceived “objects” and between “objects” themselves have yet to be made. The difference lies in the assessment of the question of novelty: if processes are continuous, no genuine novelty is possible and we remain in a neutral monism that nevertheless offers the solution to most epistemological puzzles (such as the mind-body problem).

2.2. Common-sensical Non-Dualism The process standpoint provides the most adequate tools to understand the threefold meaning of sensus communis: the triple genesis (discussed supra) that was presupposed—but not thematized—by substantialism comes now to the fore. First, the cognitive functions of the human mind are not static operators at all, they are the transient phylogenetical result of a long adaptive process (Spencer). Under the pressure of environmental adjustment (better knowledge allows a better chance for survival), the human intellect has become a master in the logic of solid bodies (linear causality, Euclidean geometry, etc.). But this is just an evolutionary adjustment to a limited—perceived—segment of a throbbing and coalescing world. In sum: the categories that are a priori for the individual are a posteriori for the species. Second, these functions result from an ontogenetical process: individuals are not born fully equipped with the rational apparatus embodied in consciousness-zero. Four temporally and logically sequenced stages can be distinguished (Piaget): the sensorimotor stage (ages 0-2), the preoperational stage (ages 2-7), the concrete operational stage (ages 7-11), and the formal operational stage (ages 11-adult). Third, the evolutionary success of humans also lies in the fortunate oversimplifications the species has achieved and perpetuates through cultural endeavours (Bateson). Koinogenesis 17 is the process of convergence of individual consciousnesses through learning. It is a process of integrative synchronic tuning that can be contrasted with schismogenesis—or progressive (pathological) differentiation.18 Evolution in the biosphere and education in the ethosphere are intertwined in individual ontogenesis.

2.3. Process Theoretical Non-Dualism The theoretical non-dualism enforced by process thought leads straight to the relativization, not the destruction, of Aristotelian substantialism. Whitehead’s goal is not to revoke the category of substance, but to reconstruct its limited applicability from an eventful perspective. It basically amounts to explain mesocosmic substance with the help of societies (or trajectories) of “budlike” events. Interestingly enough, the process standpoint can be characterized as the very one rejected point-blank as unscientific by Aristotle himself: the event or accident (sumbebekos) comes first, essences, substances and the like are secondary. We are looking for an accidental science.

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This brings us to the contrast we have already introduced between neutral monism and neutral pluralism. Process is a very old concept that can take two main guises: weak (trans-formative) and strong (creative). The weak concept—that already speaks in terms of event, flux, instability and the like—puts becoming before being; “being” is understood as the surface effect of ever-changing underlying relationships. This conceptualisation may occur solely at the phenomenological level, i.e., without involving ontological problematization. Whitehead's “London period” is a good example of such an attitude. It is a continuist concept that sees Nature’s unrest as a “perpetual transition into novelty.” Change is morphological: new patterns are made of old ones. With the strong concept, not only is the question raised at the ontological level, but it is now bolder: there cannot be a continuous stream of events progressively disclosing new cosmic features. So Process and Reality’s (1929) “creative advance” claims that genuine novelty can only enter the World in a disruptive, bud-like manner. Its point is to secure true becoming, to make the emergence of the unexpected possible within the fabric of the universe. “Process and individuality require each other” (MT 97): change is creation. Obiter scriptum, let us notice that this brings to the fore two main paths to rethink therapy. Psychotherapy is, no doubt, in need of new foundations: to start with, dualism and materialistic reductionism still cripple its efficacy. The question is whether one requires an open universe— and belief in the possibility of self-creation—in order to make sense of the cure, or not. According to Whiteheadian processism, there is simply no way to represent, and even less to actualize, the expected psychological change without epochality. Total consciousness is liberation. According to transformative processism such as the one advocated by François Roustang,19 the epochal theory is not needed to bypass the deterministic universe and creation is too remnant of outdated metaphysics—spontaneity is more than enough. Realizing Emptiness is liberation.

3. Processism and Spectral Consciousness Unlike substance psychology, process psychology sees consciousness as a function that accepts a third option (tertium datur): we can be both conscious and unconscious at the same time, especially since there is a continuum of levels of awareness possible. We now have all the elements to show how and why panpsychism appears to be the only viable (i.e., coherent and applicable) response to the question “what is consciousness”—whether one accepts the process worldview or not. It should not be forgotten indeed that panspychism has, until the early twentieth century, always been one among the most respected mainstream philosophical positions. Its frequent present-day characterization as the fringe position of an idiosyncratic few is demonstrably false (unless one considers the Scholastics). The best recent study on that topic is David Skrbina's Panpsychism in the West,20 which is an extremely scholarly survey of panspychism from the pre-Socratic philosophers up to and including the present day discussion. The most compelling and relevant part of Skrbina's exposition is his treatment of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where he documents panpsychist thinking,

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especially among respected natural scientists, with a degree of prevalence so widespread that even its present supporters will be surprised. Let us resume our argument with three last points.

3.1. The Field of Consciousness First, radical empiricism claims that all experiences—and only experiences—have to be taken at face value in philosophical speculation. Doing so brings to the fore a variegated cluster of experiences that constitutes the field of consciousness. To quote Whitehead: In order to discover some of the major categories under which we can classify the infinitely various components of experience, we must appeal to evidence relating to every variety of occasion. Nothing can be omitted, experience drunk and experience sober, experience sleeping and experience waking, experience drowsy and experience wide-awake, experience self-conscious and experience selfforgetful, experience intellectual and experience physical […].21 Accepting all these experiences is an essential step but by no means the most problematic. Here is a recent authoritative account of the stakes: There is such overwhelming evidence of unconscious cognition inferred from its conscious products that to deny its occurrence is either an admission of ignorance concerning the origin of conscious thought, or taking the indefensible position that all thought arises in consciousness. In addition to dream, this includes hypnotic and mystical states, creativity, myth, non-intentional moods or objectless states, such as diffuse anxiety or unresolved conflict, drive and motivation, sleepwalking and other dissociative states, “slips of the tongue,” obsessions, compulsions, not to mention the whole “storehouse” of grammar, memory, beliefs and values that account for thought, acts, objects and language. There are also experimental probes of non-conscious processes, such as masking, tachistoscopic presentation (perceptgenetic and related studies), priming, learning during anesthesia, split-brain cases, incidental and procedural learning, conditioning, habit and skill formation. To dismiss the unconscious as physiology avoids the obligation to go beyond negation to a more exact account of the transition to consciousness, its immediate precursors and evolutionary ancestry.22 The speculative function of reason requires indeed that we order all these evidences somehow, i.e., that we make sense of their variety.

3.2. Subliminal Consciousness The key that Whiteheadian process thought promotes in consciousness studies is straightforward: consciousness-zero has to be profiled against a scale that embodies the various degrees of awareness, value and complexity that human experience can reach. There is little doubt that the complete systematization of such a scale is a tricky business: there are serious theoretical problems involved, such as focus, typology and adequacy. Should we focus on the state itself, i.e., on intrinsic value (cf. James’ “immediate delight” and “enormous sense of inner authority and illumination”) or on its consequences, i.e., extrinsic value (cf. “good consequential fruits for life”: spiritual riches, bodily strength, actual dispositions)?23 Typologically speaking, should we proceed a posteriori (this would require an experimental protocol) or a priori (only with speculative categories)? With regard to adequacy of the scale: should it have an individual or an universal scope? (In such a case, how to treat Laing’s metanoia or Plato’s theoria?). Moreover, the issue of measurement is, as usual in psychological matters, highly problematic.24

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Nevertheless, all this does not imply that the definition of the scale’s general appearance is useless. In order to screen the issue, we need to sketch the concept of threshold that has been introduced to operationalize the nucleus/fringe contrast which James used as early as his 1890 Principles. Until the eighteenth century, Western philosophy and psychology have totally insulated the so-called normal state of consciousness from its roots, its lures, its complex variations and its pathologies. From that perspective, consciousness-zero constitutes yet another example of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Instead of understanding consciousness-zero as being part of a continuum, it has been severed from it and although a pure abstraction has been seen as the sole reality. Things have changed gradually, but a double inflection point is noticeable: Leibniz (Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain, 1704) for theory and Mesmer (Schreiben über die Magnetkur, 1775) for practice. Leibniz introduced the contrast between sense-perception and apperception, which will have an important conceptual legacy in Kant, Herbart, Weber, Helmholtz, Fechner, Wundt, Lotze and Münsterberg. Its correlate—Herbart’s threshold of consciousness (Bewussteinschwelle)—is directly responsible for the theoretical discovery of the unconscious realm. For his part, Mesmer developed a new therapeutical practice inspired by a Newtonian speculation on animal “magnetism.” The two conceptual legacies coalesce in Puységur (Du magnétisme animal, 1807) and later in the Salpêtrière school, which saw the completion of its program in Janet’s work. The understanding of the unconscious realm(s), however, remained limited by the complementary premises of two streams: positivistic and nosological. On the one hand, the German scholars of the Psychologie als Wissenschaft type were basically concerned with Kant’s injunction: since psychology does not work with any objective data (measurements), it is not a science (a status that Comte still refused to her in 1870). On the other hand, the French scholars of the psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l'activité humaine type (Richet, Charcot, Binet, Janet) were basically focused on the pathological (hysterical) dimension of corrupted or abnormal forms of consciousness. According to Charcot, hypnotism is abnormal, fundamentally related to hysteria, and consequently useless for therapy. Although the three stages of lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism were soon undermined by Bernheim’s criticisms, consciousness is still understood as substantial. The need for a holistic approach promoting a hygiology manifested itself in two waves. The first is represented by the Nancy school (Liébault, Bernheim, Forel, Liégeois), which normalized hypnotic phenomena and allowed for the existence of a nebulae of states of consciousness centred on the zero-state, and actually in constructive interplay with it. The other is represented by the work of F. W. H. Myers (1841–1901), that recapitulates and supersedes all previous conceptual trajectories with the help of the vertiginous wealth of data disclosed by the works of London’s Society for Psychical Research (founded in 1882). Myers is, in other words, one of the main forgotten actors in the emergence of radical empiricism in psychology; as such, his influence on Bergson and on William James should not be underestimated. According to Taylor, James's attraction to Myers' work lay in his emphasis on growth-oriented aspects of the subconscious—not in psychic phenomena themselves.25 Nor should one forget James Ward (1843–1925), who coined the term “subliminal” in 1886 in the

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course of a discussion of Herbart 26 and who also had a tremendous influence on James. Not insignificant is perhaps the fact that Ward had one very important friend in common with Myers: Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), the prominent Cambridge Apostle who co-founded the Society for Psychical Research.

3.3. Scale of Consciousness and Spectrum of Vigilance The concept of threshold allows the representation of the levels of awareness and of their lability. Although the speculative definition of a meta-criteriology granting the systematization of an univocal spectrum of consciousness is no easy task, it remains reasonable to sketch a rough scale.27 Whiteheadian processism is here in the good company of Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Dionysius and their like. Needless to say that if its attempts do not have much in common with the various quantitative “scales” used by clinicians (such as the Glasgow Coma Scale, the Rancho Los Amigos Scale, the Mini Mental State), some complementarity must be secured. To assess the position of a given experience on the scale of consciousness, the following criteria are worth considering: (i) the experience’s cash-value (a necessary but not sufficient criterion), be it practical (an improved mundane efficacy: a particular behavioural—in the broad sense of the word—change that is valuable) or semantic (retrospective clarification of a past experience); (ii) the level of intellectual and perceptual discernment (the intellectual and perceptual acuteness in terms of discrimination, sharpness and freshness); (iii) the feeling of interconnectedness and duration (the process awareness of actuality in the making and of its relativity); (iv) authenticity (general qualitative features such as emotional intensity or the sense of value and novelty).28 The most important problem lies in the assessment of the grade of the experience independently of (but not necessarily without) measurement. The issue is to do justice to the qualitative dimension of experience—its pure existential tone—together with its quantitative dimension, that is no doubt accessed, but always at the cost of reductionistic working hypothesis, by science. Existence is concrescing, hence sepulchral; being is transitional, hence public. Whitehead works with the qualitative criteria of novelty, beauty, intensity, complexity and value to discriminate the level of the awareness of experience.29 The hierarchy that he technically specifies in Process and Reality is the following: higher-grade actuality, living person (enduring object with conscious knowledge), enduring living object, enduring non-living object (society with personal order), corpuscular society, society (nexus with social order), (non-social) nexus (“electromagnetic” occasions in so-called “empty space”), low-grade actualities. To grasp Whitehead’s intention is more important here than to unfold the full technical apparatus: there is a continuous thread running through all forms of existence in our cosmos. To simplify: the basic—epochal or pulsative—structure of existence of an electron and of a human mind is the same; there is “only” a difference in intensity and in complexity. One can thus speak of a monism in order to make plain the ontological unity of all beings and becomings—but it is a pluralistic monism in the sense that all beings and becomings are epochal or bud-like (which does not amount to say that they are atomic in the Daltonian sense): Consciousness flickers; and even at its brightest, there is a small focal region of

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clear illumination, and a large penumbral region of experience which tells of intense experience in dim apprehension. The simplicity of clear consciousness is no measure of the complexity of complete experience. Also this character of our experience suggests that consciousness is the crown of experience, only occasionally attained, not its necessary base (PR 267). Although Whitehead does not specify a spectrum of vigilance centred upon human’s consciousness-zero, one can cautiously speculate that the following approximation might have been acceptable to him: mystical states (“oceanic” or “theistic”30), paradoxical or generalized wakefulness (hypnotic state), consciousness-zero in the rationalized mesocosm, somnolescence (drowsiness, daydreaming), paradoxical sleep, NREM sleep, coma.31 Whitehead nevertheless warned us: everything that is simple (or clear) is false but usable— while everything that is complex (or obscure) is so to speak adequate but unusable.32 Two questions will suffice to illustrate the limitation of our linear sketch: where exactly could near death experiences fit in such a spectrum; does this scale do justice to Advaita Vedanta’s arguments? First, NDE phenomena display a problematic double dimension: on the one hand, they belong at the bottom of the scale to the extent that physical death is further down than coma; on the other, they are akin to the so-called mystical. Second, Advaita Vedanta proposes a complex set of arguments to show that the most important awareness takes actually place in the NREM state.33 The immediate solution consists in ignoring the fringes of the spectrum, especially since they deal with the ineffable, i.e., the non-rational. The mediate solution is to turn to recent speculations in neuropsychology, such as the microgenetic theory developed by Jason W. Brown, since 1972, after Gestalt theory and the genetic theories of Jean Piaget and Heinz Werner. Microgenesis is the basic pattern of the brain activity;34 it is a wave-like arborisation of processes that unfolds from depth to surface, i.e., from the upper brain stem to the neocortex, from subconscious layers to consciousness-zero. The usual (cognitivist) substantialist paradigm is replaced by a process one: “things” are not “out there” waiting for us to be “discovered,” they arise. Microgenesis basically argues for two main theses: the reversal of the current cognitivoconnectionist interpretation and its rhythmization. It is a reversal because there is progressive lateralization. Four steps pacing the gradual transition from raw flux (where vagueness and complexity dwells) to constructed stasis (displaying clear and distinct objects) are to be distinguished: (i) upper brain stem: pure (unfocused) wakefulness, without self-awareness or even mental content (the corresponding pathology being coma); (ii) limbic structure: image awareness disclosing a plastic and shallow world (cf. dreams and hallucinations); (iii) parietal cortex: object awareness (exteriorized, i.e., spatialized world featured with stable entities) and self-awareness; (iv) neocortex: genuine analytic perception granted by a bifurcation between the perceiver and the perceived (fully independent external world); it is here that consciousness-zero spreads its wings. At each step of this transition (from one mental state to another) that builds a progressive differentiation, sensations act as input and motor responses are generated. On the one hand, sensations shape, carve, limit, select, constrict the process: they are not its building blocks, they do not fill pre-existing categories but bend the process of creation of perceptions. On the other hand, motor outputs corresponding to the level of activity participate in the life of the

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individual, in its actions. The fourfold basic pattern is the pristine pulsation of mental life, sensory input and motor output receive a somewhat contingent and symmetrical status: movement and sensation are analogous to action and perception, in both cases one contributes to the construction of the other. Better: “action and perception are ab origine a single form, a unitary act-object.”35 The pattern repeats itself endlessly (within the boundaries given by the life of an individual, of course). Furthermore, it not only recapitulates previous (partially faded) phases, it retraces phylo-ontogenic growth planes. Cognition is evolution compressed: evolution delivers the structure of behaviour, ontogenesis refines it, and microgenesis operationalizes it. Here we reach the second thesis: microgenesis advocates a rhythmization. The mind/brain state growths and decays; it is essentially pulsatile, flickering. Since the decay is slower than the growth, there is a brief overlapping of phases that accounts for the experienced continuity. From base to surface, the mind/brain state smoothly unfolds before folding back up while being replaced by a new unfoldment. In this context, freedom is being aware on all levels.

4. Panexperientialism and Hypnosis The main consequences of this processualization—be it speculative or clinical—of the concept of consciousness can now be explored. First, at a theoretical level, Whitehead’s panexperientialism is differentiated from panpsychism; second, the nature of hypnosis is processed; and third, socio-political issues are discussed.

4.1. Panexperientialism So far, we have seen that the (subjective, human-centred) spectrum of vigilance corresponds to an (objective) scale of consciousness or scala naturæ: the various types of experiences we enjoy on an everyday basis can be put on a scale and this scale provides evidence for a continuity of levels of (un)consciousness that goes all the way down and up. Thanks to panexperientialism, the two concepts engineer a unipolar reality, so to speak. But how exactly does panexperientialism differ from panpsychism? Let us examine two main sources of difficulties. On the one hand, the prefix “pan” can either refer to the Whole (cf. the concept of WorldSoul) or to all parts (cf. the concept of hylozoism). A complementary—Leibnizian—version of that basic contrast is the one between aggregates and individuals. On the other hand, the root word “psychism” works at various stages or levels that can be heuristically identified and hierarchized in the following way. First, it stands for psyche itself and, in conjunction with the prefix “pan” leads irresistibly in the direction of animism. Second, it stands for subjectivity, i.e., for consciousness-zero or at least for an awareness of some sort: self-experience is its key-word. Third, it stands for some mental activity, which means capacity of abstraction, of valuation, together with some freedom (or spontaneity, depending on how you define your variables). Fourth, it stands for pure experience, in the sense that everything that “is” either experiences or is experienced. Hence a 2 x 4 matrix that allows a sharper understanding of the shades of meaning provided by panpsychism. From that perspective, Whiteheadian panexperientialism is a pluralism that

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defines existence by non-conscious—pure—experience; it does not argue for the universality of some form of psychism or even of mentation. This perspective discloses furthermore an abstractive progression: psychism/subjectivity/ mentality/experience. As usual in philosophy, the use of abstractions is quite paradoxical: it means both the quest for the ultimate generalities—that are not (necessarily) obvious for common sense, i.e., there is a distantiation from immediate experience—and it claims that, by doing so, it reveals the very marrow of any experience whatsoever. A good example is Plato, whose arguments lead him to claim that solely the contemplation of pure forms is meaningful… because they are what is most concrete! This paradox, which stems from the disregard for sense-perception inherited from the Greeks, should lead us to be exceedingly careful in the handling of daring generalities. One could claim nevertheless that the above abstractive progression is indeed at work in James, who first (already in the Principles) embraced a rather non-technical (or intuitive) panpsychism—in 1909, he is still speaking of “mother-sea” or “common reservoir of consciousness”36—and later (in the Essays in Radical Empiricism) spelled the (dry) basics of a panexperientialist framework.37 The quest for higher generalities and the striping of immediate (sometimes naive) experience of its “obvious” and “subjective” features are the two faces of the same coin. At any rate, these various conceptual stops do make sense from the perspective of the “infinite number of degrees of consciousness, following the degrees of complication and aggregation of the primordial mind-dust.”38

4.2. Understanding Hypnosis Hypnosis ranks, with hysteria and dreams, among the main clues that put psychologists on the path of the extra-marginal. Whitehead takes for granted here the works of his Harvard peers. Whereas the Principles of Psychology, because of its topic, refers mostly to Alfred Binet and Pierre Janet,39 the Varieties of Religious Experience, again because of its focus, mainly refers to Myers, while “the wonderful explorations” of Binet, Janet, but also of Étienne Azam, Hippolyte Bernheim, Josef Breuer, Jean Martin Charcot, Richard von Kraft-Ebbing, Auguste Liébeault, Rufus Osgood Mason, Morton Prince, Théodule Ribot, and of course Sigmund Freud are selectively mentioned.40 In order to refresh James’ own endeavours in the field of hypnosis (see especially PP II, ch. XXVII), we propose to use François Roustang’s recent powerful speculations, inspired in part by Léon Chertok and Milton H. Erickson.41 The goal of this section is to display the correlation that exists between the ladder of states of consciousness and the hierarchy of beings. Chertok proposes a few provisional definitions of the hypnotic state stemming from the old— but still actual—concept of animal magnetism42 and insisting on the affective core of the hypnotic trance; it is a natural potentiality that manifests itself already in the relation of attachment to the mother; it is the matrix, the crucible in which all subsequent relations will come within the scope; its essence is very archaic, pre-linguistic, pre-sexual.43 Keeping this in mind, let us first sketch the induction of the hypnotic state (or “trance” as it is called by James). For the sake of the present argument, we can bypass the distinction between self-hypnosis and hypnosis suggested on a willing and co-operative subject by a clinician. The basic conditions for entering hypnosis are fairly simple: it is just a matter of fixation of one’s

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own attention. As one concentrates on a single stimulus by gradually bracketing most of the other afferent stimuli, attention becomes more and more invasive and the waking state gets dramatically transformed: sense-perception is now nuclear, while action becomes cataleptic and reason drifts from its judgmental concern to get closer to affects. Discussing the related topic that is attention, a major mystic of the twentieth century—Simone Weil—puts it this way: “attention consists in the suspension of one’s thought, in letting it available, empty and penetrable by the object; it consists in keeping in oneself the proximity of thought and of the various acquired knowledge that one is usually forced to use, but at a lower level and without contact with it.”44 Hypnosis offers thus an examplification of the individuation/cosmization dialectic. Attention and distraction are two closely interacting perceptive (better: prehensive) phenomena. The hypnotic state is reached by focusing one’s attention on a given stimuli, thereby ignoring all others—but that bracketing somehow leads to an enhanced environmental awareness that amounts to what Whitehead calls a “negative prehension.” What about the characteristics of this gradual relaxation or sleepiness? Hypnotic wakefulness features indeed, as its etymology suggests, “many affinities” (PP II 599) with ordinary sleep: muscular relaxation and redistributed brain activity (patterns that remind us of paradoxical sleep as disclosed in EEG and EMG), anæsthesia and/or hyperæsthesia (although not genuinely sensorial), amnesia (while hypermnesia is possible), perceptive distortions (including hallucinations), increased suggestibility (besides post-hypnotic—i.e., deferred—suggestions) and the possibility of role-enactment and of alteration of the personality. But in addition it features remarkable differences (that James would claim are only of degree) with ordinary sleep; to outline them coherently, it is essential to go through the four (nonnecessary) steps to full hypnotic actualisation. First, the induction of the hypnotic state occurs through perceptive fixedness; fascination starts where ordinary perception stops. Second, the hypnotic state installs indetermination: all customary differences can be abolished, paving the way for confusion, blindness, loss of reference point and possibly feeling of helplessness. Third, the positive side of the dispersed attitude of the attention (PP II 599) is the opening of the possible: resting on this indeterminate waiting, spring dissociations, withdrawal and hallucinations; and with them the possibility of transforming one’s appraisal of life. Everything can be reframed: percepts can be put in a wider context by reverie, absence, or imagination. Fourth, the hypnotic trance displays itself as enhanced vigilance, mobilised power, energy ready to implement action, i.e., to shape the world. All the acquired knowledge is gathered, actively taken in, and one has them at one’s disposal. This explains why the hypnotherapist suggests only what is possible for the patient, s/he reveals the power patients have over their own becoming. Roustang concludes: “to understand something of paradoxical wakefulness, we have to do violence to ourselves and—at a great expense—invent in our culture a new cosmology and a new anthropology.”45 All the consequences of the continuum of the states of consciousness and of the levels of beings, i.e., of bodies, have to be thought. This is exactly what panexperientialism provides: one single onto-psychical field that allows, so to speak, only unwillingly, the bifurcation of subject and object. Since there is one organising and differentiating power endowed by many centre of forces, the mesocosmic perception of an

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object by a subject ceases to be mysterious: in pure experience, subject and object, subject and subject, grow together and reciprocally (com-)prehend themselves.46 Each experience has both a physical and a mental dimension that can be separated only in abstraction. The concreteness of experience, in other words, goes beyond the limited perspectives of “physicality” and “mentality.” After many others, Deleuze has suggested the metaphor of the fold to intuit how such a bimodal ontology is possible; James provides us with a concept.

4.3. Socio-Political Consequences It seems appropriate, by means of conclusion, to evoke the socio-political correlation of the discussion of the nature of consciousness and of its possible technical manipulation (in all senses). Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) is an important figure with that regard, both because of his representativeness of the late Victorian agenda—featuring eugenics and dysgenics (Darwin, Galton, Malthus)—and of the depth of his insights. His paternal grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), the great Victorian biologist; his brother Julian (1887–1975) was the wellknown evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist; and prominent intellectual figures such as J. B. S. Haldane, Bertrand Russell and J. W. N. Sullivan were his friends. Not only has Huxley seen clearly the correlation between substantialistic consciousness, consumerism and totalitarianism, but hypnosis played a key-role in both his dystopic World State of Brave New World (1932) and his utopic Kingdom of Pala in Island (1962).47 Brave New World puts on stage mass-production under three main guises sealing the totalitarian order: eugenics, eupaedia and soma. “A love of nature keeps no factory busy”48: only artificial processes are deemed worthy (most being named with the suffix “-surrogate”). Eugenics is actualized through bio-engineering and contraception. Eupaedia amounts to emotional-engineering and (subliminal) conditioning through hypnopaedia.49 Soma is the omnipotent drug: besides all sorts of surrogates, omnipresent music, tap-tv, feelies (or tactile talkies: films with physiological effects) and other overwhelming presences, the state drug provides peace ad libidum—from a punctual stress-relief to a longer “soma-holiday” from reality. Even religious experiences are conditioned to suppress unwelcome emotions. In sum: human beings are simple instruments for engineers who have been themselves duly programmed; fully-fledged consciousness is to be avoided. The motto of the World State is Community, Identity, Stability. Community means social utility: when we are told that “Everyone belongs to everyone else,”50 it means that the basic rule is purely utilitarian. Identity is the main keyword: thanks to the bio- and emotional-engineering, each citizen is confined within a very precise circle; there is (almost—depending on the grade) no elbow-room given to individual action. Stability is the sine qua non of civilization; total order is guaranteed by water-tight structures. Even science has to be carefully monitored. Stability is the highest social virtue because it leads to lasting happiness. In Island, Huxley insists in a radical empiricist manner that “nothing short of everything will really do.”51 The total consumerism has been substituted for a scientific culture of awareness secured by a synergy between Western science and Buddhist culture that especially emphasizes the presence (attention) to the present moment: “here and now boys.”52 Its three main tools are birth control, holistic education and moshka. Birth control is indispensable to avoid the

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Malthusian explosion of misery on the island: it is achieved through the yoga of love, contraception and, more curiously, given the context, artificial insemination.53 Holistic education54 works on all fronts, verbal and non-verbal, prevention and cure,55 consciousness and subliminal awareness. It is in this context that use is made of hypnosis,56 described as “psychological facts of applied metaphysics”57 and of spiritual exercises. Philosophy qua symbol-manipulation is of no use to attain paradoxical wakefulness.58 Moksha59 is the community drug that is used on special, ritualized occasions to open the way of liberation from the prison of oneself and to encounter reality, which is described as luminous bliss, timelessly present Event, perpetual creation.60 In sum, human beings are treated as unique individuals; total consciousness is the key to individual and social harmony. The specular motto can be spelled with the same categories. Community means now that everyone and everything belongs to everyone and everything else. “Elementary ecology leads straight to elementary Buddhism”—and vice-versa. No means but only ends—the ultimate one being the fundamental global harmony. Identity refers to true individuals; maximum elbow room is provided for each person to find peace; no complete adjustment is expected: even to a sane society, it would not be sound. Stability names peacefulness harmony, perfectly indifferent transience. Expect the best, prepare for the worst could be Huxley’s own conclusion. His two major works make clear, at least from the perspective of the present argument, that the question of the nature and conditions of possibility of consciousness, far from being a puzzle for idle philosophers, engage our entire existence and especially our socio-political status. To do justice to the wealth of our experience, we need to adopt a systemic understanding of knowledge and action that boils down to two correlates: the empirical origin of cognitive functions and the fact that cognition serves to engage with the world, not to represent it. As Whitehead says: “we cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought” (SMW 187). If experience is broader than cognition, it becomes urgent to adopt a critical panpsychist onto-epistemology. Such seems the price to pay to make sure that no worldview endangers the Ur-doxastic vital—carnal—link we maintain with the world at large.

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Notes 1

A first draft of this article was read at Action theories: Social action, Theory of Mind, Philosophy of Action, Religious Action, International and Interdisciplinary Conference, Pontifical Salesian University, Rome, 6-8 October 2006. 2 See A Pluralistic Universe’s concept of “non-rational.” 3 George Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded The Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities (1854), New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1958, cf. Chapter XV, “On the Aristotelian Logic,” pp. 174 sq. 4 Metaphysics Beta, 4. 5 Metaphysics Gamma, 3; Posterior Analytics I, 77a10-22. 6 Metaphysics Gamma, 7; Posterior Analytics I, 77a22-25. 7 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. 8 A careful analysis would be needed in both cases. On the one hand, the development of Husserl’s concept of intentionality is complex and it progressively leaves the scene for the concepts of temporality and intersubjectivity (cf. J. English, Sur l'intentionnalité et ses modes, PUF, 2006, pp. 155 sq. and Jean-Marie Breuvart, “Husserl et Whitehead, sur l’Intentionnalité,” in Michel Weber et Pierfrancesco Basile (sous la direction de), Chromatikon III. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès—Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2007, pp. 45-56. On the other hand, Whitehead’s appeal to Bradley in the Gifford context seems quite rhetorical. 9 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind [1971]. One-volume edition, San Diego, New York, London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1978. 10 David Ray Griffin and Huston Smith, Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1989, esp. pp. 90-91. 11 B. Russell, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1956, p. 39. 12 It is worth highlighting that some Aristotelo-Thomists claim that the concept of substance has to be interpreted in a processual manner: cf. James W. Felt S.J., “Whitehead's Misconception of “Substance” in Aristotle,” Process Studies, Vol. 14, N°4, 1985, pp. 224-236; Reto Luzius Fetz, Whitehead. Prozeßdenken und Substanzmetaphysik, Freiburg und München, Verlag Karl Alber, 1981; William Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many. A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. 13 “Our original sensible totals are, on the one hand, subdivided by discriminative attention, and, on the other, united with other totals,—either through the agency of our own movements, carrying our senses from one part of space to another, or because new objects come successively and replace those by which we were at first impressed. The 'simple impression' of Hume, the 'simple idea' of Locke are both abstractions, never realized in experience. Experience, from the very first, presents us with concreted objects, vaguely continuous with the rest of the world which envelops them in space and time, and potentially divisible into inward elements and parts. These objects we break asunder and reunite. We must treat them in both ways for our knowledge of them to grow; and it is hard to say, on the whole, which way preponderates. But since the elements with which the traditional associationism performs its constructions—'simple sensations,' namely—are all products of discrimination carried to a high pitch, it seems as if we ought to discuss the subject of analytic attention and discrimination first. The noticing of any part whatever of our object is an act of discrimination” (The Principles of Psychology [1890]. Authorized Edition in two volumes, New York, Dover Publications, 1950, I , p. 487-).

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Cf. James’ Essays in Radical Empiricism [Posthumously published by Ralph Barton Perry], New York, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912, p. 145 and our next section. 15 William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism [Posthumously published by Ralph Barton Perry], New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912, p. 3. Ernst Mach is an important precursor of the concept of pure experience. His Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung Historish-Kritisch Dargestellt (1883) and especially his Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886). (James visited Mach and Stumpf in the summer of 1882.) 16 “Through feelings we become acquainted with things, but only by our thoughts do we know about them. Feelings are the germ and starting point of cognition, thoughts the developed tree. The minimum of grammatical subject, of objective presence, of reality known about, the mere beginning of knowledge, must be named by the word that says the least. Such a word is the interjection, as lo! there! ecce! voilà! or the article or demonstrative pronoun introducing the sentence, as the, it, that” (The Principles of Psychology, op. cit., I, p. 222). 17 From koinos, meaning “common,” “public.” 18 We borrow of course Bateson’s term: cf., e.g., “Culture Contact and Schismogenesis,” Man XXXV, 1935, pp. 178-183, reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, op. cit., pp. 61-72. See also Cornélius Castoriadis, L'institution imaginaire de la société, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1975 (The Imaginary Institution of Society, Translated by Kathleen Blamey, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press). 19 See infra our discussion of the status of hypnosis. 20 David Skrbina, Panpsychism in the West, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2005. The depth of Skrbina's scholarship in this area is astonishing: the cumulative weight of his documentations makes it impossible to deny the seriousness of panpsychism as a philosophical position, and his erudition makes it impossible not to take his own book seriously. His treatment of Whiteheadian panpsychism is, however, somewhat weaker. 21 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, New York, Macmillan Company and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1933. Reprint: New York, The Free Press, 1967, p. 226; cf. p. 222 and of course James’ Principles of Psychology, op. cit., I, 232 22 Jason W. Brown, forthcoming, Ch 8. 23 This criteriology is inspired by William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902, New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta, Longman, Green, and Co., 1902, pp. 15-19. 24 Cf., e.g., the Glasgow Coma Scale, that is based on motor responsiveness, verbal performance, and eye opening to appropriate stimuli: G. Teasdale and B. Jennet, “Assessment of coma and impaired consciousness: a practical scale,” Lancet 2, 1974, pp. 81-84. 25 Eugene I. Taylor [Reconstructed by], William James on Exceptional Mental States. The 1896 Lowell Lectures, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons (Amherst, University of Massachussetts Press, 1984), 1982. 26 James Ward, “Psychology,” in Thomas Spencer Baynes (ed.), Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., 1886, vol. XX, pp. 37-85. & Johann Friedrich Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neugegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik [1824]. 27 Cf. our “La conscience spectrale chez James et Whitehead,” in Guillaume Garreta et Mathias Girel (dir.), William James et l’empirisme radical. 1904-2004, Éditions du CNRS, forthcoming. 28 “The subjective aim … is at intensity of feeling (a) in the immediate subject, and (b) in the relevant future” (PR 27). “Each occasion exhibits its measure of creative emphasis in proportion to its measure of subjective intensity” (PR 47). 29 Cf., e.g., PR 177. 30 The rational discrimination, apart from the hierarchization, of impersonal and personal mystical experiences is a problem that would send us straight back to Aquinas and Eckhardt. 31 A more detailed argument can be found in M. Weber, “James’s Mystical Body in the Light of the Transmarginal Field of Consciousness,” in Sergio Franzese & Felicitas Krämer (eds.),

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Fringes of Religious Experience. Cross-perspectives on William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2007, pp. 7-37. 32 “Seek simplicity and distrust it” (The Concept of Nature [1920], Cambridge University Press, 1964, p. 163). “Exactness is a fake” (“Immortality,” in Essays in Science and Philosophy, 1947, p. 96). 33 Arvind Sharma, The Experiential Dimension of Advaita Vedanta, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1993. 34 The term “microgenesis” was originally coined to render Heinz Werner’s 1956 Aktualgenese, referring to the process by which a mental state is formed in the present moment. Cf. Michel Weber, “Alfred North Whitehead's onto-epistemology of perception,” New Ideas in Psychology, 24, 2006, pp. 117-132. 35 Jason W. Brown, The Self-Embodying Mind. Process, Brain Dynamics, and the Conscious Present [Revised and expanded version of Self and Process, Brain States and the Conscious Present, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1991], Barrytown, Station Hill, 2002, p. 9; cf. p. 123. 36 William James, “Confidences of a ‘Psychical Researcher’” [1909], in Essays in Psychical Research. Fred. H. Burkhardt, gen. ed.; Fredson Bowers, text. ed.; Ignas K. Skrupskelis, ass. ed., Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1986, pp. 361-375. 37 Griffin proposed the concept of “panexperientialism” in 1977 to name Whitehead’s attitude: cf. David Ray Griffin, “Whitehead’s Philosophy and Some General Notions of Physics and Biology,” in John B. Cobb, Jr. & David Ray Griffin (eds.), Mind in Nature. Essays on the Interface of Science and Philosophy, Washington D. C., University Press of America, 1977. For a more recent discussion, see David Ray Griffin (ed.), Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy, op. cit. 38 James, William, The Principles of Psychology, op. cit., Volume One, p. 149. 39 Cf. Alfred Binet, La psychologie du raisonnement. Recherches expérimentales par l'hypnotisme, Paris, Éditions Alcan, Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine, 1886; Pierre Janet, L’automatisme psychologique, Paris, Éditions Alcan, 1889. 40 Cf. VRE 115, 125, 233-5, 240-241, 269-270, 401, 413, 484, 501, 516. 41 See especially François Roustang’s Qu'est-ce que l'hypnose? (Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1994). 42 The concept, of course present in PP, has been recently re-invigorated by Boris Cyrulnik (cf., e.g., his L’ensorcellement du monde, Paris, Éditions Odile Jacob, 1997). 43 “On peut seulement affirmer que c'est au niveau de l'affect, c'est-à-dire de la réalité la plus évidente, puisqu'elle est de l'ordre du vécu, et la plus difficile à comprendre. […] C'est un quatrième état de l'organisme, actuellement non objectivable (à l'inverse des trois autres: veille, sommeil, rêve: une sorte de potentialité naturelle, de dispositif inné prenant ses racines jusque dans l'hypnose animale, caractérisé par des traits qui renvoient apparemment aux relations prélangagières d'attachement de l'enfant et se produisant dans des situations où l'individu est perturbé dans ses rapports avec l'environnement. L'hypnose garde sa spécificité par rapport à la suggestion, bien que celle-ci, sous quelque forme qu'elle se manifeste, soit nécessaire à la production de celle-là. La suggestion nous apparaît ainsi comme la relation primaire, fondamentale entre deux êtres, la matrice, le creuset dans lequel viendront s'inscrire toutes les relations ultérieures. Nous dirons encore qu'elle est une entité psycho-socio-biologique indissociable, agissant à un niveau inconscient très archaïque, pré-langagier, pré-sexuel, et médiatisant l'influence affective que tout individu exerce sur un autre” (Léon Chertock, L'Hypnose. Théorie, pratique et technique. Préface de Henry Ey. Édition remaniée et augmentée [1959], Paris, Éditions Payot, 1989, pp. 260-261). Cf. Isabelle Stengers et Léon Chertok, Le Cœur et la Raison. L'hypnose en question, de Lavoisier à Lacan, Paris, Éditions Payot, Sciences de l'homme, 1989 (Translated as A Critique of Psychoanalytic Reason: Hypnosis as a Scientific Problem from Lavoisier to Lacan by Martha Noel Evans). Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1992) and Léon Chertok et Isabelle Stengers, “Therapy and the Ideal of Chemistry,” Nature, Vol. 329, 1987, 768 sq. 44 “L’attention consiste à suspendre sa pensée, à la laisser disponible, vide et pénétrable à l’objet, à maintenir en soi-même la proximité de la pensée, mais à un niveau inférieur et sans contact

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avec elle, les diverses connaissances acquisés qu’on est forcé d’utiliser” (Simone Weil, Attente de Dieu, Paris, La Colombe, Éditions du vieux colombier, 1957, pp. 76-77). 45 “Pour comprendre quelque chose de la veille paradoxale, il faut nous faire violence et inventer dans notre culture, à grands frais, une nouvelle cosmologie et une nouvelle anthropologie” (Qu'est-ce que l'hypnose? op. cit., pp. 98-99). 46 “Grâce à cette puissance qui organise et différencie, représentée par l'anticipation, toute une série de faux problèmes tombent d'eux-mêmes. Il n'y a plus à se demander comment un sujet peut percevoir un objet, puisque l'un et l'autre grandissent ensemble et s'appréhendent dans une action réciproque, ni comment un humain peut en comprendre un autre, puisqu'ils n'existent dès l'origine que par cette compréhension, ni comment peuvent se tisser entre eux des interrelations: l'identification et le lien affectif n'ont dû être inventés que par la supposition erronée que les individus d'abord confondus, ont été ensuite séparés” (Qu'est-ce que l'hypnose? op. cit., p. 87). 47 Aldous Leonard Huxley, Brave New World, 1932; With an introduction by David Bradshaw, Hammersmith, HarperCollins, 1994; Island. A Novel, London, Chatto & Windus, 1962. 48 BNW 19. 49 “Sleep-teaching” (BNW 21, 24, 38, 91, 101, 234) or emotional-engineering (BNW 58); “engineer into feeling” (BNW 163): (subliminal) conditioning (BNW 214) and scientific propaganda. Nonrationality of the “words without reason” (BNW 24; cf. 23). 50 BNW 38. 51 Isl, 141. 52 Isl. 21 & passim. 53 Isl. 187. 54 Isl. 203. 55 Isl. 68-9, 132, 141, 150, 208-9, 220. 56 Isl. 2, 32, 59, 93, 95, 123, 180, 203. 57 Isl. 76, 221. 58 Isl. 185. 59 Meaning “liberation, release,” moksha is a toadstool, mescaline-type substance that works holistically, unlike any pharmaceutical drug (Isl. 135 sq., 168, 261, 263-286). 60 Cf., respectively, Isl. 263 and Isl. 269.

The Experimental Examination of Process Gudmund Smith

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The present chapter attempts to illustrate the Whiteheadian concept of process within the frame of a psychological laboratory. The phenomenological (or macro) concept of process directs attention to a mutually connected series of events over time referring to one and the same subject and occasion. Even if only a limited section of such a series is cut out for study it is important to determine where the cut is made. Usually, however, the experimenter would prefer to include the entire process, from beginning to end, in the study. These two endpoints thus should be carefully defined. Ontogeny may, of course, be considered as a process. Heinz Werner was intrigued by the formal correspondence between ontogeny and microgeny, the latter termed microgenesis in his vocabulary (Werner, 1956). For the present occasion, however, we have to focus on processes unfolding in a discernible present, open to inspection and skillful measurement. Many possibilities have been brought to notice and tried. Two groups of methods have been used to study these microprocesses: (1) adaptive serials and (2) perceptgeneses. Adaptive serials are supposed to reflect how an individual adjusts to the demands of a new and strange situation, the process being registered with predetermined intervals. Perceptgeneses are reconstructions of the mostly hidden pulses assumed to construct our outside world. The reconstruction is accomplished by fragmenting the stimulus presentation. After a brief glimpse of the stimulus, just at the threshold of visibility, the viewer reports what he/she has seen. After a prolonged second presentation the viewer reports again, and so on until correct recognition. The series of reports constitutes a perceptgenesis.

1. Adaptive Serials The usefulness of a serial approach was discovered long ago in experiments with mirrordrawing (Smith, 1952). A situation had been arranged where participants were requested to draw diagonals in squares, first using direct vision, thereafter viewing their movements in a mirror. The difference in drawing time between the two conditions was planned to be used as a measure of flexibility, as also assessed by seasoned clinicians. There was no correlation. But if, instead, you assumed a serial perspective, i.e., tried to follow how the initial drawing difficulties, be they small or considerable, were overcome as the subject tried again and again, a sizeable correlation could be ascertained between experimental and general behavior. People judged as inflexible or “adhesive” improved more slowly in the mirror-drawing situation.

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Professor emeritus, Department of Psychology, Lund University, Box 213, 22100. Lund, Sweden

[email protected].

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1.1. Visual Afterimages The distinctive character of serial change was first discovered in experiments with twins and projected visual afterimages. It was the change in size from one measurement to the following one that correlated within pairs of identical twins but not within pairs of fraternal, same-sexed twins (Smith, 1949). Afterimage serials used for diagnostic purposes, with compulsive neurotics particularly in focus, were later published by Kragh (1955). He was able to define when an adaptive process came to an end: this was when directed change ceased and turned into randomized change or relative stability. Visual afterimages have continued to be important in process research over the years. Since the experimenters have made use of a standardized contrivance, one description of method will be sufficient. As their stimulus they have used a schematized red face projected on a dimly lit grey, transparent screen placed 40cm from the viewer. After fixation of the face for 20 seconds the screen was moved to a distance of 60 cm where the projected afterimage was measured by two movable rulers, handled by the viewer. The color was also described and the intensity estimated according to a scale demonstrated beforehand. The experiment was usually repeated 15-20 times (only 10 times with children). Traces of lingering afterimages were extinguished between trials. A review of a long series of experiments was published in Smith (2001). These experiments have clearly demonstrated that visual afterimages are not fixed products of a stimulated retina but depend, to a high degree, on how they are appreciated by the participant. This state of things makes serial experimentation possible and fruitful. Not until the viewer has handled this subjective phenomenon in the world of objects (screen, rulers, etc.) will he/she be able to realize its true nature; in the case of cognitively immature children, never during the course of the experiment. Afterimages produced by immature children differ from those of most adults. The color does not change from positive to negative, i.e., from red to blue-green in most of our experiments, and the size of the image does not expand in relation to an increased projection distance. If, thus, the child cannot clearly distinguish between the stimulus and the afterimage, the latter is likely to retain color as well as size when the projection distance is increased, just as a picture glued to the screen would do. If nine-year-old children were told that the experimenter was able, by means of some abstruse trick, to produce an afterimage when they fixated the projection screen, the immature characteristics of the images were enhanced for the children who told that the images were the result of processes in their own eyes, i.e., not at all objective phenomena. It was even possible to influence adult participants in a similar manner, and not only unsophisticated persons. When, in another study, medical students were instructed, in a semi-professional vocabulary, that afterimages were either strictly peripheral phenomena, products of the retina or, in a comparison group, influenced by neural centers adjacent to areas where personality characteristics were determined, distinctly different afterimage products emerged. The retinal instruction group limited the scope for individual involvement in afterimage production while the centralized theory facilitated such reactions. The latter images resembled the variegated, sometimes primitive, early reports in normal afterimage serials while the former ones more

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resembled the late, stereotyped products in the same series. The instructional influence, naturally, interacted with the participants’ personal characteristics. A result, particularly interesting for general process theory, emerged when the experimenters tried to cause regressions by means of extraneous stimulation. An afterimage serial produced by means of the arrangements described above usually lasted 15-20 trials from beginning to end, the latter defined as the termination of structured change. If a loud signal was introduced, after seven trials the serial pattern from 1 to 7 was repeated, although in an abbreviated version. But when, in a new study, the signal was sounded late in the series, no such regression could be registered. Once established, the distinctive character of the process could not be repeated. Given the susceptibility of afterimages to various individual characteristics it is not surprising that afterimage data have been used as diagnostic aids. Anxiety can thus be reflected in exaggeratedly large and/or dark images. But such manifestations may also be mitigated by defensive manoevers. One such intervention is change of afterimage color from blue-green to green, a hue resistant to over-saturation and blackening. In other cases the edges of the image seem fuzzy, thus preventing correct size estimation. The most drastic defensive measure is, of course, to prevent the image from appearing. It remains to be asked whether serials as these correspond to the perceptgeneses produced by methods to be treated later in the present chapter. One rather drastic occasion of parallelisms concerns intermittent regressions in protocols of schizophrenic patients. In afterimage serials these regressions manifest themselves as sudden lapses from mature to immature images. In their perceptgeneses the progress from early to late interpretations is suddenly interrupted by empty phases, called zerophases, or by returns to interpretations registered in the introductory phases of the microprocess, phases often stamped by obviously personal reminiscences.

1.2. Spiral Aftereffects Aftereffects of perceived movement have been utilized by Andersson (e.g. Andersson & Bengtsson, 1986). In the typical laboratory situation the participant is placed facing an arithmetic, black spiral with 2 1/2 turns drawn on a white background. Its diameter is 180 mm. Rotating 100 rpm it seems to contract inwards. After fixating it for 45 sec the participant is asked to look at a stationary circle, which replaces the spiral. The effect is an expanding or approaching circle. The participant has to indicate when this effect ceases. An ordinary test session, preceded by two trials for instruction purposes, includes ten trials. These ten duration values serve as the foundation for a number of indices characterizing the aftereffect serial. Initial duration level refers to the first two trials and final level to the last two. In accordance with the statistical treatment of data from the Serial Color-Word Test (S-CWT, cf. below) two further units were used to describe the variability. R thus represents the linear change over ten trials and V the residual variability, not ascribable to linear increase or decrease of duration values. Andersson (1983) has presented a comprehensive theoretical background to his research using the Serial Aftereffect Technique (SAT), a background colored by a psychoanalytic approach to ontogeneses, anxiety and defense against anxiety. Moving closer to his data base he presumes that aftereffect duration reproduces the balance between intraceptive and extraceptive

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determinants of the viewer’s perceptual world. Denial of the subjective contributions to the aftereffect results in brief, often hardly noticeable durations, whereas long durations represent the opposite tendency, allowing free rein to subjective determinants. Medium durations thus represent a stabilized balance between self and non-self. Like the visual afterimages, the spiral aftereffects are sensitive to anxiety. Long effects were, according to Andersson, typical of participants with pronounced symptoms of anxiety. But in a study of fear of flying Amnér (1997) found that individuals with an insufficient differentiation of self and non-self, i.e., individuals at both the extreme ends of duration values, were more afflicted with fear of flying than individuals with medium values. Thus even total suppression of self factors was detrimental to handling fear of flying in a mature manner. Only those with medium values were capable of differentiating self from non-self, the latter represented by the aircraft. In a similar vein Hansson and Rydén (1987) found that a gradual detachment of self from non-self in the course of aftereffect serials was typical of individuals who in another task were most successful in overcoming the distorting effects of a visual illusion.

1.3. The Serial Color-Word Test (S-CWT) This is a method designed to find out how test subjects, step by step, accommodate to a contradiction. The basic idea dates back to E.R. Jaensch´s laboratory in Marburg which was later on exploited by Stroop (1935). The arrangement used here was first tried by Smith and Klein (1953). The test material consists of 100 color-words (red, blue, green, yellow) printed in incongruent hues (blue in red, green, or yellow, but not in blue, etc.). The participant is asked to name the color and disregard the printed word. The main unit is the time taken to name the color of 20 color-words. This gives five time values to the test sheet. The test is presented altogether five times. Instead of using the time difference between naming a series of color slabs, on the one hand, and the color of incongruent color-words, on the other, as was the original purpose of the test, the serial approach implies a change in the focus of interest, to a study of how, over a series of attempts, the participant endeavors to master the introductory difficulties, be they modest or considerable. For this purpose the constructors used the basic statistics mentioned above to distinguish between two kinds of variation, one implying linear change (R), i.e. gradually increasing or decreasing time values, and the other the residual (V) when the linear variation was subtracted from the gross variance. These two numerical values were calculated for each of the five subtrials. The participant was thus clocked for five time values in a subtrial. The two different aspects of variations in naming speed could then be combined to represent four adaptive types: low variation in both dimensions, low linear variation but high residual variation, etc. The dominating adaptive style over the five trials was estimated. In addition, the change over time including the entire sequence was calculated utilizing the same kind of typology as in the case of the subtests. This overall treatment could reveal if, for instance, an initial tendency to decelerating naming speed in the early subtrials was eventually replaced by a more irregular variation, or vice versa, and so on.

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The test situation, including instructions and statistical treatment, are described in detail in the manual (Smith, Nyman, Hentschel, & Rubino, 2001) as are also attempts at utilizing the test results for diagnostic purposes. In the present context I will limit the presentation to two groups of comparisons between test data and clinical diagnostics: (1) the intermittent collapse of adaptive efforts in patients with psychosis; and (2) the adaptive peculiarities of hypertensive 68year-old men who later suffer from either heart or brain infarction. The test protocols of schizophrenic and other psychotic patients were characterized by sudden increases in reading time values as if the participant’s command of the test situation had completely collapsed. This adaptive style parallels that described above for psychotics taking the afterimage test and, in addition, the intermittent anxiety shocks breaking through their perceptgeneses. What for a period of time has seemed relatively normal in the adaptive process of these people is abruptly thwarted by an ostensible blocking of their grip of the situation. In the afterimage test the change could be defined as regression. Here it seems like an involuntary loss of reality control, with no outside disturbance to account for it. Lena Andre-Pettersson et al. (2003) used S-CWT data in a group of 68-year-old men suffering from hypertension to predict their fate five years later. It was possible, on the basis of different adaptive styles, to foresee if they would either suffer a cardiac or cerebral injury, in many cases with fatal consequences. In both instances the participant intermittently demonstrated his ability to resume a normal, efficient adaptive style, but in the course of the adaptive process this proved to be impossible. The heart infarction people aggravated an adaptive style reflecting emotional problems, the cerebral infarction people a style more closely reflecting stress problems. Besides these more dramatic instances of the diagnostic power of the S-CWT numerous studies have demonstrated correlations between, for instance, more ordinary variations in adaptive style and various forms of neurotic disturbances. Even perfectly normal variations in cognitive style can be traced in the S-CWT curves.

2. Perceptgeneses The basics for the reconstruction of microgeneses (here: perceptgeneses) were outlined in the preceding text. Some requirements should be particularly underlined. Stimuli have to be meaningful: geometrical figures devoid of meaning or projective test figures with no definite signification, e.g., Rorschach cards, are more or less unavailing. The perceptgenesis needs a definable end stage. Stimuli should also be fresh to the viewer; familiar motifs produce truncated geneses or none at all. We have also learned that motifs made by professional artists are more fertile than amateurish products. Finally, dominating details may distort the reconstruction and make the definition of an end-stage difficult. There is a tacit agreement between constructors of various perceptgenetic tests to unveil the process in 15-20 steps, starting just below the visibility threshold and ending when the viewer has given a correct report of the stimulus picture. But methods of reporting may vary. In the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT) the viewer is asked to draw or, at least, sketch what he/she has seen or glimpsed on the projection screen. The Meta-Contrast Technique (MCT) has no such

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requirement, mainly because the original test subjects, psychiatric patients, were often unwilling even to try their hand on a piece of paper. Common to all methods is an aim to represent the reporting in detail and to avoid the use of predetermined response alternatives. The techniques of presentation vary somewhat between different tests and have also changed with the introduction of new electronic devices. This topic will be touched upon briefly with the test presentations below.

2.1. How to Understand a Perceptgenesis? A perceptgenesis is not simply a series of reports differing only in degree of resemblance to a common stimulus theme. Early impressions in a series of presentations are not only more indistinct and uncertain, they are also more ambiguous, comprising more significations than impressions close to the endstage. The course of a perceptgenesis thus implies a progressive disqualification of competing developmental possibilities. At the same time the genesis gradually abandons its close contact with the personal reminiscences and becomes more objective, independent of the viewer’s private memories (see particularly Brown, 1991). This qualitative change over the course of a perceptgenesis entails a differential interpretation of early and late signs. Early signs must be considered as more fundamental, more typical of enduring response tendencies, late signs as more marked by the present stimulus context.

2.2. The Creative Functioning Test (CFT) The stimuli used in this test are only mildly provocative, still lifes drawn by engaged artists, and thus intended to produce an optimal variety of interpretations. The testing starts in the usual perceptgenetic way with gradually prolonged exposure times and carefully recorded descriptions. When the viewer has reached the final, correct interpretation of the stimulus theme, the procedure is turned upside-down, the viewer not knowing. In the second half of the testing the viewer is thus presented with gradually abbreviated exposures of the stimulus. There are two main response avenues in the second portion of the CFT. One is to stick to the interpretation now known to be the correct one, the other is to gradually return to more idiosyncratic alternatives, often the same as used in the first section of the test. It was assumed that the latter avenue would be typical of creative persons. This proposition, using a more refined categorization, has been tried in a variety of samples including scientists, children and adolescents, professional artists, etc., and compared with carefully selected criteria (see the manual by Smith & Carlsson, 2000). In this context it may be particularly instructive to consider the qualitative difference between successive stages of the perceptgenesis. By returning to early interpretations of the motif the viewer attains an increased associative freedom, often termed metaphoric logic as compared to the more restricted, abstract logic of late process stages. By abandoning the correct interpretation the person not only avoids the risk of automatizing his/her constructive processes but also gains the advantage of a richer context of alternative process trajectories.

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2.3. Tracing Defensive Strategies In spite of waning interest in psychoanalysis, its theory of defense has attracted lasting and even increasing interest, as attested by a recent survey (Hentschel et al., 2004). Process researchers have been active in the area for almost half a century. By introducing threatening stimulation in perceptgenetic experiments they hoped to be able to represent existential problems in the miniature world of the laboratory. If it could be demonstrated that the manner in which a test person handles a threatening stimulus motif reflected his handling of experienced danger in real life, a set of efficient diagnostic tools could be constructed. The DMT (Kragh, 1985) is the method most closely associated with classical psychoanalysis. The typical stimulus depicts a centrally placed young person, supposed to represent the viewer and called the hero in the manual, and a more peripherally placed threatening figure. To begin with the DMT was intended for sifting out unsuitable fighter plane pilots. The assumption guiding this grandiose attempt was that an excess of defensive reactions, particularly defenses of an inflexible variety, would hamper a pilot’s ability to master a dangerous situation. The assumption proved to be promising and led to further applications in other fields, e.g., handling of automobiles and lorries (Svensson & Trygg, 1994). A more decisive step into clinical psychology was taken by Elisabet Sundbom and her associates at Umeå University (e.g. Sundbom et al., 2002). Among defensive varieties let us just pick out repression implying that the threat lurking behind the hero is made impotent by turning it into a lifeless object. The MCT represents a different device for introducing a threat into an innocuous situation. Here the viewer is first adapted to the picture of a young person sitting in a room with a prominent window in the background (or, in a parallel version, a young person standing beside an opening in a wall). After that a threatening face is made gradually more visible in the window, being introduced perceptgenetic fashion. This required two combined tachistoscopes until the entire test could be computerized and the stimuli presented on a TV screen. Already from the beginning MCT was intended for clinical application. Even if a representative defensive repertoire could be mapped by this test, the sign variants covered a broader specter, including depressive stereotypy, projective transformations and psychotic regressions. The MCT is described in detail in a manual (Smith, Johnson, Almgren, & Johanson, 2002). In a typical psychotic protocol the response series is suddenly interrupted by impressions of chaos or total blackness, a type of regression also described in the afterimage section above.

3. Concluding Remarks The transfer of process in real life to a manageable laboratory situation is no utopian scheme but an attainable possibility. Several alternative devices for making the transfer possible have been outlined in the preceding text. Most of them were tried in extensive investigations and even adapted for practical use. There are two major types of processes offered for laboratory application: adaptive serials and perceptgeneses. Although they represent differing perspectives to process psychology, adaptive serials depicting them from without and perceptgeneses also

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from within, they share important formal characteristics. For a comprehensive description of process the two approaches might be combined. Although the validity of several of the process methods has proved to be high, the reservations expressed by some critics should not be ignored. The most salient hesitation about processoriented tests concerns the possibly distorting influence of the methodology itself. It does not seem natural, for instance, for a process to be incessantly interrupted for reporting or measurement. But this kind of criticism seems to take for granted that processes in a supposedly natural condition advance undisturbed. It has long been known, instead, that perception relies on repeated fixations, not on a long, undisturbed gaze. But the possibility that the experimental methodology may generate artefacts rather than the real thing should always be kept in mind. The reader may have felt a certain confusion about the terminology, particularly about the use of microgenesis and perceptgenesis interchangeably. The term microgenesis was introduced by Heinz Werner as a substitute for the German Aktualgenese. It should be understood within a frame of reference of general psychology. Neither Werner nor his predecessor in Germany, Friedrich Sander, had any inclination for speculation in the orbit of personality. When in the year of 1960 Ulf Kragh and the present author suggested, in Sander’s home, that psychoanalysis might be a frame of reference for Aktualgenese, Sander was visibly shocked. Perceptgenesis, on the other hand, was a term reserved for a theory about perception as a peep-hole into personality. The connection between perception and personality was developmental, as originally stressed by Kragh. A perceptgenesis thus ideally proceeds from stages enclosed by personal experiences to a final stage of pure perception. This agrees with Brown’s (1991) approach. Users of process methods as diagnostic tools are at risk of confronting a particular danger— that of converting process characteristics into substances. A particular sign of defense in the DMT or MCT, say isolation, may thus be designated as a trait in the subject’s personality outfit. There is nothing inherently wrong with realizing that isolation will probably recur as a typical behavior in other situations. But substance thinking is likely to block further analysis of the role of a particular behavioral style in the broader context of personality, an analysis necessary for the practical utilization of diagnostic findings. Substance thinking may seem to be an almost irresistible temptation. But in the long run it will tend to obstruct the development of functional theorizing in psychology, dealing with growth and reality construction.

Process Neuropsychology, Microgenetic Theory and Brain Science Maria Pachalska and Bruce Duncan MacQueen i

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1. Introduction The last decade of the twentieth century and the first years of the new century have seen enormous advances in our scientific knowledge about the human brain, based in part on some major technological advances. New techniques first developed experimentally in the 1980s to examine brain dynamics, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or positron emission tomography (PET), have become more widely available. Thus we are no longer limited to making “still photos” of the brain with conventional MRI or CT scans; now we can make “motion pictures” of changes taking place in the brain from moment to moment. It can be demonstrated, with a high level of confidence, that in the presence of a specific kind of stimulus, a specific area of the brain receives more blood, or more oxygen, or displays more electrical activity, or produces more metabolites—all of which at least implies that this part of the brain reacts selectively to this kind of stimulus. Given all this new technology, we would reasonably expect to know a great deal more about the brain than we did in 1990, when the “International Decade of the Brain” began. In the popular press, and in some publications for general readers, one often encounters claims to the effect that in a short time the brain will be “mapped” as thoroughly as the human genome is now, so that we will (putatively) know exactly which mental and emotional functions are performed by which clusters of neurons in the central nervous system. The errors committed by the phrenologists of the nineteenth century, who imagined that they could measure a person’s character by examining the lumps and depressions in her skull, may make us smile today, but the dream lives on: that we can read minds by mapping brains. If we know exactly what is happening exactly where in the brain, perhaps we can learn to “switch off” aggression in violent criminals and racism in bigots, “switch on” intelligence and compassion, rid alcoholics and drug addicts of their cravings and compulsions, and so forth. It perhaps goes without saying that this kind of enthusiasm is premature, indeed misplaced. Reality is far more complicated. Indeed, the new technologies have done much to unsettle our confidence in what we thought we knew about the brain, and relatively little to enable the i

Institute of Psychology at the University of Gdansk, Poland; www.acta-neuro.com; [email protected].

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Institute of Psychology at the University of Gdansk, Poland & Department of Comparative Literature, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland; www.acta-neuro.com; [email protected].

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mapmakers to go on about their business. More than a decade ago, Bolwig (1994) was already warning that the progress in “neuroimaging” was all very interesting, but to date all the masses of new data had not produced any significant developments in the treatment of brain damage or mental illness. Twelve years later, despite yet more technical progress, Bolwig’s pessimism still seems justified. Even when we know what structural or dynamic changes in the brain are associated with particular diseases or injuries, we remain unable to bring any kind of therapeutic intervention to bear on a given part of the brain, apart from perhaps surgical excision, which is drastic, costly, dangerous, and uncertain in its effects. No drugs, no psychotherapies can selectively reach a particular brain region and effect changes there. More to the point, however, we cannot really be certain that even if we did know how to target specific clusters of neurons for pharmaceutical or psychotherapeutic intervention, we would actually produce the intended effects. What the neuroimaging results reveal is that nearly every brain function involves a complex network of brain regions and neuron clusters, sometimes widely separated from each other. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that most neurons and groups of neurons participate in a number of different brain functions, which do not always seem to be related to each other in any obvious way. Thus the relationship between structure and function turns out to be far more complex than was imagined in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the work of such pioneers in brain research as Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke demonstrated that lesions to particular parts of the brain tended to have predictable effects on the patient’s speech. In the mid-twentieth century, it was demonstrated that various parts of the body are rather precisely mapped to the posterior parts of the frontal lobes for movement, and the anterior parts of the parietal lobes for sensation (the so-called “sensomotorium”). Later, with the development of computer technology and artificial intelligence, such cognitive processes as memory and perception were analyzed into specific functions performed by specialized processors, each of which received a certain input, performed a specific operation upon it, and transmitted a certain output. All this led to a picture of the brain as an elaborate biological computer, the “modular mind” of Fodor (1983), a system of neural processors shuttling raw sensory data around to make them into coherent pictures, much as a computer takes millions of binary bits to make texts and pictures. In a word, it was assumed that cognitive and emotional functions could be mapped to the brain in the same way as movement and sensation. All along the long road that has led from Broca and Wernicke to the modular brain of contemporary cognitivism there have been dissenting voices—Jackson, Freud, Head, Goldstein, Luria, Brown, to name only a few. The irony is that much of the newly available data, rather than crowning the modular approach with its ultimate achievement, i.e. the definitive map of the brain, seem instead to be eroding our confidence in the received wisdom, which, as Brown points out (1988), has actually changed very little since the end of the nineteenth century. By the same token, brain science has not succeeded (despite the confident assertions of some of its practitioners) in proving that “mind” and “brain” are but two words for the same thing. To be sure, any theory of the human mind that does not take account of the brain seems manifestly incomplete, but the converse is equally true. What a lobotomized rat can or cannot do in a maze may tell us much about the effects of brain damage on a human being, but from there to the

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highest expressions of philosophy and art is a quantum leap or two, which existing brain science cannot explain. The cognitivist, modularist paradigm has exhausted its possibilities, and in such situations a scientific revolution is imminent. In our opinion, a Copernican revolution has already begun in the neurosciences, even if many are or profess to be unaware of that fact (Pachalska 2003; Bradford 2006). In this case, the role of Copernicus has been played by Jason W. Brown, Clinical Professor of Neurology at the New York University Medical Center, whose microgenetic theory serves as the equivalent of the heliocentric universe. The theory has been expounded in a series of books, beginning with Aphasia, Apraxia, and Agnosia (Brown 1972) and concluding (for the moment) with Process and the Authentic Life: Toward a Psychology of Value (Brown 2005). As indicated by the titles of these “endpoint” works, Brown’s emphasis and interests have tended to move from clinical to philosophical, but it would be a mistake to regard this as a change of direction; rather, the general direction was laid down in the first book and followed through to the last. The clinical antecedents of this approach can be found in the work of great “dissenters” of nineteenth- and twentieth-century neurology and neuropsychology—Jackson, Head, Goldstein, Luria and others, who for one reason or another could not accept the anatomical-functional approach to the mind/brain that led in a straight line from Wernicke to cognitivism (Brown 1988). Brown’s microgenetic theory owes much to evolutionary theory (Gould 1982), and even more to Whitehead and process thought. The final product, however, is an original synthesis of ideas, backed up by extensive clinical observation. The English term “microgenesis” was originally coined to render Heinz Werner’s term Aktualgenese, referring to the process by which a mental state is formed in the present moment (Werner 1956, 1957; Werner & Kaplan 1956; Werner & Kaplan 1963). There are two main assumptions: (1) a mental state is momentary and transitory, appearing on the surface and immediately giving way to the next subsequent state; this is associated with the epochal theory of time, which in psychology can be traced back to William James (1890); (2) a mental state becomes manifest as a result of a process that proceeds from depth to surface (more literally than metaphorically), which means that in every mental state there are older and more primitive reactions from which the manifest percepts and behaviors emerge. The sequence of phases through which a mental state arises in microgenesis are determined by the patterns established during the evolution of the species (phylogeny) and the development of the individual (ontogeny), with a general movement “upward” in the direction of elaboration, specification, and articulation, as in the structure and growth of a tree (trunk, branches, leaves) or a brain (brainstem, subcortical nuclei, neocortex). The mind is thus the end product of phylo-, onto-, and microgenesis, with the brain as the stage upon which these events take place on their respective scales of time: eons, years, and milliseconds. From the perspective of process thinking, then, it becomes clear that the mind in microgenetic theory arises from the becoming of the brain, which explains on the one hand why the mind and the brain are inextricably bound up with each other, and on the other hand why the bond is not after all one of identity. A sentence does not appear until a string of sounds or letters is produced according to the rules of a given language, but these strings are not in and of

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themselves sentences. Nor are sentences merely strings of phonemes or graphemes. In the same way, the human mind cannot be conceived without a brain, but neither can it simply be reduced to a brain. If we could hold Einstein’s formalined brain in our hands, would we be holding his mind in our hands? Most would say, certainly not; and yet if this is true of a dead brain, why should it not be true of a living brain as well? And yet contemporary neuropsychological theory would have us believe that what is mental is cerebral and nothing more than cerebral. In our opinion, the only escape from this kind of materialistic neuropsychology is either ghost-in-themachine dualism or microgenetic theory, which in the tradition of Whitehead looks at process and becoming rather than entities and relations. The concept of the brain/mind that emerges from microgenetic theory is thus directly opposed to the currently fashionable information-processing models of the brain, which more or less explicitly attempt to apply the laws of artificial intelligence to natural brains. We are asked to believe in a brain that consists in a fixed arrangement of neuronal elements performing specific functions according to a predetermined plan, as in a computer, contrary to the evidence of our own eyes, which tell even the layman that a brain looks nothing like a computer. This is why microgenetic theory cannot be bent and twisted to fit into the cognitivist paradigm without destroying either the theory, or the paradigm. Hence, too, the comparison to the Copernican revolution: if we accept the theory, we have committed ourselves to rejecting the old paradigm, and thus going back to the start and thinking things through all over again. Either microgenetic theory is correct, and the brain is a place where transitional phases occur in the process of forming a self, a world, feelings and ideas, or cognitivism is correct, and the brain is a sort of biological computer, where such notions as “mind,” “soul,” or “psyche” are quaint artifacts of old superstitions (like “sunrise” and “sunset” after Copernicus). No compromise is possible. Microgenetic theory can explain why brains grow and change, and why they possess such a remarkable capacity to repair themselves when they are damaged (Brown 2002; Brown and Pachalska 2003; Kaczmarek 2003; Papathanasiou 2003). For cognitivism, the constantly changing nature of brain function and structure is a major embarrassment; for microgenetic theory, it is the point of departure. The human brain eludes definitive description, to a large extent because brains differ dramatically over time and between individuals. This obvious fact, which can be seen with the naked eye, is glossed over by standard theories, which present models of “the brain,” as though they were as much alike as every “Amilo” notebook computer manufactured by FujitsuSiemens is alike. Real brains, however, are as much different as people are different: that is, there are general laws of structure that can only be violated with grave consequences, but within a certain framework most of us are distinguishable in one way or another from everyone around us. Even identical twins, with age, tend to become less and less alike, as the experience of life leaves its marks on the body, face, and personality. Why should the brain be different? Identical twins each have the same genes for the brain, and indeed they show some marked similarities in cognitive and emotional functioning, in temperament and mental habits, even in esthetic preferences. It is not the similarities that should amaze us, however, as much as the differences. The brains of twins are not nearly as alike as two computers of the same mark manufactured by the same company in the same factory on the same day, and yet they are not as different as the

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brains of two unrelated individuals. Once again, we are clearly looking at a process that unfolds in accordance with certain patterns and regularities constraining the direction of development, but not in accordance with a prefigured plan. Brains are simply not things that are constructed according to blueprints and then brought on line to fulfill their preordained function. They become minds.

2. The Main Premises of Microgenetic Theory In microgenetic theory, the brain is at once the product of evolution and the template within which the mind evolves. The laws and regularities of evolution never cease to be in effect, including natural selection and the complex dialectic of change and continuity. Thanks to the genome and the continuity of genetic material passed from generation to generation, a given species retains a set of basic features, within which a certain range of variants is allowed, and beyond which one can no longer speak of the same species. A new species does not appear at the end point of development of one species, which would thus somehow metamorphose into a new form, but rather results from a divergence of paths, a forking off. The new species always contains a substratum of genes that represent its continuity with its evolutionary past, even when these genes (such as those that produce the “gills” in a human embryo) are either never expressed or are “switched off” by other genes (so that the gills quickly disappear). This is a fundamental characteristic of evolutionary change: that the past is not so much discarded as buried. The course of evolution is thus guided by a dialectic between continuity and change (Brown 2005), between the continuity of genes and the adaptation forced by a dynamically changing environment. When the environment changes and the genes do not, the species is threatened with extinction; when a novel mutation is too radical, the result is monstrosity, which cannot become the basis for a viable new species capable of surviving and reproducing itself. In an analogous manner, each individual human brain begins with a DNA blueprint, and yet it takes on its individual character in constant interaction with the dynamically changing environment. From birth to death we have the same brain within our skulls, and yet from one moment to the next it is not precisely the same. This explains why ontogeny travels the road built by phylogeny, but the journey is never quite the same. A human being is human from conception; the fertilized egg is not an amoeba, which metamorphoses into a slug, which metamorphoses into a frog or a fish, which metamorphoses into a rat, which metamorphoses into a monkey, which is finally born as a human infant. And yet the development of an embryo into an infant passes through stages that very closely resemble the “lower orders” of the process of evolution. At any given moment, then, we find ourselves at the culmination of a process which has lasted for six million years, and sixty years, and three hundred milliseconds, yet is always the same process. Phylogeny has given us a brain, which becomes itself in ontogeny according to phases that represent those moments in evolutionary time when “quantum leaps” occurred in the

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differentiation and specialization of the central nervous system. The most important transitions are represented by the three main levels of the central nervous system above the spinal cord: (1) the brainstem (including the midbrain), which structurally and functionally mediates between the central and peripheral nervous systems, and the cerebellum, a kind of “protobrain”; (2) the limbic system and the basal ganglia (sometimes collectively referred to as the “subcortical nuclei”), which lie above the brainstem and below the cortex; (3) the cerebral cortex (the outer layer of gray matter, whose wrinkled surface is what most of us associate with the word “brain”). The higher we go in this system, the more the human brain differs from that of animals. The human brainstem and midbrain differ relatively little from those of reptiles and fish. The cerebellum and the subcortical nuclei are very similar in all mammals. It is the cortex that distinguishes the human brain, especially the frontal lobes, which are considerably larger than those of even our nearest cousins, the pygmy chimpanzees. Each of these three main layers possesses somewhat different mechanisms for communication with the periphery, i.e. the sense organs and the effectors (muscles, ligaments, glands) by which the central nervous system interacts with the external world. The stimulus-response arc can be closed at any of these three levels, producing a behavior (when this happens below the brainstem, we speak of a “reflex”). Thus the brain is neither a monad nor a set of interconnected processors, but rather the stage on which evolutionary processes occur, including the microgenesis of particular mental states, when the course of phylogeny and ontogeny is re-created in the formation of a mental state. Plato, in the Republic, divided the soul into three parts (the appetitive part, the spirited part, and the rational part); Freud, into Id, Ego, and Superego. In microgenetic theory, we begin by observing that the brain has been deposited in three main layers, and by examining the character of those layers, we can begin to understand how and why human behavior and feeling is layered: (1) At the level of brainstem, the organism perceives objects as Gestalts, instantly classed in a finite number of very broad categories according to survival value. Reactions to perceived stimuli are immediate, stereotyped, and irreversible, while movements are largely axial and whole-body. There is language at this level, but it is the “language” of crying, laughing, moaning, growling, snorting, etc., without words or grammar, the direct expression of affect unmediated by any specific language rules. Time is simply the minimal neuronal epoch that transpires from stimulus to response. (2) In the limbic system, the seat of emotion (affect and mood), the “pleasure principle” (Freud 1920), is dominant: stimuli are evaluated on a scale from “ugly” to “beautiful” or some variant thereof. Responses to stimuli are more variegated and subtle, yet the processes involved here are physiological, i.e. biochemical and biophysical. The perception of a “beautiful” object prompts changes in the chemical environment of the entire body, which explains why emotions as such are always felt “in the body”—that is, the peripheral nervous system is affected by the chemical changes initiated by the subcortical nuclei. Limbic perception and limbic action are inseparable from mood and affect, as in dreams or hallucinations (Brown 2000). The limbic

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system possesses its own vocabulary and grammar (primarily that of cursing), but in this respect “limbic language” belongs to a particular human language and is rule-bound to a certain extent. Emotions also play an important role in the supra-segmental aspects of speech, i.e. tone of voice, gesture, facial expression, prosody, etc., those dimensions of the speech act that can usually be read by a person who does not speak our language, or even by a pet dog. The limbic system is richly connected to the memory system, which explains why emotionally laden material is more easily remembered (or forgotten at the cost of such enormous mental effort), and why memories evoke emotions. The perceived object is remembered into conscious, emerging from within, which, again, is a feature of dreams and hallucinations (Brown 2003). Time is the felt “now,” with a tendency to the cyclic recurrence of moments, i.e. sequences of event and affect. (3) The guiding principle of the cortex is division, classification, analysis, articulation in the broadest sense of the term. The cortex gathers detailed sensory data and makes judgments that can be used to constrain the percepts and behaviors generated by the lower levels. In the “limbic” perception of dreams, identities (including one’s own) are fluid and indefinite; the cortex analyzes features and fixes identity, distinguishing one object from another. There appears what Kurt Goldstein (1995) called “the abstract attitude,” which depends on an ability to reason inductively or deductively, analyze cause-and-effect and other relations, and use metaphors, analogies, and other figures of speech, while retaining criticism. Language is fully rule-bound, and this generally applies to the cognitive processes taking place at this level. The existence of the three levels described here can be demonstrated clinically by observing, for example, the verbal behavior of persons awakening from general anesthesia, or a prolonged coma. When the central nervous system first begins to stir, there is inarticulate verbalization: groaning, sighing, sometimes shouting or even howling. This is often followed by a period of uncontrolled cursing, which gradually gives way to simple utterances and the recovery of what neurologists call “logical contact.” It should be stressed once again, before we proceed, that the interactions of these three layers are evolutionary, which means that the higher evolves from the lower but does not displace it. Even the most abstract acts of mental reasoning originate, not in the cortex, but in the brainstem, and then pass through the limbic system before the rule-bound cortex sculpts them into thoughts. The lower layers deposited along the way may be more or less thoroughly hidden, but they are always present. Thus the lower levels of processing serve a two-fold purpose: on the one hand, they serve as preliminary phases in the formation of cognitions and behaviors, feeding information forward to the cortex, but on the other they are self-contained systems operating on different principles, each independently capable of taking in sensory information and putting the body into motion. In a reflex, including a conditioned reflex, the stimulusresponse arc closes at or below the level of the brainstem, so far below the threshold of consciousness that there is no possibility for a healthy nervous system not to complete the cycle. At the other end of the spectrum, the pursuit of a lifetime aspiration requires that completion of the stimulus-response cycle be delayed, usually broken down into a series of overlapping mental processes, whose goals are subordinate. This does not mean, however, that such elaborate lifetime projects are the product of the cortex acting alone. In principle there is no such

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possibility, which once again recalls Plato’s concession in the Republic that the appetitive and spirited parts of the soul are necessary to the economy of the soul: the rational part must govern, but it cannot act alone. One of the key differences between the successive layers is the time frame. The brainstem perceives and reacts in a fraction of a second; the limbic system, in seconds or minutes; the cortex, anywhere from several seconds to decades. Time is experienced quite differently at the respective levels (Brown 1996): from the instantaneous stimulus-response of the brainstem, through the “dream time” of the limbic system, to clock time in the cortex. The problem is complicated, however, by the fact that the nervous system as a whole “chunks” time into epochs of 300-400 milliseconds (the time it takes an impulse to reach from any given point in the nervous system to any other point). Microgenesis (i.e. one complete pass through all the phases) lasts just this long, but is followed immediately by the next, as drops of water rise through a fountain and fall away, replaced so quickly by subsequent drops traveling the same (or nearly the same) route, that the fountain itself takes on the appearance of a stable, solid object. This explains why the duration of the present (an ancient philosophical problem placed by William James at the heart of psychology, though the issue is mostly bypassed in contemporary psychology) continues to be one of Brown’s primary preoccupations (Brown 1996, 2000, 2005). For this system to work, then, there must be a mechanism that can suspend the reactions of the lower levels, in order for the upper levels to have time to work. This explains (among other things) why the frontal lobes are so richly connected with the limbic system, and that in turn is the physiological basis for the “rule of the rational part over the spirited and appetitive parts,” which for Plato was the essence of justice. It also explains why we can have affective reactions to our own cognitions.

3. The Microgenesis of the Speech Act As we have already suggested, speech and language are not the products of the cortex alone, as most neurolinguistic theories assume. After all, a speech act, in the Austin-Searle sense of the term, is a behavior, and behaviors are the products of microgenesis, which means that they pass through all the layers of the central nervous system. Parrots, which have very little cortex, can learn to speak in complete sentences, though it highly unlikely that the parrot who says “Polly wants a cracker!” is actually producing a sentence that could be parsed, or even that it “knows” what it is saying, beyond the conditioned reflex that the utterance of this string of sounds produces a desired effect. On the other hand, dogs and other higher mammals, especially the higher apes (gorillas and chimpanzees), can understand even several hundred words and simple sentences, though their expressive abilities are far more limited. Even more interesting: recent research has demonstrated that many words and expression evoke emotional reactions in the human hearer some time before the meaning of the word or expression has been comprehended. These same words, especially interjections and curses, can often be uttered flawlessly by patients with profound aphasia, who otherwise cannot say more than a word or two. Clearly,

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other parts of the brain, other than the well-known cortical “speech centers” in the perisylvian area of the left hemisphere, can also use and understand words. These observations point to the nature of the mutual interaction of the respective levels of the central nervous system. The lower levels form the evolutionary background, from which the complex behavior of the upper levels evolves; at the same time, the mechanisms of inhibition and learning can shape the behavior of the lower levels, by offering ever more behavioral options and the time to choose among them. In certain cases, however, the more primitive behavior emerges of its own accord, i.e. comes to the surface without the control of the cortex. This happens, for example, when we act impulsively, under the influence of strong emotions, or alcohol; it also happens when brain damage or disease affects particular regions of the brain, or the whole brain. In the microgenetic approach, then, the symptoms of brain dysfunction are not understood simply as deficiencies, that is, “zeros” on the psychometric tests favored by cognitivism for diagnostic and research purposes. Rather, the symptom is a sample of an early phase in the microgenesis of a percept or a behavior, which as a result of damage surfaces prematurely, revealing that which is ordinarily concealed (Brown & Pachalska 2003; Luria 1966). The disturbances in the naming of objects that occur in the course of aphasia are a case in point (Brown 1994; Brown & Perecman 1986). The standard test used to measure these disturbances is the Boston Naming Test (Goodglass & Kaplan 1983), consisting of sixty pictures of objects, which the patient is shown and asked to name. A naming score is achieved by marking one point for each properly named object, and zero for every mistake. The number that results is speciously objective, but remarkably uninformative: we learn little apart from the fact that the patient has some difficulty in naming objects shown to him in pictures. The problem can be somewhat alleviated by switching to a 0-1-2 system, where “2” is normal performance, and “1” is a response that falls short of normal but is not completely erroneous. Without a sense of what the patient actually says when looking at a picture, however, we can really have no idea of what has happened to his brain, or what is going on in his mind when his brain is unable to make the connection between a visual image and a verbal production. From clinical observations of patients with brain damage of various kinds, errors in naming fall into discernable patterns. If the patient is shown a picture of an elephant, for example, the following errors may be noted: (1) With a cortical lesion in the lower part of the left temporal lobe, the patient is likely to produce a nonsense word with no obvious connection to the target word “elephant,” though usually in compliance with the phonetic rules of the patient’s native language, e.g. “fellermaster.” When such errors occur frequently, the patient’s speech becomes a kind of private jargon, which also sometimes occurs in schizophrenia (“schizophasia”). (2) When the lesion is found along the temporal-parietal border in the left hemisphere, the patient produces what is called a “semantic paraphasia,” i.e. a word that belongs to the same general category as the target word, e.g. “rhinoceros.” Alternatively, the patient may know what the object is, but be unable to recall its name, as in the “tip of the tongue” errors we all sometimes make. Often there is a resort to periphrasis: “Oh, you know, the big animal with a trunk, eats peanuts.” When these kinds of errors occur so often that they interfere with the

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fluency of speech, the patient is said to have “anomic aphasia” or “amnestic aphasia,” to use Luria’s term (1977). If we prompt the patient with “e,” she may be able to produce “elephant.” (3) When the lesion occurs in the upper part of the left temporal lobe, the patient may know the correct name for the object, but be unable to pronounce it correctly: “elephant” become “ephelant” or the like. These kinds of errors are characteristic of what is called conductive aphasia. In the standard psychometric approach, “fellermaster,” “rhinoceros”, “the big animal with a trunk,” and “ephelant” would all be counted as errors, i.e. zeros or ones. From the microgenetic perspective, however, it is not the failure in performance that matters, but rather the nature of the error and what it reveals about normal processing. At first glance the foregoing analysis may appear to be a reversion to locationalism, when the nature of the symptom is correlated with the location of the lesion. The modular approach, however, falsely attributes these correlations to the destruction of a particular processor. From the microgenetic perspective, the lesion blocks or slows down a segment of processing, which disorganizes the final product in a manner that depends more on “when” than on “where” the lesion occurs (Brown & Pachalska 2003). The sequence described above is “bottom-up,” both in terms of anatomical location, and in terms of the microgenesis of the production of a name: (1) from whole to part; (2) from context to object; (3) from background to figure. This can be observed not only in the process of specification of the lexemes, but also in their phonological realization, as the target word is narrowed down from a broad concept to ever more specific semantic, lexical and phonological features. This is fully analogous to the microgenesis of a visual percept: the “target” object does not emerge from bits of specific sensory data made into a whole in second-pass processing, but from visual wholes, Gestalts, that are broken down and analyzed into specific features. It is not the nose, eyes, mouth, and chin that make us see the face, but rather seeing the face enables us to see the nose, eyes, mouth, and chin. Analogously, the word is neither understood nor uttered by gathering phonemes from a store and assembling them into words that are associated with mental states and concepts; rather, the concept constrains the word, which constrains the string of phonemes needed to realize it. There is no separate processor that handles only the lexicon, and another that handles grammar, and another that deals only with phonology. It may be useful for analytical purposes to divide language into these aspects, but it is a serious mistake to make these aspects of the linguistic utterance correspond directly to modules. Further subdividing linguistic processes into ever more discrete functions increases the number of necessary processors without producing any useful results, either theoretically or clinically. In reality, what we see in the clinic seldom if ever resembles the kind of “pure” lexical, semantic, or phonological disturbances that a modular brain would lead us to expect. Rather, the effect of a lesion resembles the disturbances caused by putting a stick into a fountain: the extent and nature of the effect depend on how large the stick is, how far it is inserted, and how high or low the point at which it interrupts some or all of the flow.

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4. Morphogenesis and the Formation of Symptoms The best approach to understanding what symptoms can tell us about normal mental functions is to look at the ontogeny of the brain, or more specifically, at morphogenesis, the process by which the brain takes shape. For cognitivism this is an uncomfortable point: it is easier to assume a ready-made brain, built off-line according to a blueprint and then brought on-line as a whole. In morphogenesis a series of transformations, simultaneously constrained by DNA, by the need to adapt to the changing demands of the environment, and by various kinds of learning and habituation, makes a cluster of undifferentiated matrix cells into a brain. In the process, however, the brain is not first built and then put into use; rather, function and structure constrain each other as the brain becomes a mind. In traditional neurology the problems of development and morphology are kept separate from the problems of function and behavior, on the assumption that developmental processes first form the anatomical structures of the brain, and then these structures begin to process information according to the functions they have been designed to fulfill. For the cognitivists, then, the stages in the ontogeny of the brain are as relevant to its cognitive function as the phases in the manufacture of a computer are relevant to how it works. This approach cannot explain morphogenesis, plasticity, or cognition. The basic problem here is that the real relation of structure to function in morphogenesis is obscured by the obvious but misleading assumption that function is something active, dynamic, an event and not an object, while structure is fixed, static, localized, an object and not an event. Thus the constant temptation to assign mental functions to speciously logical compartments, putting functions into the boxes created by anatomic structures. From the microgenetic perspective, however, structure and function are understood as inseparable expressions of one and the same process, just as brain and mind constitute moments in the actualization of a single process. By looking at morphogenesis in this way, the relation between behavior and growth can be seen in a different and more illuminating light. Growth is the dynamic of a population of cells, while cognitive processes are the realized properties of these populations of cells. As the brain matures, the emphasis shifts from structure to function, but there is no moment when structure ceases to change, or when function ceases to shape structure. Even in advanced old age, the brain is still changing. Thus the growth of the neural network in the brain is not a phase preceding the achievement of the final, intended form, but the dynamic of morphology itself. Morphology in turn is a crosssection of growth, while behavior is its extension into the fourth dimension. Language and other cognitive processes become possible in ontogeny when the neural network is sufficiently organized to enable the requisite functions to be performed; later, the demands of usage sculpt the network into the form needed to solve problems. If we can describe the processes by which the cells at the end of the spinal cord in the embryo divide and differentiate into the brainstem, the cerebellum, the subcortical nuclei, and finally the cortex, we have by the same token described the structure of human behavior. This is the essence of microgenetic theory.

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These general principles are well illustrated by a brief consideration of how identity and personality develop in ontogeny, and how this process shapes the microgenesis of the mental states involved. The first structure of the central nervous system that can be discerned in the embryo is the spinal cord. Approximately four weeks after conception, the end of the spinal cord that lies nearest the head has developed a structure that somewhat resembles an oldfashioned woman’s hairpin (see Fig. 1a), with three bulges, known as the forebrain, the midbrain, and the hindbrain. At this point, the embryonic human brain differs very little from the brain of a fish or an amphibian at the corresponding stage, with this essential difference, that the brains of fish and amphibians do not develop structurally much farther than this.

Fig. 1. The morphogenesis of the human brain: A) the human brain at about four weeks after conception; B) the human brain at about eight weeks after conception; C) the adult human brain in cross section (medial surface of the right hemisphere). Approximately four weeks later, the brain has developed considerably, assuming the characteristic forms of a mammalian brain, common to rats, dogs, apes, and humans. There are now five distinct segments above the spinal cord (cf. Fig. 1B): (1) the medulla (the lower part of the brainstem that merges into the spinal cord); (2) the hindbrain, which will become the cerebellum and the pons (the part of the brainstem that “bridges” between the medulla oblongata and the midbrain; (3) the midbrain, considered by most anatomists to be part of the brainstem; (4) the diencephalon, which develops into the thalamus and other subcortical nuclei;

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(5) the forebrain, which develops into the limbic system, the basal ganglia, and the cortex. The adult human brain little resembles the microscopic structure shown in Figure 2, but when viewed in cross section (Fig. 1C), the morphogenetic continuity can be seen. In Figure 2, this brief and somewhat simplified account of the morphogenesis of the brain is applied to the ontogenetic and microgenetic development of the self, identity, and personality.

Fig. 2. The microgenesis of identity and personality in relation to morphogenesis. Identity and personality thus constitute transition phases in the microgenesis of the self (Brown 2005). The self of the brain stem and midbrain is a biological creature, governed by instincts, drives, conditioned reflexes, and oriented towards survival. There is no reflection, no thinking, not even affect as we ordinarily understand it. It is hard to speak of identity at this stage, but there is a generalized will to survive that might imply the existence of something that Whitehead would perhaps call a “prehension.” As this self emerges into the realm of the limbic system, affect and the pleasure principle appear, along with the dream self—feeling and experiencing, though distinctly passive in relation to the outside world. Identity emerges into a kind of consciousness, but remains fluid. The likes and dislikes that inform action and perception at this level become the patterns of personality, which is not determined or measured by any one action or omission, but by that which the individual habitually prefers to do or wants to do in various situations. Personality is not a product of cognition, then, but rather is the force by which mood and affect shape cognition. The prompts of personality, shaped by preferences, can sometimes be overcome, at least in those particular situations when the cortex, especially the frontal lobes, finds it necessary or expedient to choose a course of action that runs contrary to one’s feelings (cf. Freud’s “Ego”).

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5. Conclusion The microgenetic model briefly described here is evolutionary in more respects than simply anatomical. The processing of information, like growth and evolution, is unidirectional, obligatory, and cyclical. The cycles of birth and death, sleeping and waking, are reflected in every moment of life in the growth and perishing of successive mental states. A mental state is not a reversible function, something that can be erased and replaced, like a typing error on the computer screen: the brain has no Backspace key. Thus brain damage does not remove a particular work station from a mental assembly line, or break the conveyor belt that shuttles semiproducts from one processor to another. Rather, it changes the way in which mental states move from depth to surface. In both evolutionary and growth processes, then, the mental process proceeds: (1) from potential to actuality; (2) from past to present; (3) from unity to diversity; (4) from simplicity to complexity. In microgenesis, then, the mental process—a cognition, a behavior, an idea, an intuition, a feeling—moves in the same direction through the same phases. The millions of years of evolution, all the years of a person’s life leading up to this moment, are compressed into and realized within a span of time measured in milliseconds. Cognition is thus an iterative process, like the heartbeat, which repeats itself a billion times in the course of a single life, though no two heartbeats are exactly the same (cf. Brown & Pchalska 2003). For many years Jason Brown has been virtually a vox clamantis in deserto (Pachalska 2003; Bradford 2006). To be sure, Karl Pribram (1991), in his book entitled Brain and Perception, following Lashley, referred to earlier work in neuroembryology, which indicated that the patterns of development in embryogenesis remain as force lines determining the direction and nature of information processing in mature perception. It is no longer heresy to suggest that adult cognitive processes are sculpted by ontogeny, which influences learning processes and the formation of mental representations. More and more neuropsychologists are becoming aware that the part-to-whole model of perception is basically faulty (Rosenthal 1988, 2004). And finally, the iron grip of cognitivism on contemporary psychology may at last be weakening. Still, there is a great deal of work remaining to be done. Revolutions are necessary, often exciting, but they can only be accomplished at a cost.

A Whiteheadian Enquiry Concerning Ethnopsychoanalysis Claude de Jonckheere

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1. Assessing the Problem This paper attempts to specify how far Whitehead’s speculative philosophy could throw light on certain ethnopsychoanalytic practices and especially on the theory that supports them. 1 I am using the expression to throw light very carefully, because my point is not to validate (and even less to discredit) ethnopsychoanalysis on the authority of any one philosophy, and in particular Whitehead’s philosophy. Instead, what is important is to inquire dispassionately on a practice that is primarily a way of managing the difficulties experienced by migrants. Ethnopsychoanalysis, particularly that of Georges Devereux, claims to have an applicability not limited to migrant populations. It aims at extending the conceptual and technical consequences of its core analysis to other populations, such as victims of violence and followers of sects. It has also affected the field of family therapy. The immediate difficulty that one encounters when entering the psychoanalytic field lies in its heterogeneous nature. The practices as well as their supporting theories are not fully standardized; even the term “ethnopsychoanalysis” is sometimes replaced by “ethnopsychiatry” or “ethnotherapy.” It is difficult to determine if these different terms are caused by differences in practice or in theory: the sole criterion might indeed be the education and the status of the practitioners. Psychologists tend to use “ethnopsychoanalysis,” while physicians prefer “ethnopsychiatry.” In order to stick to the usage of the French-speaking founders such as Devereux and Nathan, this paper will use only the term ethnopsychoanalysis, even though some might object to it as more restrictive than ethnopsychiatry. Like all practices intending to transform human beings, ethnopsychoanalysis possesses unexplored that do not represent limitations of the practice but rather conditions the possibility of its existence. One could display the “stroke of genius” of the authors and practitioners of ethnopsychoanalysis, but also show that certain aspects of their standpoint—perhaps those that paradoxically manifest themselves in the most intense way—are actually precisely those that are grounded in the less elucidated areas. But our inquiry proceeds in a twofold way: it is not unfair to Whitehead’s vision to argue that the founding intuitions of ethnopsychiatry can themselves throw light on the organic speculative philosophy. As a matter of fact, we have to understand, in Deleuze’s words, the Whiteheadian “becoming” of ethnopsychiatry and the ethnopsychiatric “becoming” of Whiteheadian philosophy. We have to understand each in terms of the other. i

Haute école de travail social—Institut d'études sociales, Centre de recherche sociale, Genève 4; [email protected].

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In order to do so, I propose to follow Whitehead’s claim that “the philosophic attitude is a resolute attempt to enlarge understanding of the scope of application of every notion which enters into our current thought” (MT 171). Accordingly, we have to examine the own statements of ethnopsychoanalysis and to ask ourselves what they actually mean. Of course, the statements of the ethnopsychoanalytic field receive, just as any other field, a conventional meaning more or less standardized, but their presuppositions are not usually discussed. To lead an enquiry on ethnopsychoanalysis amounts thus to recover the presuppositions that seem obvious for the theoreticians and practitioners in that field and to show the non-obviousness of these premises (cf. MT 172). The usefulness of that work is “to maintain an active novelty of fundamental ideas illuminating the social system” (MT 174). Whitehead defines speculative philosophy as “the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted” (PR 3). Accordingly, Whitehead’s system should allow us to interpret the field of applicability of ethnopsychoanalysis, which is (according to ethnopsychoanalysis itself) constituted by a type of individual experience that falls within the province of mental disorder and leads to somatic and psychic suffering. To remain faithful to the ethnopsychiatric project itself, however, one must also consider the therapist’s experience of a patient or a group of patients. The difficulty of this double interpretation derives from the fact that Whitehead does not deal with the therapeutical act, but aims at framing a system of ideas allowing the interpretation of the totality of our experience. Although his conceptual problems are not shared precisely by ethnopsychoanalysts, nevertheless ethnopsychoanalysis is a particular theory of experience—the theory of migrants as well as the theory of therapists—and, as such, it belongs to the Whiteheadian speculative territory. Because Whitehead’s speculative philosophy is a rational endeavor, one may wonder whether one should or could question a care practice such as ethnopsychoanalysis in rational philosophical terms. Whitehead allows us to do that. He does not oppose the natural (physical) realm that would be reached by reason and the realm of life that could not be reached by reason. According to him, both inorganic nature and life—notably human life in its psychological and social dimensions—belong to the same world and to its various modes of functioning, modes that result from mundane organizational diversity and that are continuous with one another. As a result, we cannot pretend without endangering this continuity that only some of these functionings (such as the “physical” ones) are rationally accessible. Shamanism and ethnotherapeutic practices are rational endeavors—but their rationality is non-dualistic and it allows the understanding of phenomena that could appear irrational in other cultural spheres (such as possession or influence). This entry has two main sources. First, it focuses on Nathan’s works, who is the heir of Georges Devereux who was himself inspired by Roheim (1978, 1988) and Freud (especially his Totem und Tabu). Although Nathan is both admired and controversial (because of his defense of migrants against French Republican values), he has the great merit of entering into dialogue with philosophers like Isabelle Stengers (1995) and Bruno Latour (1996). On the other hand, it benefits from the expertise gathered through the ethnopsychoanalytic association “Appartenances” in Lausanne, Switzerland (Jonckheere de, Bercher, 2003).

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Nathan’s ethnopsychoanalysis differs from Devereux’s mainly because of its departure from Freudian orthodoxy. Devereux argues for the unity of the psychological functioning of human beings and for the universality of the Oedipus Complex (1977). In short, he claims that there is a cultural model that transcends all contingencies. Culture is defined from the perspective of psychoanalysis as a standardized system of defense correlated to the functions of the Ego. Nathan argues that the unconscious is nothing else than the culture of the subject, and that this unconscious is always particular. Those who intend to generalize psychological laws to all human beings commit a double crime: against reason and against morality. Together, these two crimes constitute real “war machines” (1993, 37) targeting traditional cultures. Ethnopsychoanalysis was born in Western societies in order to try to meet the problems generated by human migrations. Some migrants suffer indeed from psychological and somatic problems that cannot be cured with traditional psychotherapies and drugs. Furthermore, these problems offer the opportunity to rethink the coherence and applicability of the traditional therapies. The migrants’ pathologies have obliged the therapists to construct the problems in the same way they are constructed in their original culture. Hence, ethnopsychoanalysis has summoned entities such as spirits, djinns, ancestors and other active forces that have been dismissed by most Western scientists and philosophers (with the notable exception of William James and Henri Bergson). In brief, ethnopsychoanalysis embodies the attempt to understand mental disorders from the perspective of the cultural universe within which they manifest themselves. According to Devereux (1977), even though mental illness can be defined by an adaptation deficit relatively to a given cultural environment, there is no need to know the cultural environment at stake to understand the deficit! What matters is the “universal cultural model” that is embedded in each and every particular culture. On the contrary, according to Nathan, the therapist must acquaint himself with the cultural environment to be able to help the suffering individual. Hence the need to take seriously aetiologies exploiting supernatural (or at least invisible) beings such as spirits. The cure needs to be inspired by the practice that would have taken place in the original cultural environment of the migrant. It could, for instance, use divination in order to identify the entity involved in the disorder and the entity’s proper intentionality. The practitioner (usually a shaman-type medicine-man or woman) uses coffee grounds, cowries or melted lead. The shaman knows the power and the language of these substances; through them s/he can identify the spirit involved in the disorder and eventually force it to renounce to its harmful actions. Nathan does not see himself as a shaman or a healer but as a psychotherapist: he uses these techniques and their significance to contextualize the patient in her own culture. The patient is not an insulated individual, but the meaningful member of a complex social network. The study of a curing practice such as ethnopsychoanalysis from the perspective of Whiteheadian speculative philosophy is a complex business because of the difficulties of relying on stable and clearly defined concepts—with regard both to Shamanistic practices, and the hermeneutical problems surrounding Whitehead’s writings. Rather than securing ethnopsychoanalysis to Whiteheadian categories with the help of a conceptual mapping of sorts, we need to embrace the Whiteheadian speculative standpoint. We must be especially aware of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness: what matters is the lived experience, not the abstractions

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used to asymptotically approximate it. In order to lead this Whiteheadian enquiry concerning ethnopsychoanalysis, three questions will be addressed. First, the nature of the Universe involved in the ethnopsychoanalytical practice, and especially in Nathan’s work; second, the nature of its healing practices; third, the nature of the process of influence activated in the cure.

2. The Ethnopsychoanalytic Universe 2.1. Continuum Ethnopsychoanalysis, as seen by Nathan, involves a continuum of life, from organic life to psychological life. In other words, there is no bifurcation, either between body and mind, or between the subject and its environment. Nor is the mind an immaterial organ of sorts that grounds the possibility of standard Western therapies. On the other, the human being is not a closed subject, but a subject open to its environment, which is both human and non-human (animal, but also supernatural), through the organic and psychological planes. According to Nathan (1995), Western societies understand the Universe as being “unique” and solely constituted by the experimental entities that science seeks to describe. To the contrary, traditional (“savage”) societies understand the Universe as being multiple, including the world of sense-perception as well as another, invisible world filled with supernatural beings. All these beings are endowed with intentionality and intervene in the visible world, either from their own will or at the request of human beings (usually a sorcerer). The two worlds, natural and supernatural, of “savage” thought are not discontinuous. In traditional practices, shamans invoke the spirits precisely because of the objectivity of their existence and their causal impact on the natural world. When one claims that only the natural world is “real,” one breaks that continuity. Nathan’s distinction between Western and traditional societies springs from the necessity to rehabilitate non-Western therapies through his understanding of the continuum. Although Favret-Saada’s (1977) works have shown that contemporary Western people also resort to healers who invoke supernatural beings, the fact remains that standard Western therapies are built upon the refusal of the multiple world paradigm. Whiteheadian philosophy is not foreign to this respect for the continuum of life. It too rejects reductionism and its dualistic consequences. Whitehead’s worldview is unitarian: the physical, inorganic dimension of nature cannot be understood apart from the mental, organic dimension. Although physical and mental poles are not bifurcated, they are distinguished. Mentality involves a conceptual experience that is only “one variable ingredient in life” (MT 166). We find ourselves “living within nature” (MT 156). To think interconnectedness properly, we need to understand the multiplicity of individuals and the process through which they achieve a real togetherness: “Life implies the absolute, individual, self-enjoyment arising out of this process of appropriation” (MT 150). Because of their interconnectedness, all natural occurrences influence each other, require each other and lead to each other. Life has to be thought in continuity with matter and the soul in continuity with the body. There is no precise boundary for where exactly the body begins and

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external nature ends. Although our conscious experience of nature seems to involve only “vacuous bits of matter with no internal values and merely hurrying through space” (MT 158), this experience takes place through our body (especially our eyes); “thus if we wish to understand the relation of our personal experience to the activities of nature, the proper procedure is to examine the dependence of our personal experiences upon our personal bodies” (MT 159). There is no discontinuity either between body and environment, body and mind or body and soul (cf. MT 161). The soul guarantees the unity and identity of the individual, and thus the continuity of its functions, while the body supplies the “stuff” of our experience. “All the emotions, and purposes, and enjoyments, proper to the individual existence of the soul are nothing other than the soul’s reactions to this experienced world which lies at the base of the soul’s existence” (MT 163). Please notice that “the soul is nothing else than the succession of my occasions of experience, extending from birth to the present moment. Now, at this instant, I am the complete person embodying all these occasions” (MT 163). The experience of my unity is a consistent pattern of feelings, “a unity of emotions, enjoyments, hopes, fears, regrets, valuations of alternatives, decisions—all of them subjective reactions to the environment as active in my nature” (MT 166). The world is experienced by the soul through the body. The awareness of the world is nothing else than its bodily prehension. Since the body consists of a society of occasions of experience embedded in the wider society that is nature, “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” (MT 164). It is precisely because of his epochal theory that binding body and soul is so easy. To cut a long story short: the body is a physical event, the soul is a mental event and the human being is a physico-mental event. The interconnectedness of all natural events being secured, the experienced unity of the human being and of its environment is also conceivable. There are no more gaps between body, soul, human beings, society and culture, in Whitehead’s vision. The suffering that the shaman or the ethnopsychoanalyst exploits during therapy amounts to the unified experience of the patient. In that experience, the patient’s complex unity is in contact with natural and supernatural realities. This raises the question of the status of “possessed” individuals. If possession is understood as a belief, the question becomes one of knowing how such a belief can in-form experience. It is quite risky to claim that human beings experience possession by spirits through their senses. Nevertheless, such a claim is common in some cultures. We have treated an Eastern European who claimed that he could feel the devil in his body (Jonckheere de, Bercher, 2003). Nathan’s team at Paris’ Centre Georges Devereux treated a young Bambara who claimed to be “taken” by a “supernatural husband” (1995). According to Nathan, it would be reductionistic to understand supernatural entities as primitive beliefs or mere symbols (1995, 48). Although they have no “physical” existence, they can be grasped because they possess an efficacy that unfolds in the natural world and this efficacy is not limited to illness and recovery. It is of course possible to debate that efficacy in order to determine if these entities are really causing the disorder, or if they are invoked a posteriori merely by way of interpretation. From a Whiteheadian perspective, however, the question seems poorly formulated. These entities exist independently from human beings and

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each has a name that reinforces the conscious awareness of the nefarious process. These names carry a collective efficacy and endow the entities with a contextual meaning and significance. In their given environment, these entities could be understood with the help of Deleuze and Guattari’s “conceptual personalities” (personnages conceptuels) (1991). These conceptual personalities act upon the immanence plane and organize the fields.2 They also have an existence and a name, but their character is to enable, to occasion, the existence of the other characters they meet, of the territories they cross, and of the ideas they encounter. According to Deleuze and Guattari, these characters work only within the philosophical field. However, if we import them in the psychotherapeutical field, they help us to contextualize the supernatural entities in action. These entities, qua conceptual personalities, organize the world in both natural and supernatural territories. By the very fact that they are located outside the natural realm (and although they are producing effects within it), they demarcate the within of the natural realm. They deterritorialize the responsibility of the illness in the sense that the reason of the illness is not attributed to the suffering individual. As we will examine below, these entities, qua conceptual personalities, organize the entire healing processes, which means the respective roles of the therapist or shaman, of the sick individual, and of the community.

2.2. Symbolism The healing practices that inspire ethnopsychoanalytic cures, such as witchcraft and shamanism, have often been studied from the perspective of their symbolic efficacy (see Favret-Saada 1977; Frazer 1981; Hell 1999). The most well-known works are those of Levi-Strauss (1958), that take seriously the ritualistic healing process and the testimonies of the patients who claim to have been cured (totally or partially). Since such testimonies are available, it is important to understand how they are possible. Symbolic efficacy brings a possible answer that broadens the question to the entire social environment and semantic universe in which these practices take place. Symbolic efficacy allows us to discriminate between a material—or rather, an energetic— influence and a formal, i.e., symbolic, one. We could have a healing due either to a direct impact of energetic flux from the practitioner or to an indirect symbolic impact (or a mixture of the two). In his Anthropologie structurale (1958), Levi-Strauss sees these practices symbolically: symbols, such as terrifying animals (but also sometimes plants or objects taken from everyday life) represent the forces of chaos that cause the illness. Through the narration of myths, i.e., rituals (gestures) and prayers (words), the shaman works at ordering that chaos. Levi-Strauss brings to the fore the following case: a pregnant Indian woman who could not give birth finds her physical pains unbearable and consults a shaman; the shaman reframes her suffering within the totally coherent mythology that they both take absolutely for granted.3 The shaman acts upon the image of the body by giving meaning and significance to processes that otherwise appeared chaotic and meaningless. The myth used embodies a knowledge that is common to all actors—the shaman, the patient and the community as a whole. All actors have internalized, usually unconsciously, the representation at stake in the cure: there is no need of an intellectual effort such as the one involved in the conscious belief. The myth functions as a language—or rather, as a theory—that

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provides universal meaning; through the shamanic ritual, it brings a language that enables the patient to immediately express feelings that would be otherwise unexpressed and even inexpressible (1958, 218). Levi-Strauss proposes an analogy between shamanic cure and psychoanalysis: both aim to provoke an experience; both achieve that aim by reconstructing or piecing together a myth that the patient has to live and re-live. It is the nature of the myth that differentiates the two practices—individual in the case of psychoanalysis, social in the case of shamanism.4 However, we cannot fully subscribe to this distinction: Greek mythology provides indeed a background not only to Freud’s analysis but also to a significant part of the Western culture; it has also become a collective Western mythology that articulates individual stories. According to Wittgenstein (1953), since symbols have to be understood qua linguistic sign embedded in a semantic field peculiar to a given social group, there are no private meanings dwelling only in the minds of the patient and of the shaman. Whether the symbol works metonymically, metaphorically, analogically or even mimetically, it represents—for all the involved agents—the forces of chaos and the forces of healing (Levi-Strauss 1958, 221). Nathan’s supernatural entities could be understood as symbols allowing us to “see as” (voir comme). These symbols would allow us to see suffering as the devil inside us. Or they would be images of sorts representing the fears common to individuals. But if they are understood as bare symbols or analogies, supernatural entities would no longer match the actual experience of the patients, who feel them as objective (external and efficacious) entities. More precisely: that feeling is both physical and conceptual. The patient who speaks of the devil in the context of the cure experiences both a bodily feeling (some form of unease) and a conceptual feeling that is not, however, reflective. Such a patient could say that his breath smells of sulphur. In Deleuzian terms, there is a form of “becoming-devil” of the suffering individual, or of “becomingsupernatural-husband” in the case of the Bambara woman. It is still possible, of course, to claim that the patient is lying or having a fit of delirium, but ethnopsychoanalysis and Whiteheadian organicism require that we take such propositions at face value. Whitehead’s Symbolism (1927) can help us to understand how supernatural entities qua symbols are as efficient as all ingredients of experience are. According to Whitehead, it is indeed not necessary that an entity be “real” for it to participate in actual experience. Appearances are active as well: “The relation of Appearance to Reality, when there is symbolic truth, is that for certain sets of percipients the prehension of the Appearance leads to the prehension of the Reality, such that the subjective forms of the two prehensions are conformal” (AI 248). In human experience particularly, “there is an intimate, inextricable fusion of appearance with reality, and of accomplished fact with anticipation” (AI 212) so that perception almost always means “perception in the mixed mode of symbolic reference” (PR 168). The symbolic relation contrasts the two “pure” modes of perceptions. In presentational immediacy, “perception which merely, by means of a sensum, rescues from vagueness a contemporary spatial region, in respect to its spatial shape and its spatial perspective from the percipient, will be called perception in the modes of presentational immediacy” (PR 121). Hence, “all that is perceived is that the object has extension and is implicated in a complex of extensive relatedness with the animal body of the percipient” (PR 122). In causal efficacy, the

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world is prehended through the body: “perception in its primary form is consciousness of the causal efficacy of the external world by reason of which the percipient is a concrescence from a definitely constituted datum. The vector character of the datum is this causal efficacy” (PR 120). The suffering that is localized (spatialized) in the body through presentational immediacy is given an aetiology through our visceral (even “gut”) feelings. Pain is perceived as a vector going from the external world, through the body, aiming at the mind (or soul). Presentational immediacy defines the present of the suffering; causal efficacy provides its historical depth, its emotional memory so to speak. Finally, percepts issuing from both modes intersect and complement each other in symbolic reference (S 49). Now the fact is that disorders that are treated by ethnopsychoanalytic practices do not always involve an identified external cause. If an individual complains about her stomach, that organ is the cause as well as the seat of the pain. A mental operation of sorts is needed to grasp that an external cause such as food, a conflict with a fellow human being or with a supernatural being could cause the pain. According to Whitehead, such an operation belongs to symbolic reference. Symbols truly belong to experience; they act upon us and mediate our existence in a living cosmos. Supernatural entities qua symbols in the Whiteheadian sense intervene in the experience of pain and suffering, be it of the body or of the soul. Nathan (1995) shows clearly that these entities, repressed as they are by positivism, are part of the worldview of almost all social groups (“savage,” Western or otherwise) and are strong agents of coherence within their respective cultural schemes. In order for the suffering subject to re-cognize the supernatural entity as the vector of the suffering, that entity must be cognized, known, prehended in the first place through causal efficacy; it must be so to speak a public figure in the cultural atmosphere at stake.

2.3. Eternal Objects Since Whitehead specifies that the modes of presentational immediacy and of causal efficacy are connected through an eternal object that ingresses in both (PR 170), the symbols that activate such a bond can be understood as a particular species of eternal objects. Granted, the concept of eternal object is quite problematic in itself, but they suggest a very promising hermeneutical path. Because of the permanence they embody, they allow us to think the fluctuations of experience. Supernatural entities understood as complex eternal objects ingress in the experience of a subject and thereby lure the subject in a pathological direction. They are actual only in so far as they participate in the event of the subject’s illness Eternal objects are required in order to extract the “how” of feeling from what has been felt. Hence the question of the existence of these objects is immaterial: it would make no sense to ask whether the color “red” (given by Whitehead as an example of an eternal object) is real or not; when we see a red object, “red” is just an ingredient of our experience. Needless to say, the question of the subject/object duality vanishes as well. It does not really matter anymore whether these devils, supernatural husbands, djinns, ancestors exist without or within the mind of the suffering subject: they possess an efficacy that allows them to unify the experience of the

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subject. Through these entities, the subject’s experience is one, and the subject is one with his or her community. This alleviates, even cures, the subject’s suffering. Supernatural entities have been so far understood as (complex) eternal objects, not as intentional, volitional and enduring beings. If such were the case, another of Whitehead’s categories would be needed, and this would open a very complex debate: a society of actual occasions whose social order has taken the special form of serial “personal order” (see e.g. PR 34ff, MT 161). According to Nathan (1995, 12), supernatural entities are endowed, just like human beings, with intentionality. This explains why and how they can be in “business” [négoce] with human beings (especially with shamans). But Nathan does not describe the operational mode of these entities and it is not always easy to know whether this intentionality is literal or speculative and metaphorical. In a 1994 work, he claims that the names of the entities represent the experienced fears of the patients. If so, the concept of complex eternal object would be more adequate to Nathan’s as well as Levi-Strauss’ (1958) vision. We need to bypass the simple claim that would understand objects qua passive and subjects qua active. The process of ingression signifies the activity of both poles. On the one hand, the efficacy of an eternal object such as a supernatural entity does not depend only on the object itself: the event in which it ingresses is determinant. On the other, the object is such as it is because the events are such as they are. As a result, human beings and human communities actively welcome those entities and the latter actively lure the former towards a given unified experience. Western therapies have understood supernatural entities as irrational phantasms and have replaced them by concepts like the unconscious, Oedipus Complex, Eros and Thanatos principles, and the like—all quite similar after all to the very supernatural entities they are supposed to advantageously replace. Whitehead’s ontological principle, for its part, urges us to take seriously the claims of the patients and of the shamans: “everything is positively somewhere in actuality, and in potency everywhere” (PR 40).

3. Healing Practices 3.1. Making Fears Live A practice can be characterized by its power to “make live” [faire exister] its target. Nathan’s ethnopsychoanalysis make live a patient “taken” by entities from without—entities endowed with intentions with regard to a patient who stands at the edges of the natural and supernatural realms. This practice exploits devices that allow the identification of the entities involved in the disorder, their summoning, and the negotiation that should lead to the relief of the patient. These ritual practices create what Deleuze calls “arrangements” (agencements], which components can be human and non-human, but that have the characteristics of interacting creatively. In “savage” therapies that influence ethnopsychoanalysis, the goal is of course to focus on a given patient, but the patient is never abstracted from her environment, social, natural and supernatural. The patient’s disorders are not his own; they express a collective disorder. What is

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at stake is the equilibrium between the natural and the supernatural worlds. More precisely, the equilibrium is both horizontal, i.e., between the natural entities, and vertical, i.e., between living human beings and spirits. As Nathan claims, the clinical work becomes at the same time very precise and very complex: precision is needed because a concrete technical knowledge is needed to negotiate with the spirits (the shaman needs to know their nature, ecology, modes of manifestation, taste etc.); complexity is involved because of the amount of relevant data entering the healing ritual (data from the patient, her house, parents, body, breath etc.).5 In ethnopsychoanalysis, the focus is on practitioners rather than on patients. What matters is the healing technique involved, not the category that might apply to the disorder per se. This makes the field akin to psychoanalysis because of the dialectic between transference and counter-transference: one cannot be analyzed without the other. A practice that focuses on the patient only involves the fusing of the symptom to the patient (Nathan 1995, 51: souder le symptôme à la personne) and the patient becomes defined by his pathological category. The suffering individual is at the same time dissolved in the generality of a category and isolated in the particularity of her symptom. In savage therapies as well as in ethnopsychoanalysis, both the disorder and its healing, the patient and her therapist are understood as transformations of the human being qua eventful trajectory. It is a kind of Whiteheadian ontological adventure that is individual and collective (Deleuze and Guattari 1991, 152). According to Nathan, the shaman as well as the therapist is a negotiator or a diplomat of sorts who stands between the patient and the entities he perceives. In order to do so, the therapist establishes what Nathan calls a permanent trade counter (1995, 12: comptoir permanent de commerce) where the negotiation takes place. In a way the patient is ignored and the negotiation happens between the shaman and the entity. Strictly speaking, the biography of the patient, her affects, emotions and representations can be ignored. The negotiation is possible because of the intentionality of the entity involved (a characteristic that the Freudian unconscious does not possess). The objects that the shaman or the ethnopsychoanalysts manipulates participate in the negotiation though their power to oblige the entities to manifest themselves. The therapist’s art consists in dealing with the power relationship that she has initiated; it is a matter of cunning, diplomacy and respect—of persuasion—not of brutal force. One should not be unsubtle in dealing with fears. The so-called technical objects (the one manipulated during the cure) allow the definition of a divinatory diagnostic. The shaman does not talk and interrogate the patient in the same way a Western therapist would: he manipulates the objects which are bound to the supernatural world, the very world from where the disorder originates. The divinatory process constitutes an act of creation that weaves knots between the worlds. Through that objectivization, the patient is not identified to the symptom but correlated to a collective structure that allows the cure (Nathan 1995, 18). Objects make the relationship between the therapist and the patient “routine, almost mechanical”: compassion as well as sympathy are excluded. In short, the ordinariness of the intersubjective link is transformed into a technical space susceptible to carry an action on both worlds. Actually, a seer working with these objects does not understand intuitively what is going on: during the cure process, the seer is in business with the spirits, she negotiates another destiny for the patient (1995, 18).

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One cannot find in Whitehead a real theory of action that could allow us to describe the behavior of the shaman during the cure. More precisely, there is no specific theory of intentional action. However, the world is “in action” in the sense that it is defined qua activity and that activity means here creation. It is thus possible to associate action (in abstraction from will) to creation. The subject results from the activity of the world and not the reverse. In the same way that illness happens to the patient independently of his will and responsibility, the recovery happens independently as well. Even the shaman cannot be held responsible. In Nathan’s world, only supernatural entities are acting intentionally in these matters. And this intentionality is inferred from the patient’s disorder. For reasons that are theirs, they impose the disorder on the patient. In other words, will is transferred from human beings to non-human entities. The advantage of such a transfer is that the symptom is not understood as the patient’s creature. The scientific observation and analysis of shamanistic narratives and ethnopsychoanalytic practices cannot but acknowledge the coherence of the actions involved, of the words involved, and of the systematic manipulation of the objects. The question is of course to know the reason of this coherence. Healers that we have met in the Jura say similarly that they do not effect cures, that they are only the instrument of a divine will.

3.2. Power If we follow Whitehead’s suggestions, we should not worry about the shaman’s will to cure the patient. It goes without saying that the shaman works intentionally at the recovery of the patient, but her will is not the actual cause of the recovery—that is understood as the re-harmonization of the patient’s interaction with the mundane and supramundane environment. It is only a matter of power. Whitehead borrows Locke’s concept of power: “The philosophy of organism holds that, in order to understand “power”, we must have a correct notion of how each individual actual entity contributes to the datum from which its successors arise and to which they must conform” (PR 56). A human being is not a substantial being; it is defined as a society of trajectorial societies of actual entities. In short, it is the concept of power that names the capacity of past events to influence present events. By extension, it names the capacity of the shaman to orientate the future by influencing both the patient’s experiences and the supernatural beings. There is a creative synthesis between the settled past and the novel actuality: the new event is only partially determined by past events, it is neither totally creative nor totally determined. One could say that the powers play according to longitudes and latitudes, the result being a Deleuzian agencement. According to Whitehead, the concept of power as it applies to societies has a very wide ontological range: human societies or course, but also societies such as forests, deserts and the like. All have their share in the creative advance. Shamanic objects fully participate of course in that complex dialectic of power. The cure is not to be understood as the return to a past state or equilibrium, but to the creation of a novel one—and such a creation involves necessarily all powers at stake.

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4. Processes of Influence Nathan defines ethnopsychoanalysis and all forms of therapy (even psychoanalysis itself!) as the art of the technical handling of influence.6 From the perspective of influence, human beings are not (primarily) autonomous and rational. Interestingly enough, it is because of such a faith in rational autonomy that Freud rejected hypnosis and thereby created the analytic process, supposedly totally free of any form of influence whatsoever. To take influence into account amounts to getting involved in the subject’s animal part, i.e., the subject’s preverbal or prehuman dimension that we share with other mammals. From this perspective, human beings are knots—nexus—made of threads that are as various and numerous as her fellow human beings, the world of living and non-living beings; they embody so to speak a peculiar position in an unlimited relational system.7 According to Nathan himself, influence is a principle active in all therapeutical relations— even if, in practices like psychoanalysis, one sometimes try to minimize or to control it. In sum, all agents, objects and events are interrelated; influence spreads all over the system. Since the power of influence rests upon a technical (ritualistic) use of words and objects, it belongs to both the material and the spiritual realms: the patient is integrated in an intellectual game that is devised for suffering individuals only.8 Whereas suggestion moves from the therapist to the patient, influence is a fluid of sorts that circulates at all levels and in all directions. Mesmer’s model itself is of course obsolete, but his vision remains. What matters especially is the importance of the objects to convey the influence: “one could almost claim that the objects are the sole actors on the therapeutical scene, producing demonstrations, recruiting patients and therapists, suggesting theoretical developments […]”9 Objects exercise influence because they compel thought and action. Whiteheadian interconnectedness, as it is expressed through the concept of prehension, obliges us to take seriously the power of these objects. Nathan tells the story of a young Tunisian who had a nervous breakdown in the Parisian Underground. The psychiatric treatment through neuroleptics remained without effect and, upon his return to Tunisia, he consulted a seer who used melted lead in the cure (1994, 125). One reads how the lead objects actively participated in the identification of the spellbinding, in the vomiting of the spell and hence in the cure. Their destruction allows the disorder of the patient. From a Whiteheadian perspective, one can say that the melted lead is prehended by the seer, the patient and his family. It is through that prehension that the spellbinding is felt. The fact that the man vomits makes clear that the lead has influenced his body and it does not really matter whether the lead has influenced the body directly or through the mind. The prehension of the lead gathers together all the dimensions, existential or otherwise, of the actors, human or not, involved. Such a broad understanding of the process of influence involves of course a partly undefined acceptation of the concept that exemplifies the Whiteheadian mutual prehensions and, beyond, Whitehead’s understanding of power and life: “It is the process of eliciting into actual being factors in the universe which antecedently to that process exist only in the mode of unrealized

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potentialities” (MT 151). Furthermore, the process is also shot through and through with creativity. In sum, influence actualizes what was only potential and brings something new into existence (cf. MT 166). The process of self-creation, that can be safely used to depict all forms of therapy, involves the totality of the antecedent world: “The whole antecedent world conspires to produce a new occasion” (MT 164). Please notice that Whitehead writes “conspires,” not “causes”—not only because of negative prehensions, but also because of the pure eventfulness of the new occasion. Similarly, in the shamanic cure, supernatural entities, objects, the shaman’s theories, the shaman himself, and the environment conspire to bring change in the life of the suffering individual, who also somewhat anticipates that influence. The creation of the living by the dead is neither fully determined by a settled past nor by a strict teleology. But it is not totally open either: past experiences overlap and stabilize the identity-in-the-making of individuals. “There is nothing which floats into the world from nowhere” (PR 244). Whiteheadian interpretation springs from the past, fixed world and goes beyond it. It is impossible to sharply distinguish the passive appropriation from the active creation of the interpretation of a given event. Ethnopsychoanalysis and Whiteheadian process thought agree that influence has to be understood holistically: In fact, the world beyond is so intimately entwined in our own natures that unconsciously we identify our more vivid perspectives of it with ourselves. For example, our bodies lie beyond our own individual existence. And yet they are part of it. We think of ourselves so intimately entwined in bodily life that a man is a complex unity-body ad mind. But the body is part of the external world, continuous with it. In fact, it is just as much part of nature as anything else there—a river, or a mountain, or a cloud. Also, if we are fussily exact, we cannot define where a body begins and where external nature ends (MT 21).

5. Conclusions Bringing together ethnopsychoanalysis and Whitehead’s speculative philosophy is important because it draws our attention towards an experientially unified world. All experiences matter; all must receive some elucidation within the interpretation Ethnopsychoanalysis rehabilitates “savage thought,” i.e. a thought that does not bifurcate the physical and the spiritual. Modernity has argued (1) that the absence of such an operational distinction defines savage or magical thought; and (2) that this amounts to irrationality. On the contrary, Whitehead’s project includes the rehabilitation of holistic pre-Kantian thinking with the help of processes, flux, prehensions, eventful societies and the like. The apparent simplicity and clarity of sense-perception has to be grounded in the complex vagueness of an underground anchorage in our living environment. The togetherness between facts has to be brought to light, the intrinsic continuity of all events has to be underlined (cf. MT 149). Whitehead allows us to conceive illness and healing qua processes or transitions, not qua stable states. Hence, “illness” and “healing” are simple tags given to momentarily stabilized processes. Interestingly enough, there are resemblances between this standpoint and

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Canguilhem’s. Living beings never stop fluctuating and indeed it is through their plasticity that they can survive in an ever-fluctuating environment. We would like to be able to rely upon permanence and immutability, but this would be death. Illness and healing are creative fluctuations that can be influenced through their being embedded in the (supra-) natural continuum. Healing never amounts to going back to the previous state of health: it amounts to a “social transformation” (Stengers 2002, 564). Whitehead insists on the necessity to see life as a flux (MT 99). Whitehead also helps us to understand how ethnopsychoanalysis has severed the patient from psycho-therapeutical categories. The patient’s psyche does not matter anymore, only the societies of natural and supernatural entities—entities that are furthermore not understood as substances, but as powers that can be prehended. Nathan (1994) calls them “frights” [frayeurs] on purpose: it allows him to blur the difference between the effect (the fear, fright) and the cause (the entity) and thus to put forward the vivid experience itself and the universal eventful togetherness of entities and beings. Needless to say, the rejection of all bifurcations, whether between mind and body or between spiritual and material realms, has important consequences for the status of psychology itself. A discipline that would deal solely with the mind or with consciousness understood as a phenomenon in itself is rejected by the process standpoint. The required standpoint is more ethologic: one need to understand the individual as belonging to a community and to a (supra-) natural environment. Ethnopsychoanalysis and Whiteheadian philosophy seek to understand life without reducing it to categories. Experience itself is what matters and experience always occurs within a holistic horizon. More precisely, Nathan focuses on practitioners and practices rather than to patients; Whitehead understands experience qua event, i.e., becoming. Togetherness and solidarity are not moral imperatives, but the ontological condition of all experiences whatsoever. There is a collective adventure that necessarily associates all existential trajectories. Like James before him, Whitehead has left open the question of the sense-awareness that conditions senseperception per se: he would never have dreamed to consider it as a fraud (cf. AI 236). His late empiricism is a radical one: all experiences—and only experiences—are to be eligible as instantiations (or falsifications) of his categoreal scheme. In essence, the question of the interplay of ethnopsychoanalysis and Whiteheadian speculative philosophy amounts to defining the type of world that we would like to inhabit. It seems doubtful that a substantialistic world build up of partes extra partes is livable. On the other hand, an organic world provides compelling meaning for all actors involved in its creative advance, even if they are not always fully in charge of their own becoming.

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Notes 1

This entry is an updated and slightly abriged version of a paper that has been published in Michel Weber et Pierfrancesco Basile (sous la direction de), Chromatikon II. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès—Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2007, pp. 175-204. 2 “Les personnages conceptuels ont ce rôle, manifester des territoires, déterritorialisation et reterritorialisation absolues de la pensée” (1991, 67). 3 “Les esprits protecteurs et les esprits malfaisants, les monstres surnaturels et les animaux magiques font partie d’un système cohérent qui fonde la conception indigène de l’univers. La malade les accepte, ou, plus exactement, elle ne les a jamais mis en doute. Ce qu’elle n’accepte pas, ce sont les douleurs incohérentes et arbitraires qui, elles, constituent un élément étranger à son système, mais que par l’appel au mythe, le chaman va replacer dans un ensemble où tout se tient” (p. 218). 4 “Toutes deux visent à provoquer une expérience; et toutes deux y parviennent en reconstituant un mythe que le malade doit vivre et revivre. Mais dans un cas, c’est le mythe individuel que le malade construit à l’aide d’éléments tirés de son passé; dans l’autre, c’est un mythe social, que le malade reçoit de l’extérieur, et qui ne correspond pas à un état personnel ancien” (1958, p. 220). 5 “Le travail clinique devient dès lors à la fois très précis et très complexe. Précis, en effet, puisqu'il implique des connaissances les plus étendues possible sur la nature des invisibles, leur écologie, leurs modes de manifestation, leurs goûts et les négociations qu'ils peuvent admettre. Il ne s'agit plus alors pour le thérapeute de démontrer ses capacités d'empathie ou d'improvisation, mais ses connaissances techniques concrètes. Le travail est aussi bien plus complexe, car il nécessite une lecture attentive des signes que l'on ira alors chercher, non pas exclusivement dans les informations fournies par les malades, mais aussi dans toutes sortes de regards que l'on portera sur la maison, la parentèle, le corps du malade, son souffle, sa façon de parler, etc.” (2001). 6 “L’art du maniement technique de l’influence” (Nathan, 2001). 7 “Un point où s’entrecroise les fils du réseau formé par ses semblables, par le monde des vivants, par l’univers inanimé, il serait défini par une position particulière dans un système relationnel illimité” (Roustang 1990 p.161). 8 “Le jeu intellectuel auquel ne sont admis que ceux qui souffrent” (Nathan, 2001). 9 “L’on pourrait presque dire que les objets sont les seuls acteurs de la scène thérapeutique, produisant les démonstrations, recrutant des patients et des candidats thérapeutes, permettant le développement de la pensée théorique qui leur a donné naissance” (Nathan, 2004, p. 4).

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Freud, S. 1920. Jenseits des Lustprinzips. Beihefte der Internationalen Zeitschrift fur arztliche Psychoanalyse No. 2. (Leipzig, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag). Gilmor, J. C. 1966. Analogical Generalisation and Whitehead’s Panpsychism (Ph.D Diss, Emory University). Goldstein, K. 1995. The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man, with a foreword by Oliver Sacks (New York, Zone Books). Goodglass, H., and Kaplan, E. 1983. Boston Naming Test (Philadelphia, Lea and Febiger). Griffin, David Ray, ed. 1989. Archetypal Process: Self and Divine in Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman (Evanston, Northwestern University Press). Griffin, David Ray. 1993. “Parapsychology and Philosophy: A Whiteheadian Postmodern Perspective,” The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 87, 3, 21788. Griffin, David Ray. 1998. Unsnarling the World Knot: Consciousness, Freedom and the MindBody Problem (Berkeley, University of California Press). Griffin, Donald R. 2009. “Windows on Nonhuman Minds,” in Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.), Whiteheadian Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuropsychiatry and the Philosophy of Mind (Albany, State University of New York Press Press) Grof, Stanislav. 1988. The Adventure of Self-Discovery (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Hameroff, Stuart. 2003. “Consciousness, Whitehead and Quantum Computation in the Brain,” Franz G. Riffert & Michel Weber (eds.), Searching for New Contrasts. Whiteheadian Contributions to Contemporary Challenges in Neurophysiology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and the Philosophy of Mind, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang. Hansson, S. B. and O. Rydén. 1987. “Relationship between differentiation and integration of self and nonself in terms of modes of perceptual adaptation,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 64, 523-38. Hartshorne, Charles. 1950. “Panpsychism” in A History of Philosophical Systems, edited by V. Ferm (New York, Philosophical Library), 442-53. Hartshorne, Charles. 1962. The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics (Lasalle, Open Court). Hartshorne, Charles. 1983 [1970]. Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (Landam MD, University Press of America). Hell, Bertrand. 1999. Possession et chamanisme: Les maîtres du désordre (Paris, Flammarion). Hentschel, U., G. Smith, J.G. Draguns, and W. Ehlers (eds.). 2004. Defense mechanisms. Theoretical research and clinical perspectives (Amsterdam, Elsevier). Huxley, Thomas. 1874. “On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History,” Forthnightly Review, 16, 555-80. James, W. 1890. The Principles of Psychology (New York, Henry Holt and Co). James, W. 1909. A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy (New York, Longmans, Green and Co). James, W. 1911. Some Problems of Philosophy (New York, Longmans, Green & Co). James, W. 1912. Essays in Radical Empiricism, edited by Ralph Barton Perry (New York, Longmans, Green and Co). James, W. 1970 [1904] “Does ‘consciousness’ exist?” In Body and mind: Readings in philosophy, edited by G. N. A. Vesey (London, Allen & Unwin). James, William. 1977. A Pluralistic Universe, a volume in The Works of William James, edited by Frederick Burkhardt and Fredson Bowers (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). James, William. 1996 [1912]. Essays in Radical Empiricism (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press). Jennings, H. S. 1906. Behaviour of the Lower Organisms (New York, Macmillan) Jonckheere de, Claude. 2001. Agir envers autrui. (Lonay/Paris, Delachaux et Niestlé). Jonckheere de, Claude. and Bercher, Delphine. 2003. La question de l’altérité dans l’accueil psychosocial des migrants (Genève, Editions IES).

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Kaczmarek, B. L. J. 2003. “The life of the brain,” Acta Neuropsychologica, 1(1), 12-21. Keller, Catherine. 1986. From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (Boston, Beacon Press). Kolb, B., and Whishaw, I. Q. 2003. Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, 5th edition (New York, Worth Publishers). Kragh, U. 1955. The Aktual-genetic model of perception and personality (Lund, Gleerup). Kragh, U. 1985. Defence Mechanism Test, DMT. Manual (Stockholm, Persona). Latour, Bruno. 1996. Petite réflexion sur le culte moderne des dieux faitiches (Le PlessisRobinson, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond). Latta, R. 1898. Leibniz: The Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings (London, Oxford University Press). Le Breton, David. 1991. “Corps et anthropologie: L’efficacité symbolique,” Diogène, 153. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1958. Anthropologie structurale, I (Paris, Plon). Luria, A. R. 1966. Human Brain Psychological Processes (New York, Harper and Row). Luria, A. R. 1977. Neuropsychological Studies in Aphasia (Amsterdam, Swets & Zeitlinger). McHenry, Leemon B. 1992. Whitehead and Bradley: A Comparative Analysis (Suny, State University of New York Press Press). McHenry, Leemon B. 1995. “Whitehead’s Panpsychism as the Subjectivity of Prehension,” Process Studies, 24, 1-14. Nagel, T. 1999. “Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind-Body Problem,” Philosophy, 73, 285, 337-52. Nagel, Thomas. 1979. “Panpsychism” in Mortal Questions (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Nagel, Thomas. 1986. The View from Nowhere (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Nathan, Tobie and Stengers, I. 1995. Médecins et sorcier. (Le Plessis-Robinson, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond). Nathan, Tobie. 1988. L’animisme, la magie et le roi divin (Paris, Payot). Nathan, Tobie. 1993. Fier de n’avoir ni pays ni amis, quelle sottise c’était. Principes d’ethnopsychoanalysis (Grenoble, La pensée sauvage). Nathan, Tobie. 1994. L’influence qui guérit (Paris, Editions Odile Jacob). Nathan, Tobie. 2001. “Fonctions de l’objet dans les dispositifs thérapeutiques,” online with Etnopsy. Nathan, Tobie. 2004. “La chose et l’objet,” online with Etnopsy. Pachalska, M. 2003. “The microgenetic revolution: Reflections on a recent essay by Jason Brown,” Journal of Neuropsychoanalysis, 4(1), 109-117. Pachalska, M., and MacQueen, B. D. 2009. “The microgenetic revolution in contemporary neuropsychology and neurolinguistics,” in Consciousness Studies from a Whiteheadian Process Perspective, edited by M. Weber and A. Weekes (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Papathanasiou, I. 2003. “Nervous system mechanisms of recovery and plasticity following injury,” Acta Neuropsychologica, 1(3), 345-54. Penfield, W. and Rassmussen, T.B. 1950. The Cerebral Cortex of Man (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Pribram, K. 1991. Brain and Perception (Hillsdale NJ, Erlbaum). Pribram, K.H. 1971. Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall). Regan, Thomas. 1990. “The Matrix of Personality: A Whiteheadian Corroboration of Harry Stack Sullivan’s Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry,” Process Studies, 19, 3, 189-98. Rock, I. 1997. Indirect Perception (Cambridge MA, MIT Press). Roheim, Geza. 1978. Psychanalyse et anthropologie: culture, personnalité, inconscient (Paris, Gallimard). Rosenberg, Gregg. 2004. A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Rosenthal, V. 1988. “Does it rattle when you shake it: Modularity of mind and the epistemology

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of cognitive research,” in Perspectives on Cognitive Neuropsychology, edited by G. Denes, P. Bisiacchi, and C. Semenza (London, Lawrence Erlbaum), 31-58. Rosenthal, V. 2004. “Microgenesis, immediate experience and visual processes in reading,” in Seeing, Thinking and Knowing: Meaning and Self-organisation in Visual Cognition and Thought, edited by A. Carsetti (Amsterdam, Kluwer), 221-43. Roustang, François. 1990. Influence (Paris, Editions de Minuit). Royce, Josiah. 1881. “Mind-Stuff and Reality,” Mind, VI, 365-77. Royce, Josiah. 1901. The World and the Individual (New York, Macmillan). Russell, Bertrand. 1927. The Analysis of Matter (London, Kegan Paul). Schmidt, P. F. 1967. Perception and Cosmology in Whitehead’s Philosophy (New Brunswick & New York, Rutgers University Press). Seager, William and Allen-Hermanson, Sean, “Panpsychism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2005 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Online at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/panpsychism Seager, William. 1995. “Consciousness, Information and Panpsychism,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2.3, 272-88. Seager, William. 1999. Theories of Consciousness (London, Routledge). Seager, William. 2003. “Whitehead and the Revival (?) of Panpsychism,” Franz G. Riffert & Michel Weber (eds.), Searching for New Contrasts. Whiteheadian Contributions to Contemporary Challenges in Neurophysiology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and the Philosophy of Mind, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang. Searle, J. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge MA, MIT Press). Searle, John, 2004. Mind (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Skrbina, D. 2005. Panpsychism in the West (Cambridge MA, MIT Press). Smith, G.J.W. 1949. Psychological studies in twin differences (Lund, Gleerup). Smith, G.J.W. 1952. Interpretations of behavior sequences (Lund, Gleerup). Smith, G.J.W. 2001. The process approach to personality. Perceptgenesen and kindred approaches in focus (New York, Kluwer/Plenum). Smith, G.J.W. and G. S. Klein. 1953. “Cognitive controls in serial behavior patterns,” Journal of Personality, 22, 188-213. Smith, G.J.W. and I. Carlsson (eds.). 2008. New title: In italics: Process and personality:Actualization of the personal world with process-oriented methods. (Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag). Smith, G.J.W. and I. Carlsson. 2000. The Creative Functioning test (CFT). Manual (Lund University, Department of Psychology). Smith, G.J.W., G. Johnson, P.-E. Almgren, and A.M. Johanson. 2002. MCT—the Meta-Contrast Technique. Manual (Lund University, Department of Psychology). Smith, G.J.W., G.E. Nyman, U. Hentschel, and I.A. Rubino (2001). The Serial Color-Word Test (S-CWT). Manual (Frankfurt, Swets & Zeitlinger). Sperry, W. R. 1970. “A Modified Concept of Consciousness,” Psychological Review, 76, 6, 532-36. Sprigge, T. 1999. “Panpsychism,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London, Routledge). Sprigge, Timothy. 1971. “Final Causes,” Supplementary Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XLV, 1971, 149-70. Sprigge, Timothy. 1974. “Consciousness,” in The Ontological Turn: Essays in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergman, edited by M.S. Gram and E D. Klemke (Iowa City, Iowa University Press), 114-47. Sprigge, Timothy. 1982. “The Importance of Subjectivity,” Inquiry, 25, 143-63. Sprigge, Timothy. 1983. The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press). Sprigge, Timothy. 1988. “Bradley’s Doctrine of the Absolute,” Appearance versus Reality. New Essays on Bradley’s Metaphysics, edited by G. Stock (Oxford, Clarendon Press), 193-

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217. Sprigge, Timothy. 1999. “Is consciousness mysterious?” Anthropology and Philosophy, 3, 2, 519. Stengers, Isabelle. 2002. Penser avec Whitehead (Paris, Seuil). Strawson, Galen 2006 "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism", in Anthony Freeman (ed.), "Consciousness and its Place in Nature" (Exeter: Imprint Academic), pp. 3-30 Strong, C. A. 1903. Why the Mind has a Body (London and New York, Macmillan). Stroop, J.R. 1935. “Studies of interference. Serial verbal reactions,” Journal of experimental Psychology, 18, 643-61. Sundbom, E., M. Henningsson, U. Holm, S. Söderberg, and B. Evengård. 2002. “Possible impact of defenses and negative life events on patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrom,” Psychological Reports, 91, 963-78. Svensson, B. and L. Trygg. 1994. Personlighet, olycksbenägenhet och yrkesanpassning. [Personality, accident proneness, and work adaptation] (Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell). Tye, M. 1995. Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind (Cambridge MA, MIT Press). Velmans, M. 2000. Understanding Consciousness (London, Routledge/Psychology Press). Velmans, M. 1990. “Consciousness, brain, and the physical world,” Philosophical Psychology 3, 77-99. Velmans, M. 1991. “Is human information processing conscious?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14, 4, 651-726. Velmans, M. 1993. “A reflexive science of consciousness,” Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness, Ciba Foundation Symposium No.174 (Chichester: Wiley) Velmans, M. 1998. “Goodbye to reductionism,” in Towards a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates, edited by S. Hameroff, A. Kaszniak and A. Scott (Cambridge MA, MIT Press). Velmans, Max. 2009. “The Evolution of Consciousness,” Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.), Whiteheadian Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuropsychiatry and the Philosophy of Mind (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Waddington, C. 1961. The Nature of Life (London, Allen and Unwin). Ward, James. 1911. The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism. The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the Years 1907-10 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Weber, M. 2003a. “Principes de la temporalité douloureuse chez Whitehead et Watzlawick”, in Georges Charbonneau et Bernard Granger (eds.), Phénoménologie des sentiments corporels. Volume I. Douleur, souffrance, dépression (Paris, Le Cercle herméneutique, 63-67). Weber, M. 2003b. “The Art of Epochal Change”, in Franz Riffert and Michel Weber (eds.), Searching for New Contrasts. Whiteheadian Contributions to Contemporary Challenges in Neurophysiology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and the Philosophy of Mind (Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 252-281). Weber, M. 2005. La dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead (Frankfurt, Ontos). Weber, M. 2006a. “Creativity, Efficacy and Vision: Ethics and Psychology in an Open Universe” in Michel Weber and Pierfrancesco Basile (eds.), Subjectivity, Process, and Rationality (Frankfurt/Lancaster, ontos verlag, 263-281). Weber, M. 2006b. “Alfred North Whitehead's onto-epistemology of perception”, New Ideas in Psychology, 24, 117-132. Werner, H. 1956. “Microgenesis and aphasia,” Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 52, 347-53. Werner, H. 1957. Comparative Psychology of Mental Development (New York, International Universities Press). Werner, H., and Kaplan, B. 1956. “The developmental approach to cognition: Its relevance to

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the psychological interpretation of anthropological and ethnolinguistic data,” American Anthropologist, 58, 866-80. Werner, H., and Kaplan, B. 1963. Symbol Formation: An Organismic-Developmental Approach to Language and the Expression of Thought (New York, Wiley). Wolf, George. 1981. “Psychological Physiology from the Standpoint of a Physiological Psychologist,” Process Studies, 11 4, 274-91. Woodward, W. 1972. “Fechner’s Panpsychism: A Scientific Solution to the Mind-Body Problem,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 8, 367-86. Wright, Sewall. 1953, “Gene and Organism,” The American Naturalist, 87, 5-18. Zajonc, A. 1993. Catching the Light: An Entwined History of Light and Mind (London, Bantam Press). Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophische Untersuchungen—Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (New York, MacMillan Company).

XI. Public Policy and Natural Law Political Theory Leslie A. Muray

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This article seeks to draw out some of the implications of Whiteheadian process thought for political theory. Among the most important of Whitehead’s ideas for political theory are the notions of relational power, the individual in community, and of the intrinsic value of humans and non-humans alike. These concepts provide the metaphysical undergirding for the development of what I like to call “an ecological democratic faith.”1 In the last section, I engage in a brief discussion of nationalism and community.

1. Unilateral Power vs. Relational Power2 Process thinkers develop the concept of relational power in contrast to the notion of unilateral power. The latter has typified most of the Western intellectual tradition as well as sociopolitico-economic-cultural-practice in a variety of forms. This contrast parallels process thought’s rejection of the substantialism of most of the inherited tradition in favor of “event” thinking. The unilateral conception of power rests on a substantialist view of reality. That is, if reality if constituted by discrete, isolated substances that require nothing but themselves (and God) to exist, then the values that become central are self-sufficiency and independence. The consequence of such a view of reality on the conception of power is that power is “a one-way street,” the ability to affect, to influence another. Its exercise is the manifestation of unilateral power. Anything that is its opposite—allowing oneself to be influenced by others, receptivity and sensitivity to others and to one’s world—is seen as a sign of weakness. The unilateral conception of power expresses itself in a variety of ways. One of these is evident in traditionally stereotyped gender roles. Men are seen as superior because they are active, self-sufficient, independent, unemotional, and unaffected by the vicissitudes of life. Women, on the other hand, are supposed to be dependent, the so-called “weaker sex” in need of both the brains and brawn of men. Child and spousal abuse, in turn, are the most perverted and distorted expressions of the unilateral conception of power. Legitimation of unilateral power has been provided by the understanding of divine power as unilateral power. In effect, God was traditionally conceived as the sole power of the universe, i

Philosophy Department, Curry University; [email protected].

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perfect in that power. God was conceived to be supremely unaffected by the world as part of the very meaning of divine perfection. This was also true of the deism of the Enlightenment. God created the world by setting the machinery of the universe in motion, which was then perfectly capable of operating according to its own laws. There was very little left for God to do, apart from possibly intervening “from the outside” when the world needed repairs. The political expression of the unilateral conception of power tends towards hierarchicalism, authoritarianism, and dictatorship. If being unaffected and influenced by the opinions, thoughts, and feelings of others are seen as signs of weakness, the belittling and suppression of the opinions, thoughts, and feelings of others are possible consequences. I shall now turn to the concept of relational power, using the metaphysics of process thought. In process thought, anything actual at all, from the tiniest energy event to human beings, has some degree of power. No organism can stay alive without some exercise of some degree of power. A momentary subjective experience, an actual occasion, has both a receptive side, receiving data from the past, and an active side, deciding how it constitutes itself, how it prehends data from the past and actualizes the possibilities of the moment and of future. If then there is a receptive as well as an active side to all experience, then for process thought power also must have both a receptive as well as an active side. Power is not only the capacity affect, to carry out a purpose, but also the capacity to an undergo an effect, to be acted upon. Process thought has a vision of a relational and participatory universe. Consistent with this vision, process thought envisions power as relational. One consequence of a relational view of power, consistent with a relational view of the self, is that virtues different from those of independence and self-sufficiency would be cultivated. While, to be sure, independence and self-sufficiency are to be prized, it is not to be done in an atomistic way that cuts us off from a fundamental sense of relatedness; rather, it is to be done in a way that fosters interdependence, a word that captures both independence and relatedness. Other virtues that at least this process thinker would want to nurture include sensitivity, receptivity, responsiveness, compassion, and creativity. Nurturing these virtues empowers the emergence of a larger, richer self, able to take in greater contrasts, greater intensity, leading to greater experiences of beauty. The relational view of power has important consequences for gender relations. The lives of men can be vastly enriched by nurturing their sense of relatedness without giving up their sense of autonomy. Women’s lives can affirm a fundamental sense of autonomy and not be swallowed up in relationships even as they affirm their basic experience of relatedness. Likewise, the exercise of leadership that ensues from a relational understanding of power is significantly different. Instead of a hierarchical, unidirectional, “top down” manner of exercising power, a good leader may be clear about her/his goals yet is sensitive, receptive, and responsive to those whom he/she leads, affirming them and at the same guiding and motivating them, while respecting their freedom, to the realization of novel possibilities. While there are process thinkers for whom the concept of God is not necessary for Whitehead’s system to be complete, there are others who hold God to be indeed indispensable and in their view, God is the chief exemplification of metaphysical categories. And if God is the chief exemplification of metaphysical categories, then God is the supreme example of relational power. God is supremely relational on the active side, “the primordial nature,” as God lures the

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creatures with ideal possibilities to realize themselves in their fundamental interdependence with one another. God is supremely relational on the receptive side, “the consequent nature,” as God feels the feelings of the creatures and preserves them everlastingly with no loss of immediacy. Thus, God, as chief exemplification of the mutuality and reciprocity that characterizes relatedness, is the supreme participant in the lives of God’s creatures. In Whiteheadian process thought God always act persuasively rather than coercively. Following Whitehead, process thinkers have rebelled against tyrannical images of God. In keeping with this and in being consistent, coherent, and adequate in upholding the freedom of all actualities, process thinkers have maintained that God does not voluntarily relinquish or limit the divine power but rather is “subject to the rules of the game” (is their chief exemplification), much in the manner that constitutional monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers in modern democracies are not above but subject to the laws of their countries.3 At this point, I need to mention the similarity between process thought and consensus theories in sociology and political science. Like process thought, consensus or functionalist theories uphold an organismic view of society in which societies are seen as composed of interdependent and interrelated parts, with each part contributing to the whole; change one part or one set of relationships and you have changed the whole, however incrementally. Thus, according to this view, social change is gradual, evolutionary, reformist, attained on the basis of consensus. One aspect of contemporary sociology and political science is the division between consensus and conflict theories. Defenders of the conflict theory maintain that society is made up of competing groups struggling over scarce resources. Conflict theorist can ask quite appropriately whether process thought, with its emphasis on gentleness and persuasion can take conflict into account. From my perspective, although it could benefit from the appropriation of the insights of conflict theories, process thought is quite aware of conflict (i.e. Whitehead’s statement that “all life is robbery”) and tragedy, with which it often deals in a moving way.

2. Intrinsic Value and the Individual-in-Community According to Whiteheadian process thought, the drive toward fulfillment, the experience of beauty, is characteristic of anything actual at all—from the tiniest energy event to atoms and molecules to animals with central nervous systems. Consequently, perhaps the most important metaphysical claim a Whiteheadian understanding of nature can make is that experience is the locus of value. Any subjective experiencing, however rudimentary, is of intrinsic value. The immediacy and intensity of all subjective experiences “perish,” becoming “objective data” in the becoming of other momentary experiencing subjects. While any experience is of intrinsic value in the immediacy and intensity of the moment, it is also of instrumental value as it contributes to richness of experience of consequent moments of experience. All experiences being of intrinsic value does not the mean that all experiences are of equal value. There is an incredible variety in the capacity for “richness of experience,” for “intensity of feeling.” The capacity for richness of experience depends on the degree of complexity of organization as “actual occasions of experience” come together, extended in space and time.

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Positing the locus of value in momentary experiencing is to be understood in a relational way rather than a substantialist, atomistic manner. The moment of subjective experiencing prehends data from the past of the entire universe, as it arises out of a fundamental web of relationships. This holds true from the tiniest energy event to the complex experiencing of the human self. In the relational universe of Whiteheadian process thought, there is neither absolute distinction nor absolute identity between the self (or any subjective experience) and “the other,” no absolute boundary between the self (or any subjective experience) and the world. The web of relationships is the nurturing (or obstructive) matrix for the richness of experience of the becoming moment. It is in this manner that process thought situates humans in the non-human natural world while preserving the distinctiveness of human beings (the difference between the human and nonhuman, human and non-human experience being one of degree not of kind). Moreover, it is in this manner that it also provides a non-anthropocentric grounding for human rights—as well as the rights of non-human animals. In the history of the Western tradition, human rights have been grounded in the unique dignity that humans have simply by virtue of being human, usually connected to a rationality that is a distinctive characteristic of humans alone. In contrast, process thought posits the notion in the capacity to feel, in the capacity for richness of experience which, as we have seen, is of intrinsic value. Reason, instead of being the defining characteristic of being human, is a feature of all experience, present in all actualities in however rudimentary a level. Thus, in a loose sense, because any experiencing subject is of intrinsic value, we can say that it has rights. However, as we have also seen, not all experiences are equal in richness of experience; hence we may assert that while all creatures have rights, they do not have equal rights. Those rights are contextual and intertwined with the fundamental interdependence of all things. The moment of subjective experiencing is the locus of value; yet, it arises out of the web of relationships that includes the past of the entire universe. In this manner, the relational metaphysics of process thought can be described as that of the “individual-in-community.” As with the notion of interdependence, combining independence and interrelatedness, the concept of the “individual-in community” suggests an inseparable link rather than unavoidable conflict between the individual and the community. Indeed, conflict may occur. However, the individual emerges out of a fundamental web of relationships. The communities out of which we emerge as individuals are a part of us and we a part of them. Those communities can enhance or obstruct individual development, even as individuals have the capacity to transcend their communities and realize themselves at times in spite of their communities. The notion of the self, human and non-human, being an individual-in-community holds true for all actualities, all creatures, human and non-human. Indeed, Whitehead considered the question of the “individual-in-community” to be the religious question.4 The notion of the “individual-in-community,” which in the case of humans has been called “persons-in-community”5 by such a process thinker as John Cobb and the economist Herman Daly, provides quite a different grounding for democratic theory than do typical modern democratic theories grounded in an individualistic, atomistic view of the self and in a substantialist view of reality. Process thought emphasizes the dignity of the individual and

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individual self-realization no less than do individualistic democratic theories. However, unlike atomistic democratic theoreticians, process thinkers emphasize the health of the communities out of which the individual emerges and through which she/he realizes herself/himself no less. While there is no process “party line” and process thinkers are hardly monolithic, nevertheless those who engage in political theory tend to be “communitarian” and “social democratic” in their treatment, within their green perspectives. This does not mean that process thinkers are collectivists. Process thought, with its emphasis on the “individual-in-community,” offers unique resources in affirming both the distinctiveness of the individual and her/his fundamental relatedness. Thus, process thinkers can affirm the concerns of deep ecologists and yet resist allowing the “parts” to be swallowed up by the “whole,” whether that whole be the ecosystem or a Cosmic Soul/Mind of the Cosmic Social Organism, as in some images of Gaia. If a community profoundly shapes the development of healthy, creative, free individuals, then the elements that foster that kind of creative development need to be examined. Expressing it in a variety ways, a number of process thinkers across the generations (from John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, and Daniel Day Williams to John Cobb) emphasize the need for people to participate effectively in the decisions that affect their lives.6 They emphasize the importance of individual responsibility, of taking responsibility for what we do with the past and for how we respond to the possibilities of the future, for the persons we become. One of the crucial implications for efficacious participation in the decisions that affect one’s life is the limitation of undue concentrations of power in every overlapping sphere of life, in both institutions and in persons. Politically, this would involve the maximum safeguarding of civil liberties and due process of law. It would include institutional systems of checks and balances. At larger levels of community, it could entail representative forms of government, at smaller levels it could and would encourage direct forms of democratic participation. Undue concentrations of political power are usually inseparably intertwined with undue concentrations of economic power. For example, transnational corporations have undue influence in the politics within and between nations. All too often, the ability to express one’s views is all too dependent on the ability to pay for it. The spectrum of political opinion that gets to be heard and read in public is circumscribed by the fact that the media is largely owned by transnational corporations or media moguls. Most process thinkers want to limit such concentrations of power. Process thinkers concerned with these issues advocate some form of workers’ democracy, workers’ ownership and management of their places of employment; there cannot be political democracy without economic democracy. Unlike the neoclassical economists, with individualistic, atomistic presuppositions, process thinkers also advocate subsuming economic life to political life, for the health of the community. That does not necessarily imply state control or ownership; it will involve the use of market mechanisms. However, the use of markets is not unhampered; it is for the good the community.7 All of this implies limitations on the undue concentration of power in the state, as for any institution or person, especially, as we have seen, with regard to its coercive powers, with regard to civil liberties, due process of law, and the observance of democratic procedures. Nevertheless, there is also positive role for the state: assuring that the “rules of the game” are

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observed, that there is fairness, equity, and justice, that all have access to the goods of life. The positive role of the state is to promote the common good, with the maximum participation of all. At this point, I need to refer to Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between “freedom from” and “freedom for.” “Freedom from” refers to such things as civil liberties and due process of law, protection from arbitrary state interference in people’s lives, i.e. political liberties. “Freedom for,” on the other hand, refers to maximum and direct participation in al the areas that affect one’s life, political, economic (workers’ management), and cultural (direct governance of local schools) (Gould 1990). In liberal thought as espoused by Berlin in a fashion typical in the West and having virtual official standing in the U.S. (as in the government’s official stance on human rights: there are no economic rights), freedom has been conceived only in terms “freedom from.” Although there is one political philosopher, Samuel H. Beer, who used Whitehead’s thought to defend the individualist premises of liberal democracy (Beer 1949), Whitehead as well as his early and contemporary followers have in various ways advocated both “freedom for” and “freedom from” as requisite for the flourishing of the ‘individual-in-community.” A related issue is that of equality. Whitehead and most process thinkers, with the exception of Kenneth Cauthen (Cauthen 1987), prefer to deal with the concept of “participation” rather than equality. The two concepts certainly are not mutually exclusive and process thinkers need to devote more time to the issue of equality. For example, hierarchies based on privilege of one kind or another inhibit effective participation on the part of those in the lower parts of the hierarchy. Process thinkers need to think through and work towards a society in which there equal access to power and to the goods of life. Although there is no unanimity on these issues, most process thinkers who deal with them are opposed to globalization, to free trade as practiced today. They take this position because, in their analysis, globalization is destructive of community and the diversity of communities.8 It imposes an artificial homogeneity destructive of community, of the individual-in-community, human and non-human. It keeps wages low. In contrast, process thinkers advocate economic self-sufficiency, which would enable what they see as authentic free trade, and the principle of “subsidiarity,” the idea that “power should be located as close to the people as possible, that is, in the smallest units that are feasible.”9 Although process thinkers encourage the maximization of local participation, they realize that some problems demand solutions on a larger scale, sometimes regional, sometimes national, sometimes international. Thus, their treatment of community envisions an ever expanding circle of “communities of communities.” In all instances, they seek the “common good,” the health of the community, of the “individual-incommunity.” In this regard, process thinkers realize that people need to have some minimum standard of living in order to participate effectively in the decisions that shape their lives. Hunger and poverty are not conducive to such participation. The manner in which such a minimum standard of living is guaranteed would encourage both individual responsibility and serving the “common good.” This is another dimension of “freedom for.” For process thinkers, the “common good,” the health of the community includes the nonhuman natural world—not just as something of instrumental value to human beings but of intrinsic value. Unlike in neoclassical economics, most process thinkers concerned with these

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issues treat the non-human natural world not as “externalities” but as integral to economic activity. They advocate “sustainable” economies that do not exceed the carrying capacities of the earth’s resources; they advocate economies of “scale” that use “appropriate” technologies. Instead of measuring economic welfare by the Gross National Product, they advocate the use of an “Index of Sustainable Welfare,” which includes such usually ignored factors as environmental damage, infant mortality, the value of unpaid household work, etc.10 The previously described views of process thinkers have much in common with the principles of The Earth Charter. Both process thought and The Earth Charter situate human beings firmly in the non-human natural world. Most process thinkers and The Earth Charter advocate the quest for a free, democratic, participatory, just, and sustainable community in a nonanthropocentric way, affirming the intrinsic value of the constituent elements of the non-human natural world.11 There is one last point I would like to make in keeping with the prospects for developing “An Ecological Democratic Faith.” In contrast to democratic theories grounded in anthropocentric views of humanity’s relationship to the non-human natural world, Thomas Berry has suggested that instead of “democracy” we should start talking of “biocracy.”12 In this regard, Buddhist deep ecologist Joanna Macy have called for “a council of all beings.13 The notion of “biocracy” seeks to convey the idea that we have duties and obligations towards all sentient creatures as well as to the complex, interrelated ecosystems that make life possible. I would like to strengthen the non-anthropocentric, biocentric and ecocentric thrust of Berry’s notion of “biocracy” by claiming that the non-human natural world, speaking metaphorically, has its own system of “checks and balances.” Is not the environmental degradation so evident in today’s world the result of non-human nature’s system of checks and balances? But we need to go further than that. We need to listen to the voices of the non-human natural world in their own right. And we need to experiment with institutional ways of making this effective and permanent. This is the vision of an ecological democratic faith, the vision of a participatory universe in which the dignity and creative freedom of all creatures in their fundamental interdependence with one another are affirmed, in which the voices of all creatures are “heard.”

3. Community, Nationalism, and a “Critical Patriotism” A sense of community seems to be inseparable from a sense of rootedness, of belonging,14 athomeness in the universe. We experience this sense of rootedness, of belonging, of at-homeness in the universe not in abstract ways but in the concrete experiences of community in a particular place and expressed through shared memories, although those memories may be interpreted in diverse ways. Whitehead and subsequent process thinkers maintain that each actual occasion, each momentary subjective experiencing, has its standpoint, its own perspective from which it prehends data from the past and responds to the possibilities of the future. The standpoint includes the physical, geographical location, the community(ies) of which one is a part in space

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and time. The need for rootedness, for belonging, as Daniel Day Williams has maintained, is intrinsic to one’s identity as a human being.15 And if this need is inseparable from the particularity of place, then, while repudiating its extreme expressions, we need to recognize that contemporary forms of nationalism, sometimes in twisted, distorted, even demonic ways (i.e. the Balkans), are fundamentally motivated by the search for roots and belonging. Of course, the expressions of nationalism need not such distorted and demonic forms; there are traditions within those expressions, such as the “liberal nationalism” of the nineteenth century, that are able to affirm the need to belong to a particular group in a particular place while accepting and affirming “the otherness of the other.” In this regard, the Hungarian political thinker István Bibó makes a useful distinction, one that process thinkers might appropriate, between nationalism and patriotism. Nationalism is fraught with xenophobia, an uncritical attitude toward anything one’s country does, and sees “the other” as a threat to one’s identity. Critical patriotism, on the other hand, is characterized by a natural love of one’s country yet can be critical of particular policies of particular governments and is engages in selfcritical reinterpretation of national symbols. The challenge for us is to be rooted in our own communities yet to be so open to other communities that we recognize the bonds of our common humanity, put better and more inclusively, of our common creatureliness, in the search for rootedness and belonging.

4. Conclusion I would like to conclude with Whitehead’s own words: Freedom means that within each type the requisite coordination should be possible without the destruction of the general ends of the whole community. Indeed, one general end is that these variously coordinated should contribute to the complex pattern of community life, each in virtue of its own peculiarity. In this way, individuality gains the effectiveness which issues from coordination, and freedom obtains power necessary for its perfection (AI 67).

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Notes 1

I am inebted to J. Ron Engel for the use of the term “ecological democratic faith.” In this lengthy footnote, I shall include references to both process philosophy and process theology since treatments of political theory from a process perspective have come from both areas. An early work in political thought influenced by Whitehead that stresses reason, individual freedom, and liberal democracy is Samuel H. Beer’s The City of Reason (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1949). The literature dealing with process theology, political theology, and liberation theology is abundant. For representative treatments of process theology, political theology, and liberation theology, see Delwin Brown, To Set at Liberty: Christian Faith and Human Freedom (Maryknoll, New York, Orbis Books, 1981); John B. Cobb, Jr., Process Theology as Political Theology (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1982); John B. Cobb, Jr., and W. Widick Schroeder, Editors, Process Philosophy and Social Thought (Chicago, Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1981); Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr., The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Human Community (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1981); Herman E. Daly and John B Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future, Second Edition Updated and Expanded (Boston, Beacon Press, 1994); John B. Cobb, Jr., Sustainability: Economics, Ecology, and Justice (Maryknoll, New York, Orbis Books, 1992); John B. Cobb, Jr., Sustaining the Common Good: A Christian Perspective on the Global Economy (Cleveland, Ohio, The Pilgrim Press, 1994); Schubert M. Ogden, Faith and Freedom: Toward a Theology of Liberation, Revised and Enlarged Edition (Nashville, Tennessee, Abingdon Press, 1989); the essays on the theme of faith and justice, an interface between process and liberation theologies in Process Studies, Volume 14, Number 2, Summer 1985; Dermot A. Lane, Foundations for a Social Theology: Praxis, Process, and Salvation (New York, Paulist Press, 1984); Jay McDaniel, “The God of the Oppressed and the God Who is Empty,” Frederick Ferre and Rita Matragnon, Editors, God and Global Justice: Religion and Global Justice: Religion and Poverty in an Unequal World (New York, Paragon House, 1985). For related works see, Kenneth Cauthen, Christian Biopolitics: A Credo and Strategy for the Future (Nashville, Tennessee, Abingdon Press, 1971); Kenneth Cauthen, The Passion for Equality (Totowa, New Jersey, Rowman and Littfield, Publishers, 1987); Kenneth Cauthen, Theological Biology: The Case for a New Modernism (Lewiston, New York and Queenston, Ontario, 1991); Kenneth Cauthen, Toward a New Modernism (Lanham, Maryland, University Press of America, 1997); Robert C. Neville, The Cosmology of Freedom (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1974); Robert C. Neville, The Puritan Smile: A Look Toward Moral Reflection (Albany, New York, State University of New York Press Press, 1987); Robert C. Neville, Religion in Late Modernity (Albany, New York, State University of New York Press Press, 2002); William M. Sullivan, Reconstructing Public Philosophy (Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1981). For a work closely resembling Daly and Cobb yet original in its own right, see Carol Johnston, The Wealth or Health of Nations: Transforming Capitalism from Within (Cleveland, Ohio, The Pilgrim Press, 1998). For a critique from within the process camp, see Randall C. Morris, Process Philosophy and Political Ideology: The Social and Political Thought of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne (Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1991). Hartshorne’s reply can be found in Charles Hartshorne, “Some Comments on Randall Morris’ Process Philosophy and Political Ideology,” Process Studies, Vol. 21 No. 2, 1992, pp. 123-29. For representative treatments of these and related issues from a feminist perspective, see Sheila Greeve Davaney, Editor, Feminism and Process Thought (Lewiston, New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1981); Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (Boston, Beacon Press, 1986); Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then (Boston, Beacon Press, 1996); Susan Nelson Dunfee, Beyond Servanthood: Christianity and the Liberation of Women

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(Lanham, Maryland, University Press of America, 1989); Susan L. Nelson, Healing the Broken Heart: Sin, Alienation and the Gift of Grace (St. Louis, Missouri, Chalice Press, 1997); Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, The Fall into Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology (New York, Continuum Publishing Company, 1994); Nancy R. Howell, A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidarity, and Metaphysics (New York, Humanity Books, 2000). For a perspective from Latin American liberation theology informed by process thought and biblical studies, see the works of George V. Pixley. For a creative synthesis of process thought and black liberation theology, see Henry James Young, Hope in Process: A Theology of Social Pluralism (Minneapolis, Minnesota, Fortress Press, 1990). For an important work in African American social ethics by an African American process social ethicist, see Theodore Walker, Jr., Empower the People: Social Ethics for the African-American Church (Maryknoll, New York, Orbis Books, 1991). See also the special issue of Process Studies devoted to Process Theology and the Black Experience, Process Studies, Vol. 18 No. 4, Winter 1989. The works of the members of the Social Ethics Seminar, a group of social ethicists informed by process thought, situated for the most part in the Midwest. They tend to be more positive in their estimate of modernity than such “constructive postmodernists” as Cobb and Griffin, with some favoring economic growth. For some representative works, see Warren R. Copeland, Economic Justice: The Social Ethics of U.S. Economic Policy (Nashville, Tennessee, Abingdon Press, 1988); Warren R. Copeland, And the Poor Get Welfare: The Ethics of Poverty in the United States (Nashville, Tennessee, Abingdon Press, 1994); Franklin I. Gamwell, Beyond Preference: Liberal Theories of Independent Associations (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984); Franklin I. Gamwell, The Divine Good: Modern Moral Theory and the Necessity of God (New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 1990); Franklin I. Gamwell, The Meaning of Religious Freedom: Modern Politics and the Democratic Resolution (Albany, New York, State University of New York Press Press, 1995); Franklin I. Gamwell, Democracy on Purpose: Justice and the Reality of God (Washington, D.C., Georgetown University Press, 2000); W. Widick Schoeder and Franklin I. Gamwell, Economic Life: Process Interpretations and Critical Responses (Chicago, Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1988); Lois Gehr Livezey, “Goods, Rights, and Virtues: Toward an Interpretation of Ethics in Process Thought” (The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 1986). The works of Douglas Sturm are especially important. See especially his Community and Alienation: Essays on Process Thought and Public Life (Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) and Suffering and Solidarity: Toward a Politics of Relationality (Albany, New York, State University of New York Press Press, 1998). Also important are the works of J. Ron Engel who combines in a unique way concerns for eco-justice with concerns for democracy. I am indebted to him for the phrase “an ecological democratic faith.” 2 I am indebted for the distinction between unilateral and relational power to Bernard M. Loomer’s classic essay, “Two Conceptions of Power,” Process Studies, Volume 6, Number 1, Summer 1976, pp. 5-32. See also Rita Nakashima Brock, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York, Crossroad Publishing Co., 1988); Leslie A. Muray, “A Democratic Faith in a Democratic God;” also Leslie A. Muray, “Democratic Vistas on Faith and God” (Part I), Creative Transformation, Vol. 6 No. 4, Summer 1997, pp.22-23 and “Democratic Vistas on Faith and God” (Part II and III), Creative Transformation, Vol.7 No. 1, Fall 1997, pp.14-16. See also, James Newton Poling, The Abuse of Power: A Theological Problem (Nashville, Tennessee, Abingdon Press, 1991). 3 See my “A Democratic Faith in a Democratic God” and “Democratic Vistas on Faith and God” (Parts I, II and III) for lengthier treatments of these ideas. For parallels between concepts and images of deity and of political power, I am indebted to the insights of David Nicholls. See especially his Deity and Domination: Images of God and the State in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London and New York, Routledge, 1989/1994). 4 Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (Cleveland and New York, World Publishing Company, 1967), 86. In my “Meland’s Mystical Naturalism and Ecological Responsibility,” in Religious Experience and Ecological Responsibility edited by Donald A. Crosby and Charley D. Hardwick (New York, Peter Lang, 1996), 257-75, I appropriate Meland’s use of the notion of

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the “individual-in-community” to argue that in order to foster the ecological ethos requisite for dealing adequately with ecological crisis, we need extend the doctrine of the imago dei to the non-human natural world. 5 Herman E. Daly and John B Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good, 159-75. 6 ibid., 298-304. 7 ibid., 14-15, 138-58, 298-304. 8 ibid., 209-235. 9 ibid., 174. 10 ibid., 443-507. 11 “The Earth Charter,” Benchmark Draft II, April 1999, Principle 11, p. 4. “The 1994 Declaration of Principles on Human Rights and the Environment” also attempts to affirm the right of humans and non-humans. It stresses human responsibility to such an extent that the document winds up underemphasizing the intrinsic value of non-humans, raising the question of whether, in spite of its intentions, the document succeeds in avoiding anthropocentrism. See the document at http://tufts.edu/departments/fletcher/multi/www/1994-decl.html. 12 Thomas Berry, “Teilhard in the Age of Ecology,” Video Interview (Mystic CT, Twenty-Third Publications, 1988). 13 Pat Fleming and Joanna Macy, “The Council of All Beings,” in Thinking Like A Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings, edited by Seed, Macy, Fleming & Naess, pp.79-90. 14 Daniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love (New York and Evanston, Harper and Row, Publishers, 1968), 146. 15 ibid., 146.

Whiteheadian Public Policy: Depolarization for Network Coalescence John Quiring

i

1. Introduction This entry relates Whiteheadian process thought to policy studies seeking a policy theory and method for increased global application. Its focus is on policy components and models, rather than positions, since a review of policy proposals for each issue area in any one political culture—let alone all—is out of the question. It seeks to explain the method of polarity and balance employed by Whitehead and Hartshorne. By seeing their work in the context of a global canon of process polarity philosophers, it seeks to transcend the identification of their thought with policy proposals for the North American context, although the latter will provide illustrations. Process thought is developed here as a resource for sorting, linking, and balancing competing policy components and networks, jurisdictions, institutions, and disciplinary perspectives on policy. Policy roles for Whiteheadian thought are perhaps threefold. (1) Its general polarity method indicates a potential to develop a policy method of depolarization of ideologized concepts and polarized communities, facilitating coalescence of policy networks in various issue areas. This method of polarity and balance enables it to become a resource for policymakers—in any context—interested in truly public policies. (2) Its trans-disciplinary nature helps explain the Right-Left expanding manifold of policy interests as generated by looking beyond proximate to root causes1 of public problems, and to distant consequences of policy decisions, lending credence to attempts to enfold movements of under-represented stakeholders within mainstream policy networks. (3) The method of balance is context-sensitive, generating results that vary with the paradigm in which it is applied. Thus, Whitehead’s cosmological framework can be employed to facilitate expanding levels of awareness (from ego to community to ecology to cosmos to ultimacy), generating policy proposals viewed as progressive from mainstream policy standpoints. This process policy model seeks integration of “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions of policy factors. Here “vertical” means levels of participation within policy networks and levels of jurisdiction (municipal to global). “Horizontal” denotes lateral relations between domestic ideological policy networks and between makers of international and global policy. A major focus is on vertical levels of participation within policy networks 2—government, interest groups and social movements, institutional elites, and political culture—and horizontal policy creativity i

Philosophy Department, Victor Valley College, Victorville, CA 92392; www.vvc.edu; [email protected].

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between networks. Also noted is the scale of some policy issues (e.g., environmental, business, labor) indicating need for networks to link all levels of jurisdiction—local to global, nation to nation. Here, the potential for cross-ideological and international surveillance and communication necessary for truly public policy development has been aided by the forced transparency of internet-linked computers and websites.3 Whiteheadian thought can be shown to seek reframing of policy issues, levels, and networks in terms of multiple disciplinary perspectives by employing a method of polarity and balance. If social problems can be viewed as personal and group imbalance, injustice, extremes, or polarization, policy solutions can be seen to begin with depolarization and creative transformation of internal and external factors. It is suggested that a policy method consistent with the scope of process thought might be political culture transformation and balance for policy network coalescence—domestic, foreign, international, and global. Mutual transformation could be sought between polarized networks (conservative/progressive), levels (elite/popular, global/local), and regions (West/East, North/South). Also, a process view could reinforce an evolutionary view of political cultures, their transformation presupposing a time dimension—e.g. long- vs. short-range. Lastly, appreciation of policy dimensions and factors anticipates a diversity of actual Whitehead-influenced policy writing, socially located at different levels of participation and jurisdiction and within different political subcultures and networks. Members of the International Process Network, for example, could facilitate indigenized policy applications relevant to any government-in-power seeking the coalescence necessary for truly public policies. Public policy forms a foundation for public law before it is fully enunciated. Major policy issue areas are security, criminal justice, environment, agriculture, economics and business, government operations, civil infrastructure, social, family and privacy, health, culture, and education. I wish to focus, however, not on policy debates over proposals in these areas, but on policy models that discuss components of policy and levels of participation. Some policy models discuss components outside government as well as inside; unofficial actors as well as official, macro factors as well as micro. The policy components are not only government agencies, but also policy networks, and their political subculture frameworks. Policymaking, I suggest, involves not only the levels of agenda-setting, alternative-shaping, and implementing, but also the balancing of political subcultures and cultures within which policy debates are constrained. The alternative policy models are government-autonomy, pluralist, and power elite. The levels of jurisdiction of policymaking are global and international as well as local and national. It seems that competing public policy networks express ideologically-shaped political subcultures within a given political culture.4 Policy networks link policymakers at all levels of governance with lobbyists for overlapping coalitions of interest or advocacy groups, movement constituencies, mass media opinion-makers and front groups,5 think-tank policy-shapers, policydiscussion group agenda-setters,6 and foundation and corporate funders.7 These subculturebased networks may be considered conservative, liberal or centrist, and progressive, although the content of these ideological labels varies with political culture (nation to nation) and with insider/outsider perspective. Presumably, with some exceptions, counterparts to the components

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of the Right-Left U.S. policy networks portrayed here can be identified and scrutinized in other national contexts.8 My portrait of policymaking synthesizes policy models of increasing scope—from government autonomy to pluralism and elitism—in the context of political cultures. Government- or state-autonomy models focus on policy contributions of government officials— executive, legislative, judicial, and administrative.9 Pluralist models, of which postmodernism is a type, include attention to policy factors outside government: interest groups and social movements; researchers, experts, and consultants; media and public opinion; and electionsrelated participants.10 Power elite thinking suggests that a model of three levels is needed to understand public affairs: (a) the policy agenda-setting function of elites in economic, legal, political, educational, cultural, scientific, and civic institutions; (b) the public’s endorsement of policy proposals by politicians; and (c) implementation of policy by governments.11 I have suggested, however, that political cultures constitute a broader or higher first level or stage—the historic social construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of the subculture frameworks presupposed by policy networks. At this level, perhaps, is where political philosophies and theologies are evolving their contribution to policy theory.12

2. Overview of Policy Studies In what sense is policymaking truly public? Is it of and by, or mostly for, the public? Does policy pluralism obtain in Western democracies, or is elitism a better description of policy making? Do we really have polyarchy,13 or is oligarchy a more accurate label? Do a few interests dominate? Are there no longer iron triangles, but subgovernments consisting of legislative subcommittees, executive agencies, and special interests?14 Is policy just politics by other means? Do policy networks function as countervailing powers to each other? Could a Whiteheadian process policy model be developed to explain and perhaps facilitate the shifting equilibrium of competing subcultures, institutions, interest groups, and politicians?15 Is there any way of judging the comparative impact of socialization, education, opinionshaping, advocacy group membership, contributing, campaigning, and voting, by contrast with the influence of lobbying, caucusing, budgeting, and other government-related functions? Are there not also indirect influences on policy, up-stream from governments, so to speak—the making and reshaping of political cultures, theories of political economy, philosophies of security, and ideologies—the paradigms and concepts that shape constitutions?16 Must not radicals of Left and Right recognize their policy influence as mostly indirect—rather than direct—in democratic regimes? Or are there ways of accelerating policy transformation? Governance at all levels, local to global, is influenced by policy directives. A vast spectrum of private interests funnels into public policy. Policy Studies seeks to understand “the funnel,” as I call it—the complex transformation of private money, power, interest, and opinion into concepts of public opinion, interest, policy and government action. Because enormous amounts of money are channeled into government programs and the making of regulations and laws

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purportedly in the public interest, networks of institutions and political actors seek to manage and monitor the policymaking process in order to better justify expenditures. Policies are plans or principles adopted to guide group decisions and actions. Public policy agendas—foreign and domestic—are made and reshaped by non-governmental as well as governmental processes and institutions. The policy development process funnels input from primary and secondary stakeholders across the ideological spectrum to government and other public authorities. Corporate and union leaders, foundations and other funders, think tanks and the academy, mass media, voters, single-interest advocacy groups and other civil society actors, political parties, and private individuals—all aspire to credible partnership with government. They seek to impact public policy as well as government in all its forms—legislative, judicial, and executive, and bureaucratic. But some are more influential than others. One incentive in the study of policy thinking might be to discover ways to make it more just, by increasing the influence of underrepresented stakeholders. Thus, policy studies is not just for professional policymakers but also for educators, journalists, and citizens.17 Successful public policies proceed through a policy cycle. Policy studies can help groups and individual citizens understand and structure a cycle appropriate for their concerns. Factors in policymaking are the designing and managing of public forums, coalition-building, creating consensus, communication of complex issues to citizens and leaders, managing feedback from citizens, and working with elected officials in the design of appropriate policies, ultimately managing the decision-making process. In general a human need not met by current policies is perceived. This initial perception can be cultivated to create an environment for change. A small group of leaders characterizes the status quo as unsatisfactory. To articulate new policy, a coalition of groups is formed—the broader the better—to characterize the urgency of action. Consensus may be achieved in the struggle to set aside differences. It is critical to have elected officials as partners. They need to be informed and involved. Proposed solutions need to be acceptable to the parties affected, and viewed as workable by elected officials and the public. The style of policymaking rhetoric is, perhaps, maximum self-consciousness in the interest of transparency.

3. Policy Models: Government-Autonomy, Pluralist, Elite Institutions Models of the policy process can focus on non-governmental as well as governmental components, deriving from policy studies and public administration or political science and sociology. Policy models vary in scope, focusing either on ends or means, agenda-setters or policy-makers, policy trustee elites or government officials. At one end of the spectrum, a model that focuses on proximate government policymaking can be a flow chart documenting the path by which legislative bills become laws. At the other end of the spectrum, a model can picture the plurality of institutions, groups, interests, and values involved in the identification of issues and the setting of policy agendas.

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Again, diverse models of policy formation emphasize different factors. These include policy history, participation, background institutions, ideology, elite preference, governmental systems output, econometrics, processes, compromise, group equilibrium, collective decision-making by self-interested individuals, bureaucratic structure, maximizing social gain, incremental improvement of existing policies, rational choice in competitive situations, normative decisions, and muddling through.18 Seeking to comprehend this diversity are policy models typically classified in terms of increasing scope: government, pluralist, and elite. Some public policy models assume government-autonomy or focus on government institutions. These include systems theory which takes an input/output perspective. Generic process theories seek to identify stages of policy development within government agencies. Pluralist theories19 emphasize the networks of interest groups that shape governance. In addition to the dominant rational choice and game theories, pluralism includes the public choice focus on self-interested individuals, and the rationalism of utilitarian calculation of the greatest good for the greatest number. They also include postmodern theory and group theory—the checking, balancing, and shifting equilibrium of groups in competition. Employing the spiderweb symbol, I suggest that the radii can represent interests, and the rings can represent ideological networks, radiating outward from government. The ring closest to the center represents the party in power (eg., conservative, liberal, or progressive) and its ideological prioritizing of core values (eg., order, liberty, equality). A third set of theories investigates such non-governmental factors as economics, class, and institutional leadership.20 This power elite perspective21 presents evidence for oligarchy in the interlocking leadership of institutions—economic, governmental, cultural. This becomes a class-domination theory when G. William Domhoff22 presents evidence for the upper-class backgrounds of a majority of U.S. institutional elites. A traditional Marxist perspective would emphasize the “two-interest” struggle of labor and capital to shape policy. This view trades on the distinction between agenda-setting and policy shaping/implementing. It does not necessarily imply that outside interests control politicians. But although “the buck stops” on the president’s desk, it starts somewhere outside government. Also, the hundreds of policies may follow different paths from agenda-setting to implementation, some paths longer than others. Thomas Dye holds that each of the models of public policymaking provides a useful perspective and none is complete or best,23 yet he develops a version of the elite institutionalist model. Presumably all actual policy decisions are made by elites. But different policy models might reflect disciplinary and sub-disciplinary interests. Or they might single out ideological differences in the weighting of various institutional inputs. Finally they might reflect different judgments as to the extent of popular representation and influence. Postmodern policy theorists Charles Fox and Hugh Miller24 indicate a spectrum of policy talk: anarchic, pluralist, and elitist—”many talk,” “some talk,” and “few talk.” They strategize and illustrate pluralism (“some-talk”). But I wish to employ these distinctions also to suggest stages of development of public policy consciousness, thus combining the three families of policy models. Anybody can talk politics or act out in protest (anarchic), but discipline and moderation are required to unite interest groups (pluralism) and (elite) funding around an issue for successful translation into public policy.

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A policy proposal emerges, initially, from the partial array of prioritized values or ideals within a perspective, political theory, political philosophy, or ideology. While the latter three terms can be given distinct meanings, they at least overlap, and can be shown to refer to the same phenomena—varieties of conservatism, liberalism, and progressivism.25 Within the constraints of a political culture or subculture, to the extent that the policy-making milieu is truly public, truly democratic, these private policy ideals, I suggest, will be exposed to “the full circle” (Whitehead) of competing ideals and policy proposals that incorporate them. Public policy thinking requires realism, presumably, to imagine modifications of the alleged implications of private policies in the context of this wider array of ideals and alternative priorities. Policy issues can be entertained by almost anyone anywhere, but the study of policy-making, nation-specific or comparative, is interested, perhaps, in identifying the levers of power needed for establishing government mandates—regulative and de-regulative, distributive and redistributive. If domestic policy-making occurs within the context of a political culture or subculture,26 foreign policies are similarly constrained by global conditions, structural theories in international relations would say. Each nation, small or large, seeks to maximize security and wealth by identifying its role in a uni-polar, bi-polar, or multi-polar configuration of global power blocs and their ideological values.27 Different policies are all designed to achieve the same goals. Policy proposals by representatives of competing ideologies and political subcultures will be advanced within the constraints of a given political culture. Presumably, the political culture of each nation is a unique mix of values and interests—conservative, liberal, and progressive. A range of policy-making variables would presumably exist within totalitarian and autocratic regimes as well, though narrower. While proximate policy thinking presupposes the value mix of a given political culture, policy issues are also addressed from the perspectives of philosophies, religions, theologies, and ethics. These wider paradigms may introduce questions about alternative mixes of values. Resources are thus available for reshaping political cultures in terms of alternative paradigms of political discourse, realigned institutional policy networks, ranges of acceptable policy proposals, and thus actual policy mandates.

4. Four Levels of Policy Components A representative of the pluralist policy model states that “Policymaking is a messy business. It entails more than the traditional policy cycle discussed in most textbooks. And it involves more than presidents and members of Congress. Judges, bureaucrats, corporate leaders, journalists, and voters all influence and participate in the process, and at all levels of government. Each group practices a different kind of politics, which very often results in different policies and outcomes.”28 So while the most intensive focus of policy studies is on governmental processes, some scholarship and some research institutes include macro-factors that shape political culture. Policy studies can focus on minute details of policy-making at the end of the long policy

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process in democratic regimes. But a range of wider-gauged factors is acknowledged to contribute to the transformation of private opinion and prejudice into public-minded opinion suitable for policy-consideration. Thus we can conclude that policy-talk occurs at a number of levels: from (level 1) political philosophy and theology, social and political science, and studies of ideology, to (level 2) corporate and private foundations, policy-discussion groups, and think tanks, to (level 3) mass media, public opinion, interest groups and social movements, and politics; and finally to (level 4) government. Various images can be used to picture the policy process. Elite theory has been pictured with a pyramid and a tree. In the pyramid image, the elite is at the top, government is in the middle, and the masses are at the bottom. With the tree image, the trunk represents the elite, the branches stand for the power of government, and the twigs are the masses.29 I wish to employ the images of an hourglass and a funnel to picture the diversity of policy inputs and the inevitable narrowing and focusing of thought necessary for public policies, regulations, laws, and actions. As sand in an hourglass is forced into and through a narrow passage, so a vast array of private assumptions and opinions is narrowed into public opinion, or else ignored, as policy is shaped by selected strands of opinion. Then, just as the hourglass is inverted to continue the flow of sand, so policy is tested in practice in the conflict of groups, reexamined, revised, reshaped, perhaps replaced by an incoming regime. But does the analogy hold? Does all policy-talk factor into action, as all grains of sand pass through the hourglass? The various levels at which policy thinking occurs can also be symbolized as a funnel
in four sections. The sections represent, from the top, (level 1) the historic making and reshaping of political cultures, (level 2) elite policy agenda setting, (level 3) the pluralist focus on a diversity of policy interests, and (level 4) governmental policy making.30 In the bottom fourth of the funnel (level 4) are pictured the inter-governmental and governmental policy components (executive, legislative, judiciary, and bureaucracy; local, state, national, international, and global). Above that, reaching toward the middle of the funnel (level 3) are pictured political parties, party-funders, interest groups and social movements, nongovernmental organizations, public opinion, and mass media that shape policy agendas. Above that (level 2), are the institutions that, according to elite theory, set policy agendas— think tanks, policy-planning groups, foundations and corporations. In the top fourth of the funnel (level 1) are pictured the policy experts, “epistemic communities,”31 and the components that shape political culture. I do not wish to imply that education is the most powerful institution, just that education contains a symbolic representation of the broadest array of factors that form and transform political culture: political science, management theory, public and private organization theory, economics, political ideologies, international relations, social theory, sociology, world history and historiography, social and political philosophy, philosophy of social science, natural sciences and technology. Vertical dotted lines running through the funnel (top to bottom) portray the channeling and narrowing of issues through the policy networks of the ideological subcultures. A note about the relevance of social movements to public policy is warranted. A relationship between social movements and public policy has long been assumed but is “under-studied” and

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“under-theorized,” a “process involving multiple stakeholders in policy making […] acknowledging the very different organizational cultures of activists and public policy makers.”32 Mutual influence between activist efforts and the policy process, between protest and policy, has been postulated,33 in which “[s]tate policies are […] both the cause and the consequence of citizen politics.”34 Though scholars have assumed that social movements play a role in policy agenda setting, movements’ influence in shaping policy alternatives and effect on the implementation process is also being studied.35 A recent publication states that “equitable public policies have been typically created as a result of the political pressure brought to bear by social movements.”36 Social movements have been defined as “collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities,” but they need to be distinguished from interest groups and political parties.37 The domain of social movements may be local, national, or transnational.38 The scope of social movements may be reformist (e.g. abortion-rights) or radical (e.g. civil rights, Polish Solidarity). The type of change sought has been innovative (technological) or conservative. U.S. conservatism, for example, has been viewed as a movement that took about fifty years to triumph.39 The focus may be individual life change (e.g. religious) or social change (e.g. heading toward political party status). Methods may be peaceful (Gandhi, King) or violent (Irish Republican Army, Irgun, PLO 40). Typically an initiating event or sequence provides a catalyst for change (Rosa Parks). “There must also be polarizing differences between groups of people.”41 Lastly, movements have a life cycle—creation, growth, success, or failure and dissolution.

5. Policy Networks Public policy-talk is interdisciplinary and occurs at many levels and in all types of regimes. Policy-talk occurs in the contexts of philosophy, ethics, theology, and social science, as well as policy studies and government policy making. It occurs in authoritarian as well as democratic regimes and at all levels—local, state, national, international, and global. The question is always to what extent policy is truly public and not one-sidedly private. The policy process funnels input from various institutions and individuals linked by ideological networks into proximate governmental policymaking contexts. I take it that most policy proposals will be self-interested or public in name only, some will be public in intent, perhaps some will genuinely approximate public interest and the common good. Policy agendas, I take it, are decided, debated, and enacted mostly by institutional elites, but truly popular, truly public input is possible, though difficult. The public dimension of policy may be elastic, reflecting variability in opportunities to mobilize pluralist, populist alternatives to oligarchic solutions. Philosophy, ethics, and public policy are studied by a number of centers and programs.42 The relation of religious and theological interests to public policy is studied by another set of centers and programs.43 Ideological shaping of political culture and policy has been measured.44 Studies relating public policy to the wider world of political theory and the concerns of political science can be found.45 Questions about the foundation funding of policy think tanks are addressed. 46

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The impact of think tanks on policy is now quite heavily researched.47 Also the role of mass media in shaping public opinion relevant to policy matters is studied,48 as is the diversity of public opinion.49 Policy Studies can investigate the political culture contexts that transform public opinion into policy.50 Evidence for and against pluralist and elite policy theory can be examined.51 Policy proposals are discussed continuously in political magazines.52 Interest or advocacy groups lobby on behalf of numerous “subpublics” and around many issues.53 The direct study of government policy processes is a major preoccupation of proximate policy studies.54 Though my examples come mostly from the U.S. policy context, comparative policy studies are available to test the extent to which the U.S. model is being imported or modified by other countries. International policy thinking can be explored using the World Directory of Think Tanks hosted by the National Institute for Research Advancement.55 To the extent that other nations replicate the U.S. model, power elite research can be encouraged for other national contexts following, for example, William Domhoff’s method of power structure analysis.56 It is said that the dominant, mainstream, U.S. policy power structure had long been liberal, centrist, center-left—now calling itself neo-progressive; but has been surpassed in recent decades by a rapidly-developing center-right, conservative, neoconservative, libertarian policy coalition.57 Conservatives say that because of inhospitality to conservative ideas in mainstream institutions, they had to forge a new counter-establishment infrastructure,58 “changing the climate of opinion” through think tanks and media, and by organizing students, faculty, citizens, politicians, and persons of faith.59 Fusionism is a term that conservatives use to explain their powerful coalition with libertarians in the U.S. and U.K.60 Also, a progressive, left-of-center, liberal-labor network of policy interests parallels the mainstream institutions, but is vastly smaller, perhaps 2-5% of the population, and the nature of its influence on proximate policy making is debatable. A 2003 report on media citations of think tanks, for example, found “an increasing focus on centrist to conservative voices, leaving progressives out of the debate.” 61 Are progressives left out, or did they long ago excuse themselves from the policy process? To what extent, if at all, or at what level do they interact with the liberal and conservative policy networks? Political economic truth is one thing, but “actionable” policy is another. In the U.S. public policy system, for example, arguably fewer than 10,000 elites in overlapping institutional positions set policy agendas that are later shaped in public debate and enacted by government officials. A portrait of the mainstream power structure, identifying representative organizations in each ideologically-shaped policy network can be quite easily sketched. Just supplement the progressive power elite research of Thomas Dye62 and William Domhoff63 with conservative Derk Wilcox’s Right Guide64 and Left Guide,65 interest group research, a media watch magazine’s comparative survey of think tank citations, a history of neoconservatism, and a conservative-watcher’s website.66 Again, perhaps the dominant U.S. policy network, historically, has been centrist, center-left, liberal, welfare liberal, now neoliberal or “neoprogressive.” Perhaps the dominant U.S. policy influence now is conservative, center-right, neoconservative, and libertarian (or classical liberal). An older progressive, left-of-center, liberal-labor subculture in the U.S. sustains many small organizations whose leadership publishes policy statements on social and environmental

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responsibility, economic and social justice, multiculturalism and civil rights, education and freedom of expression, and nonviolence.

6. Political Culture and Public Policy Are philosophy and theology impossibly distant from the give-and-take of policy lobbying and negotiation? Not if a discussion of political culture is relevant to public policy. If sociologist Peter Berger is right about the historically-constructed nature of all things social,67 can history and political science tell us anything about the pace of transformation of political cultures? When might it be practical to reconsider the concepts of ultimate realty and value presupposed by a political culture? Is this not what the conservative movement did in the U.S. in the last half of the twentieth century? They eventually reset the agenda—to private sector solutions and family and faith-based values. Either they reshaped the political culture, or tipped the balance to one subculture within it. Did they get it right, or only half right? Can the reshaping continue? Might a better balance include nature, science, other cultures, and other religions? Public policies reflect political cultures and subcultures, says political scientist James Q. Wilson.68 The polarization of political subcultures and ideological policy networks are related. I suggest that policy-relevant thought might include analyses of political cultures as well as policy theory and proposals. A function of political philosophers and theologians might be seen as analyzing and reframing concepts presupposed within political cultures and subcultures in addition to proposing and shaping specific policies. Political culture is said to be “the inherited set of beliefs, attitudes, and opinions [people] have about how their government ought to operate.”69 Sources of political culture, at least in the U.S., “include the family, schools, religious and civic organizations, the mass media, and political activities.”70 Or, more broadly, political culture is a nation’s political philosophy, consisting of beliefs about “how governmental, political, and economic life should be carried out.”71 “Political cultures create a framework for political change and are unique to nations, states, and other groups.”72 But a distinction is drawn between political culture and ideology, in that “people can disagree on an ideology (what government should do) but still share a common political culture.”73 “Some ideologies”, however, “are so critical of the status quo that they require a fundamental change in the way government is operated, and therefore embody a different political culture as well.”74 Perhaps liberal regimes tolerate so much diversity that some radicals of Left and Right live in very different political subcultures from those that shape and implement policy. Analyses of the policy process investigate institutional decision-making and behavior. Governments and other institutions make decisions and take actions based on policies that presuppose constitutions, mission statements, ideological assumptions, or other regimelegitimating factors. Policies are shaped autocratically or democratically by elites who may represent public opinion and the public interest selectively or broadly, thinly or deeply, wisely or foolishly. Policy studies in a comparative government context could, in principle, compare and contrast policy processes in a variety of regimes—autocratic as well as democratic,

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collectivist as well as individualist, developing as well as developed, Asian and Middle Eastern as well as Western; Confucian, Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic as well as Marxist and neoliberal. Public policy thinking, perhaps, can be characterized as the attempt to coalesce competing expressions of the interests of political cultures and subcultures.75 Perhaps we can do no other than express what we believe is for the common good, based on the values of our communities and the perspectives of our disciplines and professions. But some political cultures are dominant and others are marginal. For example, security policies that are thinkable in Oslo, Stockholm, or Bonn are perhaps not possible in Washington, Moscow, or Baghdad; or perhaps environmental policies that are thinkable in cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Monica, Arcata, Santa Fe, or Burlington, are not possible in Los Angeles, nor at state, national, and international levels.

7. Global Policymaking Piecemeal global policy making 76 seems to fill the void left by the realist veto on global government, and modifications of traditional positions in international relations (IR) theory are being made. If classical realism denies the possibility of transnational government, neorealism is modified to account for the effects of a real international structure on the security calculations of states. If liberalism inspired international institutions like the U.N. and its global policymaking, neoliberalism stresses policies for economic and technological globalization. Against the focus on nation-states and security issues in the “realism/neorealism orthodoxy,” neoliberalism stresses mixed-actor models that include inter- and trans-national organizations, NGOs, MNCs, and other non-state actors. Critical Theory and Postmodernism in IR theory critique both the “closure” of the realist “anarchy problematique” and the Enlightenment remedies of the liberalisms. They seek “new possibilities of socio-political transformations” by situating IR in the broader context of social, political, cultural, philosophical, and literary studies.77 So what can be said about policymaking at the global level? The questions might be: global governance or global government? de facto or de jure? centralized, decentralized, or virtual? Governance is “the complex set of values, norms, processes, and institutions by which society manages its development and resolves conflict, formally and informally. It involves the state, but also the civil society at the local, national, regional and global levels.”78 A British realist school of international relations pioneered the study of “international society” as consisting of laws, diplomacy, organizations, and balance of power arrangements. The study of global governance, it seems, is the investigation of ways in which international society elites make policies that address transnational issues. De facto global governance has long existed, despite the “sidelining” of proposals for de jure world government. Whether or not the U.N. is ever reformed, strengthened, or superceded, policies effecting persons and communities in every nation have been and are being made— technological, economic, financial, corporate, military, medical, environmental, cultural, linguistic, educational, religious, and philosophical. The patchwork of efforts at global governance, actual and theoretical, has been chronicled.79 It includes the following: World Bank

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and I.M.F. (Bretton Woods), U.N. Charter, World Federalist Association, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, World Conference on Religion and Peace, James Tobin’s global tax concept, World Resources Institute, Brandt Commission, Montreal Protocol, Commission on Global Governance, Agenda 21, W.T.O., BIONET, Green Cross, consensus statements like Our Common Future and Our Global Neighborhood, International Criminal Court, Charter for Global Democracy (Charter 99), Earth Charter, Kyoto Protocol, and other landmarks. Also, the related notion of virtual global government 80 has been approached, in both senses of “virtual” (1) in actual effect though not in name and (2) electronic global communications and transportation. Might each interest area be said to generate its own global governance network, its own “coalition of the willing?” Internet communications make feasible the rapid coordination of policy proposals at all levels of governance: rural and urban, state or provincial, national, international, and global. In the derived meaning of “virtual,” global policies— international, cross-cultural, inter-faith, and inter-ideological—can now be studied, developed, and communicated with increasing ease. Information about many policy conflicts can now be accessed on the Web and coalitions mobilized by email: for example, issues relating to global public goods, international relations, clash of civilizations, terrorism, interfaith conflict, and comparative criminal justice systems. If the internet is “a massive network of networks,” might it not be said to enhance the possibility of coordinating the affairs of a massive “community of communities of communities”? Global policy institutes have developed the concepts of “global public policy networks” and “global governance.” The Global Public Policy Institute develops Wolfgang Reinicke’s concept of “global public policy networks.” This notion involves “a mixed approach to global management in which states, corporations, NGOs, regional and international organizations, and coalitions cooperate.”81 This is similar to the concept of “global civil society” developed at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance82 of the London School of Economics. Global civil society involves the coordination of “transnational civil society actors,” meaning international organizations and multinational companies. The GPPI facilitates the creation of “strategic communities” through the development of “networks and partnerships” that address “trans-national, public policy problems that defy single-actor solutions.” It involves advising many types of organizational stakeholders—private, public, and non-profit—on a given issue, for example, labor, health, environment, etc. The work involves consulting, workshops, conferences, and publications addressing the concerns of government agencies, international organizations, foundations, NGOs, corporations, other civil society organizations, and the broader public. Attempts are made to provide “strategies for operating in the new governance environment.” The Institute for Global Policy develops the “global governance” ideas of the World Federalist Movement. Its statement of purpose advances the notion of subsidiarity as a basic federalist principle. If federalism originally promoted a balance of local and national levels, world federalism extends the context to include a balance between national and global levels, between national self-determination and common humanity (i.e., global). Subsidiarity affirms the wisdom of the “solving of problems at the level at which they occur, in general at the most local level possible.” But this implies the need for “institutions to deal with problems which can

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only be treated adequately at the global level.” World institutions need to be created, or existing ones invested with legal and political authority.83

8. Whiteheadian Process Thought Contributions to Levels of Public Policy Thinking What might be the relation of Whiteheadian thinking to the world of public policymaking? Can anything be said to explain the congruity of the polarity/balance method of process thought with the policy proposals process thinkers actually generate? If public policy-making is constrained by political culture and subculture, as James Q. Wilson suggests, policy proposals will differ from nation to nation. If Randall Morris is right to see Whitehead and Hartshorne as products of an Anglo-American liberal tradition, is the policy relevance of process thought limited to this tradition, this nation, or nations shaped by this tradition? If the Whiteheadian bibliographies84 relevant to public policy indicate a tendency to support Western liberal and progressive movements, is there nothing in Whitehead for the conservative majority? If we look at the dipolar method employed by Whitehead and theorized by Hartshorne, do we not find an insight that, in principle, could be applied in all cultures, integrating issues and information across ideological and national as well as disciplinary lines? We can suggest that Whitehead represents an alternative Western tradition with counterparts in other cultures and traditions—Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Jewish, and Islamic. There is a growing reception of Whitehead in political cultures anciently shaped by Yin-Yang thinking and/or reshaped by the Hegelian dialectics of Marx. Consider, for example, the enthusiastic embrace of Whitehead by a current Chinese government policymaker85 and others positioned to remake Chinese education policy. Observers might be forgiven if they presumed that Whiteheadian thought lies outside the domains of public policy. However, A. H. Johnson analyzes Whitehead’s social thought as combining themes from metaphysics of civilization, philosophy of history and religion, social philosophy, and philosophy of education. Whiteheadian thought has influenced political philosophy, political theology, sociological theory, social ethics, philosophy of law and international relations, ecological economics, and philosophy of technology. If Process political and economic work is mostly theoretical, perhaps realism can be encouraged by considering its relevance to the policy process. Whitehead’s influence on public policy is, thus far, perhaps largely indirect. A few Whitehead-influenced scholars have been close to government (Charles Malik, Samuel Beer and Warren Copeland). But undoubtedly, much Whiteheadian scholarship has remained in the background, influencing the shape of liberal and progressive opinion, coalescing with other philosophical and theological shapers of themes, debates, options, and priorities on a wide range of domestic and international issues. Increasingly, process themes have been identified and developed in a wide range of disciplines, bringing process thought closer to policy areas in political science, economics, sociology, psychology, law, and environmental science. If process thought could be identified as containing a method of third-way mediation of polarized

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positions, it could perhaps play a role in policy-making. For example, it could reinforce a paradigm alternative to the individualist/collectivist polarization that many presume has been settled in terms of individualism. The milieu of Whiteheadians is academic—transdisciplinary, philosophical and theological. Only a few process writings thus far have been self-consciously policy-oriented. These have appropriately argued the Whiteheadian alternative to the metaphysics of the dominant political culture and applied Whiteheadian insights to selected policy issues. But they have not established a policy theory. Nevertheless, many issue areas of public policy have been addressed from the process perspective and could be tailored for entry into the give-and-take of public policy debate. Existing institutes of philosophy-and-policy and theology-and-policy86 might provide models for extending the policy relevance of the International Process Network and the new “Distributed Whitehead Network.”87

9. Process Polarity Method and Public Policy The vast breadth and diversity of positions in the academy and popular opinion are narrowed and refined by the realism of the policymaking process. The question is whether the narrowing is just—truly representative of public interests and the relative importance of each issue. As an aid to appreciating and reinforcing the policy process, I wish to discuss the polarity method employed by Whitehead and theorized by Hartshorne to entail a praxis of moderation.88 I will then note correlations in policy studies. That is, if polarity is the deep structure of the cosmos and polarization is historically the tendency of the human condition, depolarization and balance can be a method of process thought, applicable to normative corrections. Polarity positions in metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics are fairly well documented in process literature. Perhaps the polar aspect of positions in process political thought are less apparent—though the availability of versions of communitarianism illustrate the potential.89 Whiteheadian thought could be employed to reframe policy issues, levels, and networks grounded in a method of descriptive polarity
employing its concepts of “dipolarity,” “ultimate contrasts,” “ideal opposites,” and “asymmetry;”and prescriptive depolarization, employing such concepts as “balance” and “moderation.” As relevant to policy network coalescence, I point to the views of Paul Kuntz, Austin Lewis, and Wilmon Sheldon who reaffirmed what Whitehead said about civilization’s need for both order and change, which I take to be core values of conservatism and progressivism, respectively. In Process and Reality, Whitehead writes that “the process of becoming is dipolar” (PR 45). He employs such notions as ideal opposites (PR, V, Ch. 1), mental/physical dipolarity (PR 277), divine dipolarity (PR 342-51), bipolarity (PR, 108), poles, sides, balance (PR 278), and contrasts (PR 24). In Adventures of Ideas he writes the universe is dual, “[t]hroughout the universe there reigns the union of opposites” (190). Harmony and mathematical relations are exemplifications of an interconnectedness that “transforms the manifoldness of the many into the unity of the one” (AI 150). The policy process, I suggest, funnels manifold interests and

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perspectives into one position temporarily. Immediately, the evaluation of policy begins the policy cycle all over again. Connecting West and East, process theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. has discussed parallels between Whiteheadian and traditional Chinese philosophies.90 “They share a style of thinking in terms of polarities as over against the dualistic model of thought so common in the West.” 91 Instead of dualism, these traditions hold that “The world is full of opposites, but these opposites are co-present in all things or events” (1984, 45). Cobb says, “Chinese perceptions of Yin and Yang and Whitehead’s description of the dipolarity of all events can be seen as complementary ways of grasping and expressing the deepest rhythm of the universe as process” (1984, 46). Cobb adds that “Each species of event can be seen as a particular unity of Yin and Yang or of physicality and mentality” (1984, 46-47). “These particular polarities,” he writes, “reflect in distinguishable ways the deeper polarity within all events” (1984, 45-46). In Creative Synthesis and Philosophical Method Hartshorne said, “polarities are ultimate” (99). He wrote the following: “[T]he general rule I call the principle of inclusive contrast” (90); “This pattern, symmetry within an overall asymmetry, we meet again and again” (210); “the philosopher’s ultimate calling […]is to transcend […]warring exaggerations […]. Half-truths treated as truths yield stunning paradoxes and arouse vigorous opposition (coming especially from those wedded to contrary half-truths)”(96). Hartshorne characterizes philosophy as a middle way in Wisdom as Moderation.92 Here the family of working principles includes polarity and contrast (6), unity of contraries (x), balance (3), harmony (2), moderation and middle way (iii), moderation as judiciousness (4), avoiding extremes (6), good as a mean (1), golden mean as where truth lies (5), and beauty as a mean (1). “The idea of the judicious mean is applicable not only in ethics and aesthetics but also in […] metaphysics” (22-23) and other areas of philosophy (15), political philosophy (30, 44), environmental ethics (48), economics (35), everyday life (29), marriage (2), diet (39), etc. He discusses failures of “political moderation” (44-47). My own way of putting it93 is that six metaphysical hypotheses in world philosophy seek to conceptualize all experience. The experience each conceptualizes makes each very powerful, tempting, and thus perennial. But two pairs of views I wish to interpret as extreme and two as mediating. As nihilism and pluralism are forms of anti-realism it is difficult to live them out consistently. Being reductionistic, the two monistic substance theories of materialism and idealism have a hard time accounting for each other’s evidence. Dualism juxtaposes these distorted and polarized monisms. Polarity event theories depolarize and creatively integrate the experience-bases absolutized in the four extreme conceptualities. Ultimate reality likely cannot be contained in human conceptuality, but perhaps some of the triple-aspect ultimate concepts of the polarity tradition, East and West, come closer. Among these are Tai-chi (Tao-Yin-Yang), Being-Nothing-Becoming, and Being/Supreme Being/Beings. Whitehead’s “Category of the Ultimate” (PR, 21) includes Creativity-One-Many, or Creativity-God-World. Process thought can be conceived, then, as a third-way method of mediation applicable to polarized issues in philosophy, theology, and other disciplines. Additional terms characterizing the method of process thinkers in the global canon might be relationality, evolution,

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coincidence-of-opposites, paradox, self-reference, Zen Prajna logic, qualified non-dualism, perspectivism, mutual transformation, creative advance, dialectic, and justice.94 As applied to public policy, I am developing Hartshorne’s interpretation of process philosophy as the wisdom of the middle way—moderation. To reinforce this interpretation, I appeal to Paul Kuntz who saw Whitehead’s thought as reconciling the liberal/conservative antithesis, as a middle course between individualism and collectivism, as diverging from Burke and Marx, and as primarily liberal insofar as it is too conservative for radicals, too radical for conservatives.95 Austin Lewis, likewise, views Whitehead’s social philosophy as embodying both conservative and progressive aims in mutually-transforming ways.96 This view is reinforced by Wilmon Sheldon who said “order-process are polar opposites,”97 and the process metaphysic “introduces […] harmony between the old and the new, between conservatism and progress.98 I have tried to reinforce this observation about the complementarity of conservatism, liberalism, and progressivism at the level of their combined core values, not, of course, their perspectival policies.99 I would suggest that the presupposition that polarity underlies polarization might lead to different conclusions about where and how to restore the balance—by emphasizing progressive or liberal, or conservative solutions. Many of us are tempted to rush to single-concept reductive explanations in science, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and ideology. We inherit a spectrum of alternatives preshaped by the history of world thought, polarized into the following competing views: idealism vs. materialism, theism vs. naturalism, faith vs. reason, rationalism vs. empiricism, deontology vs. consequentialism, conservatism vs. progressivism. While dualism creates uneasy combinations of these seemingly opposed views, polarity thinking seeks to show their organic relatedness to each other. Process political theory has understood a number of contrasts as polarized elements of structural asymmetries: metaphysical realism/idealism, order/change, coercive/persuasive power (hard/soft), individualism/collectivism, and premodernism/modernism. By accepting the Hartshorne-Sheldon-Kuntz-Lewis interpretation, it can perhaps be extended to mediate other polarizations of the conservative/progressive type, such as privatization/nationalization, globalism/localism, libertarianism/egalitarianism, economism/statism, and economy first!/Earth first! The polarity method of Hartshorne and Whitehead, it seems to me, can help explain one of the functions of public policy, namely, depolarization. Kenneth Dolbeare identifies three constraints on U.S. policymaking—value priorities or ideologies, economic and social structures, and world problems of the day. Policy derives partly from the competition between “two polar-opposite sets of conflicting positions” (Dolbeare 1982, 14). The “two poles of opinion” in the U.S. context involve “contrasting versions of the values of freedom and equality” (1982, 31). For selected policy issues, Dolbeare portrays a “continuum of conflict” (1982, 95). For example, on the issue of inflation, he identifies three categories of analysis (government, economy, external forces). “Three schools of thought,” he says, “take consistent positions in each category, reflecting positions on the right, center, and left of the ‘continuum of conflict’” (1982, 94). James Lester and Joseph Stewart portray the policy system as generating policy outputs derived by “Policy Brokers” from the strategies of two competing policy

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coalitions. This pictures “the interaction of competing ‘advocacy coalitions’ within a policy subsystem/community” in the theory of policy change and learning of Paul Sabatier (1996, 14041). My suggestion is that if the vision of dipolarity in Whitehead supports the method of harmony and balance theorized by Hartshorne, these can be said to lend support to group equilibrium and generic process models of policymaking at any level of society, local to global. In principle, they could be employed within any policy network in any nation to encourage the coalitionbuilding, compromise, and consensus necessary for policy that is truly public. I take it that there are many levels of the public and many “subpublics”—from each individual, to families, neighborhoods, cities, counties, states, nations, international regions, and the global level. Process polarity thought allows us to see that the concept of the public lures persons and groups beyond themselves, transforming identities into a larger “self” or community. In principle this public lure draws all together into one life sustained by one earth. “The many become one and are increased by one” within each person and group. Realistically we know the inertia of varieties of false ultimates that limit the vision, but internationalism, ecological thinking, and spirituality lure us beyond group egoisms of gender, class, ethnicity, tribe, nation, and civilization.

10. Process Thought Inside and Outside the Box: Process and Political Culture The dilemma, as I see it, is that direct influence on public policy requires that one play by the rules. Otherwise one is consigned to “the remote margins of political debate,” as Noam Chomsky writes (The Chomsky Reader, 1987, 136), or dismissed as operating “outside the spectrum of thinkable thought” (131). Chomsky asserts what textbook authors Dye and Domhoff document, that “the design and formulation of political programs—candidate selection, the requisite material support, educational efforts or propaganda—are the domain of relatively narrow privileged elites” (132). Apparently the only option to conceding that “elite groups can act without popular constraints” (124) is to agitate for an “aroused public” (126) in opposition to educational institutions that “serve power and privilege” (126). Whiteheadian thought, it seems to me, is relevant to both sides of this dilemma. On the one hand, process thought gives us concepts to discuss ways of re-balancing the framework of political cultures and ideological systems (Chomsky, 1987, 127). On the other hand, it can encourage balance in policy making within any given public policy system, within the range of the thinkable, “within the ideological mainstream” (130). By the same token it can be employed also to propose balanced policies within competing policy networks. Thus, it seems, a Whiteheadian policy method could be free to be employed on both sides of all issues. The outcomes we seek require balancing of forces on both sides of polarized issues. Think again about the Anglo-American liberal tradition of philosophers Whitehead and Hartshorne, and the current identification of their thought with a type of postmodernism. Is it possible or not to think beyond one’s socialization, culture, and history; outside the box as well

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as in, objectively as well as subjectively, realistically as well as idealistically? Are political philosophy, science, and policy slaves of ideology, or is critical thinking genuinely possible? Also, how easy is it to decipher a political culture? Scholarship indicates, says James Q. Wilson, that, for example, the political culture consensus of the U.S. includes such values as individualism, liberty, equal opportunity, rule of law, and civic duty. G. William Domhoff adds laissez-faire liberalism, free enterprise, competition, and minimum reliance on government, indicating their philosophical origins in Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith.100 But then how, for example, do we understand the rise of conservatism in the U.S. in the last fifty years? Have conservatives changed the political culture, or just shifted the balance? Before the conservative reaction to the 1960s, historian Clinton Rossiter had argued that the U.S. tradition is both deeply conservative and deeply liberal, “progressive and traditional, idealistic and realistic, experimental and conventional, anxious to see the future and concerned to honor the past.”101 U.S. political thought is predominantly liberal, but U.S. political practice is conservative (78), he said. Though its dominant political tradition has been liberal, conservatism has been “gaining strength slowly over the long haul” (96). U.S. liberalism rests on a foundation of conservatism (96). “The American ideal exalts equality and decries class; American reality sacrifices equality to liberty and assumes the natural existence of class,” but perhaps a “fluid, flexible, and open-ended class” (81). The possibility of a healthy competition and cooperation between conservative and liberal values is, I believe, captured by Deborah Stone in the concept of policy paradox (Stone 1997, 815). I believe she represents this vision in a way that is compatible with the polarity method of process thought. Stone writes: Equity, efficiency, liberty, security, democracy, justice, and other such goals are only aspirations for a community, into which people read contradictory interpretations. But while the interpretations divide people, the aspirations unite us. The process of trying to imagine the meaning of a common goal and fitting one’s own interpretation to that image is a centripetal [unifying] force (1997, 380). In clashes of fundamental paradigms and goals Stone proposes a balance that includes both elements. She contrasts this paradox “model of reasoning” with the monistic either/or “rationality model,” generating a “polis” alternative to the market model of society and its “production” model of policy making. In the polis model of society, for example, public interest can be served as well as self-interest (33). “Is there a Liberty-Equality Trade-Off? […] Liberty itself can be equalized” (129). “Is There a Liberty-Security Trade-Off? […] Security creates true liberty” (127). “Is There a Security-Efficiency Trade-Off? […] Human productivity increases with increased security” (107). “Is There an Equality-Efficiency Trade-Off? Redistribution does not stifle experimentation and innovation […]” (84). My own way of putting it is that the differing core values of conservatism, liberalism, and progressivism can be integrated and are not incompatible,102 but policies derived exclusively from one ideology’s value priorities will conflict with others. Alternatively, the ideologies within the common political culture might be said to have common values, though setting different priorities on them. Policy conflict reflects the conflicting priorities. To simplify, suppose we single out the values of liberty, equality, and order. The conservative ranking is said to be order, liberty, and equality. Perhaps then the liberal ranking would be liberty, equality, and

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order, and the progressive ranking would be equality, liberty, and order. Communist priorities might have ended up as order, equality, liberty. Thus, a process policy method might picture the constant regaining of balance between core values that is regularly lost when policy is overtaken by the priorities of one ideological subculture—conservative, liberal, or progressive. I would contend that the polarity method of Hartshorne and Whitehead could be employed to model the encouragement of policy coalescence by integrating core values of the competing ideologies. From the polarity perspective, justice is a mediating value, working to balance the competing values of liberty, equality, and order. To each its due. It would lend support to the mediation of liberty and equality by justice so clearly stated, for example, by Mortimer Adler.103 The temptation to absolutize liberty or equality requires justice to temper them. Also needed is ongoing transformation of old orders of approximate balance of liberty and equality into new orders of balance. On this view, libertarianism and egalitarianism are extremes. Justice is needed to limit both liberty and equality in the interest of each other.

11. Process Policy Making In any governmental system, the creation of policies and laws can be described in terms of a policy cycle, a model describing the types of behavior found in the political process. Policycreation is incremental, each stage building on prior actions and decisions. Issues recur over different periods of time, enabling review and revision. Each stage may take weeks or years depending on the complexity. Whereas budgets are reviewed yearly, environmental policy might require a decade before review is useful. Different versions of the process policy model emphasize, expand, and supplement different stages of the policy cycle to clarify the inputs. A simple model is Agenda>Formulate>Implement>Budget>Evaluate. To this might be added an emphasis on clarification of method, decision aids, specifying the client receiving the analysis, determination of objectives, modeling, forecasting or predicting consequences, establishing evaluation criteria, calculating the cost of each policy alternative, and identification of constraints. A generic “process” model of policy making can be indicated. It identifies such factors as agenda-setting, evaluation criteria, policy formulation and alternatives, assessment of your policy and its alternatives, adoption, implementation, and evaluation. An issue is ushered into the political arena by historic events, interest groups, individuals, or different government institutions. The process begins with problem definition or agenda setting (“verify, define and detail the problem”). Methodological thinking is required to bring maximum focus to the issue. The extent and magnitude of the problem needs to be determined. Accepted thinking about the problem needs to be questioned. Initial formulations of the problem can be revised. Similar policy analyses can be researched. “Say it with data” is a slogan pointing to the need of relevant and reliable information. Critical thinking, above all, is required—to eliminate irrelevancies and ambiguities. Objectives need to be clarified, resolving conflicting goals. Identify the stakeholders in this issue and their power. What parts of the problem can be realistically solved? What resources will be needed? Then, evaluation criteria need to be determined. Identify the

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criteria relevant to the problem and each stakeholder: costs, benefits, effectiveness, equity, legality, political acceptability, administrative ease, etc. Can these criteria be ranked in order of importance? How will the policy goals be measured? Are there rules for comparing alternatives? What are the desirable and undesirable outcomes? One risk in proposing a policy method of balance is that both sides of policy debates will be tempted to claim that their own policies are balanced while those of their opponents are extreme. If so, discussion needs to shift to assumptions about scales and levels of relevant consideration and the breadth of the ideological spectrum of thinkable solutions. By the same token, if the global political economic system is distorted and polarized, policies influenced by polarity/balance thinking might be expected to be marginalized for seeming to be radical, i.e., off the spectrum of the thinkable viewed from opposite ends. This may stem from translating the perspective of policies for global public goods into policies for the domestic common good in any political culture. Process thought, I suggest, can clarify the ideological competition of public policy inputs as polarization in need of creative transformation. From the perspective of polarity method, the now-dominant paradigm shaping global policy appears monistic and extreme (i.e., individualist, libertarian, economistic, unipolar, Western, Northern, techno-utopian, globalist, and anthropocentric). If so, how might new balances be drawn by absorbing, as well, the countervailing, polarized perspectives and values (i.e., socialist, egalitarian, statist, anarchist, East, South, techno-skeptical, localist, and eco-centric)? The reframing of political cultures to counter-balance these polarized tendencies might be a long-range policy strategy of process thinkers, requiring coalescence with groups seeking third-way policy values—multi-polarity, subsidiarity, communitarianism, social justice, techno-realism, stakeholder democracy, reembedded national economies, fair trade, and eco-social responsibility in business. A systematic effort could be organized to develop policy proposals from Whiteheadian reflections in each issue area. These could eventually be entered into the foreign and domestic policy processes of the respective governments. An achievable goal might be, initially, to edit a handbook of Whiteheadian or Process “Policies for the Common Good” based on materials listed in Center for Process Studies bibliographies. One model might be “The Cato Handbook for Congress” which summarizes issues and lists suggested readings in such areas as fiscal, domestic, international economy, foreign and defense policy, regulation, and ecology.104 Another stage might involve polling the process membership in selected policy issue areas. Teams could draft statements and circulate them for revision. They could be tailored for local consumption in each nation that has an IPN membership. Or IPN members could create fresh policy statements reflecting the actual views of their own Whiteheadian communities. Here a model might be Faith Voices for the Common Good, an internet consensus-building organization founded by Whiteheadian Rita Nakashima Brock and Brian Sarrazin.105 Its “Synanim” internet technology enables geographically separated individuals to create consensus statements online to be brought into “dialogue with policy experts and activists.” Recent campaigns have generated statements embodying such values as democratic diversity, equal human dignity, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, non-violent conflict

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resolution, reverence and care for life and earth, love of community, hospitality to strangers, and justice for all, especially the underprivileged and disenfranchised.106 Another strategy to demonstrate the relevance of process thought to political science and public policy might be to identify and perhaps support polarity positions in process-compatible interest groups. In each issue area of foreign and domestic policy, the complete ideological spectrum of positions could be clarified and polarized concepts identified. At each level or stage of the policy process, positions that combine polarized phenomena or groups understood as truly polar could be recommended for careful consideration. This would funnel attention from education (legal studies, history, political science and political theology, philosophy and ethics) to public policymaking, legislation, and enforcement. The next stage might be for Whiteheadian opinion to be brought closer to the policy milieu of each country. For each issue area and at each stage of the policy process, relevant actors shaping a position that approximates the polarity perspective could be identified and supported. Whiteheadian policy shaping could be encouraged through networking at all levels: political culture review, foundations and think tanks, media and public opinion, interest groups, social movements, and other non-governmental organizations. Care would need to be taken in finding appropriate criteria for identifying polarity candidates, initiatives and referenda, and lobbyists at all levels: bureaucratic, legislative, executive, and judiciary. Resources for this stage are funding directories,107 directories of public interest groups,108 directories of interest group ratings of legislator voting records,109 and directories of lobbyists.110

12. Process Policy Proposals Policy proposals by Whitehead-influenced thinkers have been developed at different levels of participation in the policy system and in diverse issue areas. Postmodernism and Public Policy (2002) by John B. Cobb, Jr. challenges the dominant U.S. political subcultures and depicts the alternative polarity worldview of Whitehead, identified as a constructive integration of premodern and modern ideas. He derives policy implications in various social and interpersonal issue areas such as governance and economy, race and class, gender and sexuality, culture and education, ethics and religion. The latter components indicate its intent to be a public theology “directly relevant to matters of public policy” (vii). The Whiteheadian outlook employed proposes that the complexity of reality lends itself to diverse patterns of description in different communities. But, seemingly contradictory and mutually exclusive patterns, if interpreted as “hypotheses with varying degrees of warrant” (172), can sometimes be shown to be compatible, complementary, or even polar (130) in nature. An affiliated pattern of normative reasoning is balancing interests and rights (188). Policy relevance will require compromise and coalitions to win majority support (190). The polarity-balance outlook differs metaphysically from outlooks presupposed by the world’s dominant policy systems in recent generations. The latter involve monism and dualisms. The monistic explanations of science conflict with religion, generating atheism or dualistic theism. Related dualisms are matter vs. mind, nature vs. humanity, object vs. subject.

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The dualism of individualism vs. collectivism dominated public policy in the twentieth century, perhaps also the related dualisms of statism vs. economism, and globalism vs. localism. It is also possible to discern polarization or dualism in matters of gender, race, class, education, religion and elsewhere. The problem with dualisms is that they juxtapose monistic distortions of reality based on perceived external relations from the standpoint of objectivity severed from subjectivity. By contrast, the polarity-balance alternative calls for reintegration or “creative transformation” of mutually-alienated dimensions of reality and interest, on the basis of postulated “internal relations” of all things. What can be said about global public policy and the orientation of process policy thought? The first challenge for a process public policy of moderation is to facilitate dialogue between those who support policies to shape globalization and those who deny international society in the name of state sovereignty or localization.111 Among those who acknowledge international society, the challenge is to mediate between supporters of nationalist globalism (U.S. neoliberal unipolarism) and various forms of pluralist globalism—global governance and global government. Cobb reframes governance in terms of a postmodern, relational ontology, which in turn is an expression of the polarity/balance method of process thought. For Cobb, policy proposals are derived from the basic model of “person-in-community.” His proposal of policy supporting global governance of the global economy is based on a model of “community of communities” with a “subsidiarity” of levels. The “bottom-up” notion of subsidiarity supports federalism, but counterbalances its nationalizing tendency. “Federalism as a balance between centripetal [unifying] and centrifugal [diversifying] forces […and] as a theory of regional or even global integration” operates in terms of “the ‘unity through diversity’ dialectic.”112 The levels of governance—local to global—are contextualized like Russian Dolls, and embedded in ecology, Earth, nature, and ultimate reality—God and Buddha-nature—viewed as having complementary attributes. Overall there is a kind of cosmic subsidiarity.113 At least to the extent that the economy remains global, global governance is thought to be needed to protect the ecological context of societies at the local level. In Cobb’s bottom-up governance model, higher levels of governance, including the global level, emerge to represent the interests of the preceding level, either by direct vote at the base or by representative vote at each subsidiary level (2002, 141). The level of global governance would be a reformed United Nations, or a successor to the UN representing international regions (e.g., NAFTA, EU, OAS, ASEAN) instead of nations (2002, 142).114 In support of a view similar to Cobb’s, David Ray Griffin115 discusses scholarship on the imperialist nature of U.S. foreign policy. Given significant global oppostion116 to the foreign policy of the G. W. Bush second administration for its apparent assumption of de facto world government status, Griffin wonders if there is not by now a considerable global constituency ready to take steps in the direction of representative global government—global democracy. He points to scholarship on a common ethic among world religions that could reinforce the work of selected, morally-engaged NGOs as a stage on the way to democratic global government.117

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My suggestion is that global public policy networks like those facilitated by the Global Public Policy Institute might, though neoliberal, provide a realistic model for the type of mobilizing needed in Griffin’s scenario of the means to global democracy. Similarly, the Institute for Global Policy mobilizes the intial constituency for Cobb’s subsidiarity federalist alternative for global governance. Third-way global policy alternatives are developed by an international relations expert and three scholars of theology and social ethics in American Empire and the Commonwealth of God.118 They evaluate accounts of the origins, nature, legitimacy, and dangers of empire, focusing on recent scholarship about imperialist themes in U.S. foreign and economic policy. Contributions by Richard A. Falk, Catherine Keller, John B. Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin indicate that justifications and critiques of American policies employ polarized understandings of history, power, terror, governance, realism, idealism, democracy, reform, security, economics, ecology, religion, God, and Jesus. The authors conceive of a third way between empire and anarchy. They develop the following views: balancing global with local dimensions of world order; global democratic governance with a relation of subsidiarity to nations and cultures; resumption of multi-polar relations and the balancing of international power blocs (U.S., E.U., Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Southeast Asia, East Asia); strengthened regional, national, and local economies; coalitions of moral NGOs and progressive religious movements; and a two-nation state solution for Palestinians and Israelis. Economist Herman E. Daly and theologian John Cobb develop implications of the process worldview for economic and political policy in For the Common Good.119 Economic and political issues are reframed in terms of “community,” or “persons-in-community,” rather than individualism. When “the growth system” is seen to be unsustainable, balanced trade with tariffs for self-sufficiency (232, 290) will begin to make sense. Dealing with over-population in poor countries must be matched by reversal of over-consumption in rich countries (242). Land policy sees humanity as one community among biospheric communities (252), hence land is a community resource (256). Taxes should be raised on land and lowered on improvements, à la Henry George (258). Agriculture policy should avoid both extremes of subsistence and industrialized monoculture agribusiness totally subservient to the global market (268). This would encourage self-sufficient family farms (271) and the rebuilding of rural culture (274). Industrial policy would aim at national self-sufficiency (285); decentralized, regionalized, small business (291, 294), and buying locally (294). Labor policy would involve worker participation in management and ownership (298), and full employment (309). Income policy and taxes aim at limited inequality—between complete equality and unlimited inequality (33); negative and positive income tax (315, 318), pollution tax and depletion quotas (324), and taxes to shift power to states and localities (326). A model of Whiteheadian analysis from the ethos of proximate policymakers in “think tank town”120 is Warren Copeland’s And the Poor Get Welfare.121 He critically analyzes a spectrum of currently influential approaches to poverty and welfare. He identifies theological parallels to each position, focusing on their handling of the concepts of individuality, community, worth, motivation, and hope. He then proposes principles for reform deriving from his own public theology rooted in process theology. Poverty is increased by four empirical factors: economic

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downturn; lack of education for a changing economy; concentration of poverty in urban neighborhoods; and punitive welfare policy. Copeland’s recommendations are (1) a federal negative income tax to achieve a national minimum benefit needed for active participation while preserving self-determination; (2) economic full employment policy, basic education, job training and re-training (employer-based); (3) supportive human services (day care, scholarships, community mental health, national health insurance; and (4) positive incentives for employment and child-support. Models for the pursuit of a third-way space between polarized conservative and liberal opinion can be found in the Process & Faith Hard Issues booklet series.122 Traditional and modern approaches to controversial issues are reviewed, followed by a process alternative that transforms the polarized options. Designed for lay theological education, they could be revised as policy statements. They cover such policy-relevant issues as parenting, teen sexuality, homosexuality, suicide, abortion, civil disobedience, economic theory, and science-andreligion.123 A proclamation on American Empire124 was also published by the Process & Faith Program, and a Whiteheadian statement on the foreign policy challenge of Iran’s nuclear technology program is available.125 The Center for Process Studies conference on end-of-life issues published a statement on the right to die.126 Chinese government officials from departments of foreign and religious affairs have been brought to Claremont by the China Project of the Center for Process Studies. Influential Chinese scholars and leaders in education have also come. The China Project has opened eighteen process centers in China to absorb Whiteheadian process thought in the areas of philosophy, education, urbanization, psychology, and theology. Affiliated centers deal with social responsibility in business, science and faith, and the concept of an Ecozoic Age. Chinese policy has been addressed in the areas of land-use, education, religion, sustainable cities, ecological civilization, management, and constructive postmodern transformation of Marxism.127 Lastly, the Earth Charter is a policy statement to which the Center for Process Studies lent support by co-sponsoring a series of conferences with one of the Charter’s major developers— the Center for Respect of Life and Environment, an affiliate of the Humane Society of the U.S.128 Also an Environmental Ethics 129 paper challenges environmental policies derived from self-interest. It invokes the Whiteheadian metaphysic which sees reality as interrelated events, rather than substantial things and selves. Self-aggrandizing behavior is evidently inappropriate in a world of interrelated processes. Policies fitting this picture include (1) preservation of natural habitat, (2) preservation of species diversity, (3) minimizing harm to natural processes (e.g., pollution), (4) minimizing damage to the upper atmosphere, (5) scientifically determining the welfare of other forms of life, (6) harmonizing human cultures with natural processes (i.e., agriculture, architecture, consumption), and (7) reversing human population growth. But, perhaps this set of policies is mislabeled “minimalism.” A process depolarizing perspective might, rather seek a mean between maximalism and minimalism.

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13. Concluding Summary I suggest that Whiteheadian thought might seek to absorb elite-oligarchic theory factors within a pluralist model (postmodern, group equilibrium), utilizing generic process policy theory, as well, to sharpen specific policy suggestions for the attention of government officials within given political cultures and subcultures. It seems that Whiteheadian thought could provide a framework to (1) explain the shifting center of policy debates as diverse perspectives expand or contract the spectrum of the thinkable; (2) examine and shape the transforming balance of ideological core-value priorities in any given political culture; (3) examine and shape the transforming balance of value priorities within each ideological policy network that funnels into a public policy milieu; (4) encourage, if not facilitate, the horizontal, issue-by-issue, crossnetwork dialogue necessary for public policy coalescence, that is, encourage balance within the range of the thinkable in mainstream policy making;130 (5) encourage a balanced global perspective for policy on global public goods and international relations; (6) encourage vertical multi-level communication—local to global—to enhance integrated applications; (7) reinforce the generic process model of policy; and (8) contribute policy proposals within given policy networks that are thought to provide counterbalance within a political culture, or are perceived to embody the best balance of values. On the one hand, the full policy relevance of Whitehead could be missed if his ideas are identified with one end of, or one position along, the polarized ideological spectrum.131 By the same token, his relevance might be increased if his thought can be shown to embody a method applicable in all policy networks. The polarity-balance method, employed by Whitehead and Hartshorne, might be shown to be relevant to attempts at truly public policymaking by explaining the need to creatively transform all polarized concepts, including progressive and conservative paradigms. Individual process thinkers might differ on strategies for approaching balanced representation for truly public policy and differ over which policy network (conservative, liberal, progressive) most needs to be balanced. On the other hand, the same polarity method that could reinforce mediating policies within any given political culture might also be capable of introducing progressive thought at the levels of political culture reform and political economic philosophy by theoretically bridging many polarizations—ultimately between realism and idealism: between individuals and groups (gender, ethnicity, and class), between liberty and equality, economics and government, West and East, North and South, humans and ecology, religion and science. It could then explain how the policy center shifts as the spectrum of the thinkable enlarges. The spectrum expands perhaps from right to left as additional factors are considered—self, society, economy, government, world, ecology, nature, ultimate meaning. These factors are introduced by the pressure of interest groups, social movements, and academic disciplines. Thus, a third-way process polarity policy model provides a way of deriving policies from depolarized policy networks. It starts by offering a standpoint for considering the possibility that the policies now shaping the global political economic system are based on a philosophy that

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expresses one side of polarized factors. That is, policies currently promoted by the U.S. might be judged extreme (i.e. one-sided) for being individualistic, economistic, libertarian, oligarchic, patriarchal, Western, Northern, anthropocentric, theocratic, etc. An alternative public philosophy—like process thought—might be capable of facilitating the political culture’s correction of such imbalance by re-framing and re-integrating these partial perspectives with their similarly-partial polar opposites: socialist, statist, egalitarian, anarchic, feminist, Eastern, Southern, eco-centric, and naturalistic. This begins to make room for the surfacing of depolarized perspectives—communitarianism, fair trade, social justice, democracy, partnership, multi-polarity, sustainability, panentheism, etc. As philosophy is now disciplinarily distanced from policy studies, trans-disciplinary process thought can be employed to re-integrate the polarized philosophies with their polarized political subcultures and policy networks.

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Notes 1

Michael E. Kraft and Scott R. Furlong. Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives (Washington DC, CQ Press, 2004), p. 109. 2 I am referring to the horizontal integration of three ideologically-shaped policy networks— conservative, liberal, progressive—each of which vertically integrates elite institutions, public opinion, and government. This differs from the horizontal linkage of ideological, economic, military, and political networks in the “Four Networks Theory of Power” (attributed to Michael Mann), but is likely related. [shttp://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/theory/four_networks.html] 3 Without indulging in “etopian” fantasies. http://www.caslon.com.au/digitalguide2.htm: The Australia-based Caslon Analytics Digital Environment Guide. 4 See Kraft and Furlong, pp. 17-19. I further develop this notion by combining the ideas of progressives Thomas Dye and William Domhoff (see below) and conservative James Q. Wilson, American Government: Institutions and Policies, 2 nd Ed (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1983), pp. 72-73. 5 SourceWatch is a program of The Center for Media and Democracy: http://www.prwatch.org/. It is “a wiki-based investigative journalism resource […] documenting the activities of public relations firms and public relations professionals. Sourcewatch also includes specific case studies of deceptive PR campaigns, corporate PR campaigns, the activities of front groups, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts […]. building profiles on public relations associations, specific criticisms of PR, common propaganda techniques, war propaganda […]”. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch 6 Joseph G. Peschek, Policy-Planning Organizations: Elite Agendas and America's Rightward Turn (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1987). “Within the elite policy network, five key groups are shown to represent a spectrum of opinion in ruling circles: the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Contemporary Studies, and the Trilateral Commission.” http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/413_reg.html 7 I build on John Kingdon’s classic Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies [Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1984] which differentiates between inside and outside participants in policymaking. Inside participants include administration officials, civil servants, and congressional delegations and staff on Capitol Hill; Outside participants include interest groups, academics-researchers-consultants, media, public opinion makers, and elections-related groups. T. A. Birkland differentiates between official and unofficial actors. 8 Donald E. Abelson. Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002). 9 Eugene Bardach. A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving (Washington, DC, C Q Press, 2005). 10 See John Kingdon, Chapter 3 (“Outside of Government, But Not Just Looking In”). 11 H. T. Reynolds, summary of Power Elite literature at the Social Studies Help Center http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/APGOV_Power_Elite.htm. 12 See Deborah Stone. Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (New York, W. W. Norton, 1997 [1988]). 13 Robert Dahl’s term. 14 Kraft and Furlong, pp. 50-51. 15 Thomas R. Dye. Politics in America (Englewood Cliffs NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1994), 24-25. 16 Dye, 1994, p. 3. 17 Kraft and Furlong, pp. 10-13, 359-362. 18 James Lester and Joseph Stewart. Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach (Minneapolis MN, West Publishing, 1996), pp. 34-42. 19 Dahl, Kingdon, Van Horn, Kernell/Jacobson, Fox/Miller.

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See “Sources of Information on Policy Formation” at “Who Rules? An Internet Guide to Power Structure Research” http://www.uoregon.edu/~vburris/whorules/policy.htm. 21 Thomas Dye, Who’s Running America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1995). 22 G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Power and Politics, 4 th Ed. (Boston, McGraw Hill, 2002) See also the Who Rules America? website http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/ 23 Dye, Understanding Public Policy, p. 18. 24 Charles J. Fox and Hugh T. Miller. Postmodern Public Administration: Toward Discourse (Thousand Oaks CA, SAGE Publications, 1995), pp. 128-159. See also Hugh Miller, Postmodern Public Policy (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2002) 25 The Handbook of Political Theory, ed, Gerald Gaus and Chandran Kukathas (Thousand Oaks CA, SAGE, 2004) includes Straussian Approaches, Premodern Chinese Political Thought, Medieval Political Theory, Conservative Theories, Communitarianism and Republicanism, Modern Islamic Political Thought, Liberalisms, Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism, Democratic Political Theory, Nationalism and Multiculturalism, Discourse Theory, Feminism and Gender Theory, Green Political Theory, and “A Future for Marxism?” Political Philosophy: Theories, Thinkers, and Concepts, ed., S. M. Lipset (Washington DC, CQ Press, 2002) includes Authoritarianism, Buddhism, Capitalism, Classical Greece and Rome, Communism, Communitarianism, Confucianism, Democracy, Environmentalism, Existentialism, Fascism, Fundamentalism, Hinduism, Liberalism, Marxism, Postmodernism, Pragmatism, Progressivism, Civil Religion, Republicanism, and Socialism. Political Ideologies, by Andrew Heywood (New York, Worth, 1998) includes Classical Liberalism, Modern Liberalism, Neoliberalism, Conservatism, Neoconservatism, Socialism, Communism, Social Democracy, Nationalism, Anarchism, Fascism, Feminism, Ecologism, and Religious Fundamentalism. 26 James Q Wilson, American Government, 72-73. 27 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Principles of International Politics (Washington DC, Congressional Quarterly Press, 2006), p. 125. 28 Politics and Public Policy, http://www.cqpress.com/product/Politics-and-Public-Policy-3dedition.html. 29 From H. T. Reynolds’ summary of Power Elite literature at the Social Studies Help Center http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/APGOV_Power_Elite.htm. 30 I adapted a funnel diagram from Charles Kegley and Eugene Wittkopf, World Politics—Trend and Transformation,8 th Ed. (Belmont CA, Wadsworth, 2001), p. 56. 31 The Carnegie Endowment’s Global Policy Program notes five sets of actors: experts and transnational groups of experts (epistemic communities), in addition to NGO’s and civil society, business and the private sector, international organizations, and states. P. J. Simmons and Chantal de Jonge Ourdraat, ed., Managing Global Issues (Washington DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001), pp. 11-12. 32 “Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy.” U. C. Irvine School of Social Ecology Conference January 11-13, 2002, Laguna Beach, California: http://www.seweb.uci.edu/users/jenness/conference.html. 33 David S. Meyer, “Social Movements and Public Policy: Eggs, Chicken, and Theory” (January 15, 2003). Center for the Study of Democracy. http://repositories.cdlib.org/csd/03-02/ 34 “Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy.” 35 “Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy.” 36 Jean Anyon Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and A New Social Movement (Routledge, 2005) www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415950996/104-01356501715144?v=glance&n=283155. 37 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_movement. 38 Sanjeev Khagram, Kathryn Sikkink, and James V. Riker, ed, Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 2002).

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Lee Edwards. “The Origins of the Modern American Conservative Movement.” Heritage Lecture #811 heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/HL811.cfm. 40 Jonathan R White. Terrorism: An Introduction (Belmont CA, Wadsworth, 2002), p. 100. 41 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_movement, Emphasis added. 42 Philosophical factors in policy are investigated by the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. It publishes the Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly. The Social Philosophy and Policy Center publishes the journal, Social Philosophy and Policy. London School of Economics has a Philosophy and Public Policy lecture series. Cambridge University Press publishes Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Public Policy. Philosopher Rosemarie Tong published Ethics in Policy Analysis. 43 Religious and Theological thinking about public policy also occurs, and religious interests have been increasingly developed for their policy relevance. The Ethics and Public Policy Center develops Conservative Evangelical and Roman Catholic interests. The Churches’ Center on Theology and Public Policy develops mainline, liberal leaning policy perspectives; The Roman Catholic Woodstock Theological Center has an Ethics in Public Policy Program. See also the Institute on Religion and Public Policy and the booklet, Religion and Public Life-The Role of Religious Bodies in Shaping Public Policy. In this context should be considered Postmodernism and Public Policy by John B Cobb, Jr. It addresses a range of public policy issues from the perspective of liberal Protestant Christian theology shaped by the polarity method and process metaphysic of Whitehead and Hartshorne. 44 Political culture and ideology are shaping factors in policy. If the public intent of policythinking is thought to transcend narrow interests, the study of Ideology and Policy reminds us that ideology shapes all claims about what is good for everyone. Kenneth Dolbeare defines ideology in terms of policy: “A coherent set of values and Beliefs about public policy is a political ideology.” Also the nature of conservative and liberal shaping of policy can be reviewed in The Behavioral Study of Political Ideology and Public Policy Formation. 45 Political Theory and Political Science perspectives on public policy are available. Robert Goodin has authored Political Theory and Public Policy. A comparative government perspective on policy exists in Policy and Politics in Six Nations. Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies has a number of programs including the Politics of Public Policy. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Government and Politics has a section on “Policy Making and Policies.” “Public Policy in State and Local Government” can be investigated in State and Local Politics. Citizens’ guides to policy processes are available in American Public Policy: A Citizen’s Guide; and Ralph Nader Presents A Citizen’s Guide to Lobbying. 46 The funding of Policy think tanks comes largely from foundations. The role of Foundations and Public Policy can be studied in Private Foundations and Public Policy; The Culture of Philanthropy: Foundations and Public Policy; Giving for Social Change: Foundations, Public Policy and the American Political Agenda. For example, the Open Society Institute of founded by financier George Soros distributes grants to Eastern European public policy centers that focus on human rights and governance. 47 Think Tanks and Policy Research institutes designed to study and advance public policy thinking on various issues evolved in US political culture early in the 20th Century and proliferated in the second half of the century. A variety of studies have examined the role and power of these “think tanks”: Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes; Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise; The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite; Advice and Consent: The Development of the Policy Sciences; Policy-Planning Organizations: Elite Agendas and America’s Rightward Turn; “How Think Tanks Improve Public Policy.” A guide to think tank websites is found on http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/ infousa/politics/ thnktank.htm. Links to progressive organizations on the electronic policy network is at http://www.movingideas.org. Does the network of policy-relevant inputs extend far and wide, or is public policymaking exclusively a matter of relations between capital cities and corporate headquarters? Worse, is public interest marginalized and public policy privatized in “iron triangles” where special interests capture government agencies and legislators? [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle]

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Is the multi-disciplinary intellectual sophistication of think tanks merely at the service of ideology, or does it generate fresh alternatives to the mainstream? Are policy institutes just ideological propaganda tools, lobbying for special private interests [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tank]? For example, it was recently reported that in the U.S. “80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades.” [washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/06/AR2005080600848.html] Or does the diversity of think tanks provide a counter-balancing, and perhaps mutuallytransforming effect? I would like to illustrate the latter possibility. Each major German political party is linked to a foundation. American Enterprise Institute and Project for a New American Century are neoconservative U.S. think tanks, Heritage is conservative. CATO and Reason Foundation are libertarian. Left of Center think tanks are Institute for Policy Studies, Progressive Policy Institute, and Center for American Progress. Brookings perhaps thinks of itself as centrist, but conservatives, it is said, founded the AEI to promote market solutions instead of Brookings’ government solutions. Many claim to be independent, non-partisan. Then think of the diverse interests of the following: The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, The Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, Focus on the Global South, Human Rights Watch, Korea Institute for National Unification, Social Market Foundation, World Resources Institute, Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, and Open Society Institute. 48 The role of mass media in shaping public policy is studied by a number of research institutes. These include the Center for Media and Public Policy of the Heritage Foundation, and the Observatory for Media and Public Policy at McGill University. Perhaps the most influential is Annenberg Public Policy Center whose program on political communication, led by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, studies media use, campaigns, speeches, political knowledge. The need for factchecking in advocacy advertising, issue ads, political talk radio, and congressional discourse is stressed. See also the Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.prwatch.org/) which reports on government propaganda, spinning the news, public relations industry, and industry manipulation of science, and fake news. 49 Political Culture and public opinion http://www.pollingreport.com/; An independent, Nonpartisan resource on trends in American public opinion http://www.pewtrusts.org. The Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University has a program on The Dynamics of Public Opinion. 50 Introductions to the insights of this research area can be seen in the Handbook of Public Policy Evaluation; The Public Policy Dictionary; A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis; Understanding Public Policy; Theories of the Policy Process; The Public Policy Cycle. 51 How much influence does “the public” actually have on policy formation? Is policymaking the exclusive domain of think tanks, lobbyists, and legislative aides? Alternative policy theories can be reviewed. Studies of “The Public’s Influence on National Policy” can be reviewed as evidence for Pluralist model, as opposed to Elite Institution analyses. Pluralist theories can be considered by investigating studies of the policy impact of news media, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, campaigns, elections, and voting. “You are the policymaker” sections of an American Government text encourage you to develop your own conclusions about issues faced by policy makers. Similarly, John Rourke’s International Relations text says “You are the Policy Maker: Who Should be in Charge of Peacekeeping? The UN or NATO?” [http://highered.mcgrawhill.com/sites/0072890363/student_view0/chapter2/interactive_exercise_2.html] 52 Politics and public Policy magazine websites include American Enterprise, American Outlook, American Prospect, American Spectator, Atlantic Monthly, Campaigns and Elections, Commentary, Economist, Governing, Harpers, Harvard Political Review, Mother Jones, Nation, National Journal, National Review, New Republic, New Yorker, Newsweek, Reason, Time, US News Washington Monthly, Weekly Standard. http://www.policyalmanac.org/directory/General-Media-Magazines.shtml

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The study of these groups and their power can be advanced with “Interests and Interest Groups in the Public Policy Process,” “Interest Groups, Congress, and Public Policy” and How Groups Try to Shape Policy. Questions about policy gridlock and Iron Triangles-alleged ‘capture’ of legislators and bureaucracies by interest groups-are part of this segment of policy studies. Political advocacy groups are listed on http://www.csuchico.edu/~kcfount/index.html. They include the following areas: abortion and reproduction, African-Americans, aged population, alcohol, tobacco and drugs, animal rights, Arab-Americans, Business, labor and economics, Catholic, Christian, children, civil rights, consumer advocacy, corporate accountability, criminal justice, disabled, education, environment, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender, government reform, gun control, immigration, inter-religious affairs, Jewish, land resources, Latinos, local government, media, men and women, multiethnic Americans, Muslim, Native Americans, peace and war, political parties, public Interest law, religion, social security and medicare, tax reform, and term limits. 54 It can be examined in “Interest Groups, Congress, and Public Policy;” Legislative Strategy: Shaping Public Policy; Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process. Websites tracking the courses of policy and legislation are Public Policy Matrix and Public Policy Process. Briefings on global Issues for legislators are made available by the US Congressional Quarterly Press and the website CQ Researcher). Particular studies of policy-making by legislative, judicial, executive and bureaucratic branches of government need to be consulted in relevant chapters of the following books. 55 500 institutions from 100 countries is available on-line: [www.nira.go.jp/ice/nwdtt/2005/index.html]. [“Since 1993, NIRA's Center for Policy Research has published NIRA's World Directory of Think Tanks (NWDTT), which provides a systematic introduction to the world's most prominent and innovative public policy research institutes, better known as think tanks. NWDTT provides details of the organizational structures of these think tanks and research activities in which they engage, functioning as the “soft infrastructure” for a global network of think tanks”]. 56 G. William Domhoff. Who Rules America? (1995) Appendix A. 57 “Conservative Foundations” and Conservative Think Tanks.” In American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (ISI Books, 2006), pp. 851-854 and 318-320; Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado. No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America’s Social Agenda (Temple UP, 1996). “Since the sixties, the Left has had little to do with setting the country’s agenda and […] conservative think tanks and foundations have been systematically abetting a conservative revolution by funding a variety of issue-oriented studies and programs.” [http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1316_reg.html] 58 Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power (New York: Times Books, 1986). 59 American Conservatism entries on conservative foundations and conservative think tanks. 60 American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. See also A Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought, ed., Nigel Ashford and Stephen Davies (Blackwell). 61 FAIR (July/August 2003). 62 Thomas R. Dye. Who’s Running America? 63 Domhoff. Who Rules America? 64 Wilcox, Derk Arend, Joshua Shackman, and Penelope Naas, eds. The Right Guide: A Guide to Conservative and Right-of-Center Organizations (Ann Arbor MI, Economics America, 1993). 65 Wilcox, Derk Arend. The Left Guide: A Guide to Left-of-Center Organizations. Ann Arbor, MI: Economics America, 1996. With 516 pages, this book “includes a substantial number of centrist and establishment organizations, in addition to organizations that would identify themselves as progressive or leftist. Almost every profile is admirably objective, but occasionally the rightist editor cannot resist a gratuitous slur […] ”). http://www.namebase.org/sources/aJ.html. 66 “The Right’s Architecture of Power,” by Tom Barry, Policy Director of the Interhemispheric Resource Center, rightweb.irc-online.org. 67 Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy.

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James Q Wilson, American Government, 72-73. http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/APGOV_Notes_WeekFour.htm. See also Political Culture by Walter Rosenbaum (New York: Praeger, 1975) [JA 75-76] 70 http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_burns_govbrief_5/0,7874,770150-,00.html. 71 “Political Culture” in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_culture. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 75 James Q Wilson, American Government. 76 The Public Administration and Public Policy publication program, edited by Jack Rabin (New York: Marcel Dekker) includes Handbook of Global Environmental Policy and Adminstration, ed., Dennis Soden and Brent Steel; Handbook of Global Legal Policy, ed., Stuart Nagel; Handbook of Global Economic Policy, ed., Stuart Nagel; Handbook of Global International Policy, ed., Stuart Nagel; Handbook of Global Political Policy, ed., Stuart Nagel; Handbook of Global Technology Policy, ed., Stuart Nagel; Handbook of Global Social Policy, ed., Stuart Nagel and Amy Robb. 77 Graham Evans, ed., Penguin Dictionary of International Relations (New York, Penguin, 1998), pp. 106-8, 361-2, 364-5, 465-7. 78 So says the Global Development Research Center http://www.gdrc.org/u-gov/index.html. 79 See the “Timeline to Global Governance”at sovereignty.net/p/gov/timeline.html. 80 Reinicke, Wolfgang H.: “The Other World Wide Web: Global Public Policy Networks,” Foreign Policy 117 (1999), and Jean-François Thibault “As if the world were a virtual global polity: the political philosophy of global governance.” http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/108thibault.htm#Concluding%20Conjectures%20on%20the% 20Virtual%20Global%20Polity. 81 globalpublicpolicy.net/index.php?id=10. 82 lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/. 83 wfm.org/site/index.php/articles/9. 84 https://www.ctr4process.org/publications/Biblio/bibindex_a-z.shtml. 85 Yong Pei. “Why China?” Center for Process Studies Library. 86 To develop its policy relevance, CPS might look, for example, to the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, The Churches’ Center on Theology and Public Policy, Woodstock Theological Center’s Ethics in Public Policy program, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. For examples in policy writing the Philosophy and Public Policy lecture series of the London School of Economics, and the Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Public Policy could be consulted. 87 The IPN (International Process Network) links Whiteheadian groups from 10 countries. The new DWN (Distributed Whitehead Network) is cosponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center, the Jenkins Collaboratory at Duke University, the Humanities Institute at State University of New York Press Buffalo, and HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaborative). 88 See J. Quiring, “Community College Philosophy, Polarity/Balance Method, and the Whitehead Tradition,” paper at the 5 th International Whitehead Conference in Seoul, Korea (June, 2004), which offered independent support for a polarity/balance philosophy. Available at the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, CA [ctr4process.org]. 89 Douglas Sturm, Community and Alienation: Essays on Process Thought and Public Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1988; Richard A. Falk, Catherine Keller, David Ray Griffin, and John B. Cobb, Jr. American Empire and the Commonwealth of God (Louisville KY, Westminster John Knox, 2006), pp. 101, 116. John Quiring, “Ideological Polarization, Communitarianism, and Process Thought” (unpublished paper, Society for the Study of Process Philosophies, APA Pacific, 1996). 69

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Also the connection between Whitehead, Pragmatism, the I-Ching, and Hua-yan Buddhism was the focus of the 2007 Creativity and Process Conference in Taiwan. Its publicity states, “The concepts of ‘creativity’ and ‘process’ are prominent in the traditional Chinese schools of thought: Confucianism, Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, and specifically in the philosophy of the Book of Changes (I-Ching) and Hua-yan Buddhism. They are also the key notions of Process Philosophy […].” Chair, Professor Yih-hsien Yu. 91 John B. Cobb, Jr. “Process View on Yin and Yang,” in Hanism as Korean Mind, ed., Sang Yil Kim and Young Chan Ro (Los Angeles, Eastern Academy of Human Sciences, 1984), pp. 4550; reprinted from the Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6 (1977): 421-426. 92 Charles Hartshorne, Wisdom as Moderation: A Philosophy of the Middle Way (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1987). 93 My view is inspired by Sheldon who argued for “the polarity of the perennial types of metaphysical system […].” (Wilmon Sheldon, Process and Polarity (New York, Columbia University Press, 1944), p. 87.) 94 One problem is that only two Whiteheadians appear in even the broadest canon of Political Studies/IR/Political Economics—Samuel Beer and Muhammad Iqbal. May we include Richard Falk? But by combining the larger canons of process philosophy (developed by Hartshorne, Nicholas Rescher, George Lucas, Douglas Browning, David Griffin) with the canons of panentheism (developed by Hartshorne and John W. Cooper, I suggest that it may be fruitful to view Whitehead within the contexts of pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead) and continental philosophy (Heraclitus, Nicholas of Cusa, Eckhart, Leibniz, Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Bergson, Teilhard, Nietzsche, Berdyaev, Heidegger, Deleuze, Badiou), not to mention Eastern philosophies (Yin-Yang, Middle-Way, and Qualified Non-dualism). 95 In Alfred North Whitehead (Boston, Twayne, 1984), Paul Kuntz wrote: “One of Whitehead’s applications of reconciliation is to the great social and political antithesis called “liberal” and “conservative.” Whitehead’s philosophy is in principle a middle course between individualism and collectivism, and the avoidance of the extremes of anarchy and dictatorship […]. The object to be obtained has two aspects; one is the subordination of the community to the individuals composing it, and the other is the subordination of the individuals to the community” (p. 10). “There are conservative ideologies that stress continuity of custom, such as Edmund Burke’s. Whitehead agrees with this as ensuring order, yet not with the implication drawn, that society can survive only by “the negation of progressive reform” (S 73). His dominant stress is liberal, on the maximizing of freedom of each individual (p. 83). The conservative will find Whitehead too radical. And the radical will find him too conservative. It is not lack of sympathy with the oppressed that leads Whitehead to appreciate the necessity of strong institutions. His defense of custom, traditions, and moderation in policy is based on an appreciation of order. We began by defining progress as the achievement of freedom. But there is a necessary complementary truth: “civilization is the maintenance of social order.” Only within an order can there be “the victory of persuasion over force” (AI 105). Thus, “Whitehead diverges from such a radical philosophy as Marx’s or such a conservative ideology as Burke’s (p. 87). 96 In “Whitehead’s Social Philosophy” (unpublished MS, Center for Process Studies Library), Austin Lewis discussed Whitehead’s organic paradigm, theory of social order, concept of society, and notions of social progress and social justice says in Lewis wrote, “For Whitehead […], a society must simultaneously maintain a system of stable social customs and institutions in order ‘to be’ a society, and yet continually reform those same social systems in order to avoid the alternative of decay. The questions therefore arises as to […] what measures it must take to creatively adapt the forces of conservation and forces of change to its advantage. Formulating social agendas which embody both conservative and progressive aims would seem to be the solution to this inexorable problem” (pp. 12-13). 97 Sheldon, p. 87. 98 Ibid, p. 145.

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See John Quiring, “Conservative, Liberal, Progressive Dialogue” mistitled in The Republic of Faith: The Search for Agreement Amid Diversity in American Religion, ed., Carl Raschke and William Dean (Aurora CO, Davies Group Publishers, 2003), pp. 97-127. 100 Who Rules America Now?, 98. 101 Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America, 96. 102 J. Quiring, “Conservative, Liberal, Progressive Dialogue.” 103 Mortimer Adler. Six Great Ideas (New York: Touchstone, 1981), Part Three (liberty, equality, justice). 104 The Cato Handbook for Congress: 104 th Congress (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1995). 105 http://www.faithvoices.org/about.html. 106 http://www.faithvoices.org/about.html. 107 Follow the Money and Open Secrets: The Encyclopedia of Congressional Money are published by the Center for Responsive Politics. http://www.opensecrets.org/pubs/index.asp 108 Public Interest Group Profiles 2004-2005 (Washington, DC, 2004) [Animal/Wildlife, Business/Economic, Civil/Constitutional Rights, Community/Grassroots Organizing, Consumer/Health, Corporate Accountability/Responsibility, Environmental, Families/Children, International Affairs, Media/Technology, Political/Governmental Process, Public Interest Law, Religious, Research Institutes and Think Tanks]. 109 J. Michael Sharp, Directory of Congressional Voting Scores and Interest Group Ratings (Washington DC, CQ Press, 2006) [conservative, liberal, civil liberties, national security, commerce, consumer, labor, conservation, education, taxpayers]. 110 Washington Representatives 2005 (Washington, DC: Columbia Books) has listings for 18,000 lobbyists and government relations personnel, 3400 organizations, 1500 law and lobbying firms, and 500 individuals doing legislative affairs work. 111 Penguin Dictionary of International Relations, 309-10. 112 Penguin Dictionary of International Relations, 169. 113 One could go on to suggest the following: The human vs. nature dualism is countered with ecological economics embedding economy in community and community in ecology. The dualism of global and local is overcome with the idea of subsidiarity. A proposal for overcoming statism vs. economism is that the WTO be supervised by the UN’s General Assembly. Class and elite dominance of policy making is counterbalanced by postmodern pluralism recognizing the foundational nature of communities. 114 Further contributions to pluralist globalism are theories of world society (John Burton), world law (P.E. Corbett), and World Order Models (Falk). 115 David Ray Griffin, “Global Imperialism or Global Democracy: The Present Alternatives,” pp. 25 and 35. users.drew.edu/mnausner/Hc3griffinpaper.pdf. 116 In America Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked (New York: Times Books, 2006) Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes report on “The precipitous rise in antiAmericanism” based on Pew Research Center surveys of more than 91,000 respondents in fifty nations. The Kirkus Reviews states that “in the wake of 9/11, and particularly since the invasion of Iraq, anti-Americanism has become the majority view in most of the world […].” They find that “once considered the champion of democracy, America is now seen as a self-absorbed, militant hyperpower. More than seventy percent of non-Americans say that the world would be improved if America faced a rival military power” (Publisher’s blurb). The Library Journal notes that “America is seen as a monster military power-70 percent said we need a superpower rival to get us under control.” http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/ isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=0805077219&itm=1 117 See also A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, ed., Hans Kung and Karl-Josepf Kuschel (New York, Continuum, 1993) and policy statements in A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics, by Hans Kung (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998).

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The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement by Richard A. Falk, Catherine Keller, David Ray Griffin, and John B. Cobb, Jr. (Louisville/London, Westminster John Knox, 2006), p. 125. 119 It seems that dialogue between makers of the ecological economic policies in For the Common Good and those who use the environmental economic paradigm would be useful. See Tom Tietenberg, Environmental Economics and Policy, 2 nd ed. (Reading MA, Addison-Wesley, 1998). 120 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2006/04/03/LI2006040301493.html. 121 Warren R. Copeland, And the Poor Get Welfare (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, and Washington, DC: The Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy, 1994), pp. 180-185. 122 http://www.processandfaith.org/bookstore/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5&zenid=3a2f9 83c996c67222dde643e830cd97e. 123 David Polk, ed., What’s A Christian to Do? (St. Louis MO, Chalice, 1991) [abortion, evolution, civil disobedience, evolution/creation] and Now What’s a Christian to Do? (St. Louis, MO: Chalice, 1994) [homosexuality, teen sexuality, parenting, suicide]. 124 http://www.ctr4process.org/pandf/proclamation.htm. 125 A Google search for “Whiteheadian Public Policy” turned up “Whiteheadian Reflections on a Probable Nuclear Strike on Iran“: ctr4process.org/publications/Articles/nuclear_iran.shtml 126 “It’s No Longer Human Life, at a point; It’s Metabolism.” Los Angeles Times (December 11, 1989): B7. 127 See Wenyu Xie, Zhihe Wang, and George Derfer (eds). Whitehead and China: Relevance and Relationships (Frankfurt, Ontos, 2005) 128 http://www.earthcharter.org/innerpg.cfm?id_menu=19. See also “Process Metaphysics and Minimalism: Implications for Public Policy,” by Steven Keffer, Sallie King, and Steven Kraft. Environmental Ethics 13:1 (Spring 1991): 23-47. It criticizes the philosophy currently underlying public policy. I suggest that proposals for Whiteheadian environmental policy consider a document like the Guide to Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy, ed., Natalia Mirovitskaya and William Ascher (Durham NC, Duke University Press, 2001). 129 Steven Keffer, Sallie King, and Steven Kraft. “Process Philosophy and Minimalism: Implications for Public Policy.” Environmental Ethics 13:1 (Spring 1991): 23-47. 130 I have attempted to characterize ideological divisions as polarizations to be mediated in “Conservative, Liberal, Progressive Dialogue” in The Republic of Faith, edited by Bill Dean and Carl Raschke. 131 Randall Morris, Process Philosophy and Political Ideology: The Social and Political Thought of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne (Albany, State University of New York Press Press, 1991).

Prolegomena to a Process Theory of Natural Law Mark C. Modak-Truran

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As in other areas of the academy, the influence of process philosophy on modern and postmodern legal theory has been impeded by the predominance of post-metaphysical assumptions. The modern consensus assumes, in Max Weber’s words, that the “specific and peculiar rationalism” of Western culture (Weber 1958, 26) has resulted in the “disenchantment of the world” (Weber 1946, 155).1 Science, the only form of objective knowledge, has shown that religious and metaphysical worldviews can not provide a “rational” explanation of the world (Weber 1946, 355). Society has also become differentiated into many autonomous spheres of life (e.g., formalistic law, economics, morality) that are oriented toward different values and that require different bases of legitimation. Thus, Weber concludes that once religious and metaphysical worldviews have been eliminated as a justification for law, law must have its own independent, rational justification. Postmodern legal theory shares the post-metaphysical assumptions of modern legal theory but rejects the idea that law can have an autonomous, rational foundation. Postmodern legal theory focuses more on analyzing law as an assertion of political power and attempts to deconstruct the law to identify its hidden biases relating to race, gender, and class. Rather than providing a rational legitimation of law, it primarily deconstructs the rational legitimation proposed by modern legal theory and reduces law to ideology. Consequently, both modern and postmodern legal theory start from post-metaphysical assumptions so that the legitimation or deconstruction of law can be done without recourse to metaphysics.2 Given the pervasive post-metaphysical assumptions of modern and postmodern legal theory, it should not be surprising that exploring the implications of process philosophy for law and legal theory has only just begun. Two quandaries in contemporary legal theory, however, suggest that legal theory is now ready for a revival of interest in the metaphysical principles presupposed by the law. First, the debate about legal indeterminacy has made it clear that law cannot function autonomously as a self-contained set of rules that can be deductively applied to resolve disputes. In addition, Steven Smith has persuasively argued that the metaphysical or ontological presuppositions of the practice of law are inconsistent with the presuppositions of contemporary legal theory. This “ontological gap” between the practice of law and legal theory presents “a metaphysical predicament” that “will require us to ‘take metaphysics seriously’” (Smith 2004, 2). Legal indeterminacy and the ontological gap between legal theory and legal practice present a new opportunity for articulating a process theory of law. The aim of this article is to i

J. Will Young Professor of Law, Mississippi College School of Law, Jackson, MS 39201; www.law.mc.edu; [email protected].

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demonstrate how process thought entails a novel theory of natural law that will eliminate the perceived illegitimacy arising from legal indeterminacy and that will close the ontological gap between legal theory and legal practice. To support this argument, Section 1 will identify the threat of illegitimacy arising from legal indeterminacy and the ontological gap between legal theory and legal practice as the two key quandaries for contemporary legal theory. Section 2 will discuss Whitehead’s theistic teleology of beauty and his treatment of law. Section 3 will discuss the emerging process scholarship on law and human rights. Section 4 will then demonstrate the promise of process thought for articulating a new theory of natural law that legitimates the law even when it is indeterminate and that closes the ontological gap between legal theory and legal practice.

1. Two Quandaries for Contemporary Legal Theory 1.1. Legal Indeterminacy Consistent with Weber’s diagnosis, strong legal formalism attempted to develop a “science of law” in the early 1900s to explain how law and judicial decision making could be autonomous or separate from religion, morality, politics, etc. Christopher Columbus Langdell, who is often considered the archetype of strong legal formalism, claimed that common law cases could be reduced to a formal system. Within this system, judges could operate like technicians and determine the right decision as a matter of deductive logic by pigeonholing cases into the formal system (Gilmore 1977, 42-44). To the contrary, both the Legal Realists and the Critical Legal Studies Movement (“CLS”) have forcefully undermined the feasibility of strong legal formalism by demonstrating the indeterminacy of the law. For example, legal realist Karl Llewellyn argues that “legal rules do not lay down any limits within which a judge moves” (Llewellyn 1989, 80). CLS goes further by rejecting not only strong legal formalism but also any attempt to find a rational principle that can resolve legal indeterminacy. In this respect, Mark Kelman claims that “the legal system is invariably simultaneously philosophically committed to mirror-image contradictory norms, each of which dictates the opposite result in any case (no matter how ‘easy’ the case first appears)” (Kelman 1987, 13). Although there is little consensus about nature and degree of legal indeterminacy,3 most legal theorists have come to accept that the law is indeterminate such that there are hard cases where the apparently relevant statutes, common law, contracts, or constitutional law provisions at issue do not clearly resolve the dispute. For example, the indeterminacy of the U.S. Constitution results in many hard cases where judges arrive at conflicting decisions about the Constitution’s implications for abortion, physician-assisted suicide, and same-sex marriage. Ken Kress has noted that “[t]he indeterminacy thesis asserts that law does not constrain judges sufficiently, raising the specter that judicial decision making is often or always illegitimate” (Kress 1992, 203). Judges must rely on extra-legal norms to resolve hard cases which can result in inconsistent treatment of like cases and arbitrary decisions. Consequently, the indeterminacy thesis puts into question the notion of the “Rule of Law.”

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Contemporary legal theory, however, fails to indicate how law can be rationally legitimated under the conditions of legal indeterminacy. There have been three types of unsatisfactory response to legal indeterminacy. First, some legal theorists have attempted to reject the legal indeterminacy thesis and maintain a weak form of legal formalism. For example, despite compelling criticisms of his argument, Ronald Dworkin maintains that his interpretative theory of law provides an understanding of law that is quite determinate so that the law provides “right answers” (even in hard cases) based on the criteria of “fit” with prior precedent and “justification” according to the principles of political morality underlying the law (Dworkin 1986, 225, 255). Second, legal positivists usually recognize legal indeterminacy but fail to explain how judges provide a rational legitimation for the law in hard cases. For instance, H. L. A. Hart argues that in some hard cases, the law “is fundamentally incomplete: it provides no answer to the questions at issue in such cases” (Hart 1994, 252). As a result, judges have the discretion “to follow standards or reasons for decision which are not dictated by the law and may differ from those followed by other judges faced with similar hard cases” (Hart 1994, 273). Finally, CLS, feminist legal theory, and critical race theory appear to give up on a rational legitimation for law altogether and reduce law to politics. As a proponent of CLS, Roberto Unger claims that the legal order is merely the outcome of power struggles or practical compromises, and thus, he advocates “the purely instrumental use of legal practice and legal doctrine to advance leftist aims” (Unger 1983, 565, 567).4 Given these responses, the challenge of legal indeterminacy to the legitimacy of the law has not been met. Legal indeterminacy thus still constitutes “the key issue in legal scholarship today” (D’Amato 1990, 148), because it potentially calls into question the rule of law. In other words, legal indeterminacy raises a crucial normative question that current legal theory has failed to answer: on what rational normative basis do judges determine which extra-legal norms are valid and which valid norm or norms are controlling in deciding hard cases? In the following discussion, I will show that a process theory of law can address this issue and save the law from illegitimacy.

1.2. The Ontological Gap The second issue demonstrating the need for a new theory of law stems from the disconnect between legal practice and legal theory. Steven Smith argues that this disconnect stems from an ontological gap between the metaphysical presuppositions informing the practice of law and the “anti-metaphysical animus” informing contemporary legal theory which has resulted in “a jurisprudential dead end” (Smith 2004, xii). Smith emphasizes that “[t]he ways in which lawyers and judges (and even most legal scholars) actually practice and talk about law are not so different than they were a century ago—or even five centuries ago” (Smith 2004, 1). The contemporary practice of law still presupposes a classical or religious ontology that maintains “the reality of ‘the law’” and that posits “a sort of working partnership between a divine author and human legislators” (Smith 2004, 155). However, he maintains that the classical “account has been widely rejected by modern legal thinkers as mere ‘superstition’” (Smith 2004, 155). As a result, the religious ontology presupposed by the practice of law is contrary to the ontology presupposed by contemporary legal theory.

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More specifically, Smith identifies “three ontological families,” which he labels “everyday ontology,” “scientific ontology,” and “religious ontology.” Smith argues that “‘the law’ […] does not square with either the everyday ontology or the scientific ontology that people in academic settings regard as axiomatic, at least for professional purposes” (Smith 2004, 155). This clarifies that the ontological gap results because the practice of law presupposes a religious ontology while contemporary legal theory presupposes a scientific ontology. The ontological gap presents a problem because the end result of accepting a scientific ontology based on “atomic physics and Darwinian evolution” “is that the religious worldview is inadmissible for purposes of serious thought” (Smith 2004, 34). To support this claim, Smith cites John Searle’s conclusion that an unassailable scientific ontology (i.e., scientific materialism) invalidates religious ontology. Smith’s argument means that legal practice is based on a defective or faculty religious ontology that lacks “academic” credibility. Given this analysis, the question becomes whether the ontological gap between legal practice and legal theory constitutes an unfathomable chasm that cannot be traversed or whether it can be navigated by reforming centuries of legal practice or by discovering a new ontology.

2. Whitehead’s Theistic Teleology of Beauty and his Treatment of Law Contrary to Smith’s conclusion, Whitehead’s metaphysics or speculative philosophy shows that “atomic physics and Darwinian evolution” are not inconsistent with a religious ontology. John Cobb emphasizes that Whitehead’s speculative philosophy blends together the new insights in physics (e.g., relativity and quantum theory) with William James’s new philosophical insights (e.g., radical empiricism) to challenge the pervasive “scientific materialism and the Cartesian Ego” (Cobb 1993, 165-66). Similarly, David Ray Griffin clarifies that Whitehead’s philosophy is part of “constructive or revisionary postmodernism” that “rejects not science as such but only that scientism in which the data of the modern natural sciences are alone allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview” (Griffin 1993, viii). At the same time, Whitehead maintains that God is a necessary part of his metaphysics because God “shares with every new creation its actual world, and the concrescent creature is objectified in God as a novel element in God’s objectification of that actual world” (PR 345). God is crucial for the creative advance of the universe because God lures the world toward the categorical imperative of maximizing beauty or the “intensity of feeling […] in the immediate subject, and […] in the relevant future” (PR 27). Whitehead’s metaphysics thus unifies scientific ontology and religious ontology and presents the possibility of closing the ontological gap between legal practice and legal theory. Furthermore, Whitehead maintains that maximizing beauty is categorical or universal because “[t]he teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty” (AI 265). Beauty or unity-in-diversity entails achieving both a sense of order (harmony or an absence of mutual inhibition among various prehensions) and a raised intensity of feelings (complexity or a synthesis of contrasting feelings) (AI 252). Because this transcendent (a priori) telos is universally applicable to all experience (human and nonhuman), humans as self-conscious

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experiencing agents should direct their actions to maximize beauty. Consequently, normative legal claims should maximize beauty (unity-in-diversity) no less than moral claims and, as I will argue below, Whitehead’s metaphysics requires a natural law theory of law based on the telos of beauty. Although Whitehead’s metaphysics provides great potential for closing the ontological gap with a new theory of natural law, Whitehead’s discussion of law and jurisprudence offer little explicit guidance on how this can be done. In Adventures of Ideas, he refers to law several times but mainly as an example of how it relates to the advance of civilization. For example, Whitehead briefly mentions essential human rights, the “alliance of philosophy, law, and religion,” “jurisprudence,” “Anglo-American Common Law,” and “our legal ideas” in various passages without discussing law or legal theory in any detail (AI 13-14, 19, 44, 63, 65). Whitehead’s other references to “law” in Adventures of Ideas focus primarily on the “notions of Law” relevant to science and technology (i.e., physical laws of nature) and the cosmological ideas they presuppose (AI 103-39).

3. Process Scholarship on Law and Human Rights Despite Whitehead’s limited treatment of law, Jay Tidmarsh has provided great insight into the implications of process thought for legal theory. In contrast to the focus in this article on the normative implications of process thought for law, his focus has been more on descriptive jurisprudence than on normative jurisprudence.5 In A Process Theory of Torts, he maintains “that torts must be understood as a system in perpetual process—forever indefinite and infinitely malleable in its precise theoretical, doctrinal, and practical manifestations—yet ultimately bounded in its possibilities” (Tidmarsh 1994, 1317). “Normatively, the fact that all states of perfection will perish suggests that a tort system that wishes to survive must reject all conceptualist efforts to hitch the system to a particular natural law, corrective justice, or efficiency theory” (Tidmarsh 1994, 1418). In Whitehead’s Metaphysics and the Law, he further provides a comprehensive introduction to Whitehead’s metaphysics and suggests some principles like perfection, order, and harmony, as “a framework that could be used to determine that which best achieves Beauty in certain instances, and that which does not” (Tidmarsh 1998, 89). He also suggests that “middle principles” could be developed from Whitehead’s metaphysics which “could suggest in general terms the sorts of legal structures, theories, rules, and practices that best suit particular occasions of experience, and thus are most conductive to the achievement of Beauty” (Tidmarsh 1998, 89). Recent work on process thought and human rights begins to derive middle principles from Whitehead’s metaphysics that give further insight into how the telos of beauty might provide a normative theory of law. Howard Vogel has explored the importance of process thought for reinvigorating the sense of vocation among lawyers through an understanding of “law-asprocess—with-a-purpose” (Vogel 2001, 183). Recently, he has also begun to explore the importance of process thought for international human rights (Vogel 2006a) and constitutional interpretation (Vogel 2006b). With respect to the later, Vogel has argued that “[t]he legitimacy

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of constitutional interpretation is to be found in the growth and nurture of participatory democracy, as an expression of the principle of internal relations, seeking community large enough to embrace the elements of discord in our experience, as contrast within a ‘more perfect union’” (Vogel 2006b, 824). With respect to human rights, both Douglas Sturm and George Pickering have set forth relational or process perspectives on property rights (Sturm 1988 & 1998, 73-121; Pickering 1988). Sturm has been particularly responsible for advancing the implications of process thought for human rights.6 He attempts to preserve the “idea of human rights” because of its “normative insight about the meaning of life” but replaces the individualistic ontology of “classical western liberalism” with a process-based “communitarian political ontology” which “is more relational and ecological, even organic, in character” (Sturm 1994, 238 & 1998, 1920). Sturm further advocates a “jurisprudence of solidarity” rather than a “jurisprudence of individuality” (Sturm 1998, 10). In a jurisprudence of solidarity, “the driving passion of law is not so much to protect the individual against trespass as it is to create a quality of social interaction conducive to the flourishing of a vibrant community of life across the world” (Sturm 1998, 11). In other words, Sturm argues that “human rights are of greatest importance as a form of empowerment, enabling people, as individuals and in their associations, to participate effectively in and through political community” (Sturm 1998, 18). In addition, Franklin Gamwell’s work provides great insight and guidance in determining what particular human rights follow from the theistic telos of beauty, which he refers to as the comprehensive divine purpose or the “maximal unity-in-diversity” (Gamwell 2000b, 338). In Democracy on Purpose, Gamwell attempts “to articulate the [comprehensive] divine purpose in terms of the principles of justice” (Gamwell 2000a, 149). He arrives at these principles by supplementing process thought with the work Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. Based on Apel and Habermas, Gamwell makes a transcendental argument supporting “the principle of communicative respect,” which “is a meta-ethical presupposition of every claim to moral validity” (Gamwell 2000a, 223). The principle of communicative respect provides that “individuals are morally bound to treat each other as potential participants in moral discourse” (Gamwell 2000a, 197). This principle is a formative principle because it remains neutral to all substantive principles and provides that moral disagreement should be resolved by the social practice of argumentation. Gamwell argues that the constitution must establish formative rights to ensure a “full and free political discourse” (Gamwell 2000a, 212-13). Democracy requires that political association is both full such that all principles or norms, whether formative or substantive, are subject to contest and free such that all individuals participating in this political association have equal rights to participation. However, the rights in the constitution must be solely formative because “[a]ny constitutional provision of substantive rights would, in other words, arrest a full and free political discourse by stipulating that citizens as participants in it explicitly accept some conception of good human association” (Gamwell 2000a, 221). Rather, the full and free debate essential to democracy concerns precisely the question of which conception of the good human association should inform the substantive rights prescribed by law.

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In order to institutionalize this debate, Gamwell argues that the constitution should include formative rights protecting both private and public liberties. Private liberties protect the prerequisites for discourse such as the right to personal property and the right to contract (Gamwell 2000a, 206). Public liberties “govern actual participation in discourse” and include the rights such as due process, equal protection of the law, free speech, and freedom of association (Gamwell 2000a, 217-18). In addition, some liberties, like religious freedom, are both public and private. As a private liberty, religious liberty protects the “freedom of conscience,” and as a public liberty, it ensures that all conceptions of the comprehensive good are subject to contest (Gamwell 2000a, 235). While these private and public constitutional rights remain formative, statutory legislation must make substantive determinations concerning issues such as the extent of personal property rights, the legal constraints on the free market, and public education (Gamwell 2000a, 216). There is no guarantee that these decisions will facilitate free and full debate, but the private and public formative constitutional rights ensure that these decisions are always subject to contestation. Individuals may challenge these substantive prescriptions and the conception of good human association that they endorse. Despite the formative nature of the constitution, Gamwell maintains that “the principles of justice depend on a comprehensive [divine] purpose” and “that the [comprehensive] divine purpose for human life implies a democratic principle” (Gamwell 2000a, 181). To support this claim, he argues for “the compound character of justice” (Gamwell 2000a, 232). On the one hand, the substantive principle or principles of justice imply the formative principle of communicative respect which is the meta-ethical presupposition of moral validity. On the other hand, the formative principle of communicative respect implies a comprehensive purpose. This comprehensive purpose provides the basis for the substantive principles of justice that are required to resolve moral and political decisions. In addition, Gamwell summarizes his compound theory of justice as general emancipation with a principle: “Maximize the general conditions of emancipation to which there is equal access” (Gamwell 2000a, 295). He supports this substantive principle by demonstrating that it has a compound character and that it follows from the comprehensive divine purpose. He then summarizes this compound conception of justice by a set of democratic principles: 1. The political association should be constituted as a full and free discourse, providing equal public liberties and, therefore, equal private liberties. 2. The political order should A. maximize equality of public access, providing for all conditions of basic emancipation, and B. maximize the general conditions of emancipation to which there is equal access (Gamwell 2000a, 311).7 Although 2B is the inclusive principle of justice as emancipation and implies the others and their priority, the formative principle in 1 and the substantive principle in 2A are democratically prior. Moreover, “this statement of principles for a conception of human rights backed by neoclassical metaphysics,” is “inseparable from a comprehensive [divine] good,” and articulates

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“a universal or natural moral law” that should determine the activities of the state (Gamwell 2000b, 343-44).

4. Process Natural Law 4.1. A New Theory of Natural Law Michael Moore’s definition of “natural law theory” supports Gamwell’s characterization of his process-based compound theory of justice as “a universal or natural moral law.” Moore argues that a “natural law theory” contains “two essential theses: (1) there are objective moral truths [moral realist thesis]; and (2) the truth of any legal proposition necessarily depends, at least in part, on the truth of some corresponding moral proposition(s) [relational thesis]” (Moore 19911992, 2425). With respect to the moral realist thesis, process metaphysics clearly establishes both a rationally necessary teleology of beauty (i.e., comprehensive divine good) and the formative and substantive rights it implies as objective moral truths. Similarly, with respect to the relational thesis, Sturm notes that Gamwell’s formative rights are “unqualified rights, since they compose the necessary, even if not sufficient, foundation of a democratic political process” (Sturm 2004, 253). In other words, the validity of any law in a democratic political system must be consistent with these formative rights. In addition, substantive rights must be “rooted in an overarching moral criterion that both authorizes the formative rights already indicated and provides a normative measure for the evaluation of contestable policy proposals” (Sturm 2004, 253). Even though formative rights should be constitutionally guaranteed and substantive rights should be left to the legislature, both formative and substantive rights are accountable to the telos of maximizing beauty for their legitimacy. Consequently, the telos of maximizing beauty and the formative and substantive rights it implies represent objective moral truths that determine the legitimacy of any legal proposition. A process theory of natural law, however, varies substantially from classical natural law theory. As noted by Cicero, classical natural law maintains that True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting […] there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge (Republic III, xxii, 33). With respect to formative rights, the classical notion of fixed, unchanging natural laws may have some relevance to process natural law theory. The universal formative rights noted above should be protected in all constitutions. With respect to the universal telos of maximizing beauty (including the implied substantive right to general emancipation), the realization of that aim is always relative to particular circumstances. For example, Whitehead claims that the details of all moral codes “are relative to the social circumstances of the immediate environment” but that there is a transcendent “aim of social perfection” (beauty) for all these moral codes (AI 269, 290, 291). Conduct in one

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environment produces a measure of harmony, but in another environment, it is destructively degrading. “Each society has its own type of perfection” (AI 291). Similarly, the substantive laws in any particular country should embody legal norms which are relevant to its particular environment and which aim at promoting the evolution of that environment towards its proper perfection. Consequently, we must continually "seek for some highly general principles underlying all such codes. Such generalities should reflect the very notions of the harmonizing of harmonies, and of particular individual actualities as the sole authentic reality. These are the principles of the generality of harmony [order], and of the importance of the individual [increased intensity of feeling]" (i.e., beauty) (AI 292). The telos of beauty, however, is not something that is ever fully realized, which means that substantive laws and “[m]orals consist […] in the aim at the ideal” (AI 269). This aim at the ideal is not a static state of affairs to be achieved, but a goal of creative advance to be strived for. While the telos of beauty is universal, the state of affairs that should be realized to maximize beauty in any legal system through statutory or case law will depend upon the circumstances in the society in question. Thus, except for the telos of beauty and the formative and substantive rights it implies, no fixed and unchanging substantive rights or state of affairs will be the end of the law as in classical natural law and natural rights theory. Thus, substantive rights and regulations must be continually modified to facilitate the ideal social perfection that is relevant to the current societal circumstances.

4.2. Legal Indeterminacy and Closing the Ontological Gap Process natural law also responds to the two major threats to the rule of law—legal indeterminacy and the ontological gap between legal theory and practice. Contrary to contemporary legal theories, legal indeterminacy does not present an issue of illegitimacy for process natural law theory. Rather than reducing law to an act of will (e.g., legal positivism) or an ideological gesture (e.g., critical legal studies), process natural law theory claims that the law has a rational basis. In hard cases, even though the expressed will of the majority (e.g., statutes) and the decisions of their judicial representatives (e.g., case law) are indeterminate, judges still have resources for rationally legitimating their decisions. Judges can rely on the telos of beauty and the formative and substantive rights following from it to determine how hard cases should be decided. Given that the validity of the law is already determined by the telos of beauty and these rights, judges are warranted in relying on them directly whether the indeterminacy is intentional (e.g., reasonable person standard) or unintentional (e.g., conflicting laws). Furthermore, process natural law does not mean that some inflexible, antiquated natural laws will be imposed on contemporary society. Rather, judges must determine what maximizes beauty in accordance with the circumstance of the case and the social perfection possible within that society. As a result, under a process theory of natural law, legal indeterminacy does not result in illegitimacy but presents an occasion for judges to rely directly on the rational foundation of the law (i.e., the telos of beauty and the formative and substantive rights it implies) to resolve disputes. In addition, no ontological gap exists between process natural law theory and the practice of law. Whitehead’s metaphysics unifies scientific ontology and religious ontology. There is no

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distinction between the religious ontology presupposed by the practice of law and the “scientific” ontology presupposed by legal theory. Whitehead’s theistic teleology makes sense of the religious presuppositions of legal practice regarding “the reality of ‘the law’” and “a sort of working partnership between a divine author and human legislators” (Smith 2004, 155). Similarly, Whitehead’s metaphysics refutes the “scientific” ontology of contemporary legal theory, which presupposes that the end result of accepting a scientific ontology based on “atomic physics and Darwinian evolution,” “is that the religious worldview is inadmissible for purposes of serious thought” (Smith 2004, 34). Consequently, process natural law theory solves the two most pressing issues of contemporary legal theory by providing for the legitimation of law despite its indeterminacy and by closing the ontological gap between legal theory and legal practice.

4.3. The Empirical Side of Process Natural Law Given the abstract nature of the telos of beauty and the human rights implied by it, it is far from clear how a process theory of natural law provides a legitimation of judges’ decisions in hard cases. These abstract principles clearly rule out some options from consideration and provide general guidelines for practical deliberation. However, the principles of process natural law do not provide a deductive mechanism for resolving hard cases. These principles are also indeterminate when it comes to resolving particular disputes. Judges must still choose from the permissible options. Unlike classical natural law theory, process natural law involves more than top-down reasoning from the abstract principles of process natural law. Process natural law also provides justification for judges reasoning from the bottom-up. Judges are permitted to rely on their intuitions about how these abstract rational principles ought to resolve hard cases. Judicial intuitions constitute a direct application of principles of process natural law to the facts and positive law relevant to a particular case. This conclusion seems to be supported by Whitehead’s similar conclusion with respect to practical reasoning in ethics. He claims that “ethical intuitions are a direct application of metaphysical doctrine for the determination of practice” (AI 18). Judicial intuitions thus complement the purely rational approach to judicial decision making based on the principles of process natural law. This bottom-up approach is the empirical side of process thought as it relates to practical reasoning. For Whitehead, experience is primary while rational theoretical constructions are an abstraction from the fullness of experience. He claims that the apprehension of a vague and inarticulate causation is primary while consciousness is secondary (PR 173, 178). In other words, what we are conscious of is a reduction of that vague sense of causation. The principles of process natural law are an abstraction from more inclusive experience of the telos of beauty and its relation to the facts and positive laws relevant to particular cases. Consequently, a process theory of natural law should take into account the inclusiveness and primacy of experience as well as the principles of process natural law. Whitehead, however, does not provide much insight on how the empirical side of process philosophy relates to practical reasoning. To supplement Whitehead’s account, I will draw on William James’s pragmatic empiricism. Although Whitehead rejects James’ denigration of

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rational metaphysical speculation, Whitehead agrees with James about the primacy and inclusiveness of experience. Whitehead credits James with “the inauguration of a new stage of philosophy” because of his rejection of Cartesian dualism (SMW 143). Whitehead further cites James’s empiricism approvingly (PR 68), and he credits James with properly protesting “against the dismissal of experience in the interest of system” (MT 2, 3). James’s pragmatic empiricism claims that our experience includes the conjunctive and disjunctive relations between things as well as the things themselves8 (James 1963, 138; 1948a, 165-66; 1996, 44-52). James refers to this inclusive view of experience as the vast wholeness of experience or the fullness of experience. Pragmatic empiricism takes both logic (or theory) and the external senses as valid experiences. Rationalism limits itself to logic (theory), and empiricism limits itself the external senses. James’ pragmatic empiricism, however, includes all experience, physical and mental, which is one of the reasons James refers to it as “radical empiricism” (James 1963, 138; James 1996, 41-44). With respect to practical reasoning, James identifies two factors that discipline or justify practical decisions based on the fullness of experience. First, James says that we will recognize answers to practical problems as we do everything else, “by certain subjective marks.” These subject marks include “a strong feeling of ease, peace, rest” and a transition from a puzzled or perplexed state to a state of rational comprehension (James 1948c, 3). James calls these subjective marks the “Sentiment of Rationality.” He argues that we experience the justification of the decision and feel a lack of need to justify or explain it (James 1948c, 4). Applying James’s radical empiricism to judging means that the process of judging must be looked at from the inside. James recognizes that “[a]bstract rules can indeed help,” but he claims that “they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing” (James 1948b, 83). Hence, judging is about the judge taking in all the relevant legal materials, factual information, and other factors and trying to determine the outcome. Once the judge has come to a resolution of the case, the judge should have a sentiment of rationality that her decision makes sense. This subjective sign is not an “objective justification” of the judge’s conclusion. However, it is a confirmation that the judge’s decision resonates with what the judge believes is true about the law, the facts, and how they should relate. If a judge does not have a sentiment of rationality, this should be a sign that the judge’s decision is ill-formed. In other words, the judge must do the best she can to resolve all the loose ends in the case and come to a decision that she feels confident is right. The judge knows that this has occurred when she feels a sentiment of rationality about her decision. Once the judge has achieved the sentiment of rationality, this is not the end of the story. James argues that we must use the pragmatic method to test these decisions in accordance with their consequences. The second disciplining factor is thus the pragmatic testing of judges’ decisions. James has confidence that we all experience a common world and have access to a common truth, but he is not naive about the possibility of disagreement about our interpretations of that world. He recognizes that there are a plurality of decisions that different decision makers may feel confident are right or produce the sentiment of rationality. Hence, James argues that we must test these judgments by their fruits; “[t]he results of the action corroborate or refute the idea from which it flowed” (James 1948c, 33).

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Accordingly, judges must pay attention to the effects of their decisions. Did the parties live up to the terms of the court’s resolution of the case? Did similarly situated parties change their behavior because of the decision? In other words, the court should determine whether the opinion furnished good or bad incentives for future actors. For example, if future cases demonstrate that justifying the legal decision requires numerous “subsidiary hypothesis” that eventually undermine the original decision, James would argue that the decision has been determined to be false or misguided and ought to be corrected. Consequently, judicial intuitions should be subjected to the pragmatic method of testing. Intuitions must be verified by their consequences for the parties, future claimants, future precedent, etc. In addition, process natural law requires that judges be able to reconcile their pragmatically tested decisions with the principles of process natural law. Unlike James, Whitehead would be confident that judges could provide a rational argument to support their decisions based on these principles. This would provide an additional check on parochial judicial bias masquerading as legitimate judicial intuitions. Once the top-down principles of process natural law are complemented by the bottom-up judicial practice of arriving at intuitive judgments, process natural law both solves the problem of legal indeterminacy and closes the ontological gap. Whitehead’s unique blend of rational and empirical methods in his Speculative Metaphysics is further extended to judicial reasoning. Searching for the sentiment of rationality in judicial decision making takes the primacy and inclusiveness of experience into account. Pragmatic testing puts a check on those intuitions, and the principles of process natural law provide an overarching rational structure for the law and further discipline judicial decision making in particular cases. Process natural law theory thus shows great promise for moving past the current theoretical obstacles in legal theory and providing for the creative advance of the law.

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Notes 1

2

3

4

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For the full citation of the works cited in this article, see the “Works Cited and Further Reading” section on pages @173-176 after the article by David Ray Griffith. In several articles, I have tried to show that the attempts by Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, and Kent Greenawalt to provide a post-metaphysical justification for law have failed because their theories presuppose metaphysical or comprehensive principles at the same time that they deny the possibility of rational metaphysics. (Modak-Truran 2004: 774-81)(demonstrating the performative contradiction in Greenawalt’s theory of law); (Modak-Truran 2003: 279-85 & 1998: 266-71)(arguing that Rawls’s “political not metaphysical ordering of political values” and his “Law of Peoples” are incoherent because they imply a comprehensive doctrine); (Mark Modak-Truran 1997)(arguing that Habermas’s discourse theory of law is circular and fails to explain how intersubjective agreement can validate the law independently of comprehensive convictions). Ken Kress notes that “versions of indeterminacy differ according to whether they claim that the court has complete discretion to achieve any outcome at all (execute the plaintiff who brings suit to quiet title to his cabin and surrounding property in the Rocky Mountains) or rather has a limited choice among a few options (hold for defendant or plaintiff within a limited range of monetary damages or other remedies), or some position in between” (Kress 1992, 201). Similarly, Robin West claims that masculine jurisprudence proceeds from the presupposition of individuals as essentially separate from one another (“separation thesis”) while feminist jurisprudence proceeds from the presupposition that individuals are essentially connected or related to one another (West 1988). Critical Race Theorists have similarly tried to show that “areas of law ostensibly designed for our benefit often benefit whites even more than blacks” (Delgado 1991). Descriptive jurisprudence helps us understand how analytically we can talk about law as something distinct from other forms of practical reasoning such as morality and politics. It also describes how the normative justification occurs in the legal system. By contrast, normative jurisprudence provides a justification or legitimation of the law and the legal system (including judicial decision making). In honor of Sturm’s contributions and his retirement from teaching at Bucknell University, “the Center for Process Studies held a conference April 17-19, 1999 called ‘Human Rights in a Process Perspective’” (Morris 2004, 195). The “task of the conference” was “to take a critical look at the principle of human rights” from the perspective of process thought (Morris 2004, 196). Sturm notes that “[i]n important respects, Gamwell’s understanding of the role and importance of human rights and mine […] converge,” but he offers an amendment proposing that “the right to subsistence” (which includes economic and social rights) should be added to the “right to participation” on the list of formative rights (Sturm 2004, 251, 254). For a more extended treatment of James’s pragmatic empiricism and its implications for legal reasoning, see Modak-Truran 2001, 71-83.

Saving Civilization: Straussian and Whiteheadian Political Philosophy David Ray Griffin

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Both Leo Strauss (1899–1973) and Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), believing civilization to be in crisis, hoped that their philosophies could help overcome this crisis by influencing politics. Strauss, who focused almost entirely on political issues and took great pains to become politically influential, has been amazingly successful. His ideas provide the main philosophical basis for the neoconservative movement, which now dominates US foreign and domestic policy and is thereby the most influential political philosophy in the world. Whitehead, for whom politics was only one of many concerns and to which he devoted far fewer words than to several other matters, has thus far had little if any influence on the world of practical politics. He did, however, provide the basis for a political philosophy that, while having a few things in common with Straussian philosophy, is for the most part diametrically opposed to it. The importance of this point is that unless Straussian political philosophy is replaced by Whiteheadian political philosophy, or something similar, there is little hope that civilization will long survive. That is, at least, the conviction behind this essay. In presenting Strauss’s position, I will follow the interpretation offered by Shadia Drury, especially as given in The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, which first appeared in 1988 and was reissued with a new introduction in 2005. Her interpretation, according to which Strauss’s position is basically Nietzschean, is controversial, but that is not surprising in light of her view that one must distinguish radically between the exoteric level of his writings, in which he supports religious belief and conventional morality, and the esoteric level, in which he expresses his true beliefs in a way intended to be understood by only a few. Those who have accepted the pious, exoteric Strauss as the real Strauss will naturally disagree with her view that he was really an “atheist and moral nihilist.”1 Drury’s interpretation is supported by Laurence Lampert, the author Leo Strauss and Nietzsche. Criticizing “mindless dismissals” of Drury’s book, he speaks of its “fine skeptical readings of Strauss’s texts and acute insights into Strauss’s real intentions.”2 Lampert agrees that “Strauss is an atheist [and] a pagan.”3 Lampert’s interpretation is so similar to Drury’s, in fact, that we can speak of the “Drury-Lampert interpretation.”4 The truth of their Nietzschean interpretation of Strauss, besides being intrinsically convincing, is supported by two biographical facts. First, Strauss himself, in a letter to Karl Löwith, said that “Nietzsche so dominated and charmed me between my 22nd and 30th years that I literally

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Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 93117; [email protected].

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believed everything I understood of him.”5 Second, one of Strauss’s last writings was an essay on Nietzsche6 that, in Drury’s words, “reveals the extent to which Strauss’s own ideas have their foundation in Nietzsche’s thought.”7 Given this prologue, I will now, presupposing the truth of the Drury-Lampert interpretation, compare Straussian political philosophy with Whiteheadian political philosophy on a few key issues. By “Whiteheadian political philosophy,” I mean the political philosophy that is present, partly explicitly, partly implicitly, in Whitehead’s writings. The issues to be treated are the present crisis of Western civilization, the relations between religion, morality, and society, the truth about reality, the best form of government, and the nature of political philosophy.

1. The Crisis of Western Civilization Both Strauss and Whitehead believed Western civilization to be in period of crisis, and both of them believed that this crisis was due to the fact that inherited ideals had lost their power. For Strauss, in Drury’s summary statement: A civilization is healthy when it is inspired by an idea, a purpose and a project that animates all within its compass. A civilization begins to decay […] when the individuals within it no longer believe in the idea or ideas that are its guiding light […]. The crisis of modern Western civilization consists in the fact that [modernity’s guiding] ideas have now lost their power; we no longer believe in them.8 The crisis, in Strauss’s words, “consists of the West’s having become uncertain of its purpose.”9 Whitehead’s sense of crisis can be seen by reading together several of his statements. Having defined adventure as “the adventure of ideas, and the adventure of practice conforming itself to ideas,” he said: “Without adventure civilization is in full decay.”10 Then, saying that “[t]he prolongation of outworn forms of life means a slow decadence,” he added: “let us hope that our present epoch is to be viewed as a period of change to a new direction for civilization.”11 Elsewhere, he wrote that “as the present becomes self-destructive of its inherited modes of importance,” there is a need for “new aims at other ideals.”12 Both men believed that philosophy might play an important role in overcoming the present crisis. Philosophy could now best serve civilization, Whitehead suggested, by “seek[ing] the insight […] to escape the wide wreckage of [the human] race.”13 For Strauss, the solution to the modern crisis would require the recovery of “political philosophy,” in his distinctive sense of that term, to be explained later.

2. Religion, Morality, and Society Does a good social order require adherence by members of the society to moral norms believed to be objective? And if so, does this morality in turn depend on a religious view of the universe? Strauss and Whitehead both answered these questions in the affirmative.

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For Strauss, society, to be healthy, must rest on morality, which must in turn rest on a religious worldview. “[O]n the basis of a strictly this-worldly orientation,” Strauss said, “no objective norms are possible”—at least not the kind of objective norms required by civil society.14 “[People] cannot […] live together, if opinions are not stabilized,” and they cannot be stabilized if people think that their society’s principles “have no other support than our blind choice.” These principles must instead be regarded “as divinely established and involving an absolute duty.”15 Losing this view leads to catastrophe. It was the nihilism resulting from the loss of biblical morality that led to Nazi barbarism.16 Besides providing the basis for the society’s moral laws, religion is also necessary to provide contentment. In explicating Machiavelli’s position, Strauss says: [W]ealth, pre-eminence and glory give many comforts of which the many are necessarily deprived. Society would be in a state of perpetual unrest if men […] were not both appeased by religious hopes and frightened by religious fears. Only if their desires are thus limited can the many become satisfied with making those small demands which can in principle be fulfilled by political means. Religion is necessary, moreover, to produce citizens who are willing to sacrifice, perhaps even their lives, for their state, which is likely only if it is regarded as sacred and its basic principles considered “sacred dogmas.”17 Although Roman paganism was better for this purpose than Christianity, at least as usually interpreted, “Christianity permits the exaltation and defense of the fatherland” and “Christians may be good and faithful soldiers because they fight for the glory of God.”18 The contemporary crisis is due to the fact that modernity, failing to recognize the permanent need of a religious basis for the state, has endorsed political atheism and political hedonism. “Political atheism” is the idea that atheism should be publicly declared, thereby contravening the belief of all pre-modern atheists that “social life required belief in, and worship of, God or gods.”19 Political atheists such as Thomas Hobbes and Pierre Bayle, believing that an atheistic society, besides being possible, would be preferable, advocated “popular enlightenment,” in which the truth about the world, as they saw it, would be shared with the masses.20 By “political hedonism,” Strauss meant the idea that a good political order could, rather than being based on duty rooted in religious reverence, instead be based on the goal of fulfilling people’s desire for comfort and pleasure.21 Society would focus not on citizen’s duties but their rights, such as the right to liberty and happiness, so that “[t]he state has the function […] of safeguarding the natural right of each.”22 The “modern project,” presupposing these beliefs, was to create a world of universal happiness and prosperity based on the conquest of nature. The present crisis involves loss of faith in this project combined with nihilism, which holds that no ideals or principles are intrinsically more noble than any other.23 The crisis of modern society, said Irving Kristol, a Straussian generally considered the godfather of neoconservatism, is that reason alone is impotent to ground morality.24 Given the political importance of religion, Kristol said, it is necessary to breath “new life into […] religious orthodoxies.”25 Whitehead agreed that a good society presupposes widespread moral and religious beliefs. He spoke of the importance of having a “vision of the world” that includes “those elements of reverence and order without which society lapses into riot.”26 Also, believing that social

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progress in the West has been inspired primarily by the “humanitarian ideal,” according to which human beings, simply by virtue of their humanity, have essential rights, he was concerned that this ideal was being undermined by modern developments such as Social Darwinism, according which to which social progress is achieved by “the extermination of the unfit.”27 Whitehead believed, moreover, that the main source of respect for humans qua humans is “reverence for that power in virtue of which nature harbours ideal ends, and produces individuals beings capable of conscious discrimination of such ends.”28

3. The Truth about Reality Although Strauss and Whitehead agreed that society requires morality which in turn requires a religious worldview, they disagreed on whether a religious-moral view of the universe can be philosophically justified. Strauss held that it could not. Pointing out that “[u]tility and truth are two entirely different things,”29 he regarded religion as “both untrue and salutary.”30 Although religion claims to be based on divine revelation, “every belief in revelation is ultimately belief in the absurd.”31 Religion, therefore, has a “human, not heavenly, origin.”32 Accordingly, although Strauss spoke of his own religious tradition, Judaism, as glorious, he counseled fellow Jews to embrace it as a “heroic delusion.”33 In rejecting revelation, Strauss understood it broadly to include “what is nowadays called religious experience,” which, he say, has no “cognitive value.”34 Accordingly, although philosophy is the search for knowledge about the whole35—”all philosophy is cosmology ultimately”36—it is not based on a synthesis of sensory and religious experience. It instead consists exclusively of “reasoning based on sense perception,”37 and there is no higher truth to be found by synthesizing philosophy and religion.38 As Lampert says, “Strauss did not differ from Nietzsche” regarding “the truth about revelation” and hence “the exclusivity of philosophy.”39 On that basis, Strauss shared Hobbes’s “materialistic and atheistic view of the whole.” In such a cosmology, as Heidegger emphasized in his essay on Nietzsche’s saying “God is dead,” there is no place for a realm of supersensuous values to exist.40 Strauss, surely sharing this view, thereby held, with Hobbes and Machiavelli, that “there is no cosmic support for [our] humanity,” “no superhuman, no natural, support for justice,”41 and with Nietzsche that “human life is utterly meaningless and lacking support.”42 There is, in other words, no natural law, in the sense of normative principles of conduct rooted in the nature of things.43 The very idea of a natural law, Strauss held, is a “contradiction in terms,” because nature could contain laws of conduct only if there were a divine legislator.44 Whitehead’s mature views were radically different. After having been agnostic or even atheistic most of his life, he decided, after turning to metaphysics, that a rational and empirically adequate cosmology required an all-inclusive actuality to which the term God would not be inappropriate, even though this actuality differed significantly from the deity of classical theism (which was rightly, from Whitehead’s perspective, considered incoherent by Strauss45).

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Given Whitehead’s doctrine of God, there was somewhere for moral norms, along with other Platonic forms (such as numbers), to exist, namely, in what he called the “primordial nature of God.” This primordial nature, besides providing a home for moral norms, such as justice, also provides them with agency, because the primordial nature, rather than simply containing the eternal forms passively, envisages them with appetition that they be actualized in the world.46 We can thereby understand how they can influence us. However, Whitehead’s explanation of how nonmaterial norms can influence us, even if they be given efficacy by a divine actuality, requires one more dimension of his philosophy, his doctrine of perception, according to which sensory perception is derivative from a more fundamental, nonsensory mode of perception. Given that doctrine, he could regard the experience of moral ideals as involving genuine perception on our part, referring to our “experiences of ideals—of ideals entertained, of ideals aimed at, of ideals achieved, of ideals defaced”—as our “experience of the deity of the universe.”47 Whitehead’s theism combined with his epistemology, therefore, allowed him to regard “the impact of […] religious and moral notions,” which he called “inescapable,”48 as cognitive, truthgiving experiences. He held, accordingly, that a metaphysical philosophy, to be adequate, had to integrate the data of our religious and moral experience with the data of sensory perception.49 As a result, whereas Strauss accepted a universe that is thoroughly disenchanted in Max Weber’s sense, meaning that it contains no moral norms,50 Whitehead presented a reenchanted universe.51

4. Natural Right(s) and Good Government The radically different cosmologies of Strauss and Whitehead led to radically different views about human rights and the appropriate type of government. With regard to Strauss, the fact that he was a moral nihilist does not imply that he was a relativist or nihilist in his own, Nietzschean, sense of those terms, meaning a person who believes that there is no standard for declaring any values more noble than others.52 The fact that there is no divinely rooted natural law, in other words, does not mean that there is no such things as natural right, which can be discerned by philosophical reason.53 Natural right can be discerned, he said, by taking renouncing authority and taking nature as the standard, with nature contrasted with convention.54 Taking nature as the standard means that “a human life […] is good [if] it is in accordance with nature.”55 The “true code” is one that “is in accordance with the truth, the nature of things.”56 The fundamental fact about nature, Strauss said, is that it is not egalitarian. It is characterized instead by hierarchy—higher and lower, superior and inferior.57 People are very unequal, so the policy of “equal rights for all” is inappropriate. Because “some men are by nature superior to others,” they are, “according to natural right, the rulers of others,”58 because they are the “true natural aristocracy.”59 This—the right of the superior to rule over the inferior—is the one and only right inherent in the nature of things. Human rights in the egalitarian sense are nonexistent. Although one might

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doubt that Strauss, in quoting Edmund Burke’s phrase “imaginary rights of men,”60 meant to endorse this rejection of human rights, this doubt is removed by Strauss’s statement, in the 1930s, that any protest against certain Nazi policies should be made “without the ridiculous and pitiful appeal to ‘the inalienable rights of man.’”61 “The classic natural right doctrine,” Strauss says, is, when fully developed, “identical with the doctrine of the best regime.”62 The best regime is “aristocracy,” “in which the best men habitually rule,” and this “would seem to be the rule of the wise.”63 Their rule should be “absolute rule,” because it “would be absurd to hamper the free low of wisdom by any regulations” or by making the rulers “responsible to their unwise subjects.”64 However, although this policy would be best in theory, it is “impracticable. The few wise cannot rule the many unwise by force [and] the ability of the wise to persuade the unwise is extremely limited.”65 Also, “the wise do not desire to rule […] because their whole life is devoted to the pursuit of […] the unchangeable truth.”66 Therefore, although “the simply best regime would be the absolute rule of the wise,” the “practically best regime is the rule […] of gentlemen.”67 This policy presupposes Strauss’s division of human beings into three natural types: philosophers, the masses, and gentlemen. The gentleman “is the political reflection […] of the wise man.”68 The gentlemen, by ruling directly on the basis of the advice of the wise, allow them to rule in a “remote manner.”69 Strauss’s doctrine of natural right, in any case, leads to an aristocratic doctrine, which rejects the idea that all human beings have inherent rights, which good government would protect. Whitehead’s position was the exact opposite. He held that insofar as there has been moral progress in Western civilization, this progress has been due to the “humanitarian ideal,” which involves “the idea of the essential rights of human beings, arising from their sheer humanity.” 70 Believing that this ideal reflected that idea of the human soul that came about through the combined influence of Platonic, Stoic, and Christian ideas, Whitehead considered harmful the Humean denial of the human soul.71 He considered the most direct threat to humanitarian ideal, however, to be the Social Darwinian notion that social progress will come about through “the extermination of the unfit.”72 Although Whitehead did not refer to Nietzsche in this regard, he could well have quoted the following passage, in which Nietzsche attacked Christian morality: All “souls” became equal before God: but this is precisely the most dangerous of all possible evaluations! If one regards individuals as equal […], one encourages a way of life that leads to the ruin of the species: Christianity is the counterprinciple to the principle of selection […]. The species requires that the ill-constituted, weak, degenerate, perish: but it was precisely to them that Christianity turned as a conserving force […]. What is “virtue” and “charity” in Christianity if not just this mutual preservation, this solidarity of the weak, this hampering of selection?73 Although Strauss did not, to my knowledge, explicitly endorse this part of Nietzsche’s teaching, he certainly held that, given the great inequalities between different types of human beings, the idea of equal rights was inappropriate to the nature of things. The crucial difference here is that Whitehead, because of his theism, does not accept nature as interpreted through DarwinianNietzschean eyes as providing the ultimate standard. This standard is provided by “that power in virtue of which nature harbours ideal ends.”74

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Given that standard and Whitehead’s concern for universal human rights, it is not surprising that he hoped for a world that would abolish war. In his 1933 book, Whitehead mentioned World War I as the primary sign that civilization needed “a new direction.”75 Also, in discussing implications that have been drawn from a one-sided interpretation of biological evolution in terms of the “struggle for existence,” he spoke against the focus on competition, military warfare, and the “Gospel of Force,” which, he said, “is incompatible with a social life.”76

5. The Task of Political Philosophy The diametrically opposed views of Strauss and Whitehead about religion, morality, and good government led them to diametrically opposed conceptions of political philosophy. The difference involved whether philosophers should openly proclaim the truth about the universe as they see it. For Strauss, the truth—that God is dead and morality is devoid of cosmic support—would undermine the religious morality that society needs. Political philosophy, accordingly, needed to consist of two parts: an esoteric core, in which the truth is stated in a way that will be grasped by the wise few, and an exoteric coating, consisting of “noble illusions” required by the masses. Philosophers who are “socially responsible,”77 Strauss says, will write so as to reveal what they regard as the truth to the few, without endangering the unqualified commitment of the many to the opinions on which society rests. They will distinguish between the true teaching as the esoteric teaching and the socially useful teaching as the exoteric teaching.78 Near the end of his life, Strauss summed up this view in the syllogism that “philosophy is the attempt to replace opinion by knowledge, that opinion is the element of the city, hence philosophy is subversive, hence the philosopher must write in such a way that he will improve rather than subvert the city.”79 For Strauss, recovering political philosophy, thus understood, was the precondition for overcoming the modern crisis, which was due precisely to the decline of political philosophy, thus understood.80 This decline began when early modern philosophers, such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, openly proclaimed truths that should have remained the secret of the wise few, thereby undermining the illusions needed for strong societies.81 “What is needed,” summarizes Drury, “is natural law for the masses and classic natural right for philosophers and those in power.”82 In public, of course, the wise should pretend to believe the moral code taught to the masses. 83 This involves hypocrisy, of course, but “it is impossible for a wise man to benefit his city except by deceiving it.”84 In order for the state (which Strauss often called “the city”) to be strong, it was necessary for the people to be willing to fight and die for it. Toward this end, they needed to believe in “pious swindles” and “noble falsehoods,” including not only God, moral norms, and life after death, but also the sacredness of their nation.85 From Whitehead’s perspective, by contrast, there would be no need for political philosophy to distinguish between esoteric and exoteric teachings, because the truth as he sees it would be salutary for both the political leaders and the people. His philosophy of the whole, in other words, provides the background for his political philosophy. This point is made most clearly in

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a chapter entitled “Civilized Universe,” in which Whitehead sought “evidence for that conception of the universe which is the justification for the ideals characterizing the civilized phases of human society.”86 Because Whitehead saw the idea of essential human rights as central to these ideals and also saw modern thought as undermining the traditional justification for such rights, he sought to provide “a reconstructed justification for the doctrine of regard to [human beings], as [human beings].”87 Also, given Whitehead’s conviction that the continuation of war showed that civilization needed a new direction, he argued that if civilization is to be saved, it must move “From Force to Persuasion”88—by which he meant a world in which social coercion, some degree of which would always remain necessary, would be reduced to “the barest limits necessary for [social] coordination.”89 One factor that had contributed to warfare, Whitehead believed, was the traditional idea of deity as exercising coercive omnipotence. Saying that for the barbarian the “final good is conceived as one will imposing itself upon other wills,”90 Whitehead spoke of traditional theism’s “barbaric conception of God,” then added: “I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the bones of those slaughtered because of men intoxicated by its attraction.” By promoting the “worship of glory arising from power,” Whitehead believed, this conception of deity had “infused tragedy into the histories of Christianity and [Islam].”91 Given those comments, we can see why Whitehead considered the view that he attributed to Plato—”that the divine element in the world is to be conceived as a persuasive agency and not as a coercive agency” and that the world’s order is based on this “divine persuasion—to be “one of the greatest intellectual discoveries in the history of religion.”92 We can also see that Whitehead considered his own doctrine of God, which developed that idea, to be an integral part of his political philosophy. Toward this end, Whitehead hoped for a new form of religion that, by encouraging “the love of [hu]mankind as such”93 and promoting “world-loyalty,” would become “the common basis for the unity of civilization.”94

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Notes 1

Shadia B. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, updated edition with a new introduction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), ix. 2 Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 132n5. 3 Ibid., 143n18. Lampert is here citing with approval Stanley Rosen’s “refreshingly direct” acknowledgment of these facts. 4 Essentially the same interpretation is also reflected in Nicholas Xenos, “Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror,” Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture 3/2 (Spring 2004) (http://www.logosjournal.com/xenos.htm). 5 “Correspondence of Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss,” trans. George Elliott Tucker, Independent Journal of Philosophy/Unabhängige Zeitschrift für Philosophie 5/6 (1988): 177-92, quoted in Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 5. The period between Strauss’s 22 nd and 30 th years would have been 1921-1929. “It was Nietzsche’s fundamental critique of the Enlightenment,” Lampert says (164), “that helped give Strauss his beginning.” 6 Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” Interpretation 3 (1973): 97113; reprinted in Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 174-91, and in Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 187-205. 7 Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (henceforth PILS), 171. 8 Ibid., 133. 9 Strauss, City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 3; Strauss, “The Crisis of Our Time,” in The Predicament of Modern Politics, ed. Harold J. Spaeth (Detroit: University of Detroit Press, 1964), 218; quoted in Drury, PILS, 160. 10 Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (1933; New York: Free Press, 1967), 259, 279. 11 Ibid., 278. 12 Whitehead, Modes of Thought (1938; New York: Free Press, 1968), 103. 13 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 159. 14 Strauss, Natural Right and History, 70, where he is explicating Max Weber’s position. The qualification is needed because Strauss does believe, as we will see, that a purely rational approach to nature provides norms, those of “natural right,” but that these are norms only for the few, not for the masses constituting society. 15 Strauss, Natural Right and History (henceforth NRH), 6, 12, 153. 16 Strauss, “Preface,” Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1965 [originally published in German in 1930]). 17 NRH, 107, 257. 18 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (henceforth TM), 179, 189. 19 NRH, 169; quoted in Drury, PILS, 142. 20 NRH, 198. 21 PILS, 134-37. 22 NRH, 181. 23 Drury, PILS, 160-62. 24 Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Free Press, 1994), 99, 101, 258, 269, 298-99; as cited in Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, 148. 25 Ibid., 146; cited in Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, 148. 26 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 99. 27 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 13, 35-36. 28 Ibid., 86. 29 Strauss, NRH, 6

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Strauss, TM, 226. NRH, 71; here Strauss is expressing his view in an explication of Max Weber’s position. 32 NRH, 41. “According to Machiavelli,” Strauss said, “Biblical religion and pagan religion have this in common, that they are both of merely human origin” (TM 205), so “the dogmatic teaching of the Bible has the cognitive status of poetic fables” (TM 205, 41). 33 Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews: Can Jewish Faith and History Still Speak to Us?” in Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, eds., Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 73. 34 TM, 208; here Strauss uses Aristotle to express his view. 35 In Strauss’s words, “philosophy, in the full and original sense of the term,” [is] the attempt to replace opinions about the whole by knowledge of the whole,” whereas the sophist “is unconcern[ed] with the truth, i.e., with the truth about the whole” (NRH 30, 116). 36 Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” L’Homme: Revue francaise d’anthropologie 21 (1981): 5-36, at 15-19 (quoted in Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 171. 37 Strauss, “The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy,” 112, quoted in Drury, PILS, 51. See also NRH, 92, where Strauss says that reason is “the human faculty that, with the help of sense-perception, discovers nature.” 38 NRH, 74. 39 Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 143. 40 Martin Heidegger, “Nietzsche’s Word: ‘God is Dead,’” in Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology: Heidegger’s Critique of the Modern Age, trans. William Lovett (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 53-112. 41 Strauss, NRH, 170, 175, 178. 42 Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” Appendix to Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 188-205, at 194. 43 Strauss, “Natural Law,” 83, cited by Drury, PILS, 44 Strauss, “Natural Law,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 12: 80 (reprinted in Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy), cited in Drury, PILS, 103. 45 Drury, PILS, 40, citing Strauss, “The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy,” 112, and “Jerusalem and Athens,” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 157, 162. The main issue was the contradiction of divine omniscience and omnipotence with human freedom. 46 Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (orig. 1929), corrected edition, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978), 32-33. 47 Saying that “[t]here are experiences of ideals—of ideals entertained, of ideals aimed at, of ideals achieved, of ideals defaced,” Whitehead added: “This is the experience of the deity of the universe” (Modes of Thought 103). 48 Whitehead, Modes of Thought, 19. 49 Regarding religious experience, Whitehead said that religion “contributes its own independent evidence, which metaphysics must take account of” (Religion in the Making, 76). With regard to moral experience, he quoted with approval Henry Sidgwick’s statement that philosophy’s aim to unify all departments of rational thought “cannot be realized by any philosophy that leaves out of its view the important body of judgments and reasonings which form the subject matter of ethics” (Science and the Modern World, 142). 50 See H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 122, 155. Strauss did believe, contrary to Weber, that “the unassisted human mind” is able to discern an absolute norm (NRH 70). Aside from Strauss’s “natural right,” however, his universe is as thoroughly disenchanted as Weber’s. 51 See David Ray Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). 52 Ibid., 162. 31

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Strauss used the term “natural right” rather than “natural law,” he said, so as to make clear the distinction from Thomistic natural law; “Letter to Helmut Kuhn,” Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): 23-26, at 24; cited in Drury, PILS, 103. 54 NRH, 84, 92, 93, 11-12. 55 NRH, 95. 56 TM, 83. 57 NRH, 118, 134. 58 NRH, 134-35. 59 NRH, 298, quoting Burke. 60 NRH, 297. 61 Quoted in Nicholas Xenos, “Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror” (http://www.logosjournal.com/xenos.htm). 62 NRH, 144. 63 NRH, 140. 64 NRH, 140-41. 65 NRH, 141. 66 NRH, 151. 67 NRH, 142-43. 68 NRH, 142. 69 NRH, 152. 70 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 13. 71 Whitehead wrote: “Hume’s flux of impressions and of reactions to impressions, each impression a distinct, self-sufficient existence, was very different to the Platonic soul. The status of man in the universe required re-considering. ‘What is man that thou are mindful of him?’ The brotherhood of man at the top of creation ceased to be the well-defined foundation for moral principles. There seems no very obvious reason why one flux of impressions should not be related to another flux of impressions in the relative status of master to slave” (Adventure of Ideas, 29-30). 72 Ibid., 36. 73 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, edited by Walter Kaufmann. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), 141-42. 74 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 76. 75 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 278. 76 Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925; New York: Free Press, 1967), 205-206. 77 Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1952), 35-36. 78 Strauss, Writings in Platonic Political Philosophy, 221-22; quoted in PILS, 19. 79 Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” in Leo Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 463; quoted in Xenos, “Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of War.” 80 Strauss, “The Crisis of Our Time,” 217-18; cited by PILS, 165. 81 Drury, PILS, 35-36, 119-23, 131, 141-43. 82 Ibid., 109. 83 Drury, PILS 53, citing Strauss, “An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John’s,” Interpretation 7/3 (September 1978), 1-3. 84 Strauss, City and Man, 235. 85 NRH, 107, 257. 86 Modes of Thought, 105. 87 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 38. Whitehead, in line with the language of the time, wrote “man, as man.” But the change as suggested is entirely appropriate to his thought, especially given the fact that he was an outspoken advocate of women’s rights.

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This is the title of Chapter 5 of Adventures of Ideas. Adventures of Ideas, 56, 85. 90 Adventures of Ideas, 51. 91 Religion in the Making, 54-55, Process and Reality, 342. 92 Adventures of Ideas, 166, 160. 93 Adventures of Ideas, 286. 94 Religion in the Making, 60; Adventures of Ideas, 172. 89

Works Cited and Further Readings Abelson, Donald E. 2002. Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press). Bardach, Eugene. 2005. A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving (Washington, DC, C Q Press). Beer, Samuel H. 1949. The City of Reason (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). Boorsma, P., et al. (eds). 1997. Public Priority Setting: Rules and Costs (Boston, Kluwer). Cauthen, Kenneth. 1987. The Passion for Equality (Totowa NJ, Rowman & Littfield). Cicero. 1928. The Republic, in CICERO XVI DE RE PUBLICA DE LEGIBUS. Translated by Clinton Walker Keyes (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press). Cobb, John B., Jr. 1984. Jr. “Process View on Yin and Yang,” in Hanism as Korean Mind, edited by Sang Yil Kim and Young Chan Ro (Los Angeles, Eastern Academy of Human Sciences), 45-50. Reprinted from the Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6 (1977), 421-26. Cobb, Jr., John B. 1993. “Alfred North Whitehead,” in Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy, edited by David Ray Griffin, John B. Cobb, Jr., Marcus P. Ford, Pete A. Y. Gunter, and Peter Ochs (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Cobb, John B., Jr. 2002. Postmodernism and Public Policy: Reframing Religion, Culture, Education, Sexuality, Class, Race, Politics, and the Economy (Albany, State University of New York Press). Copeland, Warren. 1994. And the Poor Get Welfare: The Ethics of Poverty in the United States (Nashville, TN, Abingdon/Washington, DC, The Churches’ Center for Public Policy). D’Amato, Anthony. 1990. “Pragmatic Indeterminacy,” Northwestern University Law Review, 85, 148-89. Daly, Herman E. and Cobb, John B., Jr. 1994 [1989]. For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston, Beacon). Deacon, Bob, with Hulse, Michelle and Stubbs, Paul. 1997. Global Social Policy: International Organizations and the Future of Welfare (Thousand Oaks, CA, SAGE). Delgado, Richard. 1991. “Brewer’s Plea: Critical Thoughts on Common Sense,” Vanderbilt Law Review, 44, 1-14. Dolbeare, Kenneth M. 1982. American Public Policy: A Citizen’s Guide (New York, McGrawHill). Domhoff, G. William, Who Rules America? Power and Politics, 4th Ed. 2002. (Boston, McGraw Hill). Dworkin, Ronald. 1986. Law’s Empire (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press). Dye, Thomas R. 1994. Politics in America (Englewood Cliffs NJ, Prentice-Hall). Dye, Thomas R. 1995. Understanding Public Policy, 8th Ed. 1995. (Englewood Cliffs NJ, Prentice Hall). Dye, Thomas R. 1995. Who’s Running America? 6th Ed. (Englewood Cliffs NJ, Prentice-Hall). Forrester, Duncan. 1997. Christian Justice and Public Policy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Fox, Charles J. and Miller, Hugh T. 1995. Postmodern Public Administration: Toward Discourse (Thousand Oaks CA, SAGE Publications). Friedman, Murray. 2005. The Neoconservative Revolution … the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Frohnen, B., Beer, J. and Nelson, J. (eds.). 2006. American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (Wilmington DE, Intercollegiate Studies Institute). Gamwell, Franklin I. 2000a. Democracy on Purpose: Justice and the Reality of God (Washington D.C., Georgetown University Press). Gamwell, Franklin I. 2000b. “The Purpose of Human Rights,” Process Studies, 29.2, 322-346.

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Reprinted in Mississippi College Law Review, 22, 239-61. Gamwell, Franklin I. 2004. “Response to Douglas Sturm,” Process Studies, 33.2, 258-61. Gilmore, Grant. 1977. The Ages of American Law (New Haven, Yale University Press). Gooden, Robert. 1982. Political Theory and Public Policy (Chicago, University of Chicago). Gould, Carol C. 1990 Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy, and Society (New York, Cambridge University Press). Grafton, Carl (ed.). 2005. Behavioral Study of Political Ideology and Public Policy Formation (Washington DC, University Press of America). Griffin, David Ray, John B. Cobb, Jr., Richard A. Falk, and Catherine Keller. 2006. American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement by (Louisville/London, Westminster John Knox). Griffin, David Ray. 1993. “Introduction to State University of New York Press Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought,” in Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy, edited by David Ray Griffin, John B. Cobb, Jr., Marcus P. Ford, Pete A. Y. Gunter, and Peter Ochs (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Hart, H. L. A. 1994. The Concept of Law, 2nd Ed. (London, Clareton Press). Issues for Debate in American Public Policy. 2006. (Washington DC, Congressional Quarterly). James, William. 1948a. “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth,” in Essays in Pragmatism, edited by Alburey Castell (New York, Hafner Press), 159-76. James, William. 1948b. “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” in Essays in Pragmatism, edited by Alburey Castell (New York, Hafner Press), 65-87. James, William. 1948c. “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in Essays in Pragmatism, edited by Alburey Castell (New York, Hafner Press), 3-36. James, William. 1963. “The Meaning of Truth,” in Pragmatism and Other Essays (New York, Washington Square Press), 133-84. James, William. 1996. “A World of Pure Experience,” in Essays in Radical Empiricism, edited by Ralph Barton Perry (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press), 39-91. Kaul, Inge, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc A. Stern (eds.). 1999. Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st century (New York, Oxford University Press). Kelman, Mark. 1987. A Guide to Critical Legal Studies (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press). Kingdon, John. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (Boston, Little, Brown & Co.). Kraft, M.E. and Furlong, S. R. 2004. Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives (Washington DC, CQ Press). Kress, Ken. 1992. “Legal Indeterminacy and Legitimacy,” in Legal Hermeneutics: History, Theory, and Practice, edited by Gregory Leyh (Berkley, University of California Press). Kruschke, Earl and Jackson, Byron. 1987. The Public Policy Dictionary (Santa Barbara CA, ABC-CLIO). Lester, James P. and Stewart, Joseph. 1996. Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach (Minneapolis/St. Paul MN, West Publishing). Llewellyn, Karl. 1989. The Case Law System in America, translated by Michael Ansaldi, edited by Paul Gewirtz (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Meyer, David, et al. (eds). 2005. Routing the Opposition: Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy (Minneapolis-St Paul, University of Minnesota Press). Miller, Hugh T. 2002. Postmodern Public Policy (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Modak-Truran, Mark C. 1997. “Habermas’s Discourse Theory of Law and the Relationship Between Law and Religion”, Capital University Law Review, 26, 461-482. Modak-Truran, Mark C. 1998. “The Religious Dimension of Judicial Decision Making and The De Facto Disestablishment,” Marquette Law Review, 81, 255-288. Modak-Truran, Mark C. 2000. “Corrective Justice and the Revival of Judicial Virtue,” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 12, 249-298. Modak-Truran, Mark C. 2001. “A Pragmatic Justification of the Judicial Hunch,” University of Richmond Law Review, 35, 55-89.

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Modak-Truran, Mark C. 2003. “Reenchanting International Law,” Mississippi College Law Review, 22, 263-301. Modak-Truran, Mark C. 2004. “Reenchanting the Law: The Religious Dimension of Judicial Decision Making,” Catholic University Law Review, 53, 709-816. Montgomery, John D. and Dennis Rondinelli (eds.) 1995. Great Policies (Westport CT, Praeger). Moore, Michael S. 1991-1992. “Moral Reality Revised,” Michigan Law Review, 90, 2424-2533. Morris, Randall C. 2004. “Focus Introduction: Human Rights in a Process Perspective: Conversations with Douglas Sturm,” Process Studies, 32.2, 195-198. Nagel, Stuart (ed). 1983. Encyclopedia of Policy Studies (New York, Marcel Dekker). Noam Chomsky. 1987. The Chomsky Reader, edited by James Peck (New York, Pantheon). Pickering, George W. 1988. “Property Rights: Another Relational Perspective,” in Economic Life: Process Interpretations and Critical Responses, edited by W. Widick Schroeder & Franklin I. Gamwell (Chicago, Center for the Scientific Study of Religion), 79-88. Reinicke, Wolfgang. 1998. Global Public Policy (Washington DC, Brookings Institution). Smith, Steven D. 2004. Law’s Quandary (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press). Solum, Lawrence B. 1996. “Indeterminacy,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, edited by Dennis Patterson (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers), 488-502. Stone, Deborah. 1997 [1988]. Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (New York, W. W. Norton). Stone, Diane, and Andrew Denham (eds.). 2004. Think Tank Traditions: Policy Research and the Politics of Ideas (Manchester, Manchester University Press). Sturm, Douglas. 1988. “Property: A Relational Perspective in Economic Life: Process Interpretations and Critical Responses,” in Economic Life: Process Interpretations and Critical Responses, edited by W. Widick Schroeder & Franklin I. Gamwell (Chicago, Center for the Scientific Study of Religion), 29-77. Sturm, Douglas. 1994. “The Idea of Human Rights: A Communitarian Perspective,” Process Studies, 23.4, 238-255. Sturm, Douglas. 1998. Solidarity and Suffering: Toward a Politics of Relationality (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Sturm, Douglas. 2004. “Taking Human Rights Seriously: Relationality and Subjectivity,” Process Studies, 32.2, 237-257. Tidmarsh, Jay. 1994. “A Process Theory of Torts,” Washington and Lee Law Review, 51, 13131428. Tidmarsh, Jay. 1998. “Whitehead’s Metaphysics and the Law: A Dialogue,” Albany Law Review, 62, 1-90. Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. “The Critical Legal Studies Movement,” Harvard Law Review, 96, 561-675. VanHorn, Carl, et al. 1992. Politics and Public Policy (Washington DC, Congressional Quarterly Press). Vogel, Howard J. 2001. “The Terrible Bind of the Lawyer in the Modern World: The Problem of Hope, the Question of Identity, and the Recovery of Meaning in the Practice of Law,” Seton Hall Law Review, 32, 152-189. Vogel, Howard J. 2006a. “Reframing Rights from the Ground Up: The Contribution of the U.N. Law of Self-Determination to Recovering the Principle of Sociability on the Way to a Relational Theory of International Human Rights,” Temple International & Comparative Law Journal 20.2, 443-497. Vogel, Howard J. 2006b. “The Possibilities of American Constitutional Law in a Fractured World: A Relational Approach to Legal Hermeneutics,” University of Detroit Mercy Law Review, 83, 789-827. Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, Oxford University Press). Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott Parsons (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons).

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West, Robin. 1988. “Jurisprudence and Gender,” University of Chicago Law Review, 55, 1-72. Wilcox, Derk Arend, Joshua Shackman and Penelope Naas (eds.). 1993. The Right Guide: A Guide to Conservative and Right-of-Center Organizations (Ann Arbor MI, Economics America). Wilcox, Derk Arend. 1996. The Left Guide: A Guide to Left-of-Center Organizations (Ann Arbor MI, Economics America). Xie, Wenyu, Zhihe Wang, and George Derfer (eds.). 2005. Whitehead and China: Relevance and Relationships (Frankfurt, Ontos).

Websites NIRA’s World Directory of Think Tanks: nira.go.jp/ice/nwdtt/2005/index.html. PPA 670 POLICY ANALYSIS: csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa670/670steps.htm. The Policy Cycle: sfasu.edu/polisci/Abel/142/PublicPolicyCycle.html. The Public Policy Cycle: civic-strategies.com/about/services.html. Phases of the Public Policy Life, Northern California Grantmakers, Public Policy Grantmaking Toolkit Cycle: ncg.org/toolkit/html/gettingstarted/definitions/definitions2.htm.1

XII. Sociology of Science Kuhn and Whitehead Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas

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Parallels between Thomas S. Kuhn and Alfred N. Whitehead have been noticed several times.1 For example, shortly after the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), the scientist C. H. Waddington told Kuhn that the absence of references to Whitehead in that book was disappointing, because, both epistemologically and metaphysically, it plainly addressed some of Whitehead’s philosophical themes. On that occasion Kuhn admitted that, although the parallelism was there indeed, the last time he remembered having read Whitehead was before he had formulated his current views. By that time, Kuhn added, he was not attracted by the notion of “prehension”—the one which Waddington thought embraced Kuhn’s stance as a whole. Kuhn acknowledged that Waddington’s point was an interesting one, and that he would probably give Whitehead further consideration some day—but he never actually did.2 Kuhn occasionally quoted Whitehead’s brilliant sentences to support his own points.3 However, he used to quote William James and others in a similar manner—that is by way of a rhetorical appeal to a recognized authority—even though his own views were not necessarily in full agreement with theirs (Kuhn 1962, 113).4 To what extent did Kuhn know Whitehead’s philosophy? And, to what extent did he find it interesting? My aim in this paper is to answer these questions. To do so, I will show how Kuhn started from a typically Whiteheadian perspective when making his early criticisms of the empirical tradition (as represented by Bertrand Russell).5 I will explore Kuhn’s readings of Whitehead’s books, his use of Whitehead’s terminology, and, finally, his understanding of physical science as a process.

1. Kuhn’s Winding Route to Whitehead Kuhn entered Harvard intending to become a theoretical physicist, but the routine of war-time physical research and his experience of graduate-level physics convinced him that he actually did not want to make a career in the field. During his undergraduate years, he found the philosophy of science to be a reasonably satisfying substitute, and so he soon hoped to become a professional philosopher instead. By mid-1943, having recently graduated with a degree in physics (summa cum laude), he told his aunt Emma Fisher that the prospect of becoming an

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Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge (UK) and Darwin College, Cambridge; [email protected].

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academic philosopher, difficult as it seemed, was not out of the question.6 By the end of the war, Kuhn had already decided that physics would not be his future profession. If Kuhn had planned to devote his time to philosophy when he entered Harvard in 1940, he would have done it at the right time. Quine referred to the year 1940-41 as “halcyon days” (1998, 19). Together with C. I. Lewis, H. M. Sheffer, Quine himself, and the rest of the faculty, some outstanding figures of modern philosophy, notably Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap, had been or were giving courses and seminars on logic, semantics, and analytic philosophy as visiting professors.7 It was doubtless a good moment to start up as a philosopher. However, by that time, Kuhn had never thought of majoring in philosophy, and the requirements of a physics degree meant that by the time of graduation he had taken only one course in philosophy, and that as a freshman—the history of philosophy, taught by Raphael Demos. It played an important role in Kuhn’s intellectual development in the long run, because it helped him to discover Immanuel Kant, whose work greatly increased his early interest in philosophy. But this one course did not make up for the lack of a more complete training in the field, as Kuhn himself realized shortly after returning from war service, as he began to take some graduate courses in philosophy: there was a lot of philosophy left for him to learn.8 But this is not to say that Kuhn knew little philosophy. Harvard’s Department of Physics was not devoid of philosophically minded scientists, such as Edwin C. Kemble and, particularly, Percy W. Bridgman, whose Logic of Modern Physics provided a large number of American physicists with an explicit methodological statement of the sort of physical theory they aimed to develop. The Logic of Modern Physics was a primer to Bridgman’s so-called “operational analysis,” a methodological doctrine according to which physical concepts were meaningful as long as a series of experimental procedures could be devised to provide quantitative measurement justifying their usage. It was an empiricist criterion of meaning (welcomed by Logical Positivists) that made the handling of physical concepts rely on pure verifiability. Kuhn first heard of operational analysis as an undergraduate student, and later on, during his war service, he read it through. Kuhn did not consider Bridgman’s Logic thoroughly convincing, because he did not agree that experimental procedures were altogether devoid of assumptions concerning, e.g., the reasonableness of quantitative agreement, or the aseptic scruples involved in experimental design and implementation.9 Kuhn had learned the significance of assumptions (though we should rather term them “preconditions”) for knowledge from Kant (and from David Hume as well), and he wanted to approach the field of psychological epistemology to discover how scientific generalizations were actually made.10 With this project in mind, Kuhn started his war service by reading popular works on epistemology and philosophical analysis, philosophy of science, and science. His was the viewpoint of a young scientist and an amateur philosopher. So, together with a planned study of the Principia Mathematica, he read recent popular works by A. S. Eddington, R. A. Millikan, Max Born, and J. B. S. Haldane, and to these he added Bridgman’s Logic as well as Nietzsche’s Antichrist, The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, some works by Sigmund Freud, Ludwig von Mises, Philipp Frank, Rudolf Carnap, and Bertrand Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World.11 All these readings allow us to see that Kuhn was trying to enlarge his rather limited philosophical education. But, as mentioned above, Kuhn’s first serious

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encounter with “real” philosophy happened after his war service, during the Fall term of 1945, when he took H. M. Sheffer’s graduate course in symbolic logic, and Donald C. Williams’ course in metaphysics. After passing these courses, Kuhn decided not to move over into philosophy because of his lack of training in the field. Frustrating and painful though this experience must have been, it nevertheless contributed to Kuhn’s eventual philosophy of science, as we will discuss further below. Kuhn’s first references to Whitehead’s philosophy appear at this time. In his term paper for D. C. Williams he mentioned The Concept of Nature, a book that (as we will see below) seems to have left a mark in Kuhn’s organization of the philosophical problems of physical theory. That was not the only work by Whitehead that Kuhn had read by now. Kuhn’s quotations from Science and the Modern World are well known today, but he also read (and commented on) Whitehead’s Axioms of Projective Geometry as well as Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect. 12 Unfortunately, we have no evidence as to when he read these two books, but if we take what Kuhn said to Waddington into account, we can infer that he must have read them before 1947, i.e., the year he fixed as the very beginning of his mature thought (Kuhn 1977, xi). He praised some of these books (especially Axioms and Symbolism), and found them useful in quite different senses, though all related to his various philosophical interests—notably causation and his view of science as process.13

2. Kuhn on Russell and Causality Kuhn’s first published papers—apart from those on solid-state physics, a direct outcome of his dissertation—date from 1951, and are mainly historical studies of science.14 Until 1959, Kuhn’s work is clearly historical, and included the history of chemistry in the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, the history of thermodynamics, and, of course, the Copernican Revolution. With the exception of The Copernican Revolution (Kuhn 1957), there are as yet no explicit references to the kinds of ideas that he would eventually explore in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In other words, until 1959 there is no explicit account of science from a philosophical (or rather, perhaps, a “metahistorical”) point of view.15 So we will not find any mention of the philosophical questions which mostly interested him at the outset in those publications. To study those questions we must turn to his unpublished papers. And there we find how Whitehead’s exposition of the philosophical principles of scientific knowledge influenced him. To understand that influence it is advisable to begin by describing an early philosophical view of Kuhn in which Whitehead’s shadow is still not visible. It corresponds to Kuhn’s undergraduate studies at Harvard (1940-43). By that time, Kuhn’s philosophical image of science included some ingredients seemingly close to the empirical tradition in philosophy. I say “seemingly” because he does not follow any philosophical current at all. Kuhn shows his viewpoint in a 1941 term paper whose title was “The Metaphysical Possibilities of Physics.”16 In that essay, Kuhn holds an instrumentalist idea of scientific concepts together with an empirical conception of the ultimate origin and justification of scientific theories in raw data. 17

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His perspective regarding the relation of scientific theories to absolute truth was that of a fallibilist and sceptic. The thinker who better represents his image of the nature of scientific knowledge was Hume rather than Kant. Thus Kuhn writes: Do the fictions of physics approach nearer and nearer to the truth, and will the ultimate fiction thus correspond to the truth? […] This has been the dilemma of the physicist: he searches for a truth which, though found, cannot be proved. We can only be glad that he has not been so discouraged by it as to give up the attempt, for further investigations shows possibilities of a less discouraging nature (1941, 6). His paper evaluates these possibilities, and his conclusions help us to see that Kuhn is rather a pessimistic scientific realist.18 That is, he does not take skepticism to the extreme. He finds it difficult to affirm that science articulates absolute truths about nature, but this is not in itself an impossible task. His essay is a sketch of a philosophical program leading to the removal of uncertainty. For Kuhn physical science is a metaphysically meaningful enterprise that might give very good results (1941, 1), and philosophers would do better if they studied it properly. To that effect, the philosophical study of physics does not consist of the mere study of the a priori, such as Kant argued (1941, 3-4). Scientific assumptions are more than the mere application of permanent categories of the mind.19 Concepts of physics, Kuhn says, “are not the concepts of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason” (1941, 3). Incidentally, this position links Kuhn with a naturalistic current of thought to which Whitehead is not alien.20 I must re-emphasize that this small piece of work is still not the outcome of a thorough study of philosophy. Kuhn copes with the specific relation of theory to data very intuitively. He says that data are the elementary pieces of scientific theories and concepts their glue. Concepts are the way we express the loose unity we grasp in raw data. They are “fictions” (1941, 3 ff.) that we adopt as long as they successfully express the facts represented by the data. “[T]ime,” Kuhn writes, “is derived from endurance and change;” in the same vein, “cause and effect [are derived] from repeated interaction” (1941, 3).21 In this intuitive philosophical research Kuhn does not seek any account of the way concepts, unity, and data produce a proper scientific theory. He refers this matter to a practical attitude on the part of the researcher, who looks for unity and order.22 But how a specific arrangement of data gives rise to the concepts of space and time, and where that arrangement comes from, is not explained at all. What mostly interests him in this work is the relation between concepts and data, so as to answer questions about the “metaphysical possibilities of physics;” his own answers are guided by the intuitions of a student of physics relatively new to philosophy. After this short essay, Kuhn did not abandon such questions, but he soon realized that it was necessary to understand scientific concepts and scientific explanation before providing an account of the nature of scientific truth. Already in 1943, Kuhn had revealed to his aunt Emma Fisher his interest in psychological epistemology. From 1943-45, he pursued such studies on his own and in a somewhat leisurely fashion. His study became more systematic in the Fall semester of 1945, when he took his first two graduate courses in philosophy. At this point, Kuhn began to adopt a recognizable philosophical language. This language derives partially from C. I. Lewis’ epistemology and modal logic, and partially from Russell’s and Whitehead’s ways of dealing with scientific concepts. It is worth mentioning that, although Russell is extensively

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discussed in Kuhn’s writings of 1945, it is Whitehead’s language that survives Kuhn’s penetrating criticism. Moreover, Whitehead’s language, along with Lewis’ work,23 are the bases on which Kuhn builds his early philosophical view about science, or more precisely, the views that preceded his first contact with the history of science. Let us take as a case study Kuhn’s term paper for Donald C. Williams on “causal connexity.” In this paper, “An Analysis of Causal Connexity” (1945),24 Kuhn deals with causality, thereby focusing on a classic Humean theme in the philosophy and psychology of science. He examines Bertrand Russell’s definition of the law of causality (Russell 1929), and shows how that definition does not deal with all the meanings involved in the ordinary scientific usage of that notion. In other words, Russell’s definition is not as general as he intends it to be, and therefore is not a definition at all. Russell’s definition is as follows: “Given any event e1, there is an event e2, and a time-interval t such that, whenever e1 occurs, e2 follows after an interval t” (1929, 183). Clearly, we must know what is meant by “event,” and why an interval t is necessary. In respect to this latter, Russell argues that cause and effect cannot be contiguous in time, or rather the separation itself between cause and effect cannot be explained at all (1929, 184-85).25 Furthermore, since infinitesimal time-intervals do not exist, any time-interval must be finite (Russell 1929, 187). Concerning what the term “event” refers to, Russell says that it is usually a universal, not a particular, and that it is something that recurs (1929, 186). But, Russell adds, we must be careful not to make a universal excessively “dense.” The more features we add to its definition, the more difficult it will be that the event occurs more than once. However, we cannot rely on a simple criterion of sameness such as that usually put forward in support of so trivial a definition of the law of causality as the principle “the same causes produce the same effects.” This only works, according to Russell, “in daily life and in the infancy of a science” (1929, 194), whereas modern physics relies on more strict criteria. Russell takes the law of gravitation as an example. This law is concerned with the relation between the configurations and velocities of a given (extensionless) particle at different instants. Causal connections thus take the form of a relation between two configurations separated by a time-interval, something properly described in terms of differential equations. It leads Russell to write that “sameness of relations […] is too simple a phrase” (1929, 195) and that it can be better reworded as “sameness of differential equations.” For Kuhn, Russell is right to point to spatial and temporal coordinates as sufficient elements in establishing relations that science often takes as the foundations of a physical law. In so doing, Russell tightly links causal connexity to mathematical continuity. But Kuhn also shows that this conception is too simplistic. Sameness criteria, he says, also include restrictions that affect the use of differential equations, or, broadly speaking, restrictions concerning the way any sort of relation between quantities is admissible at all. “Restriction” means here that together with the predictability we expect of a causal connection—which is often provided by mathematical continuity—there is another essential feature of causal connexity without which that former cannot do. Kuhn thus writes: [W]hatever the nature of the spatio-temporal field there are two portions to the notion of cause. One is the notion of predictability expressed in the quotation from Russel [sic]. It has been observed that under certain circumstances the validity of this notion may be analytically demonstrable. The other notion is simply that of the

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removal from the ontologically meaningful space-time field of certain types of event-particles which are conceivable and describable and therefore subsistent but which, if this analysis is correct, can never be existent (TSKP, “Analysis,” 12). Kuhn summarizes this second feature with the phrase “excluded events,” something which refers to those events that, on principle, will never satisfy the proposed causal behavior (TSKP, 12-13). Causal connexity, as used in science, Kuhn emphasizes, employs both features. Let us examine the examples Kuhn sets out in support of his own point of view. As Russell argued, it can be predicted where a given moving body (say, an extensionless particle) is going to be after a time-interval t (i.e., provided that its starting point is known beforehand). Velocity and acceleration of that moving body in a Newtonian framework can be reckoned by means of differential equations which involve time derivatives of position, with the restriction that any time derivative beyond the first two (i.e. the third derivative, expressing the rate of change of acceleration) must be equal to zero. But, in this case, it can also be said what that body is not going to do (i.e., where it is not going to be after t). That would be the “excluded event.” On the face of it, this is a trivial corollary. But it is not in fact trivial, as one recognizes if one explores the example in greater depth, as Kuhn did. It is mathematically admissible that the motion of two bodies that share an identical starting position and velocity comes finally to different end points, and, accordingly, that they follow divergent trajectories. This divergence is mathematically determinable in terms of the differences between the higher derivatives of the function assigned to each body. Without further restrictions, this is mathematically acceptable. But the phenomenon itself, Kuhn says, is not allowed in a Newtonian framework. Predictions within that framework must incorporate the previously mentioned restrictions on derivatives, so that the end point is the same in both cases. This potential divergence is the sort of “excluded event” Kuhn wanted to emphasize. In brief, Kuhn’s reference to the corollary mentioned above is not as trivial as it initially seemed. The essential conditions for laying down a scientific causal connexity include restrictions concerning the sort of formal predictive scheme that is permitted by our acquaintance with the phenomenal behavior we want to explain. Generally speaking, every form of scientific causal connexity involves taking the possibilities and impossibilities concerning the events we theorize about into account. A statement of the law of causation must pay attention to both features, predictability and restrictions, to be the alleged definition of causal connexity (TSKP, 13). Kuhn also commented on another kind of causal relation by taking an example from the theory of gases (TSKP, 14-16). Gas theory employs expressions such as Boyle-Mariotte’s and Charles’ laws (or the gas equation) that are not time-dependent. For instance, by BoyleMariotte’s Law, at constant temperature, the volume of a gas sample is inversely proportional to its pressure. If we double the volume of that sample, the pressure will shrink to half its original pressure, but we are not allowed to say that the increase of volume is the cause and the reduction in pressure its effect, nor that the latter comes after the former. The organization of the causal relation is here quite different from that of Russell. It does not involve any time span, and the causal relation does not resemble the Newtonian case. In conclusion, for Kuhn there is more to causal connexity as employed in science than Russell’s conception involves. The mathematical structure of prediction that Russell describes is certainly an essential ingredient of causality as employed in science. Yet, the specification of

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the sort of event involved in the causal behavior—i.e., of its necessary and sufficient features according to the causal behavior itself—is identically essential. As we will see below, Whitehead’s philosophy will be a stepping-stone to this criticism of Kuhn to Russell.

3. Kuhn, Scientific Objects, and the Process of Physical Science Whitehead’s philosophy helped Kuhn to build a convincing alternative to Russell regarding the nature of scientific concepts, and especially about causality as used in science. It is worth mentioning, however, that Whitehead himself preferred to neglect the issue about causality because, he said, it “raise[d] the memory of discussions based upon theories of nature which are alien to my own” (CN 146).26 All the same, his view about the role of objects and events in science was for Kuhn a useful philosophical perspective. Whitehead relies on a “continuity of events” (CN 52, 76). For Whitehead an “event” is “the specific character [we discern] of a place through a period of time” (CN 52). Events have a passing nature, and, although sometimes exhibit a sharp edge, they often do not. In other words, an event overlaps a number of other events, so that they are all usually coextensive. The relation of extension between events (CN 58) leads to what Whitehead calls the “continuity of events,” which in turn constitutes the “continuity of nature” (CN 76). When events do not have a passing nature they are called “objects.” Thus, for example, given a certain place (such as a European capital’s main square), then a rainy afternoon, or the collective behavior of a mass of people in that place would be considered an event, whereas the City Hall or a cathedral located on the same square would be “objects.” For Whitehead this distinction is arbitrary. It is the outcome of an analysis in terms of a “materialistic theory of nature” and its three factors, time, space, and matter. But he warns that, even though this analysis is useful “for the purpose of expressing important laws of nature,” none of “these factors is posited for us in sense-awareness in concrete independence.” And he adds: “We perceive one unit factor in nature; and this factor is that something is going on then—there” (CN 75). But, in actual fact, we need objects to arrange the continuity of events.27 The origin of scientific knowledge takes root at this point, says Whitehead (CN 158). Objects mark those passing entities (events) with an unmistakable stamp, themselves, and make events recognizable and comparable—otherwise events conserve their passing and subjective nature. Objects, for instance, acquire temporal and spatial features (i.e., they take shape, so to speak) with reference to certain events, and, in turn, make events recognizable and, frequently, intersubjective as well. As we go more deeply into the relations among objects and events, we discover that they can be investigated more precisely than they generally are in everyday intuition. We can select, for instance, what relations are more permanent and objective. The resulting objects and events are thus akin to a system of description, such as that usually presented in science. Whitehead calls these resulting objects scientific objects.28 They are the outcome of a thorough classification of physical objects in terms of other component objects; this classification seeks to provide a simple and uniform description of events by incorporating the most permanent and objective

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relations of events. It is important to underline that neither objects nor events are reducible to each other. In Whitehead’s words: In fact the whole point of the search for scientific objects is the endeavour to obtain [a] simple expression of the characters of events. These scientific objects are not themselves merely formulae for calculation; because formulae must refer to things in nature, and the scientific objects are the things in nature to which formulae refers (CN 158). In any case, Whitehead’s overall point of view is that science (and knowledge generally) provides the continuity of events—the continuity of nature—with order, classification, and stability. Science and its scientific objects are a sort of quintessence of this process. But if we try to understand a basic activity in that process, this is the progressive differentiation of events, which is marked by their gradual isolation, specification and classification. Exclusion plays a key role in this activity. Whitehead states that “every event is known as being related to other events which it does not include. This fact […] shows that exclusion is as positive a relation as inclusion” (CN 186). In other words, every complex state of nature is understood by including some events from among the set of events relevant to the state, while excluding others (CN 53). In science this process is merely more strict, specialized and permanent than in common sense. As shown in the previous section, this general point of view is also evident in Kuhn’s “Analysis.” Let us turn again to his main examples. First of all, in the case of the gas sample, the causal behavior described by the gas equation or by gas laws—non-temporal laws, Kuhn recalls—relies directly on the notion of excluded events. Gas laws are laid down in such a way that they exclude the possibility of, e.g., a reduction of the volume of a gas sample without a simultaneous increase in pressure, when temperature is held constant (TSKP, “Analysis,” 1617). Secondly, in the case of the moving body in a Newtonian framework we exclude some “event-particles,” as Kuhn calls them, following Whitehead.29 In Whitehead’s terms, an eventparticle is an “ideally simple event […] indefinitely restricted both in spatial and in temporal extension, namely the instantaneous point” (PNK 33). Event-particles represent the possibilities of motion for an extensionless particle in any framework under conditions of mathematical continuity. Kuhn points out that, in this case, the use of differential equations is necessarily subject to the specification of excluded events. It is in terms of that specification that we will adjust the mathematical description to the expected causal behavior. In short, for Kuhn causal connexity, as used in science, is a sort of recurrent complex event whose variety of cases (involving time or not) finds a more general pattern in the Whiteheadian pair inclusion/exclusion than in Russell’s reduction to mathematical continuity. In his “Analysis” (p. 8, n.), Kuhn names Whitehead’s The Concept of Nature (especially Chapters II-III) as a source of great inspiration for him, particularly with regard to the notion of the abstractive process by which event-particles are posited.30 In addition, Kuhn’s use of the notions of “event-particle” and “excluded event” clearly echoes Whitehead’s philosophical nomenclature. Nevertheless, Kuhn’s application of Whiteheadian notions was more complete later. In that respect, two further moments must be highlighted. The application is more definite in the first moment, when Kuhn employs a clearly Whiteheadian vocabulary, as for instance in his reference to “scientific objects.” This first moment was in 1947, when Kuhn was invited to participate in an experimental program of general education in science designed by the

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President of Harvard University, James B. Conant. This was Kuhn’s first contact with the history of science, and also the very beginning of his professional career as a historian (and later philosopher) of science. For the first meeting of the group, Kuhn wrote a summary of the “Objectives of a General Education Course in the Physical Sciences.”31 It was a sketch of the nature of physical science such as he saw it at that time. It must be emphasized that here Kuhn brands physical science as a “process” (TSKP, “Objectives,” 1, §I). Kuhn’s understanding of the organization of this process relies upon typically Whiteheadian notions. According to Kuhn, the process of scientific research can be summed up in four stages:32 1. The “pure classification” of “perceptual objects.” 2. The selection of “essential similarities” in “divergent phenomena.” 3. A “successive abstraction” aimed at isolating “scientific objects” (which differ from perceptual ones). This includes “increasing precision of definition including partial rejection of linguistic distinctions and of immediate sense data.” 4. The setting-up of a theoretical system and of a “conceptual structure.” The references to “perceptual objects” and “scientific objects,” as well as Kuhn’s understanding of them as resulting from selective classification and abstraction, reveal Whitehead’s influence on Kuhn concerning the basic elements in science and how they are formulated. The second moment in which Kuhn clearly adopts Whiteheadian notions is when he began his study of the history of science. As mentioned above, Kuhn used Science and the Modern World as a source of suggestive quotations, even as, gradually, he drew less and less on Whitehead’s actual thought. Yet, Kuhn’s first serious philosophical work, the eight Lowell Lectures of 1951 (never published), was still tentatively titled The Creation of Scientific Objects,33 although he finally changed it to The Quest for Physical Theory: Problems in the Methodology of Scientific Research.34 But even The Quest shows that Kuhn was still at least partially thinking in terms of Whiteheadian categories. In the second lecture, Kuhn begins by showing the medieval background to Galileo’s revolution in natural philosophy.35 But in the next two lectures Kuhn’s case studies are significantly different. Here, he deals with atoms and subtle fluids as ontological resources that serve as foundations for an indirect description of nature. In other words, Kuhn presents a study of how two kinds of scientific objects ground the understanding of a given range of natural phenomena (a group of “limiting events,” so to speak).36 In summary, in this paper I have tried to show that Kuhn relied on Whitehead, at least in part, to launch his earliest attack on the empiricist view of physical concepts. The very idea of scientific objects was a stepping-stone to reach a different image of science. Since Kuhn’s mature work led to a breakthrough in our conception of science, an additional question seems relevant: Did Kuhn’s Whiteheadian views play any role in that rupture? This paper aims at making it easier to answer this question.37

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Notes 1

See, e.g., Lucas 1989, 133. See the letter from C. H. Waddington to Thomas S. Kuhn, March 7th, 1963, 2, and Kuhn’s answer, October, 24th, 1963, 1, both of them in 4.16 of the Thomas S. Kuhn Papers in the MIT libraries (hereafter abbreviated as TSKP). 3 See, e.g., Kuhn 1957, 123, and 1963, 350. 4 For a thought-provoking way to put the difference between Kuhn and Whitehead see Steve Fuller 2000, 12, 302, and 423. 5 In this sense, I partly follow Fuller (2000, 302 n. 89, and 423) in signaling Whitehead as a sure source for some of Kuhn’s views. However, I depart from Fuller’s interpretation in exploring Kuhn’s reading of texts other than Science and the Modern World. My reasoning for doing so is that Kuhn’s study of Whitehead is rooted in an earlier interest in the philosophy of science that came before his first contact with the history of science. Accordingly, Kuhn’s main Whiteheadian source was The Concept of Nature rather than Science and the Modern World. 6 Letter from Kuhn to Emma K. Fisher, July 27, 1943, TSKP, 12.33. 7 See the Harvard University Catalogue 1940/41, microfilmed, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 234-35, for more information regarding their courses. 8 On this stage of Kuhn’s intellectual development see Baltas et al. 2000, 262-63, 273. 9 On Kuhn’s views of Bridgman see Kuhn’s letter to Edward T. Robinson, March 8th, 1965 (TSKP, 4.4); cf. Kuhn’s 7th (unpublished) Lowell Lecture (TSKP, 11.33, 40-41). Finally, Kuhn’s criticisms of Bridgman appear in his reading card at TSKP, 9. 10 Kuhn’s letter to Fisher (TSKP, 12.33). 11 TSKP, 9; Baltas et al. 2000, 305. 12 TSKP, 7. 13 TSKP, 7. 14 For a complete list of his publications see Kuhn 2000, 326-35. 15 See esp. Kuhn 1959 and 1961. 16 TSKP, 1.3. 17 TSKP, 5. 18 This interpretation of Kuhn’s early view accords with that recently proposed by Peter GodfreySmith 2003, 177. However, his interpretation refers to a more advanced stage of Kuhn’s thought. For a thorough study of this issue, see Paul Hoyningen-Huene 1993, 56, 76-77, 26263. 19 On Kuhn’s early attitude toward Kant’s a priori, see his “The Metaphysical Possibilities of Physics,” 3-4. Again, Kuhn’s views are more akin to a Humean conceptions. 20 See McHenry 2003, 161. 21 Kuhn would later change his mind about this idea of causal connexity. 22 There is indirect evidence in support of Hume (especially the Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Pt. I, §I) as the probable source of Kuhn’s point of view in this matter. Kuhn affirms, for instance, that the way a physicist usually differentiates between true and false impressions by relying (among other more objective criteria) on a sort of innate belief that the true impression will have a greater liveliness (See “The Metaphysical Possibilities of Physics,” 2.) My italics call attention to the two words that have a distinctly Humean flavor (see Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, 1). This Humean influence, which can be traced also in Kuhn’s approach to the formation of scientific concepts in this essay, is scarcely surprising, given that he had studied Hume in Demos’ course. See Baltas et al. 2000, 264. 23 I deal with Lewis’ influence on the young Kuhn in Mayoral (forthcoming). 24 TSKP, 1.3 (Henceforth referred to as “Analysis.”) 2

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A cause is either a process or a static event. This second option is problematic, for it cannot be explained why a cause suddenly explodes into its effect. But if it is a process, then it must include an instant before the effect begins, or rather only the last part of that process (as well as the earliest part of the effect) would count as the cause itself, and this would no longer be the causal event that was initially considered (see Russell 1929, 184-85). 26 However, Whitehead did use the notion of cause to enlighten the role of scientific objects in explaining appearances (PNK 182-89.) He, nevertheless, proceeded with caution in using that notion because causality and the objectionable “theories of the bifurcation of nature” were too closely related (CN 31-32). 27 For everything I will say in this paragraph, see CN 144-58. 28 On scientific objects see also PNK 93-98 and 186ff. 29 See CN, especially 86 and 92ff.; cf. PNK 76, 121-23 and Chapter XIII. 30 Kuhn also acknowledges Russell (1993, Chapter IV), but it is clear by now that he does not share his overall point of view. For more details about Kuhn’s criticisms of Russell, see Mayoral (forthcoming). 31 TSKP, 1.4, dated May, 1947 (referred to hereafter as “Objectives”). 32 TSKP, 1.4. My résumé is based on §I.1 of Kuhn’s outline, p. 1. Words, phrases and sentences into quotation marks are, of course, by Kuhn himself. To his general scheme, Kuhn adds many methodological details, especially concerning the role of generalizations and laws in the process of “successive abstraction” aimed at isolating “scientific objects”. 33 Letter from Kuhn to Ralph Lowell, March 19th, 1950 (TSKP, 3.10). 34 This was a series of eight lectures, March 3rd-30th, 1951 (TSKP, 11.33). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions would be the most famous by-product of them. 35 Here Kuhn follows Alexandre Koyré (1940) very closely, and grounds that revolution in the geometrical treatment of physical situations that reaches back to ancient mathematics. 36 In addition, they are good examples of “theories of the bifurcation of nature” (CN, Chapter II). 37 I would like to express my thanks to the Institute Archives and Special Collections, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for permission to quote from Kuhn’s unpublished papers, and to Ángel Faerna, Carlos Solís and Michel Weber for reading and commenting on previous drafts of this paper.

Works Cited and Further Readings TSKP = Thomas S. Kuhn Papers 1922–1996. MC 240. Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Baltas, Aristides, Kostas Gavroglu, Vassiliki Kindi, and Thomas S. Kuhn. 2000. “A Discussion with Thomas S. Kuhn,” in The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview, edited by J. Conant and J. Haugeland (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press), 256-323. Crombie, Alistair, C. (ed.). 1963. Scientific Change (London, Heinemann). Fuller, Steve. 2000. Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2003. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Hahn, Lewis E., and Paul A. Schilpp, eds. 1998. The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, Revised Edition. The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XVIII (Chicago and La Salle, Open Court). Hoyningen-Huene, Paul. 1993. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science. Translation by Alexander T. Levine. Foreword by Thomas S. Kuhn (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Koyré, Alexandre. 1940. Études galiléennes (París, Hermann). Kuhn, Thomas S. 1957. The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press). Kuhn, Thomas S. 1959. “The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research,” in The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press), 225-39. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1961. “The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science,” in The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press), 178-224. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Kuhn, Thomas S. 1963. “The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research,” in Scientific Change, edited by A.C. Crombie (London, Heinemann), 347-69. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1977. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Kuhn, Thomas S. 2000. The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview, edited by James Conant and John Haugeland (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press). Lucas, George R., Jr. 1989. The Rehabilitation of Whitehead: An Analytic and Historical Assessment of Process Philosophy (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Mayoral, Juan V. Forthcoming. “Intensions, belief and science: Kuhn's early philosophical outlook (1940–45)” McHenry, Leemon. 2003. “Quine and Whitehead: Ontology and Methodology,” in Process and Analysis: Whitehead, Hartshorne, and the Analytic Tradition, edited by George W. Shields (Albany, State University of New York Press Press), 157-69. Quine, Willard V. 1998. “Autobiography,” in The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, edited by L.E. Hahn and P.A. Schilpp (Chicago and La Salle, Open Court), 1-46. Russell, Bertrand. 1929. “On the Notion of Cause,” in Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays (New York, W. W. Norton & Co.). Russell, Bertrand. 1993 [1914]. Our Knowledge of the External World (London, Routledge).

XIII. Theology and Religion Whitehead’s Rethinking of the Problem of Evil Joseph A. Bracken, S.J.

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In introducing his book The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition, Joseph Kelly comments: Evil has always presented a unique problem for theists, particularly those of the Western, biblically-centered religions who believe that a good and powerful deity exists and is active in the world. A good god would not want evil to occur and a powerful deity would be able to prevent it, but since evil does happen, obviously the good and powerful God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam at least permits it for some reason of his own.1 Figuring out what God’s reasons might be for allowing the existence of evil is what has been called since Gottfried Leibniz theodicy, the justification of God’s ways in dealing with creatures. Many people today would argue that this is a fruitless exercise. No human being can read the mind of God. A far better use of one’s time is to figure out how to deal with evil once it happens. As Rabbi Harold Kushner contends in his celebrated book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, people do harm to themselves and others if they blame either God or themselves for what goes wrong in their lives and fail to take effective action to remedy the evil done.2 After all, some things happen for no reason. Within the overall order of Nature, there are multiple instances of chaos or randomness which cause pain and suffering to those affected. But chaos in its own way is just as natural, i.e., according to Nature, as order.3

1. Historical Overview of the Problem of Evil The human mind, or at least the Western mind, still seeks a further explanation and, as might be expected, Alfred North Whitehead has his own highly creative answer. But, before I summarize and evaluate his response to the problem of evil, I will offer a brief overview of the multiple ways in which evil has been diagnosed and accepted within the Western tradition. In The Symbolism of Evil, Paul Ricoeur claims that the key concept in understanding moral evil or evil incurred as a result of human responsibility is the notion of the servile will, the will that finds itself enslaved to what is alien to itself and at the same time is powerless to liberate itself from this captivity.4 Historically, this sense of the servile will developed in three stages: first external defilement in which one became infected through consciously or unconsciously violating a

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Emeritus Professor, Department of Theology, Xavier University, Cincinnnati, Ohio/USA 45207. Email address: [email protected].

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community taboo, then sin as an objective violation of a divine commandment, and finally guilt as the subjective awareness of one’s sinfulness. Certainly, these three stages are manifest in the pages of Sacred Scripture. In the Old Testament, for example, God’s striking dead Uzzah as he tried to steady the Ark of the Covenant on its passage to Jerusalem by order of King David (2 Sam. 6: 6-7) is implicit testimony to the fear and anxiety felt by the Israelites in God’s presence. The Hebrew prophets later made clear that social justice was more important to God than ritual purity and thereby introduced the notion of personal sin. But the question of subjective guilt was still unresolved by the time of the writing of the Book of Job. Job ultimately had to admit that he was guilty of questioning God’s justice toward himself and only then was he absolved from his sins and offered a new life of happiness and prosperity. Likewise, in the New Testament Gospel narratives Jesus refers to the reality of the servile will and the need for divine forgiveness of one’s sins in order to attain salvation, enter the Kingdom of God. But with his numerous healings and exorcisms Jesus also exhibits a strong belief in the existence and activity of demonic spirits. This is a theme carried over from Jewish Apocalyptic which was itself heavily influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism with its dualistic conception of a good and evil god in unending combat within human history.5 For Jesus and his contemporaries, of course, the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of the Father was assured. But in this world the awesome power of evil was clearly embodied in the person of Satan and his minions. St. Paul likewise contributed to this same mind-set by contrasting Christ with Adam in Romans 5: 12-21. Adam succumbed to the power of the devil. Jesus resisted the power of Satan even though it eventually cost him his life. By his resurrection Jesus definitively vanquished Satan and opened up the possibility of eternal life for all his followers. As Ricoeur points out in The Symbolism of Evil, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise contrasts sharply with other ancient mythical explanations of the origin of evil in this world.6 Whereas these other myths identify evil with primeval chaos which is only imperfectly subdued by the creative activity of gods and humans throughout history, the story in Genesis depicts a creation already complete and good in itself which is corrupted by the sin of the first human beings. Evil is thus linked with Salvation History more than with the cosmic process as such. As Marjorie Suchocki notes with reference to Augustine, evil is then the result of sin and its punishment.7 At the same time, Augustine recognized the finitude of human beings in dealing with the power of Satan. Given his own struggle to remain chaste after converting to Christianity, he laid heavy stress on the body as the proximate occasion for temptation and sin. But, even more fundamentally, he recognized in the role of Satan in the Garden of Eden that the power of evil comes to the human being from the outside as something already there by way of seduction.8 The human being is ultimately responsible for his or her choice. But a supra-human power is at work in human history to influence that choice. During the Middle Ages and the early modern period of Western history, belief in the preternatural power of the devil and demonic spirits was very widespread.9 The demonic was all too often attributed simply to individuals whom one did not understand or trust (pagans, Muslims, Jews, women and heretics). The witchcraft craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Western Europe and North America was the climax of this fear of the Other in the Western mind-set. By way of reaction, at least among European intellectuals there arose over

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time a tendency to dismiss moral responsibility for evil in the name of finitude.10 First Leibniz argued that natural and moral evil are paradoxically necessary within divine providence so as to achieve the best possible world.11 But the prodigious growth of the natural and social sciences in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries likewise contributed significantly to a gradual naturalizing of evil as something due largely to natural causes with diminished moral responsibility as a result rather than to supernatural powers and/or personal accountability. To consider just three examples, Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century with his theory of natural selection established the link between human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom. This effectively “killed off the classical notion of original sin […] Violence, illness, and death did not enter the world because of a prehistoric human sin but had been around long before humans existed.”12 Then in the early twentieth century Sigmund Freud with his practice of psychoanalysis introduced the notion of repression of illicit desire as part of the workings of the unconscious mind. Thus any discussion of human evil now had to include how people are moved by forces of which they were not normally aware. Finally, in mid-twentieth century, the new science of sociobiology was initiated by Edward O. Wilson with his ground-breaking work Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.13 Here group activity as well as individual human behavior was studied in terms of evolutionary practices so that good and evil were to be judged primarily in terms of their effect on group reproduction and survival rather than as a matter of obedience to divine authority or supernatural revelation. In brief, then, recognition of human finitude in the face of various forms of causal determinism within Nature has over time become far more prominent in the analysis of the causes of evil in the Western world than belief in personal freedom and moral responsibility.

2. Whitehead’s Approach to the Problem of Evil Turning now to Whitehead’s understanding of the problem of evil, I note first of all how he dealt with it in an early philosophical work Science and the Modern World. In the chapter on “God,” he distinguishes between what he calls the underlying substantial activity which is actual only in its various modes or instantiations and a principle of limitation of that same activity which he calls God (SMW 177-79). In this way, Creativity (as he later termed this substantial activity) is not a being or an agent in its own right. Rather it is a dynamic principle of potentiality, an unending activity which empowers actual occasions to become themselves by their own self-constituting “decisions.” God as the principle of limitation for the activity of Creativity is indeed an agent. Yet, unlike God in Thomistic thought, God does not determine what happens in this world; God only acts as an influence on the way in which Creativity is operative within actual occasions. God’s role in the cosmic process is “to divide the Good from the Evil, and to establish Reason ‘within her dominions supreme’” (SMW 179). On the one hand, this was a brilliant move on Whitehead’s part. For God is as a result no longer responsible for the evil that happens in this world. Actual occasions as self-constituting subjects of experience are responsible for evil insofar as they misuse the power of Creativity to bring disorder rather than order into the world. God, on the contrary, is supremely ethical since

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God never abuses the power of creativity for evil ends but instead works to minimize the effects of evil “decisions” on the part of actual occasions. Furthermore, since actual occasions are the ultimate constituents of reality at all levels of existence and activity in the world, whether inanimate or inanimate, Whitehead has thereby an explanation for the existence not only of moral evil among human beings but for natural evil, unexpected disorder within the world of Nature. In every case without exception God is free of responsibility for what goes wrong in this world. But, on the other hand, Whitehead thereby created an enormous problem for Biblical belief in God as Creator of Heaven and Earth. The power of Creativity is independent of God. God, in fact, is a “creature” of Creativity as Whitehead himself conceded in Process and Reality (PR 88). God may be the Ethical Ultimate but not the Metaphysical Ultimate within the cosmic process. Whiteheadians like John Cobb have struggled to remain faithful to classical Christian belief in God as Creator. Cobb argues in an early work, for example, that pace Whitehead “God must be conceived as being the reason that entities occur at all as well as determining the limits within which they can achieve their own forms”14; later he urges that the divine Logos not only became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth but is at the same time the “Christ” in an extended sense, namely, the principle of creative transformation in human history.15 My own solution, to be spelled out in more detail below, is to propose that Creativity as an unending activity is in the first place the nature or inner principle of being and activity for God understood as a community of divine persons and only by the free decision of those same divine persons is it also the principle of existence and activity for all finite actual occasions in this world. In this way, God can be both the Metaphysical and the Ethical Ultimate at the same time since, as Thomas Aquinas claimed in the Summa Theologiae, “nature” and “person” are only rational distinct within God.16 Beforehand, however, I will review how Whitehead further deals with the problem of evil in Process and Reality and in Adventures of Ideas. In Process and Reality, for example, Whitehead nicely balances freedom and finitude as metaphysical explanations of the existence of evil. Freedom (or at the subhuman level, spontaneity) is grounded in the self-constituting “decision” of the finite actual occasion (PR 272-78). Finitude is present both in what conditions that decision—namely, the environment out of which the actual occasion is arising—and in the fact that the actual occasion perishes as soon as its process of becoming is completed. In this way it must leave to successor actual occasions in the same society the perpetuation of the value which it has achieved. “An actual entity arises from decisions for it and by its very existence provides decisions for other actual entities which supersede it” (PR 43).17 Thus, unlike other philosophers like Augustine and Leibniz who evidently give priority to freedom over finitude or vice-versa, Whitehead maintains a creative tension between these alternatives for the rational explanation of evil. In the concluding chapters of Process and Reality, however, Whitehead seems to favor finitude as the root cause of evil: “The ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil. It lies in the fact that the past fades, that time is a ‘perpetual perishing.’ Objectification involves elimination. The present fact has not the past fact with it in any full immediacy” (PR 340).22 What allows for the continual emergence of novelty within the cosmic process, namely, the ongoing succession of self-constituting actual occasions, is paradoxically

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at the same time the cause of evil understood as the “perpetual perishing” of what has already become. Similarly, in Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead notes: The intermingling of Beauty and Evil arises from the conjoint operation of three metaphysical principles: (1) That all actualization is finite; (2) That finitude involves the exclusion of alternative possibility; (3) That mental functioning introduces into realization subjective forms conformal to relevant alternatives excluded from the completeness of physical realization (AI 259). With that third metaphysical principle Whitehead has in mind novel possibilities which the concrescing subject of experience realizes are incapable of realization here and now. As a result they can be a source of pain and distress for the individual, classic examples of what might have been and what might never be available again. Whitehead’s solution to the evil presented by finitude or “perpetual perishing” is, of course, the notion of the consequent nature of God: “The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the world. He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage” (PR 346). Hence, nothing of any value ever perishes; it is preserved forever within the memory of God. But is this enough to satisfy the human heart? As Marjorie Suchocki comments, “there are those whose lives are permanently distorted through societal or personal evil, such that they do not or cannot benefit from the good which is accomplished despite their suffering.”18 To remedy this tragic situation, there must be a way to allow for subjective immortality within Whitehead’s cosmological scheme.

3. Suchocki’s Rethinking of Whitehead’s Approach Suchocki’s ingenious solution to this problem was to rethink the way in which actual occasions are constituted and Whiteheadian creativity is passed on from one actual occasion to another. Whereas Whitehead himself had stipulated that an actual occasion is first engaged in its own process of self-constitution and then becomes a “superject,” an objective datum for the prehension of subsequent actual occasions (PR 27-28), Suchocki proposed that at the climax of the process of concrescence there should be a moment of “enjoyment” when the subject achieves “satisfaction” as a fully determined subject of experience.19 Precisely at that fleeting moment God can prehend the finite actual occasion in its completed subjectivity and incorporate it as such into the divine consequent nature.20 Thus, whereas Whitehead had stipulated that “no actual entity can be conscious of its own satisfaction” without thereby altering the character of the satisfaction (PR 85), Suchocki insisted that the actual entity must subjectively experience that satisfaction in order to become a superject, that is, to pass on its moment of creativity to successor actual entities. “Enjoyment generates transition, givingness” for the becoming of those future actual occasions.21 Granted the persuasiveness of Suchocki’s argument here, how does it contribute to a more satisfying solution to the problem of evil, especially for individuals who have suffered unjustly in this life and have died without feeling in any way vindicated? For that matter, how does it guarantee that those who are the perpetrators of injustice in their lifetime will be brought to

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acknowledge that fact and repent of their misdeeds before God and their fellow human beings? Suchocki’s response is to stipulate that when an actual occasion is subjectively incorporated into the divine consequent nature, it sees itself in an entirely new light because it is now “linked into the concrescence of God even while remaining itself.”22 It experiences God’s evaluation of itself within the context of the divine consequent nature. In effect, it has an experience of divine judgment: The judgment is multiple: it is a judgment of the occasion as it could have been relative to what it in fact became; it is a judgment of the occasion as a single satisfaction in relation to the communities in which it participated, such as the totality of a living person; it is a judgment of the occasion and, if applicable, its personhood, in relation to the increasingly wider communities of the whole universe; and it is throughout, of course, a judgment of the occasion in relation to God.23 This judgment will be largely negative or positive, depending upon the “decision” of the actual entity in question. But, in any case, if the actual occasion accepts the truth about itself in terms of this comprehensive judgment, it will experience “transformation, redemption and peace.”24 It will participate fully in the divine consequent nature from that moment onwards. Since the ultimate solution to the problem of evil within Judaism, Christianity and Islam has always been seen in terms of the Last Judgment when God will reward the just and punish the wicked in accord with the pattern of their lives on earth, it would seem that Suchocki has here provided a Whiteheadian version of the Last Judgment but without the prospect of eternal damnation or hell for the wicked. Every actual occasion will be “saved” once it accepts the role which it played within the societies to which it belongs and ultimately within the cosmic process as a whole. There will indeed be something like purgatory as the occasion is obliged to come to terms with the truth about itself in the context of the divine consequent nature. But within this scheme divine judgment is never condemnation but instead “transformation which moves from the experiential knowledge of one’s effects to the inexorably required and purgative participation in God’s own life.”25 Appealing as the prospect of universal salvation might be, there are still other inconsistencies with the Jewish, Christian and Islamic understanding of the Last Judgment which remain unreconciled. By her own admission, the stress in Suchocki’s scheme is on the redemption of the individual actual occasion, not on the society to which it belongs.26 Accordingly, with respect to human beings she has to stipulate what she calls a “transcendence of the personality into God”: “first a transcendence of seriality into the fullness of the self; second, a transcendence of selfhood through the mutuality of feeling with all other selves and occasions, and third and most deeply, a transcendence of selves into the Selfhood of God.”27 This move, however, carries with it the risk of blurring the distinction between God and human beings and among human beings in their relations with one another. Suchocki has clearly introduced intersubjectivity into process-relational metaphysics with her insistence that actual occasions are subjectively immortal within the divine consequent nature, but it seems also clear that this is a new idea for her which needs further development.28 Still another inconsistency with the classical understanding of the Last Judgment is that history never really comes to an end and so evil is never definitively vanquished. The redemption of an individual actual occasion in God

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here and now becomes just one more factor in the ongoing redemption of the temporal world.29 This is, of course, consistent with Whitehead’s own description of “the four creative phases in which the universe accomplishes its actuality” at the end of Process and Reality (350-51). But it does postpone indefinitely a final solution to the problem of evil since the twin sources for the existence of evil, freedom and finitude, always remain in play within this world.

4. A Neo-Whiteheadian Solution to the Problem of Evil Are we then to conclude that Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme even with Marjorie Suchocki’s emendations is still unable to come to terms with the problem of evil, at least in a way which would be satisfactory to classical Jewish, Christian and Muslim belief in Eschatology, the “four last things”? My own suggestion would be that there is much in Whitehead’s world view which is very helpful in dealing with the problem of evil. As noted above, with his understanding of creativity Whitehead effectively solved the classical problem of theodicy, namely, how to reconcile the existence of evil in this world with belief in a just and loving Creator God. Likewise, his description of the self-constitution of actual occasions makes clear how finitude is necessarily at work in the free decisions of human beings and in the spontaneous “decisions” of non-human creatures. Thereby he nicely reconciles with one another freedom and finitude as the theoretical sources for the existence of evil. Yet, as noted above, there are still ways in which Whitehead’s (and Suchocki’s) solution to the problem of evil creates a new set of problems for traditionally oriented Jews, Christians and Muslims. Admittedly, there will probably never be a fully satisfactory rational explanation for the existence of evil in this world. The “problem” of evil is in this sense really more a mystery to the human mind than something capable of rational analysis. Yet in the remaining pages of this article, I will offer my own emendation of Whitehead’s metaphysics which goes beyond what Suchocki envisioned and which, as I see it, offers a better chance of staying within the parameters marked out by classical Jewish, Christian and Muslim belief both in God as Creator and in the possibility of eternal life for all God’s creatures after their time in this world has come to an end. Since I will be using material laid out in much greater detail elsewhere, I will simply state my position and not present supporting arguments except as needed to make my position clear. Like Suchocki, I will be rethinking Whitehead’s notion of creativity; but, unlike Suchocki, I will focus on the role of creativity in the formation of societies rather than in the self-constitution of individual actual occasions. As noted earlier in this article, I believe that the problem generated by distinguishing between Whiteheadian creativity as the Metaphysical Ultimate and God as the Ethical Ultimate can be resolved if one thinks of creativity as the nature or inner principle of existence and activity for God conceived as a community of three divine persons. For, since there is only a rational distinction between “nature” and “person” within God, the Metaphysical Ultimate and the Ethical Ultimate refer in the end to one and the same reality. But, over and above this merging of what Whitehead distinguished as separate realities, one may also argue that creativity thereby takes on a new role. It is active not only in the self-constitution of individual actual entities but

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in the formation of the societies into which they combine. Whitehead’s dictum that creativity is the principle whereby “the many become one, and are increased by one” (PR 21) is then applicable to the formation of a new kind of reality, the reality of a society as distinct from the reality of its constituent actual occasions. For, otherwise, a Whiteheadian society is reductively nothing more than an aggregate of actual occasions with analogously the same pattern of selfconstitution; the society itself has no objective status or intrinsic ontological identity of its own.30 Yet what is this further ontological identity of a society? I propose that it is the reality of an enduring environment or structured field of activity for successive sets of constituent actual occasions. In one moment the current set of actual occasions by their dynamic interrelation give shape or pattern to their common field of activity. But in the next moment that same shape or pattern is a key formative element in the self-constitution of the next set of actual occasions.31 Given this field-oriented interpretation of Whiteheadian societies, one can rethink the GodWorld relationship in a way which allows for classical belief in God as freely choosing to create in order to share eternal life with creatures both now and, above all, in eternity. For, if the three divine persons are one God in virtue of a shared field of activity proper to themselves in their dynamic interrelation from moment to moment, then they are free to create or not to create the world of creation. But, if they choose to create and thereby share with creatures their own communitarian life, then creation must exist within this divine field of activity. The divine field of activity, after all, is infinite or strictly unlimited; hence, creation can only exist within the divine field of activity as a hierarchically ordered set of subfields of activity. These subfields of activity together with their constituent actual occasions have, to be sure, ontological integrity both with respect to one another and with respect to the divine persons. Yet the divine persons and all created actual occasions still share one and the same all-comprehensive field of activity from moment to moment, what may suitably be called the Kingdom of God in Biblical language. Furthermore, as societies of actual occasions come to an end in the temporal order either through death in the case of individual organisms or dissolution in the case of inanimate things or social realities like human communities, they remain preserved in their basic structure and pattern within the divine field of activity. In this sense, they achieve objective immortality as societies much as Whitehead prescribed for individual actual occasions within the consequent nature of God. But these societies also enjoy subjective immortality in proportion to the degree of self-awareness of their constituent actual occasions in the temporal order. Here I seem to be saying the same thing as Suchocki with one major exception. Whereas Suchocki stipulates that every individual actual occasion without exception enjoys subjective immortality within the divine consequent nature, I propose that only the final actual occasion or set of actual occasions within a given society is granted subjective immortality by the three divine persons at the moment of death or dissolution of component parts. As Whitehead himself comments in Adventures of Ideas, individual actual occasions come and go; societies endure (AI 204). Hence, all that is needed for the subjective immortality of a Whiteheadian society within eternal life, the divine field of activity, is that there be a final actual occasion or set of actual occasions to take full possession of the field of activity proper to itself and its predecessors in the same society. Only the final actual occasion or set of actual occasions will thus achieve “trans-

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formation, redemption and peace”32 both for itself and for the society of which it is the latest member. This is not to imply that animals, plants, and even the component parts of inanimate things will experience transformation, redemption and peace in the same way as human beings, but only that there will be a “new heaven and a new earth” as promised in the Book of Revelation (21: 1-4). Granted the plausibility of this reconception of Whitehead’s and Suchocki’s vision for the redemption of the temporal order and therefore in some sense for the “end” or termination of evil, I believe that it is superior to theirs for several reasons. In the first place, it provides for a distinction between life in this world and eternal life. Only in eternal life is evil definitively overcome; in this world all victories over evil are partial and incomplete. Because Suchocki follows Whitehead in stipulating the total interdependence of God and the world, she cannot claim that evil is ever fully overcome. Redeemed actual occasions within God share in the divine subjectivity which is itself preoccupied with the trials and vicissitudes of life in this world, the constant battle with the forces of evil. Within my own scheme, on the contrary, the three divine persons and all their redeemed creatures are involved with this world but not totally. There is a dimension of eternal life which is distinct from this world and can be enjoyed for its own sake, both by the divine persons and by all their creatures. There is an end to evil within the depths of the divine life. Likewise, my approach to the problem of evil accounts for the workings of evil even in this world better than do the theories of Whitehead and Suchocki. That is, because both Whitehead and Suchocki focus on the role of individual actual occasions within the cosmic process and pay correspondingly less attention to the enduring role of societies within that same process, they underestimate one of the key insights from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures into the reality of evil, namely, that evil is a supra-human power at work in this world which transcends the decisions of individuals here and now even as it is continually sustained and augmented by them. As noted earlier, the image of the devil and his minions figured prominently in the late Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament. In the Gospel narratives, Jesus is represented as engaged in mortal combat with the forces of darkness through his healing miracles and exorcisms. He predicts the eventual triumph of the Kingdom of God but warns his followers that they must continually be on guard against the tactics of the devil who effectively symbolizes a supra-human malicious power at work in the world. Many Scripture scholars, to be sure, dismiss the “myth” of Satan and his minions as angels who fell from heaven as a result of a primordial sin before the creation of Adam and Eve.33 But like so many other myths, it contains a deep religious truth that should not be overlooked. Evil and Good originate in the decisions of individuals but are perpetrated within human history and indeed within the entire cosmic process as rival powers for the allegiance of creatures. Elsewhere I have carefully analyzed how one can integrate this primordial religious truth into a Neo-Whiteheadian metaphysical scheme such as I have sketched above.34 Here it suffices to note that if Whiteheadian societies are interpreted as structured fields of activity for their constituent actual occasions rather than simply as aggregates of actual occasions with a “common element of form,” then the collective power of both good and evil can be understood at the societal level in structural terms. A Whiteheadian society, in other words, embodies at any

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given moment both the collective power of good and the collective power of evil within its inherited structure. With the decision of its concurrent actual occasion or set of actual occasions, it will either add to or subtract from the collective power of both good and evil in this world but inevitably not in equal measure. The struggle between good and evil, therefore, is grounded in the decisions of individual actual occasions but the enduring results of the struggle are inscribed in the ongoing structure of the societies to which they belong. In Process and Reality Whitehead represented the consequent nature of God as the way in which God employs the unrestricted vision of possibilities within the divine primordial nature so as to convert contradictories, apparently irreconcilable events, into needed contrasts for the overall richness of the cosmic process (PR 346). Harmony rather than conflict characterizes the enduring reality of the consequent nature of God according to Whitehead. On the contrary, I would once again appeal to a distinction between eternal life and life in this world which is admittedly not Whiteheadian but which seems to be demanded by traditional Jewish, Christian and Muslim belief in salvation, God’s plan for the redemption of this world. The consequent nature of God, insofar as it simply reflects what is happening in this world, is not characterized by harmony but by deep and enduring conflict. It reflects the ongoing struggle between the collective powers of good and evil in this world. Only in eternal life which is related to but distinct from life in this world will the harmony envisioned by Whitehead for the divine consequent nature become a reality. On this point also, in my judgment, the metaphysical scheme which I have sketched in these pages works better than the proposals of Whitehead and Suchocki to provide a workable solution to the problem of evil (insofar as the latter is indeed capable of a consistent rational explanation rather than being written off as a humanly unfathomable mystery).

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Notes 1

Joseph F. Kelly, The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition: From the Book of Job to Modern Genetics (Collegeville MN, Liturgical Press, 2002), 2. 2 Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York, Anchor Books, 2004), 97-124. 3 Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York, Anchor Books, 2004), 53-63. 4 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, translated by Emerson Buchanan (Boston, Beacon Press, 1969), 151-57. 5 Kelly, The Problem of Evil, 21. 6 Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, 172-73. 7 Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context (Albany, State University of New York Press Press, 1988), 5. See also Augustine, On True Religion, X, ii, 23; The City of God, XXII, 14. 8 Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, 155. 9 Kelly, The Problem of Evil, 62-118. 10 Kelly, The Problem of Evil, 119-32. 11 Suchocki, The End of Evil, 21. 12 Kelly, The Problem of Evil, 176. 13 Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1975); also by the same author On Human Nature (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1978). 14 John B. Cobb, Jr., A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead (Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1965), 211-12. Cf., however, Michel Weber, La dialectique de l’intuition chez Alfred North Whitehead (Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2004), 211-14. Weber agrees with Whitehead that creativity is simply a metaphysical “given” which should not be grounded in God or any other entity in virtue of the so-called ontological principle (see also 273). 15 John B. Cobb, Jr., Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia, Westminster, 1975), 31-87. This means, of course, that the classical Christian understanding of God as three persons and yet one God is significantly changed; see on this latter point Cobb’s Postscript, 259-64, where he attributes functions to the divine persons rather than personal names. 16 S. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologiae (Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1951), I, Q. 39, art. 1 resp. 17 Cf. PR 110: “The character of an actual entity is finally governed by its datum; whatever be the feeling of freedom in the concrescence, there can be no transgression of the limitations of capacity inherent in the datum.” 18

Suchocki, Suchocki, 20 Suchocki, 21 Suchocki, 22 Suchocki, 23 Suchocki, 24 Suchocki, 25 Suchocki, 26 Suchocki, 27 Suchocki, 19

End End End End End End End End End End

of of of of of of of of of of

Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil,

81. 88. 91. 89. 102. 106. 109. 113. 107-108. 108.

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28

J.A.Bracken, s.j.

See, e.g., Suchocki’s response to her critics in World Without End: Christian Eschatology from a Process Perspective, edited by Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. (Grand Rapids MI, Eerdmans, 2005), 202-208. 29 Suchocki, End of Evil, 115-34. 30 Charles Hartshorne saw this problem and tried to remedy it many years ago in “The Compound Individual,” Philosophical Essays for Alfred North Whitehead (New York, Russell & Russell, 1936),193-220. Therein he distinguished between composite individuals (democratically organized societies of non-living actual occasions) which are virtual aggregates and compound individuals (societies of actual occasions with a “regnant” actual occasion giving unity and coherence to its contemporaries) which have an objective unity. For many years now I have contested that argument as insufficient to account for the objective reality both of inanimate things and of communities and environments as likewise composed of societies of actual occasions but not organized monarchically in terms of a regnant subsociety as in organic compounds. See, e.g., Society and Spirit: A Trinitarian Cosmology (Toronto, Associated University Presses, 1991), 39-56; The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship (Grand Rapids MI, Eerdmans, 2001), 99-100, 135-37. At the same time, I am aware that my own position remains a somewhat unorthodox interpretation of Whitehead’s notion of society. For a recent more conventional presentation, see Michel Weber, La dialectique, 152-68. 31 PR 90-91: “The causal laws which dominate a social environment are the product of the defining characteristic of that society. But the society is only efficient through its individual members. Thus in a society, the members can only exist by reason of the laws which dominate the society, and the laws only come into being by reason of the analogous characters of the members of the society.” See also Bracken, Society and Spirit, 39-56; The One in the Many, 131-55. 32 Suchocki, End of Evil, 109. 33 For a brief summary of the origin of this myth in Christian circles, see Kelly, The Problem of Evil, 38-39, 44-45. 34 Cf. here Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Christianity and Process Thought: Spirituality for a Changing World (West Conshohocken PA, Templeton Foundation Press, 2006), Chapters 3-5.

Whitehead’s Natural Theology: The Implications of Order and Novelty Thomas E. Hosinski, C.S.C.

i

Alfred North Whitehead’s natural theology arises as the rational implication of his metaphysical questions concerning the ultimate ground of order and novelty. It blossoms into much more than this, in that Whitehead goes on to affirm speculatively a God who not only makes the universe possible but who also constantly saves it. Whitehead was led to this affirmation not by some prior theological agenda or personal religious commitment, but by his commitment to thinking empirically in working out his metaphysics and because of his respect—similar to that of William James—for the empirical fact of religious experience. His approach was in some ways rather traditional, despite the radical novelty of his metaphysical categories. But in other ways his cosmology produced a remarkably novel understanding of God’s nature and the dynamic interaction between God and the world. Whitehead himself did not pursue the theological implications of his natural theology very far; but he left a body of thought that has evoked and nurtured rich and diverse traditions of philosophical and theological reflection. In this essay I will summarize the problem of natural theology, how Whitehead developed his natural theology, and some of its implications for the understanding of God.1

1. The Problem of Natural Theology From the time of Plato and Aristotle until the eighteenth century, philosophers and theologians in the West believed that by reason one could arrive at knowledge of a divine ground of the universe. The reasoning began with some feature of the universe as analyzed philosophically, asked what was ultimately necessary in order to make this feature intelligible, and concluded to the existence of the infinite divine, understood in different ways, as the necessary ground of the finite. For many centuries such arguments were regarded as proofs that any reasonable person would have to affirm. In the history of Christian theology, such proofs (first in neo-Platonic and later also in Aristotelian forms) were universally accepted in the West until just prior to the Protestant Reformation when some theologians began to argue that our knowledge of God rests entirely on revelation. Until the twentieth century most Protestant and Reformed Christian theologians abandoned natural theology, while the Roman Catholic tradition continued to hold that one could know of God’s existence by reason alone. In the eighteenth century criticism of such arguments by David Hume and Immanuel Kant showed that they were not proofs in a strict sense and that each type entailed a leap to arrive at the Christian God. Kant, in his moral

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Dept. of Theology, University of Portland, Portland, OR 97203; www.up.edu; [email protected].

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argument for belief in the existence of God, transformed natural theology into a statement of what one may reasonably assume to be true in order to account for our sense of moral obligation. The existence of God became a postulate of reason, a reasonable hypothesis, not a rationally proven conclusion. The wider culture, however, ignored what Hume and Kant had shown. Supported by the new sciences at first, traditional forms of the argument for first cause and the argument from design in nature were supported by scientists such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. The argument from design in nature survived into the mid-nineteenth century in English-speaking countries. It was the gradual elimination of God as an acceptable cause in the empirical and natural sciences and the success of those sciences in explaining the universe that eventually led people to question the very possibility of natural theology. In biology, the last stronghold of classical natural theology, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution undercut both the assumptions and conclusion of the argument from design in nature. But the problem of the ultimate ground of order continued to linger in the background, even as many philosophers came to believe that metaphysics was no longer possible.

2. Whitehead’s Natural Theology Whitehead’s natural theology, developed in an era when metaphysics was suspect, confronts this problem of order quite directly. Even though his metaphysics incorporates what he took to be the fundamental assumptions of quantum theory and relativity theory, he recognized that there was still a metaphysical question concerning the ultimate actual ground of order. He introduced God into his cosmological scheme because of his reflections on the nature of possibility and the rational need for an actual source of order. His arguments resemble the Kantian type of natural theology in the sense that Whitehead does not claim to prove the existence of God; instead, he postulates God as what we must rationally assume in order to understand the basis of possibility, value, novelty, and order. But his arguments are quite unKantian in their content. From another perspective, Whitehead has followed the traditional approach of natural theology: given his philosophical analysis of the universe, he asks what is necessary to make this universe, so understood, possible. This rational desire and hope for ultimate intelligibility is something Whitehead shares with the ancient Greeks and the medieval philosophers, however novel his analysis and his categories and however humble he is regarding the result.

2.1. The Problem of Possibility and Actuality It is important to note that Whitehead is led to his affirmation of God because of his commitment to formulating an empirical metaphysics. This commitment is reflected in his “ontological principle,” which means that only actual entities have the power of agency in Whitehead’s philosophy.2 In metaphysical explanations, any “reason” must be referred somehow to an actual entity as its “vehicle.” As Whitehead put it, “there is nothing which floats into the world from nowhere.” (PR 244)

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We live in an ordered universe characterized by the continual emergence of novelty. In his ontology Whitehead analyzes this experience in terms of actual entities receiving the influences of other actual entities in their first phase of becoming, which establishes the ordered situation of the present moment. Then, in their second phase of becoming, they encounter the potentials or possibilities open to the present moment, one of which they actualize in their third (and final) phase of becoming. Novelty occurs because actual entities are capable of actualizing new possibilities in the context of order. Given this analysis and the peculiar nature of possibility, and in light of the ontological principle, several questions concerning possibility and order arise: (1) Possibilities are real, in the sense that they are objects of our experience and we deal with them all the time; but in themselves, as mere abstract possibilities, they are by definition not actual. Since they are not actual entities, they cannot serve as their own reasons. Since all the temporal actual entities constituting the universe require this general potentiality in order to occur, none of them, not even all of them together, can serve as its actual source. One can ask what the ultimate actual source of this general potentiality of the universe is.3 What is the ultimate actual ground of novelty? (2) Moreover, since abstract possibilities are by definition not actual, they cannot have the power of agency. How, then, can they interact with actual entities in the process of becoming? (3) Totally abstract possibility is infinite. Because of the limitations of the situation in which it occurs, only a relatively small number of possibilities will be relevant to an actual entity. It has only a minute fraction of a second to complete its process of becoming and cannot search through infinite possibility to identify the set relevant for it. By what agency, then, are relevant possibilities made present to each actual entity in its process of becoming?4 (4) In order for there to be a universe, possibilities must be organized or ordered. If all possibilities are equally possible at each moment, then we would have absolute chaos (in the philosophical sense)—the complete absence of order. But organization imposes a limitation within abstract possibility and such a limitation can only be understood as due to the agency of some actual entity. Yet all temporal actual entities require this organization of possibility in order to occur. What, then, is the ultimate actual ground of the order necessary for there to be any universe at all?5 (5) Every temporal actual entity reacts to the value of the possibilities open to it in its becoming. But value can be connected with possibility only if there is some restriction within abstract possibility that establishes contrasts, gradations, and oppositions. And such a restriction or limitation can only be understood as due to the agency of some actual entity. Yet since possibilities are given to temporal actual entities as already inherently attractive or repulsive, it is clear that no temporal actual entity can be the reason for this inherent connection of possibility and value. What, then, is the ultimate actual ground of value?6 (6) A sixth problem arises from Whitehead’s ontology because of the ontological principle, one that concerns the “subjective aim” of each actual entity, its drive to make something of itself. Once the subjective aim is given, it is its own reason; that is, we can appeal to this aim as the actual reason for the becoming of the actual entity. The problem is to understand the actual ground or source of this subjective aim: from what actual entity does the “initial subjective aim” arise?7 One is tempted to say that the aim must arise from past actual entities, most especially

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the one immediately preceding it in its social history: for example, this moment of my experience originates by taking its aim from the immediately past moment of my experience. But Whitehead argues for the true atomicity of each actual entity as a quantum of experience, so that the immediacy of its aim is unique to each process of becoming and “perishes” when the aim has been satisfied (by the actualization of a possible form). The “living immediacy” of the aim at self-constitution does not carry over from one moment to the next; the past actual entity is an object for the present moment, not a “living subject” in the process of becoming. Thus no past actual entity can be the actual source of the “living immediacy” that characterizes the process of becoming in the present.8 These six metaphysical problems are all interrelated and together they pose a major problem for Whitehead’s cosmology: if they cannot be answered or resolved, the philosophy is ultimately incoherent. To find the solution, Whitehead followed the procedure known as “heuristic method” in mathematics: the nature of the problems gives the clues to the characteristics of the solution. The ontological principle requires that the solution be an actual entity. But no temporal actual entity can be the solution because all temporal actual entities require exactly what these six questions point to for the very possibility of their occurrence. Since these six problems are all related, one actual entity can serve as the solution to them all, but it must be a non-temporal actual entity. This non-temporal actual entity must be the reservoir of all possibilities; by its agency it must mediate between possibilities and the temporal actual entities of the universe; it must be the agency by which the relevant possibilities are made present to each process of becoming; it must be the reason for the fundamental organization or ordering of possibilities; its organization of possibilities must also constitute the ultimate standard of value; and it must be the actual source of all initial subjective aims. Whitehead calls the required non-temporal actual entity “God” and initially introduces the concept of God into his cosmology because, in his judgment, it is necessary to resolve the problems I have just summarized. In pursuing the implications of conceiving of God as an actual entity, Whitehead’s philosophy of God developed beyond those characteristics necessary to resolve these problems and discovered other aspects of God’s relation to the universe. Before briefly summarizing his philosophy of God, I want to note that Whitehead’s understanding of God is analogical; that is, he works out an understanding of God by analogy with the structure of actual entities. We must not forget that the ontological understanding of actual entities is itself the product of speculative philosophy and that its application to understanding God is also speculative. Whitehead does not present this philosophy of God with any claims for certainty. Rather he presents it with humility and regards it as a set of suggestions for how our understanding of God and God’s relation to the universe might be transformed in light of his metaphysical analysis of reality.9

2.2. The Primordial Nature of God One major aspect of God’s relation to the universe in Whitehead’s philosophy concerns the resolution of the six problems I discussed above. Whitehead refers to this aspect as the “Primordial Nature” of God and defines it as “the unconditioned conceptual valuation of the entire multiplicity of eternal objects” (PR 31). Translated from Whitehead’s technical

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vocabulary, this conceives of the Primordial Nature of God as God’s unconditioned grasping and valuation of all possibilities. This aspect of God is analogous to the second phase of the process of becoming of all temporal actual entities, in which they encounter and react to the possibilities open to them. The Primordial Nature of God differs, however, in that God grasps all possibilities and is absolutely free in how God valuates them, whereas any temporal actual entity grasps only a limited set of possibilities and its valuation of them is conditioned or influenced in several ways. Because God grasps all possibilities, God is the primordial actual source of the general potentiality of the universe and is thus the ultimate actual ground of possibility and novelty. It is through the agency of God that possibilities can interact with the temporal actual entities of the universe and that the relevant possibilities are made present to each actual entity in its process of becoming. Because of the unity of God as an actual entity, God’s grasping and valuation of the possibilities organizes them, relates them to each other (thus forming the basis for all possible worlds), and invests them with value (relative to God’s subjective aim). This implies that the general order of the universe is an aesthetic order, an order of potential beauty and goodness derived from God’s valuation of all possibilities. God’s “vision” of possibility is thus the ultimate standard of value and is the reason why possibilities are experienced as having value inherent in them. In short, the Primordial Nature of God is the ultimate actual ground of both order and value,10 as well as of possibility and novelty. The Primordial Nature of God is also the actual ground of all initial subjective aims. We saw above that the “living immediacy” of the process of becoming cannot come from past actual entities, which have become “objects” and in which the “living immediacy” of becoming has “perished.” To put it metaphorically, the living cannot be born from the dead; life comes only from life.11 Thus the “living immediacy” of each process of becoming (each actual entity) can come only from the “living immediacy” of God who, as Whitehead says, is “in unison of becoming with every other creative act” (PR 345) and who endows each new actual entity with its initial aim at its own self-constitution. But this is not some sort of divine determinism. This initial subjective aim, derived from God, includes in it the freedom of self-determination or self-causation. It constitutes the becoming actual entity as an autonomous subject that will determine itself in its process of becoming. The organization and valuation of all possibilities in God’s Primordial Nature means that for every possible standpoint in the actual world God envisions all relevant possibilities and organizes them in a gradation of value. Thus for any possible actual entity, all relevant possibilities are “graded” in an order of “preference” based on God’s valuation of them. Although every actual entity derives both its aim and its relevant possibilities from God, it is free to select any of these possibilities. What it becomes is, within the limits of its freedom, self-caused and selfdetermined. The Primordial Nature of God, then, is the ultimate actual ground or source of both possibility and actuality. God is the ground of the universe in ordering possibility so as to make a universe really possible; without this organization of possibilities, establishing the fundamental metaphysical conditions, there could be no course of actual events. God also creates each temporal actual entity, not by determining what it will be, but by providing all that it needs to

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create itself: its living immediacy, its initial aim, its ability to be its own standard of value, its possibilities, and its freedom and autonomy to select what possibility it shall actualize in and for itself. In this sense each temporal actual entity lives by sharing or participating in the life of God. Whitehead says in one of his most memorable lines, “The world lives by its incarnation of God in itself” (RM 156). It is through the presentation of all relevant possibilities, including those never before actualized, to each moment of becoming that God “lures” the creative advance of the universe. Temporal actual entities are not fated to the repetition of the same possibilities but can actualize new forms, develop new types of order, and can make of themselves and their societies something new in the universe. God creates not just by making every temporal actual entity really possible, but also by luring the actualities of the universe toward novel possibilities, new accomplishments transcending the “stubborn facts” of the past. Order and novelty, Whitehead says, “are but the instruments of [God’s] subjective aim,” luring the universe into a continual creative advance (PR 88). This interaction between God as ground of actuality and possibility and the freedom of the temporal actual entities of the universe results in a universe characterized by order but also by flexibility and creativity, so that it is constantly changing and developing in new ways while relying on the underlying basis of order and stability. God and temporal actual entities in their interaction are co-creators of the actual universe.

2.3. The Consequent Nature of God But Whitehead’s natural theology does not end with this analysis of God as the ground of order and possibility. If God is to be conceived as an actual entity, then the Primordial Nature of God cannot be the entirety of God’s relation to the universe.12 In Whitehead’s analysis all actual entities not only grasp and valuate possibilities, they also must receive into themselves the influences of completed actual entities. The Primordial Nature of God is God’s grasping and valuation of all possibilities. But if we are to understand God by analogy with temporal actual entities, then God must also receive into God’s experience the temporal actual entities of the universe as they complete themselves. Moreover, there must also be a third, integrative phase in God’s becoming, just as in temporal actual entities, in which the first two phases (the encounter with possibilities and the experience of actualities) are integrated and synthesized. This, too, is part of Whitehead’s natural theology, because it arises from his rational reflection on the implications of conceiving of God as an actual entity.13 Whitehead calls the reception of temporal actual entities into God’s experience and the integration of them with God’s primordial vision of value the “Consequent Nature” of God.14 It is called “consequent” because this aspect of God’s interaction with the universe follows upon the interaction of the Primordial Nature of God and the temporal actual entities of the universe. Every actual entity occurs, so to speak, between these two aspects of God’s interaction with the universe: the Primordial Nature of God makes each temporal actual entity possible; the temporal actual entities create themselves on that divinely-given ground (and also in relation to the influence of past actual entities); and then the completed actual entities are taken into God’s everlasting experience (the Consequent Nature). As is evident from the analogy with actual

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entities, this implies that God is to be understood as a process of becoming, at each moment dynamically interacting with the universe of the immediate past and the universe about to be, receiving completed actual entities into God’s experience and making possible the new actual entities beginning their processes of becoming. God’s reception of the completed actual entities is perfect: God not only receives all newlycompleted actual entities, but receives them completely in their “stubbornness”—that is, they are received exactly as they are. But as God integrates these temporal actual entities with God’s own “vision” of possibility and value in the third phase of God’s becoming, they are unified, transformed and harmonized in the unity and harmony of God’s own experience. This is analogous to the way in which each temporal actual entity unifies and transforms what it inherits from the universe as it integrates its own experience. The difference is that God’s reception and transformation of all past actual entities is perfect, not characterized by the limitations of perspective and elimination that mark the process of becoming in the actual world. Thus Whitehead says that the Consequent Nature of God “is the realization of the actual world in the unity of [God’s] nature, and through the transformation of [God’s] wisdom” (PR 345). Whitehead thus distinguishes two quite different aspects of God’s interaction with the universe. The Primordial Nature of God makes the universe and each actual entity within it possible. The Consequent Nature of God receives into God’s own experience what the universe and each actual entity within it has done with the possibilities God presented and transforms, unifies, and harmonizes these actual entities in the unity of God’s own experience. Recognizing these distinct aspects of God’s interaction with the universe has direct implications for understanding God’s attributes.15

2.4. The Divine Attributes In the foundational aspect of God’s relation to the universe (the Primordial Nature) God is completely unaffected by the actual course of events, because God presupposes only creativity, while the actual course of events presupposes the Primordial Nature of God.16 Thus the Primordial Nature of God is infinite, complete, unconditioned, absolutely free, eternal, unchanging, and impassible. Since the Primordial Nature of God grasps the entire infinity of possibilities, it is infinite and complete. Because the very possibility of any universe depends on God’s organization and valuation of possibilities, the universe can in no way condition or limit this aspect of God; thus in this respect God is unconditioned and absolutely free. Again, since the very possibility of any universe depends on this fundamental organization and valuation of possibilities, the Primordial Nature of God must be eternal, transcending all temporal relation and limitation. Likewise it must be unchanging, since change is a measure of the difference between actual entities over time and thus is possible only in relation to an actual course of events. Since the Primordial Nature of God is required for there to be any actual course of events, God’s eternal “vision” of possibility cannot change. One can even say that the Primordial Nature of God is impassible (incapable of suffering or being affected by anything other than God): Whitehead writes that because the Primordial Nature of God presupposes no actual world, “it is deflected neither by love, nor by hatred, for what in fact comes to pass” (PR

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344). It is important to note that all these attributes of the Primordial Nature of God are identical with the traditional attributes of God in Christian theology. Whitehead’s metaphysics of God differs from traditional Christian metaphysics, however, in the recognition that there is another, quite different aspect of God’s interaction with the universe: God also receives into God’s experience what all the actual entities of the universe have done with the possibilities and aims God presented to them. In this aspect God is affected by the actual course of events. Thus the Consequent Nature of God is finite, incomplete, conditioned, partially determined, everlasting, developing, and passible (capable of suffering and being affected). It is most unusual to attribute these characteristics to God, especially when their opposites have already been affirmed as divine attributes. But the implications of Whitehead’s metaphysics require that these “opposite” attributes also be affirmed of God, for the following reasons. Because the Consequent Nature God must receive what the temporal actual entities of the universe have actually made of themselves, this aspect of God is dependent on these actual entities and is therefore conditioned and determined (initially) by them. The Consequent Nature of God is incomplete and finite because at any moment God can receive only those actual entities that have thus far completed their becoming. As long as there is a universe and a future, there will always be more actual entities to receive.17 The Consequent Nature of God is everlasting, including all temporal relations. Whitehead conceives of God’s process of becoming as spanning all of time, including all temporal actual entities in the “living immediacy” of God’s own becoming. Time is real for God, even though God is not subject to time in God’s own becoming. The Consequent Nature of God is constantly developing. Technically this is not change, since Whitehead holds that no actual entity changes. Change is a measure of the difference between actual entities. Since God is a single actual entity, the development in God’s Consequent Nature does not constitute change within God. But God experiences change in the differences between all the temporal actual entities that constitute the data of God’s Consequent Nature. God is continually developing in an everlastingly present immediacy.18 Thus Whitehead’s metaphysics implies a process concept of immutability, quite different from the traditional concept. Finally, the Consequent Nature of God is passible, capable of being affected, capable of feeling, and capable of suffering. God suffers in two different ways. First, because God receives all temporal actual entities with perfect sympathy, God experiences directly the sufferings of all temporal creatures. God’s perfection here implies a sympathy infinitely transcending all sympathy with which we are familiar. But God must also suffer in God’s own right because of the difference between God’s eternal vision of what is possible in the universe and God’s experience of what actually occurs. As God integrates the actual entities of the universe with God’s Primordial Nature, God feels the difference between the beauty and goodness that might have been and the tragedies and evils that have actually occurred. God redeems and overcomes the evil so that it is not final; but this does not eliminate the fact of suffering and tragedy in God’s own experience. Because it is developed by analogy with the structure of actual entities, this metaphysical understanding of the distinct aspects of God’s relation to the universe and of the different

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attributes of God in each aspect forms a consistent and coherent metaphysical understanding of God. We can say both that God is infinite and finite, unconditioned and conditioned, absolutely free and partially determined, impassible and passible, and so on, because we can specify which attribute applies to which aspect of God’s relation to the universe. Whitehead’s metaphysics can show quite precisely, in a way Nicholas of Cusa’s could not, how it is possible for God to be the “coincidence of opposites.”

2.5. The Complementarity of God and the World Whitehead’s cosmological vision conceives of God and the universe in a dynamic relationship of complementarity. Although God and the temporal actual entities of the universe all illustrate the same ontological principles, they are “opposites” complementing each other, each incorporating the other and completing the other. God is the infinite and eternal ground of possibility, order, novelty, and value that is necessary for there to be any actual course of events at all. This aspect of God makes the universe possible, but, we should note, is an eternal vision of merely possible beauty and value. The temporal actual entities of the universe, finite and passing, incorporate this aspect of God in receiving their initial aims and possibilities. In turn, these temporal actual entities give to God something God cannot otherwise acquire: actualized beauty and value. It is only through the agency of the temporal actual entities of the universe that the possibilities of God’s eternal vision are gradually actualized. But temporal actual entities lack permanence. They constantly “perish,” swiftly completing their processes of becoming and losing their immediacy. Some beauties and values endure through the societies actual entities create in their relationships, but eventually these societies decay and their achievements vanish into the past. Moreover, the competing aims of the actual entities and societies of the universe produce discord, lack of harmony, suffering, evil, tragedy, and disunity. Here, in the other aspect of God’s relation to the universe, God provides what the passing world cannot otherwise achieve: permanence, harmony, unity, healing, and peace. God receives into God’s everlasting becoming every temporal actual entity in the universe and through the integration of these with God’s eternal vision in the unity of God’s experience, the universe obtains unity, harmony, and healing in the unity and harmony of God’s own experience.19 This is God saving the world as God takes it into the immediacy and unity of God’s own life.

3. Brief History of Scholarship on Whitehead’s Natural Theology The history of scholarship on Whitehead’s philosophical theology is quite extensive and I can do no more here than indicate a few of the major developments having theological implications.20 Charles Hartshorne (1948, 1972) was one the earliest commentators on and revisers of Whitehead’s philosophy of God, noted mainly for conceiving of God as a society of actual entities instead of a single actual entity and for developing the modal logic of perfection implicit

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in Whitehead’s philosophy. John Cobb (1965) produced one of the first lengthy analyses of Whitehead’s natural theology that had much influence on process theologians. Several scholars have argued that Whitehead’s separation of “creativity” from God, one of his ways of resolving the problem of evil, is problematic and needs to be revised. Langdon Gilkey (1976), Robert Neville (1980), and Lewis Ford (2000) have addressed this issue in different ways. David Ray Griffin (1976) related Whitehead’s solution to the problem of evil to the history of western thought on this topic. Lewis Ford, in a host of articles and three books has produced many technical studies analyzing and revising Whitehead’s metaphysics. He connected Whitehead’s philosophy of God to the biblical tradition (1978); applied the methods of biblical criticism to a textual study of Whitehead’s writings disclosing the development of Whitehead’s ideas about God and his metaphysics more generally (1984); and developed a major transformation of Whiteheadian process theism (2000). The latter work argues for conceiving of God’s causal and creative activity as action from the future, thus relating process theism to the eschatological theologies of Jurgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg. John F. Haught (2000) has similarly interpreted Whitehead’s thought in relation to eschatological theology and thinks of God as acting from the future, seeing this as the metaphysical ground of hope. Many scholars have attempted to relate Whitehead’s philosophy of God to the Christological and Trinitarian concerns of Christian theology. David Ray Griffin (1973) and John Cobb (1975) developed early process Christologies. Joseph Bracken, S.J. (1985, 1991) has related Whitehead to the Trinitarian tradition of Christian theology and developed a process Trinitarian theology by utilizing Whitehead’s notion of a “society,” but revising his philosophy in important ways. He, along with Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, has edited a collection of essays on Trinitarian theology from a process perspective that illustrates the diverse directions pursued by different process theologians (1997). Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki applied Whitehead’s philosophical theology very practically to the central concerns of Christian theology (1982). She also argued that Whitehead’s philosophy can support the idea of “subjective immortality” and analyzed how his philosophy can address some of the major concerns of Christian eschatology (1988). Ian Barbour (1997), John F. Haught (2000), and David Ray Griffin (2000), among others, have employed Whitehead’s metaphysics and philosophy of God to address many difficult problems in the contemporary science and religion dialogue. Finally, John Cobb (1982, 1999) has been instrumental in using Whitehead’s philosophy to foster inter-religious dialogue, particularly with Buddhism.

4. A Personal Assessment Whitehead’s philosophical theology offers many riches for Christian theological reflection. His cosmological vision is neither monist nor dualist, but pluralist, in which the whole is understood as a complementarity of opposites and God is understood as a coincidence of opposites that both makes possible and saves the passing temporal actual entities of the universe.21 Every actual

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entity is related to all other actual entities; Whitehead says, “no two actualities can be torn apart: each is all in all” (PR 348). While this is true of all actual entities, it is God as “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28) that ultimately both grounds and saves the universe. In a way, Whitehead’s philosophy blurs the line between natural theology and revealed theology; or, perhaps better, it shows their relation. In Whitehead, rational reflection on the concept of God as an actual entity arrives not just at God as the necessary ground of the universe, but also predicts God’s receptive and redemptive role in relation to the universe. This prediction must appeal to religious experience for its empirical support. In this way Whitehead shows that reasoning about God finds its empirical support in faith and that faith feels what reason suspects or must postulate. This, it seems to me, is a more satisfying understanding of the relation between reason and faith than thinking of them as separated, opposed or even conflicting ways of dealing with our experience. Whitehead’s cosmological vision expresses a panentheism, a vision of God as the all-inclusive actuality. This is not pantheism, because God is at once transcendent to and inclusive of the universe. And although every actual entity transcends the universe given to it (“The many become one, and are increased by one” [PR 21]), God’s transcendence has an ultimacy that no temporal actual entity has. God’s transcendence can be respected without denying God’s dynamic immanence in and interaction with the universe. In my judgment this metaphysical vision, far better than any other option of which I am aware, enables us to develop a consistent, coherent and unified understanding of God and the universe that accepts and respects both the testimony of science and of Christian faith. Much of the scholarly study of Whitehead to this point has stressed the radically novel in his thought. Much of the theology produced on this basis has seemed to many mainstream Christian theologians to depart too radically from the tradition to be accepted. But Whitehead’s philosophy can also be interpreted in ways that have more regard for the tradition. Whitehead’s philosophy offers Christian theology a powerful tool for expressing its central doctrinal convictions in a new way that might resolve some ancient tensions between Christian religious experience and the assumptions of classical metaphysics. Whitehead’s philosophy may need to be revised to make it useful to Christian theology, as many scholars have suggested. But it offers theology a rich resource for the development of doctrine.

Notes 1

For a more thorough discussion of Whitehead’s natural theology, see Hosinski 1993, 155-250. See PR 19, 24, 40. 3 See PR 46. 4 See PR 32, 40, 88, 164, 207. 5 See PR 40, 257, 344, 349; also SMW 250, 256-57. 2

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See PR 244, 344; also SMW 256. See PR 67, 108, 189, 224, 244, 283, 344. 8 This is connected with the experience of value as well. The “subjective aim” also functions as the internal standard of value in every actual entity that guides and adjusts its reactions to the values inherent in the possibilities open to that process of becoming. Thus the initial subjective aim is also the initial standard of value, and the question concerns its actual source. 9 See PR 343; also xiv. 10 See PR 32, 40, 87-88, 247, 257, 344, 349; also RM, 103-05, 119-20, 153-54. 11 See PR xii-xiv for the use of these terms; see also PR 244. 12 There is an important methodological move here. Whitehead writes: “In the first place, God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. [God] is their chief exemplification” (PR 343). Thus God is to be understood by analogy with the structure of actual entities and God’s perfection will be understood as residing in God’s perfect exemplification of the metaphysical principles (rather than being an exception to them). If we do not approach the topic with a pre-commitment to the Greek assumptions concerning perfection, then we may be able to discover that in different aspects of God’s relation to the universe God exhibits different attributes. Not every function of God must be collapsed back into the eternal, unchanging being of God (as in the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas and, indeed, most theologians of the Christian tradition). This methodological move in conjunction with his ontology enables Whitehead to conceive of God as a “coincidence of opposites” in a consistent and coherent way, as I will discuss below. 13 Methodologically, Whitehead arrives at the Consequent Nature of God by analyzing the implications of conceiving of God as an actual entity. But he must appeal to religious experience for evidence of this aspect of God. See Hosinski 1993, 181-87, 197-98 for a discussion of this point. 14 For a more thorough discussion of the Consequent Nature of God and why and how Whitehead developed this idea, see Hosinski 1993, 181-206. 15 See PR 343-45. 16 “[The Primordial Nature of God] is a free creative act, untrammeled by reference to any particular course of things[…]. The particularities of the actual world presuppose it; while it merely presupposes the general metaphysical character of creative advance, of which it is the primordial exemplification” (PR 344). 17 One should note that this incompleteness is a function of the character of the universe and is not an imperfection in God (as it would be in classical metaphysics). 18 There is a problem in understanding how development is possible without temporal succession, especially since Whitehead understands God’s becoming to extend over all time. But this problem is analogous to the problem of understanding how the development of a temporal actual entity occurs without temporal succession in its phases of becoming. In short, although there is a problem for understanding here, it is not an inconsistency. This attribute of God’s Consequent Nature exemplifies the same principle Whitehead affirms of all actual entities. 19 See PR 345-51. 20 I have deliberately omitted reference to works mainly aimed at developing Whitehead’s philosophy but which have few or no implications for theology. 21 It is for this reason that Wolfhart Pannenberg’s characterization of Whitehead’s understanding of God and the world as “dualistic” is, in my judgment, erroneous (1994, 2-15). 7

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Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. It runs through three stages, if it evolves to its final satisfaction. It is the transition from God the void to God the enemy, and from God the enemy to God the companion. (RM 16)1

Introduction The present Whiteheadian dialogue between natural process theology and Whiteheadian scholarship exploits a tangential approach that will provide new ways of contrasting Whitehead’s worldview by adding a third unexpected speaker: Thomas, the Gnostic Jew who wrote his Gospel perhaps as early as 60 years after Jesus’ death and could thus have constituted an earlier corpus than the canonical gospels—and their hypothetical Q.2 Some readers might consider that the price to pay is too high to venture oneself on such a cross-interpretative path: there is no need to impose an unfashionable syncretic burden either on Whitehead or on Thomas; the inflexion required on each of them to bring them together is simply too demanding and totally unscientific anyway. At least four answers immediately come to mind: first, there is no such thing as a totally objective interpretation in these matters (even the “hard-core” scientific enterprise does not completely escape from the social construction of its issues); second, this hermeneutical wager carries important consequences for each party; third, the rapprochement is operational only at the level of the fundamental intuition—of course not at the level of the technicalities (for the most part absent in Thomas anyway); fourth, what matters above all is to highlight new ways of understanding the human condition, not to stick sclerotically to dead abstractions. Let us notice moreover that the strong matriarchal or at least antipatriarchal emphasis of most Gnostic sects is of good omen in the present post-modern context. Having said this, who could seriously dare to claim that we should not aim at a new vision, not only globally speaking, but also on such cultural landmarks as Whitehead and Thomas? The answer is simple: nobody, unless such a vision undercuts his or her own power on the social scene (or on its backstage). Granted, it is sometimes too demanding to shake intimate convictions while compassion should prevent us from harsh judgements. The requirement of authenticity nevertheless clears this objection promptly. Transfigurative contemplation is as old as humanity (remember the emblematic Mesopotamian orant sculptures or the role of theoria in i

Centre de philosophie pratique “Chromatiques whiteheadiennes,” Brussels; Visiting Professor at the New Bulgarian University (Sofia); www.chromatika.org; [email protected].

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Greek philosophy, religion and politics), and there is no doubt whatsoever that it is still alive in philosophy. Samuel Alexander has for instance boldly claimed: “I read Whitehead naturally not only to understand him but to save my soul.”3 There is evidence that Whitehead knew at least of the Oxyrhynchus logia, published in 1898 by Grenfell and Hunt (thus far before the Nag Hammadi logia, discovered in 1945, and Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947). In Religion in the Making (1926), he writes: The notion of immanence must be discriminated from that of omniscience. The Semitic God is omniscient; but, in addition to that, the Christian God is a factor in the universe. A few years ago a papyrus was found in an Egyptian tomb which proved to be an early Christian compilation called “The Sayings of Christ.” […] We find in these Logia of Christ the saying, “Cleave the wood, and I am there.” This is merely one example of an emphatic assertion of immanence, and shows a serious divergence from the Semitic concept. (RM 71)4 Whitehead’s repeated emphasis on immanence should be kept in mind when confronted with the Platonist temptation of his ontology. Gnosticism has been for too long totally despised and interpreted as a weak blend of systems hastily syncretized. From a strict philosophical perspective, Jonas’ doctoral thesis remains a landmark here5: he very smartly used Gnosticism to understand Heidegger and Heidegger’s existentialism to cast light on Gnosticism. The present essay is, at a far smaller scale and in a more experimental fashion, in the same vein. Practically speaking, our argument will have a double focus: on the one hand, Thomas’ Gospel and, on the other, Whitehead’s worldview, as it is exposed in Process and Reality, and its religious significance, as it is specified mainly in Religion in the Making. This paper proceeds in three main steps. First, it introduces the heuristic tools needed to interpret Thomas freely and thereby to flesh out what often appears as a rather abstract metaphysics; second, it sketches the zest of Whitehead’s vision with the help of the introduction of his fundamental standpoint as it is embodied in the proto-idea of “creative advance of nature”; third, we revisit in conclusion the question of religious perennialism.

1. Thomas’ Soteriology Alfred North Whitehead’s onto-theo-logical system is as challenging as Thomas’ soteriotheological message. One is tempted to add “for completely different reasons”— after all aren’t the requirements of post-modern speculative philosophy totally foreign to those of first-century mantic utterings?. But there are actually some striking similarities that can be pinned down for the sake of our argument, at the level of matter as well as the level of form. On the one hand, the respective general worldview that nourishes both Whitehead, the British algebraist (unexpectedly) turned metaphysician after having taught applied mathematics in Cambridge and London, and Thomas, whose whereabouts are unknown, are fully compatible, if not downright similar in intent; on the other, the human psyche and language are such that, if you intend to make experience speak, be it everyday experience or—even more—Ultimate experience, there are not that many ways to do so, especially in print, where meta-

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communication is impossible: no gestures, no mimics, no use of intersubjective space, no rhythm or pace are available… all of which creates what Edward T. Hall called the Dance of Life or the Silent Language. For our part, we will treat this question with the help of the concept of interanimation of sentences. Needless to say, the price to pay to maintain the similarity between Whitehead and Thomas is manifold, but by no means philosophically too high (we are not concerned with religious orthodoxy here) and totally justified by the hermeneutical advantages brought out. For one thing, we put into the balance the respective general worldviews, reactivating the perennialist claim according to which there is a fundamental signature common to all core religious phenomena. Let us underline again that we deliberately deal with synthetic concepts animating the respective worldviews, not with finely shaded historical dogmas—in the broad sense that Whitehead gives to that word.6 We do so all the more so since the meaning and significance of Whitehead’s organic philosophy is susceptible of slightly different interpretations while Thomas’ message is intrinsically problematic because of its encryption. Actually, specialists don’t agree (one fears often for ideological reasons) on the issue of the exact link between Gnosticism, Judaism and Christianity: is there an essential or an accidental link between (some of) these religions? How deep are Gnosticism’s historical roots? Obiter scriptum, is there a religion that manages to truly avoid the core Gnostic distinction between knowledge and faith? How far does this distinction mirror itself in the difference of status imposed, by definition, between clergy and lay-people? Even in the case of Buddhism, that heavily insists on the universal necessity to practice meditation in order to obtain a direct intuition of the Four Noble Truths, there remains a sharp distinction between the enlightened and the unenlightened individuals… There is moreover no Heideggerian overtone in our introductory claim. On the one hand, we cannot afford here a discussion of the meaning and significance (if any) of Sein und Zeit (1927) to interpret the history of philosophical and theological scholarship—and even less Whitehead’s own spiritual commitment. On the other, one finds indeed in Process and Reality (1929) an onto-theo-logical argument and in Thomas a soterio-theological message. Whitehead’s introduction of a theological slant in his philosophy of nature is, according to him, totally dispassionate: in Science and the Modern World (1925), he makes clear that a genuinely eventful uni-verse is impossible without some tuning-in organism. In other words, in order to understand how events are possible at all, one needs an algorithm of sorts to (com)possibilize them—a constraint that has two sides: one, the very possibility of each event relies upon a extensive screening process that cannot be entirely self-catered; two, the com-possibility of contemporary events (their intensive unison) makes the former constraint more strict. This, argues the philosopher, is just a condition of coherence of his finely-shaded ontological system, it does not say much of God qua person, provided of course that this concept applies to such an “existent” (we are reluctant to say “Being”). Prima facie, it is rather surprising however that Whitehead chooses to call this algorithm “God.” But when the argument got polished the reason emerged: God qua algorithm became only one side of the divine (the “primordial nature of God”); more importantly, God became a conscious personal existent (“the consequent nature”) who has a direct impact on the world (to cut a long story short, “the superjective nature”).

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Whitehead’s very last speculative article (“Immortality,” 1941) makes even clear that there is an infinite number of divine “natures,” thereby reopening the floodgates to polytheism. In sum: starting from “below,” Whitehead is led, from a strictly ontological standpoint that is anchored in a sharp phenomenological vision, to adopt a theological argument. The shift happens, and this is crucial, rationally, with the help of an argument that at times seems to puzzle the author himself. It is only progressively that the dry theological concept gets fleshed out with some of the most striking Christian claims: God is love and God suffers, both because of humans and with humans. With regard to Thomas, the question is completely different: there is no real argument to be found in this Gospel; the author is only reporting what Jesus said—and Jesus speaks of experience, i.e., from personal emptying knowledge. Jesus explains what can be explained, suggests what is susceptible of being suggested, and above all tries to make the apostles adopt the right attitude in order to hopefully arrive at intuiting the divine—which amounts to intuiting Jesus’ unconditional and compassionate love. Starting from “above”, from the perspective of a total eschatological revelation, Thomas worries only about the salvation of individuals (community will follow). There is not much need, it seems, to primarily linger over rational matters here—especially in light of our forthcoming distinction between rationality, irrationality and non-rationality.

1.1. Basic Heuristic Tools Two first important heuristic moves are necessary to allow our joint venture: one, to concede two main types of Gnosticism—Iranian and Syrian—and to bracket the question of their historical interaction; and two, to underline the fundamental Gnostic trait, which is the contrast between gnosis and pistis. First, we have to distinguish Manichaeism or Iranian Gnosticism, whose roots are Zoroastrian and which survived in Paulicianism, Bogomilism and later in the Cathari (of the Albigensian Crusade); and Syrian Gnosticism, derived from Pythagoricism and Platonism, promoted by Valentinus and Basilides—and out of which has emerged Christian Gnosticism with figures such as Simon Magus and Marcion.7 The absolute dualism of the former type (two co-eternal principles in perpetual conflict) is not as rigid in the latter (a blend of pantheism and emanationism), that is far more processual, relativized and subtly hierarchized. The “war of Good and Evil” and the “Fall” are themes, of Babylonian roots, common to both types. The former constitutes the well-known cornerstone of Iranian Gnosticism, whereas the debauching of creation can be so to speak softened when understood from the perspective of the ladder of states of consciousness that will be properly introduced during our argument but that can already be made palpable with the help of the archaic idea of hierarchies of angels, humans and demons. The evil of the world can thus be understood extrinsically as being stuck in the wrong state/level of consciousness. So existence is indeed the struggle of light against darkness—not of two distinct realms though, but of higher states of consciousness against lower states (a contrast that makes perfectly sense in a panpsychic scheme allowing the distinction, not the birfurcation of the bodily and the mental experiences). As far as Whitehead is concerned,

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evil basically amounts to “birth at the wrong season,”8 a relativistic concept that cannot be treated here. For the sake of our argument, we furthermore borrow Gilman’s distinction (that is not unrelated to James’ influential distinction between the religion of the healthy-minded—and its nature mysticism—and that of the sick soul9) between “death-based” religion, that asks “What is going to happen to me, after I am dead?” and “birth-based” religion, that asks “What is to be done for the child who is born?”10 Accordingly, the contrast between the two types of Gnosticism could amount to the following: Iranian Gnosticism is death-based, it features a posthumous egoism, while Syrian Gnosticism is birth-based, it fosters an immediate altruism (this is of course debatable in the case, e.g., of Valentinian Gnosticism). All this remains of course a matter of emphasis, especially since the question of metempsychosis blurs any attempt to enforce a strict distinction. Since Thomas historically belongs to Syrian Gnosticism, the following important qualification is needed: Thomas’ dualism is not extreme; it has to be understood from a holistic perspective seeing differences of degree in place of differences in kind. Under such a hypothesis, the wellknown problematic Gnostic anthropological acosmism loses its absoluteness. Human beings are certainly separated from the divine, but their mundaneity constitutes a strong foothold from which they are expected to extract themselves. Spirit and matter, God and the World, should not be understood in opposition, because there is a tension leading from one to the other: this is precisely what is at stake in the human terrestrial existence. The direct correlate is a ladder of spiritual levels that can be approximated by a ladder of consciousness levels. The divine energy in us can be revealed and channelled by certain practices (like the consolamentum)11 and, by doing so, salvation is made likely, if not inevitable. In sum, we will argue that Thomas promotes a scala naturæ that internally dynamizes the God/World bipolar. Please notice that such a move undermines the possible—although totally foreign to Whitehead’s own intuition—Iranian interpretation of the God/World dialectics structuring Process and Reality: some could indeed be tempted to use the ambiguous appropriation of mundane satisfied actualities by the consequent nature and to claim that God lives vicariously through the existence of mundane processes, that God feeds through these processes that are thus emptied of their own intrinsic value for the sake of God’s own survival. Second, let us highlight that the constant Gnostic trait that runs through these schools, whether they are Iranian or Syrian, lies in the contrast between gnosis and pistis, a contrast that boils down to the difference between knowledge and faith and which is reflected in the distinction of esoteric and exoteric teachings. “Psychic” individuals are capable of the ultimate form of salvation while “material” individuals are cut off from salvation. This contrast structures a twospeed religion: the chosen receive a special, private, solitary revelation; the many are given—by the chosen—a common, public dogma to observe. Revelation is experiential, i.e., esoteric and not (fully) rational; dogma is sacramental, i.e., exoteric and as rational as possible in these matters. As Jung saw, it is a socially therapeutic dream of sorts (which means that it possesses a genuine efficacy and also that it could become a nightmare). Only the secret, revealed knowledge is saving (the contact with the divine is transfigurative); however, the public dogma allows one to put oneself in the position of a likely reincarnation as a chosen. Whereas gnosis

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brings the trauma of light to the happy few (awakening to Truth is never painless), pistis confines the many, for their own good, in comfortable doxastic obscurity. The important point with regard to rationality, as we will see in a moment, is that rationality is by its very essence a public phenomenon. This does not mean that rationality is totally contingent, relative or even subjective. On the contrary, it means that it can be understood (and circularity is here a heavy burden) from below, independently of everlasting rules belonging to the celestial spheres. When all is said and done—when the individual is dying—pistis appears as risky as gnosis. Pistis, defined by rationalized faith, carries indeed ultimately the same existential burden as gnosis—how to make sense of one’s own life and secure the next one—but two different level of gnoseological risk are at stake here. The intensity of the commitment and its temporalization differ. The pneumatic accepts a far higher goal than the hyletic, who appears furthermore to postpone his/her dramatic involvement. The willingness to venture oneself, for the sake of salvation, beyond what is safe and comfortable is not commensurable; the respective vulnerabilities are thus different. There is of course a social functional constraint behind this partition between perfection and imperfection, but we should certainly not adopt a reductionistic stance here: the religious obligations of the chosen are such that they cannot take part in everyday social life while their existence has to be supported by the work of the many. In the very same way that a Taoist needs a Confucianist society to survive, the Gnostic chosen need the life and work of their fellow faithful to assume their destiny and guide their community. The point is that gnosis and pistis are necessarily interlinked (i.e., relative) and Whitehead’s Religion in the Making is better at exploiting this than William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). When you boil it down, claims James, the distinction is really about a living, breathing religious commitment (religiosity) versus a dusty one (religion per se). Whereas the American carefully puts in brackets the whereabouts of this constitutive correlation, the Briton exploits it and shows the importance of its bi-directionality: on the one hand, gnosis is at the root of pistis (the first-hand or inward experiences of the mystics inspire the ethos of the many); on the other hand, pistis informs gnosis (the past rationalizations of first-hand experiences and the collective structures they inspire carve the first-hand experiences of the few, or at least constitute their soil). As Whitehead writes: “The reported sayings of Christ are not formularized thought. They are descriptions of direct insight. The ideas are in his mind as immediate pictures, and not as analysed in terms of abstract concepts.” (RM 56)

1.2. Religion and the Non-Rational As a matter of fact, almost no scholar has ever tried to make sense of Whitehead’s religious and theological speculations in themselves. The commentator either tries to interpret Religion in the Making or the seminal Part V of Process and Reality (focusing on the divine) from the perspective of a given denomination—or, on the contrary, attempts to evacuate God altogether from process thought. A feat that is not impossible, but that fails to do justice to Whitehead’s thought. Our basic move is different: to systematize Whitehead’s ontology and, from there, to encounter Thomas’ soteriology.

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On the one hand, the important works of Joseph Bracken, John Cobb, David Griffin, Thomas Hosinski, Joseph Mabika, Alix Parmentier and Tshishiku Tshibangu are very close to a Whiteheadian natural theology but they all belong to a particular denomination (Methodist for Cobb and Griffin; Catholic for the five others). The same remark can be made for the innumerable and equally important Buddhist interpretations and the recent promising publications of Muslim scholars such as Alparslan Açıkgenç, Mustafa Ruzgar and Mohammed Taleb. On the other hand, the three lay philosophers who have dealt with the theological dimension of Whitehead’s cosmology—Donald Sherburne, Frederick Ferré and Donald Crosby—have promoted a process atheology with the help of very strong arguments that remain nevertheless inadequate to Whiteheadian thought. In both cases, Whitehead is not interpreted secundum Whitehead but either as a theological ancillary or as an atheological one. In sum: if it is impossible to extract the concept “God” from Whitehead last philosophical synthesis without ruining its coherence, it remains possible to develop a process thought independently of Whitehead’s categories and especially of his theological commitment. Some complementary examples immediately come to the mind: Nicholas Rescher’s (1928–) works, that deal with basic theological questions independently of Whitehead.12 Franz Brentano (1838–1917), also a Catholic (he was a priest between 1864 and 1874), argues for an event philosophy developed in correlation with his theological ruminations and his formal ontology.13 Lastly, with the exception of R. Poli and J. Seibt, all Brentanians seem determinate to willingly ignore the theological slant of their master.14 This question is complicated further by the allegiance of the vast majority of Western religious and theological studies to the speculations (most of them socio-political in spirit) of the first covenant, as they were recarved by the Paulinian legacy in the light of some unfortunate Greek premises (especially the insistence on the unchanging and passionless Absolute15) and put to the service of Roman imperial (and imperialistic) policies.16 To condemn all these four successive layers of pitiful—but highly efficacious—political empowerment is one thing; to move beyond them is another. And it is equally important to realize that there is no need to actually begin with a destructive argument before starting a constructive one: in such complex matters, the risk of never being able to reach the second part of the argument is too high, especially since a balanced judgement would be expected. Who dares to turn to the Gnostic message or to apophasis in Plotinus and Eckhart? Thomas Aquinas’ rationalism reigns unchallenged, presenting itself as the safe harbour of plain common sense and universal religion. Nothing seems worse than irrationalism in religion while apophasis appears at best useless (who could make sense of this—or even succeed on this road, provided that there is one?) and at worst dangerous (isn’t mysticism a form of psychosis after all?). Of extraordinary interest in this context is the additional fact that the Gnostic path leads straight to Buddhism17—perhaps because there is a highly probable Buddhist influence on early Syrian Gnosticism (“Siddhartha” Gautama, the historical Buddha, lived around 563–483 B.C.E.). An influence that was later reinforced through the missionary monk sent by king Asoka (who reigns in the years 272–232) to all nations, including Mesopotamia. According to recent (controversial, of course) studies, the real historical question is thus not if Jesus studied Buddhism, but where and how much he studied Buddhism.18 Data are rare here, but a simple argument can be built

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with the help of the famous Neo-Pythagorean Apollonius of Tyana, who is a contemporary of Jesus and who travelled to India in search of wisdom.19 Scholarship has the tendency to isolate cultures and peoples, but the fact is that travel, mainly for trade purposes, has always created a cultural maelstrom (not necessarily fostering a religious relativism and tolerance). This matters especially since there is already a very rich scholarship exploiting the proximity between Whitehead and the various forms Buddhism has adopted over the ages (especially Mahayana and Pure Land Buddhism). In light of all this, the most urgent thing to do is to defuse the argument exploiting the hydra of irrationalism to enforce religious conservatism, itself enslaved to political whiggism. Whitehead himself insisted on the religious primitive collective Barbary.20 As a matter of fact, it is difficult to reasonably claim that what is needed in religious matters is less rationality and that irrationality does not need to be disposed of, prevented and rationalized. Well, hasty judgments are no more advisable here than in any other speculative matters. Thankfully, we have an important conceptual tool at our disposal: the Jamesean articulation of first-hand and second-hand religious experiences (the main working hypothesis of his Varieties), that Whitehead himself uses with profit, and that can be traced back to the Gnostic contrast of gnosis and pistis, a contrast that we propose to use from now on as a paradigm (and that will not be italicized in order to distinguish gnosis and pistis from the Gnostic acceptation per se). What matters for James is gnosis: religion qua direct, personal, living contact with the Ultimate (that actually receives quite different definition in different traditions); religion qua indirect, collective, sedimented contact is bracketed by him as much as possible. By doing so, he obviously wants to focus on the roots of all religious phenomena (on the religious feeling or Gefühl) and furthermore to avoid dealing with the many historical dysfunctions of institutionalized religions (which boil down to their political stance). We have seen that Whitehead, for his part, rebalances this asymmetric picture and underlines the strict relativity of gnosis and pistis: the former indeed grounds the later, but there is a feedback on the former, that could itself not take place anyway without the latter. Most importantly, James’ analysis, when pushed to the hilt, brings to the fore another fundamental set of distinctions: the rational, the irrational and the non-rational. In conjunction with the gnosis/pistis binomial, it generates the following twofold thesis: gnosis discloses reality itself, which is non-rational in its constitution; while pistis provides a rationalization of gnosis that is always in danger of becoming irrational or purely instrumental. Here is how we define our variables. A judgement is rational provided that it is congruent with the set of rules of relevance consensually adopted in a given culture—something that obviously involves a double tuning: synchronic (among contemporaries) as well as diachronic (in dialogue, as it were, with ancestors and their founding narratives). An irrational judgement is not congruent, but could become so, once some fixing-up (tuning-in) is provided. At the very least, it is easy to identify the irrational and possible to rationalize it. For its part, the nonrational is definitely incommensurable with reason, whatever the rational system at stake is; it names the intrinsic—or primordial—opacity of concrete reality.21 In sum, we advocate an epistemological relativism (made operational with the rational/irrational binomial) fading in

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front of the Ultimate (operationalized with the concept of non-rational). The conjunction of these two traits allows a strong constructivism together with a genuine realism. Unfortunately, we cannot afford the detailed analysis of the question of the cultural validation of the rules of relevance here. Let us simply point at two ontogenetic constraints: phylogenetic (evolution in the biosphere) and koinogenetic (education in the ethnosphere).22 Suffice it to say that the relative adequacy of the rules of relevance is the product of a long evolutive process that has seen all actors tune-in while adapting to the environment out of which they emerged in the first place. In the case of human beings, there is a second tuning process that takes place at the cultural level. Hence, the issue of intercultural dialogue can be reduced to the possibility of establishing bijections between the relevant concepts belonging to both cultural spheres. If the bijection is straightforward, the allo-rationality is recognized as such. If the bijection fails, the irrationality is made “obvious.” Let us however acknowledge that this is a purely theoretical standpoint: if any actual attempt is made, one soon realizes that bijections are possible if and only if they bind very abstract concepts. In practice, one concept always belongs to a conceptual network that semantically sustains it: there is no such thing as a semantically isolated concept; meaning always emerge out of a conceptual tissue. Ideally, there should be a conceptual democracy that sustains the respective cultures: a given concept is, in some respect, independent and, in some other respect, interdependent. In other words, its independence signals that it brings something to the semantic tissue while its interdependence signals that it properly makes sense only through the tissue. Wilhelm von Humboldt was probably the first to see that the semantic structures of different languages are fundamentally incommensurable. Franz Boas, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf drew the direct consequence of this incommensurability: since the vocabulary and grammar of a language are directly correlated to the thought and actions of its users, the understanding of a given cultural pattern from an external perspective is not really possible. Let us think of learning to speak (not only to understand) a second language: it is possible only if you live through the target language and embrace its cultural weight. Language, thought, and culture are deeply interlocked, so that each language might be claimed to be associated with a distinctive world view.23 The simplest way of putting this into perspective is a quick look at the Aristotelian substantialistic logic, which, since Boole, is defined by three principles. The principle of identity states that we come to know all things in so far as they have some unity and identity.24 There is, in other words, a fundamental permanence amid flux; without it, no cognition, and indeed no life, seems possible. The principle of contradiction is somewhat the negative side of the principle of identity: it claims that the same attribute cannot, at the same time and in the same respect, belong and not belong to the same subject.25 For Aristotle, this is “the most certain of all principles,” the “natural starting-point for all the other axioms.” According to the principle of excluded middle, there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories: of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate.26 There is no third possibility: either the cat is alive or it is not. An irrational proposition contradicts at least one of these principles.

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Non-rationality aims at something different from simple irrationality: one can conceive how the irrational could become rational, but (by definition) never how the non-rational could be fully rationalized. The non-rational opacity of experience is not only due to the contingent specialization of our senses, to the deficiencies of our language and the weakness of our insight, it involves the very nature of our historical chaosmos: a multiverse constantly seeking new perfections. Opacity is rooted in the genuine novelty that manifests itself in the world and that gives its meaning to the strong pluralism advocated by thinkers such as Whitehead, James, Bergson, Peirce and Dewey (again: a pluralism featuring a constant renewal of the crude variety of experience). In other words, non-rationality embodies the intrinsic—or primordial—opacity of concrete (concrescent) reality; it is peculiar to process pluralism. Fully-fledged experience exceeds logic because new events and patterns are always popping in. Gnosis gives access to the fullness of experience and, as such, it is a non-rational experience: neither a rational nor an irrational one. Only when the gnostic experience has stopped can one try to rationalize it in order to communicate its zest. Out of these attempts settle the religious practice of the many. It goes without saying that the sedimentation of pistis is a multi-layered process. The first gnostic utterances are not rational in the usual sense of the term: they are usually quite paradoxical and need to be refined in order to “speak” to everyone. To put it another way, the non-rationality of the mystical state is gradually transformed into a paradoxical rationality adapted to the transitional phase between the mystical and the normal consciousness, then again into a fully rational dogmatic corpus. This rationality can be criticized only from an external perspective, which means a different gnosis, either directly (through a new distillation process) or indirectly (by an open conflict with another dogma). In conclusion: pistis entirely relies upon a dogmatic corpus that evolves according to two main axes, experiential and conceptual. Experience provides new evidences and hence some dogmatic inflexion; the order of concept has its own requirements that suggest further dogmatic improvements. Depending on one’s own worldview, adequacy is preferred (in realism), or not, to coherence (in idealism). Our argument is as follows: the reproach of irrationalism is possible only when dealing with pistis per se; not with gnosis or transitional gnosis (this is how we will call paradoxical phase between the mystical per se and the normal consciousness exploited by pistis). All outstanding philosophers—and here let us think especially of Whitehead 27—are exploiting in their works the virtues of gnosis, of a vision, or better: of a contact with the Ultimate. This exploitation boils down to transitional gnosis and accounts for the liminal rationality that they sometimes—not always—use. Gnosis is personal, solitary, never irrational. Pistis is collective, hopefully rational. As recent history of thought amply shows, only a philosophy refusing to point at experience can be fully rational, i.e., can bear no trace of transitional rationality luring the reader towards transitional gnosis. Such a purely analytical philosophy can afford selfreference; being ouroborian, it is fully transparent. The constitutive opacity of reality is gone. One could claim for instance that this is the essence of the Hartshornian project: in the process of making Whiteheadian thought fully transparent, realism had to be disposed of. In the same way that in everyday life people who are too polite cannot be trusted, in philosophy, systems that are too transparent cannot be ontologically reliable. “Seek simplicity and distrust it,”

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claimed Whitehead,28 who also insisted that “exactness is a fake.”29 These systems remain an important tool of investigation of the potentialities of human rationality, but nothing more. It is basically such a dialectic that is disclosed in the history of religious thought. If we focus on Jesus for the sake of clarifying the status of the Gospel of Thomas, the following steps are quite obvious. First, Jesus’ contact with the Ultimate—or Jesus’ (momentary) identity with the Ultimate—is a purely gnostic experience (or first-hand experience, if you prefer the Jamesean concept). Second, Jesus’ attempts to offer the gnostic light to his fellows human beings is only transitionally rational—hence intrinsically paradoxical. Third, the gradual distillation of the dogma (see, e.g., Pelikan and Soler on this)30 constitutes an endeavour to achieve at all costs the highest intellectual coherence. Alas, this is possible only by “clarifying” the opacity, by replacing the total prehensive contact with the partial intellectual vision. From that perspective, it is easy enough to settle the controversies around the historical priority of Thomas: conceptually speaking, it stands closer to the gnostic light itself (which can be equated here with the Gnostic Light indeed) and embodies thus a first transition towards full rational transparency. The development of the Christian doctrine has followed an uninterrupted trend towards full transparency until the Reformation (later, the “crise du modernisme” had also particular side-effects in Europe). The highest coherence was sought and bodies of texts developed additional layers of self-referential speculations. This tendency was of course largely anticipated by Jewish theologians.31 It is essentially the scientific breakthroughs of Bruno and Darwin that compromised first the socio-political hegemony exploited by Christian ecclesiastic authorities through their semantic and existential power; later came quantum indeterminism and recently chaos theory (to use only a few mile-stones). When theology as the pronouncement of the eternal Truth of the Scriptures lost credibility, new paths of understanding Jesus’ message needed to be found, and every actor in the scientific and religious fields agrees that this happened for the better of both agendas. Of special interest for our present discussion is the fact that Protestants turned to religious experience, thereby factually drifting from pistis to—a very tamed form of—gnosis. But systematic concerns could not of course be obliterated in the context of a religious institution, even an institution centred upon the individual—hence the moderated version of pistis that is, overall, operational in Protestantism.

2. Whitehead’s Systematic Ontology Mankind has wandered from the trees to the plains, from the plains to the seacoast, from climate to climate, from continent to continent, and from habit of life to habit of life. When man ceases to wander, he will cease to ascend in the scale of being. (SMW 207)32 It is possible—indeed advisable—to sketch Whitehead’s ontology with the help of what James has called (and Deleuze after him) his “scream” and that we will here call his “proto-idea.”33 By doing so, we do not aim at summarizing the system but at firmly rooting it in its intuition. One speaks of a “proto-idea” in order to point at the special conceptual status involved by the debated expression. The “creative advance” is the farthest conceptual outpost, the tag that stands

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the closest to the throbbing reality, i.e., to direct, non-linguistically mediated, full-bodied experience. In the course of our argument, we will progressively unfold the meaning and significance of this proto-idea with (i) ideas, (ii) categories and (iii) concepts. There is, in other words, an abstractive hierarchy that is rooted in experience, not in abstraction; it develops out of the requirement of adequacy, not of coherence.

2.1. Radical Empiricism The direct or “pure” experience we have just alluded to is a typical feature of radical empiricism. To summarize a complex and ancient debate, radical empiricism can be contrasted with rationalism and empiricism in the following way. Rationalism and empiricism both work with root items or primitive factors (respectively, innate general ideas and acquired particular ideas) that are organized with a fundamental law (respectively, calculation and associationism of sorts). They share the common presuppositions that established substantialism: the existence of non-related primitive elements that can be obtained through regressive decomposition and synthesized through constitutive operation. Radical empiricism being unsurprisingly a radicalization of the empirical standpoint, it adopts a gesture foreign to rationalism—but it also supersedes empiricism itself. All experiences are now taken at face value: not only senseperception, but also interoceptive and proprioceptive experiences, (causal) relations, altered states of consciousness, and so forth. This conceptual move has of course to be linked with the emergence of psychodynamics. James Ward (1843–1925) had coined the term “subliminal” in 1886 while discussing Johann Herbart (1776–1841), who is the originator of the psycho-scientific program.34 We owe the use of the concept of “subliminal” in this radical empiricist atmosphere to F.W.H. Myers (1841– 1901), whose work with London’s Society for Psychical Research (that he co-founded in 1882), together with his sharp awareness of all the main conceptual advances of his time (the German psychophysics and the Salpêtrière nosologisation versus Nancy’s hygeology) led him to lay the foundations of twentieth century dynamic psychiatry with the help of his emphasis on growthoriented aspects of the subconscious. Whereas psychophysics was only interested in measurement and the Salpêtrière in degenerations and insanities, prefigurating the Freudian understanding of the unconscious as a “rubbish-heap,” Myers understood it as a “treasurehouse,” as “beginnings of higher development.”35 With regard to the concept of subliminal itself (meaning beyond the threshold of consciousness), Myers uses Ward’s concept in a suppler way: his point is no more to quantify sense-perception, but to circumscribe the halo of non-conscious processes that contribute to consciousness-zero. Since he furthermore perceives that “these submerged thoughts and emotions possess the characteristics which we associate with conscious life,” he feels “bound to speak of a subliminal or ultra-marginal consciousness.” In conclusion, Myers insists that his subliminal Self does not assume that “there are two correlative and parallel selves existing always within each of us […: the] subliminal Self [is] that part of the Self which is commonly subliminal.”36 Let us underline the link between his thesis and his radical empiricism: all experiences have to fit—and these experiences can be considered in themselves or filtered through other experiences that happen to be more “conscious.”37

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According to thinkers such as Whitehead, James, Dewey and Bergson, all experiences matter: conscious, liminal, subliminal, superliminal… whatever. This is no small feat, all the more so since a very strong argument can be made for defining (philosophical) thought as being necessarily radically empiricist. What does “thinking” mean? It is not just a matter of giving reasons to causes (or causes to reasons), or to build a fully transparent conceptual edifice (or to refuse any systematic enterprise). The conceptual moment (and its proper architectonic requirements) is no doubt crucial but what matters above all is the depth of the vision that pilots it, its very experiential scope and its pragmatic impact. Interestingly enough, when one considers this experiential depth according to the variety of its modes (from the low-level experience of unicellular organisms to the high-level experience of superior mammals), of its durations (from the pure flash to the cosmic epoch) and of its extension (from microcosm to macrocosm), this depth discloses ipso facto a political stance. To accept a—socially, temporally or spatially—limited spectrum of experiences (i.e., of facts) leads inevitably to a right-wing politics. On the contrary, to accept the total, variegated spectrum leads to a left-wing politics. Now, a mode of thought that springs from data that are—voluntarily or not—limited is nothing but a form of doxa. Thought per se has to be concerned with nothing less than the common good…38 Of course the old cliché is still pretty well alive: everyone has his reason to the right and her heart to the left and everyone would be more than happy to accept all the requirements of a social justice worthy of that name, if only this were reasonable (or even rational). On the contrary, we argue that all human beings are viscerally inclined to take care only of their own interests and of the interests of their own people (cf. the well-known “family values” cherished by the far right) whereas Reason demands the promotion of universal values and of their becoming. To resume our argument: on the one hand, there are no fundamental items anymore, only an overwhelming experience, intrinsically vague and confused; on the other, the cognitive law involved is now genetic. The clear and distinct ideas that we manipulate in consciousness-zero are the product of a refinement process that contribute to their creation: it is no longer a matter of unearthing pre-existing stabilities, but of constructing them. Although the genetic law is ultimately of the order of a settled habit, its twofold dimension and general trend remain: on the one hand, there is an onto-genesis (whose archetypal characters are infants, idiots, intoxicated adults, Adam…) and a phylo-genesis (invented by Spencer when he claimed that what is a priori for an individual is actually a posteriori for the species) that should be thought in conjunction with koino-genesis (the process of convergence of individual consciousness through learning39); on the other, a progressive abstraction of patterns out of a wealth of details through discrimination and synthesis. From this nomological perspective, radical empiricism amounts to processism: the foundational premise and its emphasis on parts is replaced by an antifoundationalism emphasizing the whole qua complex and relational. Whitehead’s proto-idea is especially challenging because it asks the adoption of a perspective that belongs to what we have called in our previous section transitional gnosis. It is the lens through which pure experience (solitary non-rational gnosis) is reflected in categories (communal rational pistis). Since gnosis does not belong to consciousness-zero while pistis is firmly rooted in it, it makes sense to speak of a subliminal transition—something which is not

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without significant linguistic consequences. Exactly, the linguistic consequences we have repeatedly alluded to can be boiled down to one single requirement: language is to be used as a lens directed towards the experiential realm, not as a self-coherent entity that would act as a screen between the speaker and its interlocutor (or the writer and its reader). This is basically what is meant by the interanimation of sentences—a concept that we owe to Quine and that can be introduced by a metaphor: in order to penetrate, through the mantle of words, to the body of experiences which it clothes one needs a closely knit system of categories. Hence, the empirical requirement (some applicability is needed) is more important than the rational requirement (logical consistency is advantageous, not always essential—especially in the light of what has been said of transitional gnosis). Accordingly, the usual insistence on Thomas’ cryptogrammatic wording should be softened. In Plato's words: philosophy “does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself.”40

2.2. Heuristic of Whitehead’s Intuition At least three main conceptual mile-stones would need to be examined in order to circumscribe Whitehead’s intuition: the creative advance of nature, Process and Reality’s pancreativism and its reformed subjectivism. Since we have done this work elsewhere,41 we will offer here only a brief reminder and focus on the application of our heuristic thesis. The creative advance embodies the Ur-concept of the late Whitehead (i.e., of his Harvard period, starting in 1924) and, as such, it is the key-vault of his entire work. The definition of its conditions of possibility leads—through the category of the Ultimate—straight to the allembracingness of the concept of mother-creativity (hence the designation “pancreativism”). Further conceptual refinement involves the introduction of Whitehead’s reformed understanding of subjectivity. The definition of subjectivity independently of consciousness, together with the understanding of its intrinsic transience grounds Whitehead’s epochal (or bud-like) theory of actuality. Three ideas or functors embody the proto-idea of the creative advance: creativity, efficacy and vision. They contain in potentia Process and Reality’s entire categoreal scheme. In order to understand how the scheme works, how it is stratified and interanimated, it would be worth considering the following intermediate steps: creative advance, Category of the Ultimate, creativity, principles and scheme. For the sake of the present argument’s tightness, let us summarize our hermeneutic. Seen through the lens of the Category of the Ultimate itself, the creative advance appears as a rhythmic process, a dialectics of sorts between becoming and being. Becoming produces being, that in turn serves as basis for further becomings. In order to understand this fundamental process, Process and Reality uses one main concept—creativity— with many meanings and purposes. Hence the idea to speak of “mother-creativity” and, from there, to unfold its various semantic slices. First of all, mother-creativity is dipneumonous: God and the World constitute the two specular loci of the creative rhythm. Second, mother-creativity is bifunctional: on the one hand, it is agent, fundamental inclination towards novelty; on the other, it is reticular, partial goals, i.e., it is instantiated in actualities-subject (including the

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consequent nature of God) and characterised in actualities-object (including the primordial nature of God). In the context of the present work, the proto-idea of creative advance can be advantageously translated (there is indeed no strict one-to-one correspondence) into three conceptual tools: (i) the perennial concept of scala naturæ, (ii) reticular dipneumonousness and (iii) gnosis. Behind the apparent esoterism of these concepts lies a rather straightforward intuition, totally commensurable with the creative advance as it was spelled out in our first section. Although the three ideas have to be thought in their togetherness, a difference in emphasis can be perceived: the scala naturæ is a primarily subjective and form-like requirement; the dipneumonous character is more objective and matter-like; while gnosis tends to name the active relativization of the two. At this point of our argument, we need primarily to linger upon the scala naturæ.

2.2.1. Scala Naturæ The significance of the perennial concept of scala naturæ is mainly two-fold: on the one hand, it epitomizes the idea that all differences in kind are to be replaced by differences in degree; on the other hand, it names the unison of private spiritual-soteriological ladders—not of course a pyramidal structure of power. The notion of value is here on the hot seat, as two of the major historical mile-stones testify: the Pseudo-Dionysus and Kant. In The Celestial Hierarchy (Chapters 6-9), Pseudo-Dionysus asks: what is the first order of the celestial essences, what is the middle order and what is the inferior order. His answer exploits the names of the hierarchies that appear in the scriptures. They are divided into three groups of three hierarchies each: first, Seraphim (Fire, “Those who burn”), Cherubim (Messengers of knowledge, Wisdom) and Thrones (Seat of God); second, Dominions (Justice), Virtues (Courage, Virility) and Powers (Order, Harmony); third, Principalities (Authority), Archangels (Unity) and Angels (Revelation, messengers). Kant, having rejected the cosmological, ontological, and design proofs of (or way to) God, argued in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) that the existence of God, though not directly provable, is a necessary postulate of the moral life. The moral law demands that human beings become perfect, this is however something that can never be finally achieved but only asymptotically approached, and such an unending approach requires the unending existence of the soul, which, in turn demands that the immortal soul evolves in a morally structured universe.42 One of the most important claims Whitehead makes lies in the destruction of the bifurcation of nature. The mental and the physical should not be understood as two totally different—hence separated—realms, but as one single ontological tissue with various shades of beauty, intensity and complexity in a perpetually evolving multifold of patterns. A somewhat similar intuition leads Leibniz (and Deleuze after him) to speak of folds. In terms of the functors of the creative advance: creativity and efficacy weave growth. But growth is ultimately not random: there is a fundamental trend that properly animates all actualities (remember Aristotle’s unisubstantialism). There is certainly decay after growth, but that decay is followed by further growth building upon the new given (the freshly decayed), and so forth. Whitehead argues for such a hierarchy with the help of what he calls “God’s eternal

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envisagement of possibilities”. Through the concept of initial subjective aim (that is endowed by God’s primordial nature to all actualities in the making), he makes quite a strong argument for an open growth. Whitehead speaks in this context of the maximization of the “integral intensity derivable from the most favourable balance […] amid the given materials.”43 The problem with such a formulation is two-fold: on the one hand, how far is the language of maximization under constraint, so familiar in applied physics and in economics, applicable here? First, what is exactly to be maximized? Intrinsic or instrumental value? (cf. our next paragraph) In any case, is it the intensity of the experience (experience defining actuality), its complexity or its beauty that is to be sought?44 Second: maximization involves comparison, which requires quantification, which is possible only in reference to the past and quite difficult in an open universe that never features twice the exact same event in the exact same environment. Hence the question: if the real core of actuality consists of its subjective intensity, of its creativity, which is not reduceable to the potential—objective past—data from which it spurs (including God’s eternal envisagement), it is an absolute that can be relativized only ex post, i.e., at the end of the concrescence, after the “satisfaction.” In other words: a given concresence is by definition beyond instrumental rationality and metrical constraints. To replace “maximization” by “minimization” is speculatively counter-productive in this context (but wouldn’t be in a Socratic one) for two reasons: first, we remain within the same logic of quantification; second, we lose the very idea of a progress or lure towards better experiential states. On the other hand, such a picture tends to promote an old-fashioned theistic vision of the divine, and, as some feminist critics have seen, the hierarchical structures of relations of Whitehead’s ontology should be modified in order to by-pass its patriarchal overtones. A straightforward distinction inspired by the general systems theory shows indeed that a hierarchy does not need to be patriarchal and follow a logic of exclusion: (partially) ordered sets can be either nested or non-nested; a hierarchical (i.e., asymmetric) relationality other than a strict pecking-order is possible—it is indeed foundational to life. Overlaping is a logic of inclusion. Anyway, Whitehead seems to take that optimization lexicon at face value precisely because of his theological commitment, the primordial nature providing the necessary archetypal structure. Let us peruse this issue. Two types of value are usually evoked in such an argument: intrinsic and instrumental value. The point of the scala naturæ is that both types have to be understood in one go, and this for two reasons. One, the intrinsic value of an event, which is a purely private virtue, will be factually assessed only from the perspective of its instrumental value. Two, both types are somewhat instrumentalized by the divine primordial envisagement itself. There is one fundamental way of assessing the value of any experience whatsoever, but it belongs exclusively to God and cannot be used for everyday purposes. This understanding is somewhat deeper than the view promoted by Birch and Cobb’s Liberation of Life, according to which the hierarchy of value among living and non-living creatures is based upon the balance of intrinsic value (capacity for richness of experience) and instrumental value.45 The event’s value is primarily intrinsic, it stands by itself. Its assessment from God’s perspective is subsidiary. This could appear as a fundamental flaw in Whitehead’s system; it is actually an immense advantage that allows him to escape the pit of patriarchalism while still providing a coherent

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view on our multiverse. By doing so, he furthermore reactivates the perennial intuition that goes back, through Plato, to the ancient mysteries, such as those at Eleusis. In the Symposium and the Phaedo, Plato combines indeed the ascent of the soul to the most sublime, truly spiritual vision, with Eros. Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas has rediscovered this intuition. In terms of the functors of the creative advance: growth lured by vision de facto implies a ladder of sorts. But that ladder preserves the intrinsic value of events-in-the-making and secures the advance per se. The evocation of Plato is furthermore very suggestive of the move that might be needed towards a kalocentric understanding of the creative advance and thus of the debated hierarchy. The continuum of existence spreads in all bottom-up directions: all our experiences relate to one another, we are all interrelated—so all our personal experiences are also public experiences; coercive, hierarchical power patterns are not fundamental, they are the by-product of private processes. The link with emanationism is immediate—but we have here an inverted emanationism, both because of the pluralism and the directionism involved. In sum, the concept of scala naturæ that is activated here can be specified by two contrasts: it embodies a stronger claim than the Great Chain of Being and a different one than the more traditional creationist or emanationist theses. On the one hand, the Great Chain of Being—at the very least this is how we choose to see it in the context of the present discussion—basically names the continuity existing between all beings. Statically speaking, it means that all beings, animate, inanimate, conscious or not, complex or elementary, belong to the same ontological sphere; they share a fundamental kinship. Dynamically speaking, it means that process or change is understood qua transformation or meta-morphosis: nothing is really new under the sun; the phenomenological novelty boils down to the new appearance taken by old forms. Now, without genuine novelty there cannot be temporality and the processes involved are at best cyclical and most probably purposeless. The scala naturæ claims that there exist a hierarchy among beings, an order of sorts that allows us to speak meaningfully not only of a self-differentiating continuum but also of processes of (de)gradation. On the other hand, precisely from the standpoint of the existence of such a hierarchy (not necessarily fully actualized, either because some levels are still potential or because the hierarchy is an open one, i.e., such that its entire configuration does not exist separately), mainly two times two figures can be discerned a priori, one monistically biased and the other intrinsically pluralistic. From the perspective of the Divine, if we rule out the pure static Parmenidean sphere and its Spinozistic sequel, two main alternative systems remain, both centred on the notion of degradation, devaluation or descent: creationism and emanationism. In both cases, there is factually a degradation of the Being of the Absolute in its creation(s). The absolute perfection is mirrored in various ways in the World, the subsidiary question being to know whether there is an increasing number of guises of the Absolute or simply a continuous trans-formation among them. From the perspective of the World, two further contrasts should be specified, both centered on the notion of gradation, valuation or ascent. (We clear the question of the nestedness of the ordering.) The first one sets out a closed hierarchy, with God at its top: there exists only one single Being, that is (some would claim ipso facto) eternal and is likely to be seen as a person.

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The second features an open hierarchy, that results from two axioms: local, relative, comparisons are possible—not global, absolute ones—and hence there is no guarantee that one single hierarchy exists (we can be actually dealing with one hierarchy evolving within another one…); moreover, the hierarchy is open, which basically means that new actualities are likely to create new steps on the ladder, something that is of special importance at the “top” of the ladder. None of the orders is totally perfect; all the hierarchies thus mutually participate in a constant march, striving towards new perfections. If God is still perched on the ladder, God is now intrinsically transient and probably impersonal. It is in this later acceptation that lies the meaning we choose to confer to the scala naturæ, reason why it is worthy of the term inverted emanationism. As Whitehead claims, “the task of philosophy is the understanding of the interfusion of modes of existence” (MT 71). This has of course a direct impact on our Whiteheadian heuristic of Thomas. Whereas Gnostic scholars are likely to adopt the divine or top-bottom perspective, we stand squarely with the second alternative, the pluralistic bottom-up one. But one needs to know that, from the perspective of Process and Reality, the entire issue can be viewed from the perspective of the creative dialectic between the One and the Many: on the one hand, the Many concresces into (become) One; on the other, the One transitions (fosters) further Many. In other words, the Whiteheadian co-dependent origination between mundane and divine actualities exploits both a monistic top-down and a pluralistic bottom-up scheme; the organic totality is woven out of two threads, valuative as well as devaluative (interestingly enough, there is no judgement of value in the contrast between the two). Process and Reality’s chapter on “The Order of Nature” (pp. 83110) provides, e.g., an interesting argument to flesh this out, but there is no need to go through it here.

2.2.2. Reticular Dipneumonousness The fundamental objective trait of Whitehead’s ontology, its pancreativism, can be synthesized with its core feature—dipneumonousness—as sketched above and as particularly exemplified in one of Whitehead’s very last essays (“Immortality,”,1941), according to which the Uni-verse is to be understood as the interplay between two “Worlds,” the World of Active Creativity and the World of Timeless Value. The former is the world of origination of patterns of assemblage that nevertheless develops Enduring Personal Identity. The latter is timeless and immortal, but it nevertheless seeks Realization. Neither finitude nor infinitude are self-supporting; fact and value require each other. Whereas the natural ladder names so to speak the form taken by events (at the very least their “strange attraction” for high-grade experiences), dipneumonousness names its abyssal nonsubstantial substratum. The Abyss has a strong historical anchorage in European thought (not speaking of India and Asia) with Meister Eckhart’s “der Abgrund”46; it embodies, in the context of the present heuristic, a more fundamental and unifying trait than the Gnostic distinction between the unknown supreme God and the Demiurge (usually identified with the God of the Old Testament) who created this doomed world.

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2.2.3. Gnosis Gnosis provides the synthesis of the two previous mile-stones by means of the words that summon up the opening of the passageway, the archway that is also a psychic gate.47 To show this, it suffices to re-centre the notion of gnosis on the individual. The scala appears then mainly as a subjective trait providing form to the dipneumon that is mainly the objective “matter.” Unsurprisingly, we encounter again the absolute primacy of experience and its origination in “pure” relatedness.

3. Conclusion The modern world has lost God and is seeking him. […] If the modern world is to find God, it must find him through love and not through fear, with the help of John and not of Paul. (RM 73) So far, we have argued for two main points. On the one hand, the two basic tools needed to make sense of Thomas (gnosis/pistis and non-rationality/rationality) are applicable from a Whiteheadian perspective. On the other, the two basic features of our Whiteheadian heuristic (radical empiricism and the creative advance triptych) could offer a systematic understanding of Thomas’ most difficult passages.48 Before concluding, let us widen the debate a little. Our comparative argument actually involves two different steps: one, we claim that there is a similar basic religious hyperdialectic (a gnosis founding a pistis that in turn moulds gnosis) at work in our authors; two, that gnosis can be understood in a similar way in all religions, whatever their spatio-temporal localization: there is in other words a universal core of mystical experience, a core that we have already discovered to be intrinsically non-rational.

3.1. Religious Perennialism There has been much-heated debate around these questions. For instance, as its title amply indicates, Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy (1946) argued, mostly by means of extensive exemplifications, for such a universal fundamental core: gnosis (religiosity or mysticism) represents a common core at the centre of all pistis (or religions). On the contrary, R.C. Zaehner’s Mysticism Sacred and Profane (1957) explicitly repudiates Huxley’s perennialist claim and his drug-induced (hence non-authentic) experientialism. According to him, there are three fundamentally different types of mysticism: theistic, monistic and panenhenic (or nature mysticism)—in that strict hierarchical order. Zaehner’s own work has been later challenged by Walter Stace’s Mysticism and Philosophy (1960), that distinguished between two types of mystical experience: introversive and extroversive. The introvert mystical experience occurs with a complete merging of the subject and constitutes for Stace the mystical core of all religions (and of course the superior of the two types of experience). The extroversive experience is only a partial realization of introvert union; it amounts to a sense of harmony between two things. According to Stace, all mystical experiences have the following characteristics: they provide a sense of objectivity or reality, a sense of blessedness and peace

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and a feeling of the holy, the sacred or the divine.49 Both mystical experiences are of an underlying unity characterized by paradoxicality and are alleged to be ineffable by mystics. This analysis directly taps into James’ characterization of mystical states of consciousness (that applies to gnosis as it is here understood) by means of Eliade’s bipolar enstasis/ekstasis (that has itself often been compared with Plotinus' distinction between “a standing in oneself” and “a standing beyond oneself in another”): enstasis names the Yogic annihilation (or samâdhi), the total absorption in the Whole; ekstasis names the eagle’s eye on the Whole.50 For its part, James’ Varieties 51 highlights the following four traits of all mystical states; the first two are sharply marked, the last two less possibly so. (i) Ineffability: the mystical state of mind is qualitative, private, non-rational; it defies expression (“no adequate report of its contents can be given in words”). (ii) Noetic quality: the mystical state of mind is nevertheless cognitive in its own right, it is “full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain.” (iii) Transiency: except in rare instances, the mystical state of mind cannot be sustained for long. (iv) Passivity: although its oncoming may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, the mystical state of mind itself is beyond the individual’s will. In sum, they are “states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect” that “carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.” More precisely, here is how we could argue, with the help of James, for a perennialist religion. The Varieties raises the question “is there, under all the discrepancies of the creeds, a common nucleus to which they bear their testimony unanimously?” Its answer is unequivocally yes: there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts:—1. An uneasiness; and 2. Its solution. 1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand. 2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers (VRE 508). The universality of suffering is the fundamental fact, the extinction of suffering the goal. This powerful dialectic between the uneasiness and its solution is self-explanatory; it is however susceptible of (at least) two direct cross-elucidatory interpretations. On the one hand, it obviously corresponds to the Buddhist Four Noble Truths: existence is suffering; the origin of suffering is ignorance of co-dependent origination and of impermanence (i.e., of eventfulness); the cessation of suffering amounts to becoming aware of universal interdependence and accepting impermanence; the path to achieve this is meditation. Again: this correspondence is unsurprising, since it embodies precisely our claim; the fact that there has been conceptual flux from and to the East only adds grist to our mill.52 On the other hand, the uneasiness corresponds to what Whitehead has called the bifurcation of nature while its solution lies in the destruction of this bifurcation. The bifurcation of nature has actually numerous complementary meanings in Whitehead’s corpus, but they can be boiled down to the subject/object distinction that is constitutive of the normal state of consciousness (see supra the specification of the concept of consciousness-zero) and that is thus presupposed by all forms of cognition. In other words, what is wrong in the natural state of consciousness is the separation between the subject and its environment—and this echoes indeed the Gnostic acosmic subjectivity—while the cure (in the loose sense of the word) is connecting, i.e., feeling

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the togetherness of all beings and existents. Needless to say, such a feeling occurs in an altered state of consciousness: consciousness-zero is defined by the bifurcation of the subject and his/her world. But one needs to add as well that the alteration at stake does not need to be understood in a dramatic manner: the conscious awareness of the web of life actually occurs quite often in everyday life and it is relatively easy to improve its conditions of possibility. Accordingly, we can redefine the sacred/profane distinction. Sacredness is experienced when we strongly anchor ourselves in direct experience, thereby undermining the bifurcation, and recovering the awareness of our roots.53 We live in a profane world as long as we accept and exploit the bifurcation constitutive of consciousness-zero. Let us notice furthermore that desacralization of all non-mental experiences—qua human consciousness-zero experiences— constitutes the very root of Western technoscience and of its nefarious applications.

3.2. Looking for God The epigraph we have chosen aptly epitomizes what is at stake in this paper. “God” was once the most obvious “Being” available to individuals in their quest for salvation, sanity, social status, comfort, perhaps even for immortality. That obviousness is now totally gone for most Westerners. The God-Being is dead, for better and for worse: on the one hand, the old corrupted structures of power presently dwell among other historical paraphernalia, such as nation, race and class, as socio-political manifestations of how much ad hoc construction entered these old myths; on the other, the backbone of Western civilization disappeared with them and we now live at the verge of anarchy—if not friendly fascism.54 The price to pay to get rid of the corrupted structure has thus been so far very high: no global narrative replaced sclerotic ideologies and individuals are now the unsheltered preys of the “market” and its “snakes in suits.” The puzzling fact is that most of us are still looking, in one way or another, for the divine or even for God; is it melancholy? or an ultimate certainty? Although the history of religions is full of treasons, the quest of the God of unconditional Love is intact. Whitehead claims that the death of God is not the death of religiousness, i.e., of the religious feeling. In order to rediscover the divine, he suggests to turn to John. We propose instead to turn to Thomas, who, incidentally, was in open conflict with John on dogmatic—and social power—matters.55 This move involves two gestures: first, to rely as much as humanly possible upon pure experience, i.e., upon contact; second, to abandon all systematic claims that do not match such direct, unmediated experience. Granted, the existential price to pay to obtain pure experience is very high, but it should be compared with the suffering, separateness and isolation (all synonyms) in which we are so often confined in consciousness-zero. We have just seen that James’ diagnosis is very clear about this: the nucleus common to all first-hand religious experiences consists of the crippling feeling of separateness that can be alleviated only by overcoming the bifurcation that conditions consciousness-zero and assuming again the web of inter-connectedness of all beings and existents. Furthermore, contact has to be made Vision and Vision necessarily settles in dogma: the destiny of creative non-rationality is to establish rational efficacy for the common good. One should be at the very least fully aware of the demanding constraints imposed on the

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passage from private and non-rational experience (religiousness) to public and rational experience (religion). In his last book, The God of Metaphysics, Sprigge repeatedly insists on the Nietzschean character of Whitehead’s God. The predicate is used derogatorily to indicate that evil, suffering and sin do not matter much for the Whiteheadian God. God’s impersonal and inexorable character lures events towards the highest intensity, full stop. From the perspective of our heuristic, God constitutes a more positive feature of Whitehead’s cosmology: since creativity is wild, it exists beyond good and evil, while efficacy embodies the (im)pure necessity of the eternal objects and of the past events, God is the only visionary functor that constantly tries to lure the outcome of the hyperdialectics between creativity and efficacy towards higher experiences. To sum up: there is an Apocryphal Whitehead to the extent that (i) very little has been said so far on his fully-fledged natural theology and that (ii) gnosis should rule system building as well as systematic interpretations striving for adequacy. Radical empiricism should not be a vain word in Whiteheadian scholarship.

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Notes 1

Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making. These are the Lowell Institute Lectures of 1926 [delivered in King’s Chapel, Boston], New York, Macmillan, 1926. 2 This paper was originally written a year ago for T. L. S. Sprigge (1932–2007), whose untimely death has prevented him from writing a response. It was published in Michel Weber et Pierfrancesco Basile (sous la direction de), Chromatikon III. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès—Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2007, pp. 227-260. Timothy had been an early supporter of the Whitehead Psychology Nexus and held, as far as I can tell, a worldview compatible with the three basic features this paper identifies in Whiteheadian process thought: the existence of a scala naturæ, the explicit dipneumonousness (god and world being the two loci of the creative advance) and the primacy of gnosis over pistis. 3 Samuel Alexander (1859–1938), in a Letter to Dorothy M. Emmet, quoted in her “Whitehead and Alexander,” Process Studies, 21/3, 1992, pp. 137-148, p. 137. 4 According to Whitehead himself, he spent around eight solid years perusing the theological scholarship of the time, before dismissing the subject (Lucien Price, Dialogues [1954], Mentor Book, 1956, p. 13; cf. 125). 5 Cf. Simone Pétrement, Le Dieu séparé. Les origines du gnosticisme, Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, 1984 [A Separate God. The Christian Origins of Gnosticism, Translated by Carol Harrison, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1990]. 6 “The dogmas of religion are the attempts to formulate in precise terms the truths disclosed in the religious experience of mankind. In exactly the same way the dogmas of physical science are the attempts to formulate in precise terms the truths disclosed in the sense-perception of mankind” (Religion in the Making, 1926, p. 57). 7 This distinction is a conceptual tool; there is no need here to dive into intricated historicoconceptual issues, such as the one involved by the Persian conquest of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 B.C. 8 “Insistence on birth at the wrong season is the trick of evil. In other words, the novel fact may throw back, inhibit, and delay. But the advance, when it does arrive, will be richer in content, more fully conditioned, and more stable. For in its objective efficacy an actual entity can only inhibit by reason of its alternative positive contribution” (Process and Reality [1929], Corrected edition, 1978, p. 223). 9 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902, New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta, Longman, Green, and Co., 1902, Lectures IV to VII. James furthermore underpins his healthy/sick contrast with a further distinction between the once-born (who are permanently in an innocent state of happiness) and twice-born the former (who regain it through some form of salvation). 10 Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), “a foremother in feminist philosophy of religion” as Frankenberry says, located an important gender difference in His Religion and Hers (1923). Cf. Nancy K. Frankenberry, “Feminist Philosophy of Religion”, in Stanford Encyclopeadia of Philosophy, 2005. 11 This book is not to be mistaken with Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae, written during his imprisonment. 12 Cf. Process Metaphysics, 1996, ch. IX. 13 Peter M. Simons, Parts. A Study in Ontology, Oxford, Clarendon, 1987; Roberto Poli & Peter M. Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Boston (Mass.) / Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Nijhoff international philosophy series 53, 1996. 14 Cf. Jacquette Dale (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Brentano, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004.

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John B. Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffin have insisted on five totally inappropriate traits: God as a Cosmic Moralist; God as the Unchanging and Passionless Absolute; God as Controlling Power; God as Sanctioner of the Status Quo; God as Male (Process Theology. An Introductory Exposition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Westminster Press, 1976). See also the revised edition of Cobb’s A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead [1965], Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox, 2007. 16 It is difficult not to mention with that regard the amazingly strong influence of an extremely naïve reading of the apocalypses of Daniel and (especially) of Ezekiel on US foreign “policy”. 17 To take an early example: J. Kennedy, “Buddhist Gnosticism. The System of Basilides”, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1902, pp. 377-415. 18 James M. Hanson, “Was Jesus a Buddhist?”, Buddhist-Christian Studies, Volume 25, 2005, pp. 75-89. 19 Cf. Gerd Petzke, Die Traditonen uber Apollonus von Tyana und das Neue Testament, Leiden, E. J. Brill, Studia ad Corpus hellenisticum Novi Testamenti, 1970; Robert J. Penella, The Letters of Apollonius of Tyana. A critical text with prolegomena, translation and commentary, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1979. Francophiles should enjoy Antonin Artaud’s related speculations in his novel Héliogabale ou L'anarchiste couronné [1932]. Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, Paris, NRF Éditions Gallimard, Œuvres complètes tome VII, 1982. 20 “The age of martyrs dawns with the coming of rationalism. The antecedent phases of religion had been essentially sociable. Many were called, and all were chosen. The final phase introduces the note of solitariness: ‘Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way […] and few there be that find it.’ When a modern religion forgets this saying, it is suffering from an atavistic relapse into primitive barbarism. It is appealing to the psychology of the herd, away from the intuitions of the few.” (Religion in the Making, p. 28) 21 The concept of opacity has a farily long philosophical history; for a recent occurrence in the process field, see Nicholas Rescher, Process Metaphysics. An Introduction to Process Philosophy, Albany (N.Y.), State University of New York Press, 1996, pp. 129-132. The general background of our discussion has been elaborated on the occasion of two complementary studies: Whitehead's Pancreativism: The Basics (Frankfurt, ontos verlag, 2006) and Whitehead’s Pancreativism: Jamesean Applications (forthcoming in 2008). 22 These categories will be developed in the (SUNY, 2009) second volume of the Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies: Michel Weber and Anderson Weekes (Eds.), Consciousness Studies from a Whiteheadian Process Perspective. 23 Ludwig von Bertalanffy, “An Essay on the Relativity of Categories,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 22, N°4, 1955, pp. 243-263. 24 Metaphysics Beta, 4. 25 Metaphysics Gamma, 3; Posterior Analytics I, 77a10-22. 26 Metaphysics Gamma, 7; Posterior Analytics I, 77a22-25. 27 “I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it” (Process and Reality, p. xii). 28 CN163; cf. PNK76. 29 Alfred North Whitehead, “Immortality,” in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, New York, Tudor Publishing Company, The Library of Living Philosophers III, 1941, pp. 682-700, p. 700; cf. IS 267 or ESP 96. 30 Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of Doctrine. I. The Emergence of Catholic Tradition (100-600); II. The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700); III. The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300); IV. Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700); V. Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700), Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1971, 1974, 1978, 1984, 1989. Jean Soler, Aux origines du Dieu unique. L’invention du monothéisme. Préface de Jean Perrot, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2002.

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With the quadrilogy Peshat, Remetz, Derasha, Sod. Cf. Henri de Lubac, s. j., Exégèse médiévale. Les quatre sens de l'Écriture, quatre tomes, Paris, Desclée De Brouwer, Théologie, 1959-1964. 32 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World. The Lowell Lectures, 1925, New York, The Free Press, 1967. 33 This part of our argument expands the conclusions of our recent monograph: Whitehead's Pancreativism, op. cit. 34 James Ward, “Psychology,” in Thomas Spencer Baynes (ed.), Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed, Edinburgh, 1886, vol. XX, pp. 37-85; Johann Friedrich Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neugegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik [1824]. 35 Frederick W. H. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (2 vols.), New York, Longmans, Green 1954 [February1903 (posthumous)], Vol. 1, p. 72. 36 Myers, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 14-15. 37 Cf. Myers, “The Subliminal Consciousness”, Proceedings of the English Society for Psychical Research, 7, 1891-1892, 298-355, p. 301. 38 It cannot be denied of course that the concept of “common good” is itself problematic and needs an industrious argument to be settled. See, e.g., Arthur Edward Murphy, “The Common Good”, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 24, 1950-1951, pp. 3-18 or David Ray Griffin, John B. Cobb Jr., Richard Falk, & Catherine Keller, The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement, Westminster, John Knox Press, 2006. 39 We have been toying with this concept since our 2000 paper “Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective,” soon to be published in the second Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies (cf. supra n. 22). Our argument was inspired by Bateson’s schismogenetic analyses. It has recently occurred to us that Cornélius Castoriadis has proposed for his part a contrast between the process of psychogenesis or idiogenesis and the process of koinogenesis or sociogenesis: cf. his 1975 L'institution imaginaire de la société (Paris, Éditions du Seuil), now available in English under the title The Imaginary Institution of Society (Translated by Kathleen Blamey, Cambridge, MIT Press) and especially Chap. 6 (“The Social-Historical Institution: Individuals and Things”). 40 Plato, Epistles, R. G. Bury, trans. in Loeb Classical Library, London, New York, 1929, VII, 531. 41 Michel Weber, Whitehead’s Pancreativism. The Basics, op. cit., esp. chapters V and VI. 42 A recent exemplification: morality has to be enforced “in the name” of someone: see Dufour drawing the consequences of the cultural desintegration idenfied by Lyotard. (Dany-Robert Dufour, L’art de réduire les têtes. Sur la nouvelle servitude de l’homme libéré à l’ère du capitalisme total, Paris, Éditions Denoël, 2003.) 43 “Thus so far as the immediate present subject is concerned, the origination of conceptual valuation according to Category IV is devoted to such a disposition of emphasis as to maximize the integral intensity derivable from the most favourable balance. The subjective aim is the selection of the balance amid the given materials.” (PR 278; cf. PR 187; “maximum” is quite frequent, e.g., PR 128) 44 Cf. the kalocentric arguments of Ferré and Henning: Frederick Ferré, Being and Value, Knowing and Value, Living and Value (Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, State University of New York Press Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought, 1996, 2001, 2001); George J. Allan & Merle Allshouse (eds.), Nature, Truth, and Value: Exploring the Thinking of Frederick Ferré, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2005; Brian G. Henning, The Ethics of Creativity: Beauty, Morality, and Nature in a Processive Cosmos, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005; also of the same author: “Is There an Ethics of Creativity?” in Michel Weber et Pierfrancesco Basile (sous la direction de), Chromatikon II. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès—Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2006, pp. 161-174. 45 L. Charles Birch and John Boswell Cobb, Jr., The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community, Cambridge - New York, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 152-153.

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Cf. also the interesting reappropriations of Heidegger (“das Nichts” and “der Abgrund”), Sartre (“le néant”) and Berdyaev (“me-ontic” freedom). Bergson and Camus are especially important formaking sense of Sartre’s arguments. For a broader standpoint, Rudolf Otto’s analyses in West-östliche Mystik. Vergleich und Unterscheidung zur Wesensdeutung (Gotha, Klotz, 1929; Mysticsm East and West. A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism, Translated by Bertha L. Bracey and Richenda C. Payne, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1932) remain important. 47 Cf. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves. Contracting the Power of the Wild Woman, London, Rider, 1992. 48 A forthcoming Whiteheadian commentary of Thomas should make this plain. 49 Any thorough argument would of course differentiate the holy from the sacred and from the divine. Cf., e.g., Nathan Söderblom, sub verso “Holiness (General and Primitive)”, in James Hastings (ed.), Encyclopædia of Religions and Ethics, Vol. VI, New York - Edinburgh, Charles Scribner's Sons - T. & T. Clark, 1913, pp. 731-741: “Holiness is the great word in religion; it is even more essential than the notion of God.” 50 Mircea Eliade, Techniques du Yoga [1948]. Nouvelle édition, revue et augmentée, Paris, NRF Éditions Gallimard, 1975. 51 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902, New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta, Longman, Green, and Co., 1902, pp. 380-381. 52 Schopenhauer’s Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (1813) and Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818) were the main actors in the introduction of Indian philosophy on the European scene, but that discovery was rather short-lived: the Eurocentrism of the late nineteenth century prevented any lasting interest until the second part of the twentieth century, when the seminal works of K. Nishida, D. T. Suzuki (and later of Alan W. Watts and Steve Odin) hit the scene. Besides, the speculative literature exploiting both Whiteheadian and Buddhists insights is very rich, especially on the concepts of togetherness, co-dependent origination, prehension, absolute nothingness, emptiness and kenosis. 53 Interestingly enough, the importance of this move is being rediscovered in psychotherapy: see especially François Roustang’s recent outstanding works (e.g., La fin de la plainte, Paris, Éditions Odile Jacob, 2000; or Il suffit d’un geste, Odile Jacob, 2003). Some of his books have been translated in English: How to Make a Paranoid Laugh? or What is Psychoanalysis?, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 [Comment faire rire un paranoïaque, Paris, Éditions Odile Jacob, 1996]; Dire Mastery, Discipleship from Freud to Lacan, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982 [Un destin si funeste, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, Critique, 1976]; Psychoanalysis Never Lets Go, Baltimore (MD.), Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980 [Elle ne le lâche plus, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1980]; The Lacanian Delusion, Oxford University Press, 1990 [Lacan. De l'équivoque à l'impasse, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, Arguments, 1986]. 54 Cf. of course Jean-François Lyotard diagnosis in La condition post-moderne. Rapport sur le savoir (Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1979) and the complementary analyses of Michel Henry in La Barbarie (Paris, Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1987) and the numerous relevant works of Pierre Bourdieu and Dany-Robert Dufour. See also Bertram Gross’ Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America (New-York, M. Evans & Co., 1980). 55 Cf. Gregory J. Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered. Thomas and John in Controversy (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1994) and, by the same author, One Jesus, Many Christs: How Jesus Inspired not One True Christianity, but Many—The Truth about Christian Origins (San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1997). Obiter scriptum, one could underline a revealing fact. Whiteheadian scholarship has kept a fair visibility in natural theology only thanks to the Center for Process Studies located in the (Methodist) Claremont School of Theology. Until recently, there was even no cooperation whatsoever with the Philosophy Department of Claremont Graduate University and this can be easily understood in the context of the current pattern pervading the Humanities. (Philip Clayton and Roland Faber are now recognized as members of the Philosophy Department’s faculty.) More curious is however the fact that Claremont process thinkers and their colleagues of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center (that fosters, with the

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Claremont Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, internationally renowned Gnostic studies that benefit from the expertise of outstanding scholars such as James M. Robinson and Gregory Riley) basically ignore each other. (Cf., e.g., James M. Robinson (General Editor), The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Translated and Introduced by Members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California. Third, Completely Revised Edition, With an Afterword by Richard Smith, New York, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1990.) It is quite unlikely that our short philosophical study, imperfect as it might be, changes that state of affairs, but the future should be at the very least kept open for new heuristic ventures beneficial for both fields. As Felix Frankfurter claimed, in a letter to the New York Times on January 8, 1948, reprinted as a Preface to the Mentor Book edition of AE (1928), the “need for breaking down sterilizing departmentalization has been widely felt. Unfortunately, however, a too frequent way of doing it has been, wittily but not too unfairly, described as the cross-sterilization of the social sciences.”

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1. Introduction Why should anyone talk about process theology and Islam in the first place? After all, Islam is a religion and process theology presupposes a certain philosophical system—process philosophy. Moreover, while process theology is a product of the Western world, Islam is more connected with the East. This requires an analysis of the Muslims’ apprehensions of the West. Roughly, we can differentiate three types of attitudes Muslims have shown towards Western systems of thought—rejection, integration, and dialogue. The option of rejection, rooted in the idea of Islam’s perfection and self-sufficiency together with the political implications of Western dominance, is advocated mainly by conservatives, who claim that anything coming from the West is contradictory and harmful to Islam. A softer form of rejection is held by those who claim that Islam does not need to take foreign elements into consideration because it has already incorporated everything of value. Those who advocate integration claim that Islam is or has become an anti-progressive religion. Thus, even if it leads to a loss of Islamic authenticity, the only way to make it relevant today is to re-formulate its essentials in the light of Western ideals. Both rejection and integration types are in opposite extremes. Either form is exclusively immersed in its selfidentity, failing to do justice to the otherness of outside elements. I find both positions equally problematic. Dialogue, by contrast is a modest, but more promising option. Here one assumes that both Islam and the West share certain fundamental conceptions that could be mutually improved through a non-partisan dialogue. Seeking to relate process theology to Islam in a dialogical form, my work is based on the premise that there are significant similarities between the basics of process theology and a certain interpretation of Islam, which represents its spirit more accurately; and that, therefore, both Islam and process theology can learn from each other and prove mutually enriching. The purpose of this paper is to explore the similarities between process thought and Islam. In doing so, I make no judgments as to the superior merits of either. Rather, I try to be as descriptive as possible, leaving the task of evaluation to later studies. I hope that this modest conversation between the two traditions can facilitate fruitful results in the future.

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Department of Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330; www.csun.edu; [email protected].

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2. Religion and Science Ian Barbour divides the possible relations between science and religion into four categories— conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration (1997, 77-105). With some reservations, the same categorization can be found in the Islamic world as well. Roughly, Muslims address the issue either from a purely theoretical perspective, focusing on Islam’s emphasis on science, or from more concrete perceptions dealing with the Western origination of modern science and some of its assumptions. On the theoretical level, Muslims generally hold that Islam is fully compatible with science, a view that corresponds to Barbour’s categories of dialogue and integration. There are two reasons supporting this view. One is that Islam extensively values and encourages science, reason, and knowledge, an attitude that is nicely expressed by Oliver Leaman: “if it is ever useful to rank religions with respect to rationality […] there is little doubt that Islam would score highly” (1999, 15). The other reason lies in Muslims’ achievements in science, especially during the peak of Islamic civilization. “[F]rom the eight century to the end of the fourteenth,” writes Toby E. Huff, “Arabic science was probably the most advanced science in the world […]. The facts, theories, and scientific speculations contained in [Arabic scientists’] treatises were the most advanced to be had anywhere in the world, including China” (1993, 48). When modern Western science comes into the picture, however, the issue becomes more complicated. In Abasi Kiyimba’s words “the big question is whether modern science is acceptable the way it is or whether it should be applied Islamically or whether in fact the Muslims should abandon any direct relationship with modern science and strike out to develop what would be called ‘Islamic science’” (1998, 10). During the modern era, this question has become one of the most important issues Muslims have ceaselessly tried to resolve. Except for those who claim that Islam inherently obstructs any scientific endeavor, and those who find an irreconcilable conflict between science and religion, the majority of Muslims have been highly critical of certain assumptions of the modern Western science. I suggest that one of the meeting points of Islam and process thought is their awareness of some of the problematical aspects of science. In this regard, what in process thought might resonate with Muslims? One idea that corresponds with many Muslims’ views is Whitehead’s criticism of scientific materialism and its inability to do justice to our employment of our senses and our pursuit of meaning and coherence (SMW 17). More specifically, Whitehead criticizes the modern scientific cosmology that “presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread throughout space in a flux of configurations” (SMW 17). According to David Ray Griffin, who provides a systematic elaboration of Whitehead’s criticisms, Max Weber’s phrase “the disenchantment of the world” nicely identifies the sort of worldview modernity has created (2001, vii). Griffin explains that by this phrase, “Weber meant that the world is no longer believed to contain any inherent meaning or normative values around which human beings should orient their lives” (2001, vii). According to Griffin, this disenchanted worldview was not produced by science itself, but was a by-product of modern

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science (1988, 1-2). There is, therefore, nothing essential to science “that is in conflict with any beliefs essential to vital religion, especially theistic religion” (Griffin 2000, xv). What are the main characteristics of modern science that have led to a disenchanted worldview and consequently to the apparent conflict between science and religion in modern times? According to Griffin, one source of the conflict between science and religion lies in the acceptance by religious thought of supernaturalism (2001, 23). Supernaturalism refers to the idea “of a divine being who could (and perhaps does) occasionally interrupt the world’s most fundamental causal processes” (Griffin 2001, 21). The other source of conflict is the dominant modern view that associates science only with atheistic and materialistic naturalism (Griffin 2001, 20-29). As long as these two assumptions are held to be true, the conflict between science and religion cannot be resolved. By following Whitehead, Griffin proposes that a real reconciliation requires “a scientific-religious naturalism, supportive of the necessary presuppositions of the scientific and religious communities” (2001, 29). In his assessment of modern science, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a respected contemporary Muslim scholar, reflects similar insights. He maintains that the history of Islam is full of scientific achievements whose contribution to the development of the modern science is significant. However, he argues that while Islamic science did not discredit the religious and moral values of humans, modern science did. Because of discrediting these values, Nasr argues, modern science has produced enormous threats to the spiritual aspect of human life (Kiyimba 1998, 24). Basically, Nasr criticizes the positivistic interpretation of science and argues that such an interpretation has done massive damage to our civilization by cutting humans off from their spiritual sources. Moreover, Nasr argues that modern science has also jeopardized the very existence of life on the earth by causing “directly or indirectly unprecedented environmental disasters, bringing about the real possibility of the total collapse of the natural order” (Kiyimba 1998, 24). Because of the dangers of modern science and its irreconcilability with Islamic norms, Nasr and others, while rejecting the secular and positivistic norms associated with science, have tried to develop an Islamic understanding of science. According to them, “the idea that natural science represents a system of pure, unmediated truth is no longer as popular as it was in the past, and science is often viewed as just as ideological as religion itself” (Leaman 1999, 53). These authors have tried to develop an Islamic framework within which natural sciences may also be put in its proper place. Given the criticisms directed at modern science both from Muslims and process thinkers, it is fair to suggest that Islam, as interpreted by the majority of Muslims, and process thought meet on similar grounds with respect to science. I further believe that both sides have things to learn from one another. It seems that Muslim communities have greatly suffered from the negative effects of the disenchanted worldview. Thus, they are highly sensitive about keeping their religious identities alive. I am suggesting that process theologians can deepen their perceptions of the importance of religiosity through conversing with the Muslim experience. On the other side of the story, Muslims can learn from the process insight how to reconstruct a form of naturalism that does not conflict with their fundamental religious convictions. This, I argue, will provide them with sounder grounds on which to engage with concrete scientific phenomena.

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3. Centrality of Constant Creation—Event or Substance As I have argued elsewhere, the Indian philosopher and poet Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938) endorses Whiteheadian conceptions in a significant way (Ruzgar 2005, 170-77). In rejecting sensationalism, atheism, and materialism, in recognizing the world as an organism, in emphasizing the importance of events as opposed to substances, and even in understanding the concepts of omnipotence and omniscience, Iqbal comes close to Whitehead’s process thought. In this and the following section, I deal mainly with Iqbal’s thoughts. While the present section focuses on Iqbal’s conception of the material world, the next section will address his conception of the divine. Although Iqbal has been influenced by many Western and Eastern thinkers, the authenticity of his own system cannot be denied. While avoiding a full account of the influences on Iqbal, we cannot pass over his debt to Mulla Sadra and his dynamic account of nature. According to Oliver Leaman, Iqbal’s theory of the self “follows directly from [Sadra’s] sort of metaphysics” (1999, 29-30). Even though the extent of Sadra’s influence on Iqbal is not clear (see Rahman 1975, 108, 120), it is certain that both scholars’ understanding of reality is event-based. Contrary to the dominant view among Muslim philosophers to prioritize essence over existence, Mulla Sadra gives precedence to existence (see Leaman 1999, 89-96; Moris 2003, 88-95), which he terms wujud, translated either as “existence” or “being” (Moris 2003, 88; Leaman 1999, 89). Sadra holds the view that “Being is a unity but the existents are multiple” (Moris 2003, 92). Being has infinite modes of self-determination in various gradations of intensity that we perceive as the multiplicity of existents (Moris 2003, 92-94; Nasr 1996, 279); it “manifests itself in different ways in reality” (Leaman 1999, 92). He calls this tashkik. More precisely, tashkik refers to the process whereby “a single universal is predictable of its particulars in varying grades or degrees or alternatively, when one single reality actualizes itself in a number of things in varying degrees” (Moris 2003, 93). At every moment, according to Sadra, there is a constant movement towards perfection. In fact, he defines motion as “the gradual movement of a thing from potentiality to actuality or from imperfection to perfection in duration” (Moris 2003, 96). Accordingly, Sadra holds that the world is in “continuous regeneration and re-creation” (Moris 2003, 96). Contrary to the narrow understanding of motion by Aristotelian philosophers, which limits it only to accidents (Moris 2003, 96; Nasr 1996, 284), Sadra argues that “it is not only the accidents but the substance of the universe itself that partakes of motion and becoming, i.e., continuous recreation and rebirth” (Nasr 1996, 284). Sadra calls this substantial motion al-haraka aljawhariya. The phenomena of the world are brought into existence by the perpetual operation of this process (Leaman 1999, 29). Seyyed Hossein Nasr explains that, in Sadra’s view, “all beings in the universe are seeking perfection and are in the process of becoming and change in order to overcome their imperfections” (1996, 284). This process evolves “from the more general and more indeterminate to the more concrete, determinate types of being” (Leaman 1999, 94). What is particularly striking is Sadra’s explanation of “permanence” and “change” in substantial motion. According to Sadra, Nasr writes, “each form has two faces, one in the world of archetypes and

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the other in nature, the first permanent and the second in continuous renewal” (1996, 285). Moreover, “every existent in the universe which is in a constant state of becoming is related through the archetypes to God who is above and beyond change” (Moris 2003, 98). Sadra’s model marks a significantly dynamic understanding of reality. Everything in the universe is in a constant process of becoming—in permanent flux. For him, there are no fixed or finished “things.” In fact, a “thing” is “a particular ‘structure of events’” (Rahman 1975, 97). Therefore, not things but events constitute the basis of Sadra’s system. How does Sadra’s conception of reality relate to Islam? In other words, is Sadra endorsing an Islamic point of view or is he fostering something non-Islamic? Sadra answers this question himself. By pointing to several verses of the Qur’an, Sadra argues that God is the first to talk about constant change and creation (Rahman 1975, 108). For example, verse 55: 29, which directly refers to the centrality of constant creation, reads that God is “everyday in a new mode” (Rahman 1875, 108). This and similar Qur’anic verses deeply inspired Muhammad Iqbal. As Robert D. Lee rightly points out, Iqbal’s main mission was “to liberate humanity from the clutches of both tradition and modernity, from the mysticism of the East and the reason of the West, from the imperialism of the West and the submissiveness of the East” (1997, 58). Iqbal realized that western superiority was rooted “in the progress of natural science,” which “went hand in hand with denial of religion, morality and of God” (Dar 1956, 11). Furthermore, the sensationalistic, materialistic, and atheistic threads of modern science created irreconcilable “dichotomies such as being and becoming, man and God, mind and matter, reason and intuition, science and religion, sacred and profane, subject and object, thinking and action” (Lee 1997, 61). Iqbal’s whole philosophy can be understood as an attempt to reconcile these dichotomies. With respect to the East, Iqbal diagnosed that “the main responsibility for Oriental decadence lay at the door of those philosophical systems which inculcated self-negation, abnegation and self-abandonment” (Vahid 1959, 27). These philosophical systems, such as Greek philosophy, Neo-Platonism, and mysticism, led people to run away from the difficulties of life, to neglect concrete problems, and value passivity over action. After diagnosing the negative features of both traditions, Iqbal turns his attention to the Qur’an and finds that the Qur’anic conception of the universe does provide a better alternative. According to such Qur’anic verses as 44:38 and 3:190, the universe is not created without any goal. While verse 44:38 emphasizes that creation serves an important purpose, verse 3:190 states that human beings can understand this purpose through the signs inherent in creation. Furthermore, Iqbal states that the Qur’an rejects “a block universe, a finished product, immobile and incapable of change” (1930, 13). This is based on the 35:1, according to which, God “adds to His creation what He wills” (Iqbal 1930, 13). After briefly mentioning the role of human beings in this system, Iqbal concludes that “God becomes a co-worker with [them], provided [they take] the initiative” (1930, 16), which is explicitly voiced by verse 13:11: “Verily God will not change the condition of men, till they change what is in themselves” (Iqbal 1930, 16). As is not the case for modern science, God plays an important role in the Qur’anic conception of the universe. According to Iqbal, “the existence of God, the reality of the Self, its Freedom and Immortality” (Enver 1944, 3) are the most fundamental notions to be preserved. These notions can be proved by intuition, which is a unique and extraordinary experience. Iqbal

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justifies intuition on the basis of the subjectivity of time and space. As Alam Khundmiri argues, the East presupposed that time is unreal. This presupposition could not support the idea of progress in time, the universe as a growing self, and the significance of history (Khundmiri 2001, 177-78). In contrast, Khundmiri argues, modernity accepts time and change by preferring history against “the timeless principle of eternity” (2001, 181). Although Iqbal is closer to the modern idea in his emphasis on the importance of time, he nevertheless does not accept the view that time is only serial. According to him, there are “different orders of time, and different levels of the experience of time” (Khundmiri 2001, 188). In the Islamic world, the scholar Fakhruddin ‘Iraqi had a dynamic conception of space, which was differentiated into three kinds—“the space of material bodies, the space of immaterial beings, and the space of God” (Enver 1944, 11). Although this view was plausible to a certain extent, Iqbal concludes that ‘Iraqi was wrong in his assumption that “space is something which is given” (Enver 1944, 12). ‘Iraqi’s assumption was presupposed in the idea of an unchanging universe, which was characteristically Aristotelian (Enver 1944, 12). Iqbal’s own argument is based on the multi-dimensionality of space, according to which there are different dimensions of space in different beings. According to him, “[t]here is no absolute space in which things are situated” (Enver 1944, 12). With regards to time, ‘Iraqi makes similar observations: time changes in accordance with the varying modes of beings. Iqbal accepts this view and additionally argues that time is different at different levels of experience (Enver 1944, 15), even within the same being. At the level of mere perception, time appears as having a serial character. But, in relation to the inner self, time is totally different because “the past, the present, and the future all intertwine and form a unity” (Enver 1944, 15). Based on the fact that there are different dimensions of space in different beings and that time is “relative to the varying grades of beings,” Iqbal postulates the possibility of the existence of “other levels of experience than the normal level of spatio-temporal experience” (Enver 1944, 15). This is how Iqbal derives the justification of intuition. After establishing the existence of intuition, Iqbal argues that we can intuit the self. Through intuition, we can “directly see that the self is real and existent” (Enver 1944, 35). The self is the starting point for his metaphysics. In Iqbal’s words, “there is nothing static in [our] inner life; all is a constant mobility, an unceasing flux of states, a perpetual flow in which there is no halt or resting place” (1930, 63). The main characteristics of the self are its directedness, freedom, and immortality (Enver 1944, 31). Very briefly, Iqbal argues that we intuit ourselves always as free and in a direction of purpose. Moreover, our intuition reveals that we are emotional and willful beings. According to Iqbal, the material world is real and really does exist (Enver 1944, 50). In fact, the main reason for his rejection of Greek thought lies in his insistence on the existence of the material world. But, Iqbal rejects the materialistic claim, according to which nature is “made up of small, hard and inert substances existing in a void, called space. These substances are atoms—small, impenetrable and indivisible physical entities. Things are combinations of atoms” (Enver 1944, 50). Against such an atomism, Iqbal argues that not substances but events in their mutual relation to each other constitute the basic elements of the material world.

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In his view of the material world, Iqbal fully agrees with Whitehead’s thesis that the world is an organism. Reality is not static, but an ever growing and constantly changing process. Iqbal holds that “the nature of the material world is that of the self; it is life” (Enver 1944, 56). In the whole universe, according to Iqbal, there is a “tendency to individuate and to grow as an individual” (Enver 1944, 59). Vahid notes that in Iqbal’s system, “there is a gradually rising note of egohood in the whole Universe. We are conscious of this in our own self, in Nature before us and in the ultimate principle of all life, the Ultimate Ego” (1959, 29). Thus, egohood constitutes the key term in Iqbal’s philosophy. The universe “is a constantly progressing, selfgenerating and self-evolving universe, whose inner possibilities of growth and evolution will never know any limits” (Enver 1944, 64).

4. Conceiving the Divine—Omnipotence and Omniscience One of the most unique aspects of process thought involves the conception of God. This conception significantly differs from the traditional understanding of God. The traditional conception of God was based on an all-powerful and all-determining God. Accordingly, all events were the result of God’s causation (Cobb and Griffin 1976, 49). Most of these events “were understood to be caused by God through the mediation of worldly or natural causes. God was the primary cause of these events, while the natural antecedents were called “secondary causes.” However, a few events were thought to be caused directly by God, without the use of secondary causes. These events were “miracles” (Cobb and Griffin 1976, 49). In discussing traditional theism, Griffin makes a distinction between “the all-determining version and the free-will version” (2001, 131). The former version claims that “God not only has the power to determine all events in the world but actually does so” (Griffin 2001, 131). Furthermore, argues Griffin, theism holds that God is both impassible and immutable. The immutability of God is derived from the eternality of God, which regards God as completely outside time (Griffin 2001, 131). The free-will version argues that “the creatures—at least the human ones—have freedom vis-à-vis God, being able to act contrary to the divine will, and time is real for God, so that there can be genuine interaction between God and the world, with God responding to the free decisions of the creatures (as well as vice versa)” (Griffin 2001, 132). Both versions create several problems, one of which is human freedom. In the Islamic world, although the general and traditional view is that God is all-powerful and all-determining, there are philosophers who have adopted different perspectives. One such perspective was presented by the Ash’arites, one of the main theological sects in Islam. After arguing that atoms constitute the basic structure of reality, they held that “when we act, our action is brought about through God, and when change in the universe occurs, it is God who is behind it all, holding together the atoms in certain ways, in order to give the impression of change and also the idea that the universe operates in accordance with rules” (Leaman 1999, 34). Al-Ghazali presents similar views by arguing that “God can do anything logically possible” (Leaman 1999, 33).

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With regard to miracles, the traditional conception holds that “God intervenes in nature on occasion, to overturn the normal rules by which phenomena operate” (Leaman 1999, 35). In a similar vein, Al-Ghazali argues that God is constrained only by logical impossibilities and, since God’s intervention in natural laws is not logically impossible, God can overrule these natural laws, thereby creating miracles (Leaman 1999, 35). Against this traditional contention, Muslim philosophers tend to explain natural events in terms of causes and effects. Ibn Sina argues that since natural phenomena are subject to causes and effects, there is a rational structure of reality that is not accessible to everybody (Leaman 1999, 33). He also differs in his understanding of prophecy, arguing that “the natural states of affairs must come into being once the appropriate set of prior conditions is in existence” (Leaman 1999, 35). In sum, while the majority of Muslims believe in a supernatural God who is able to intervene in the natural laws of the world, and does intervene, Muslim philosophers have sought to explain the universe in line more with natural causes and effects. What does Iqbal say on this issue? As we have seen, in Iqbal’s consideration of the world, there is a gradual rising of egohood everywhere, which is linked with the idea that there is a “free creative will” (Enver 1944, 65) both in us and in the universe. What is the source of this will? Iqbal says that it is either a blind force or a purposive one. He rejects the former possibility. The latter idea can be conceived in two ways: either the purposive self is directed by a being external to the universe, or the universe itself is a purposeful ego. Iqbal rejects the former possibility by arguing that if an external being gave the universe its whole purpose, then three undesirable consequences would follow. First, our freedom would be a mere illusion; second, this being would not be a creator but be a mere contriver; and third, even if it were somehow the creator, it would not make any sense for it to create a world because of the difficulties this world generates (Enver 1944, 65-66). Iqbal thus argues that “the universe itself is a Self or an Ego” (Enver 1944, 66). Although the gradual rising of egohood reaches a significant perfection in human beings, it does not stop there. There is also an all-comprehensive ego—the Ultimate Ego. Iqbal presents three possibilities for the relationship between the Ultimate Ego and the finite egos: pantheism, deism, and his own position. Iqbal rejects pantheism because of its denial of the existence and reality of finite egos. He also rejects deism because it creates an unbridgeable gap between the Ultimate Ego and the finite egos. “The infinite reached by contradicting the finite is a false infinite” (Enver 1944, 69). Iqbal’s own position consists of the idea that the Ultimate Ego “holds the finite egos in its own self, without obliterating their existence” (Enver 1944, 68). Contrary to the other two alternatives, this position does full justice to the reality and existence of finite egos. Iqbal’s conception of the Ultimate Ego is both immanent and transcendent. Although he puts more emphasis on the transcendence of God, according to Ishrat Hasan Enver, neither transcendence nor immanence is exclusively true of God. Furthermore, the Ultimate Ego is a person. The personality of the Ultimate Ego involves creativeness, omnipotence, omniscience, and eternity (Enver 1944, 75). Iqbal’s interpretation of these attributes significantly differs from the traditional interpretations.

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Although Iqbal says that God had the initial power not to create the world, he nevertheless argues that God’s power is limited by God’s own goodness and wisdom (Enver 1944, 77). This position differs significantly from the traditional understanding of God’s power as unlimited and even capricious. While Iqbal accepts the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, he differs from the traditional understanding by seeing creativity as “the unfoldment of [God’s] own inner possibilities” (Enver 1944, 76). With regard to omniscience, Iqbal argues that while God knows both past and the future, God’s knowledge of the past is qualitatively different from God’s knowledge of the future—God knows the future only as a possibility, not actuality. Again, instead of conceiving eternity as the idea that time has “no beginning and no end” (Enver 1944, 78), Iqbal sees it as the idea that the self of the Ultimate Ego “holds the entire sweep of history as a moment in its inner life” (Enver 1944, 79). Of course, understanding God’s attributes in this way has attracted some criticisms from Islamic circles. For example, after claiming that Iqbal does not capture the true spirit of the Qur’an, Raschid argues that he develops a finite conception of deity, which cannot be reconciled with the “supremely transcendent, but also immanent, God of the Qur’an” (1981, xiii). According to Raschid, the reason for the finitude of Iqbal’s God lies in Iqbal’s “inclusion of the created order (nature) within the being of the creator (God)” (1981, 59). After calling Iqbal’s concept of God “panentheistic,” Raschid claims that such a conception is irreconcilably against the plain doctrine of the Qur’an. More specifically, Raschid argues that Iqbal’s conceptions of creativity, eternity, omniscience, and omnipotence reinforce his fundamentally finite notion of deity. Is Raschid’s claim about the limitedness of Iqbal’s conception of God correct? Mehmet Aydin provides the best reply. He explains that “if there was [according to Iqbal] an ontologically independent being outside of God into which God’s creativity would not be able to penetrate, then God would be limited” (2001, 99). But Iqbal does not hold such a view. The fact that the finite egos have partial self-determination does not mean that God is limited (Aydin 2001, 99). The only limitation that can be attributed to God is a self-limitation, in accordance with God’s wisdom and goodness. This is not an outside limitation, but a self-limitation. As a general assessment, we can argue that there are significant similarities between Iqbal and Whitehead. As Aydin notes, both philosophers essentially have the same views on the relationship between science and religion; both start with experience; both are pluralists; human beings are conceived by both in their organic unity; both emphasize the importance of “events,” as in modern physics (2000, 124). Although it is true that Iqbal does not hold a limited conception of God, we have to inquire whether his conception of God is thoroughly successful. More specifically, as Aydin asks, “if the universe is the result of God’s creation [out of nothing], how can we ascribe the power of self-determination to the finite egos?” (2001, 107). Aydin finds Whitehead’s views on creation cosmologically more consistent than Iqbal’s (Aydin 2001, 108). However, he thinks that Iqbal’s views are closer to classical theism, implying that Whitehead’s position creates theologically significant problems (Aydin 2001, 108). Therefore, it is crucial to analyze whether or not the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is an Islamic doctrine—and so we turn now to this question.

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5. The Doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is one of the most important issues on which Iqbal differs from process thought. As long as one accepts this doctrine, there is no theoretical framework that will successfully reconcile the problem of evil with God’s goodness. While process theology rejects doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, Iqbal does not. On this specific issue, I disagree with Iqbal. As Harry Wolfson successfully demonstrates, there are good reasons to consider this doctrine unIslamic. According to Wolfson, the mutakallimun [speculative theologians] approved of the theory “which is commonly known as creation ex nihilo, but which they describe as creation ‘not from something’ (la min shay’)” (1976, 355). Wolfson claims that “[a] conception of creation expressed explicitly in terms which mean creation ex nihilo is not to be found either in the Jewish or in the Christian or in the Muslim Scripture” (1976, 355). Those who argue for creation out of nothing take several verses in the Qur’an as definitive proofs. One of them is verse 41:10: “Then [God] applied himself to the [creation of] heaven, and it was smoke” (Wolfson 1976, 357). Wolfson notes that there are two interpretations of this verse: one claims that the smoke itself was created by God, implying that the verse supports the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, while the other argues that “the verse means that ‘the heaven was created from something,’ that is, from something eternal” (1976, 358). Another argument developed for the support of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is the alleged distinction made between the two terms in the Qur’an—khalaqa and ibda’. The basic meaning of both terms is “to create.” Traditionally, however, ibda’ is taken to mean “to create without any tools” while khalaqa “to create with tools.” For example, Asghar Ali Engineer argues that these two terms have distinct meanings: Bada’ refers to creation out of nothingness […]. Allah is called mubdi’, who creates without any pre-existing material or without any tools or without space and time. Such an act of creation is only for Allah; no one can assist him or participate with him in this process of creation (2001, 49). Engineer argues that although it means “to create” as well, khalaqa has different connotations than ibda’ in that “[i]t means creation with tools, with assistance, with pre-existing material and in time and space. When it refers to Allah, however, khalaqa could be synonymous with ibda,’ i.e. creation without any assistance, without any tools or outside time and space” (2001, 49). However, Wolfson argues that the issue is not as clear as Engineer thinks. According to him, the mere fact that the Qur’an uses both ibda’ and khalaqa in describing God’s creation does not necessarily mean that their meanings are different (1976, 358-59). It certainly does not mean that ibda’ refers to creation out of nothing while khalaqa specifies the creation of mankind. Wolfson’s argument is supported by further evidence. He argues that “while early Muslims knew that creation meant opposition to eternity and while they may have thought of it as being out of nothing, they were not aware of the problem whether creation was out of nothing or out of a pre-existent formless matter” (1976, 359). The full implications of the problem of whether the world was created out of nothing or out of a pre-existent formless matter and whether the “nonexistent” is “something” or “nothing” appeared among Muslims in the early ninth century (Wolfson 1976, 359-60). Although the Qur’an explicitly says that the world is created, the way

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it was created is, nevertheless, quite vague. It is not clear whether the Qur’an means creation out of nothing or creation out of something, and whether this “something” is itself created or eternal. Considering the ambiguity of this issue in the Qur’an and considering the foreign influences of outside cultures and philosophies upon Islam specifically on this matter (Wolfson 1976, 36062), I argue that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not a Qur’anic doctrine. It can be shown that this doctrine entered the Islamic world from non-Islamic sources and does not necessarily reflect an Islamic point of view. I agree with Wolfson in his suggestion that even “before the appearance of Arabic translations of Greek philosophic works and even before the rise of Mu’tazilism,” the Syrian Christians “transmitted to the Muslim world a creation formula,” which suggests that the world was created from the “nonexistent,” which was interpreted as “nothing” (1976, 363).

6. Conclusion Process thought, in my view, develops the most accurate and detailed theory with regard to the science/religion relationship. After rejecting materialist, atheistic, and sensationalist aspects of modern science, process thought endorses the main point of the scientific worldview by developing a naturalistic form of theism. Islam also rejects the above-mentioned aspects of the modern science. I argue that dialogue with process thought on this matter can help Muslims recognize that science, when understood in Whiteheadian terms, does not necessarily cancel out theistic notions. Process theologians, on the other hand, can learn more about the destructive consequences of modern science from the Muslim experience. After analyzing basic cosmological notions of process thought and Islam, it became apparent that some Muslim scholars understood Islam in more process lines, which I believe is more accurate than the dominant interpretation of Islam, which regards the Islamic conception of the universe as a static and fixed one. Both Mulla Sadra and Muhammad Iqbal disagree with this traditional understanding. Basing their theories on the Qur’an, both argue for a dynamic and event-based cosmology. Although Muslims generally accept an all-determining and allpowerful God, some Islamic theologians—I use Iqbal as an example—interpret God’s power and knowledge in ways that differ from the traditional understanding. Iqbal’s considerations constitute a more dynamic relationship between God and the world, which gives the creatures a certain power of self-determination. Some of Iqbal’s views, however, significantly differ from process theology, one of which is the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. While process theologians do not accept this doctrine, Iqbal did. I argue that this doctrine is not rooted in the Qur’an, but entered into the Islamic world from foreign sources. The full ramifications that this doctrine is non-Islamic are left as a consideration for the readers.

Whitehead and Chinese Philosophy: The Ontological Principle and Huayan Buddhism’s Concept of shi Vincent Shen

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1. Whitehead and Chinese philosophy I was quite excited when, some thirty five years ago, I read Process and Reality, and saw that Whitehead wrote, even only in passing, that his philosophy of organism seemed to “approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to Western Asiatic or European thought” (PR 7). Later, I realized that, apart from a very general impression of Chinese philosophy, this comment indicates little more than Whitehead’s intuition of general similarities between his philosophy and Chinese thought. Certainly, Whitehead probably had more knowledge of Indian philosophy, including Indian Buddhism: according to Victor Lowe, Whitehead’s familiarity with Indian philosophy might come from the influence of his elder brother, Henry Whitehead, who served almost thirty years as Bishop of Madra in India, and James Wood, his colleague at Harvard, an expert on Indian philosophy (Lowe 1990, 194-95). This might lie in the background to his writing about Buddhism in Religious in the Making. Thus, I contend that, historically speaking, Whitehead’s discussion of Buddhism resembles Indian varieties more than Chinese ones (such as the Chinese Mahayana Buddhism as developed in the Sanlun, Weishi, Huayan, Tiantai, Chan and Jingtu Schools) and is even further removed from autochthonous Chinese philosophies like Confucianism and Daoism. Nevertheless, this does prevent us from discussing the possible relation between Whitehead’s thought and Chinese philosophy. Especially now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is clear that there could be mutual enrichment between Whitehead’s philosophy and Chinese philosophy, when we consider the following important trends in the twenty-first century. The first important change is the move from human-centrism to the view that human beings are part of nature. Philosophies in the twentieth century tended to be too human-centered: phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, critical theory, neo-Marxism, hermeneutics, and even post-modernism, all focused on human affairs, with little attention paid to nature. Unfortunately, as long as human beings remain blinkered by human-centered discourses, the difficulties they face become unsolvable. Nevertheless, with the emergence of the ecological movement, new discoveries in astronomical physics and new interest in the universe, we nowadays concern ourselves more with nature and the cosmic dimension of human experience.

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Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A2, Canada; [email protected].

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This leads us to an urgent need of philosophy of nature and the necessity to reintegrate human beings in nature. Whitehead’s efforts in the philosophy of nature and Chinese philosophy’s emphasis on the optimal harmony with nature will surely continue to inspire solutions for the problem of humanity’s place in nature. The second is the shift from an ontology of substance to an ontology of dynamic relation. The ontology of substance since Aristotle has been replaced in the twentieth century by the ontology of event, in the early writings of Whitehead, such as the Principle of Relativity, Knowledge of Natural World and the Concept of Nature. Now, in my view, an ontology of events should yield to an ontology of dynamic relation, which has been the basic vision of existence supposed by Chinese philosophy. For example, the Daoist concept of dao penetrating all things (dao tong wei yi), the Confucian concept of ren that represents the inner connectedness of the human with all things, and the Buddhist concept of interdependent causation (yuanqi) all imply an ontology of dynamic relation. In Whitehead’s Process and Reality, we see also a philosophically articulated ontology of dynamic relation. For Whitehead, each actual entity, by its prehensions and objectification, is related to and directs itself towards other actual entities. Whitehead’s three principles—the principle of relativity, the principle of process, and the ontological principle—offer us an image of cosmic process in which all actual entities are dynamically related in a process of being and becoming, in which one and many unify and differentiate in an ever-extending cosmos. The third fundamental change is that all countries in the world are now facing the challenge of globalization, understood basically as a process of deterritorialization. This involves all humankind on the globe as a whole, and is proceeding in every domain of human activities— health care, technology, environment, economics, politics, education, culture, religion, etc. I define globalization as follows: Globalization is a historical process of deterritorialization or cross-bordering, by which human desire, human universalizability and interconnectedness are to be realized on the planet as a whole, and to be concretized now as global free market, transnational political order and cultural globalism.1 Here “deterritorialization” should be understood in a broader sense, as a process of crossing borders, or going beyond oneself to the Multiple Other.2 Globalization is indeed the present historical stage of realizing the unceasing process of human “strangification” and a further invitation to generosity to the other. What impresses me greatly in Whitehead’s philosophy is the persistent cosmological or ontological energy of each being’s going beyond itself by the dynamism of prehension and objectification, as each actual entity is oriented towards multiple others and contributes thereby to the constitution of multiple others. This is very similar to the Confucian concept of shu or tui (extension); to the Daoist concept of the dao’s giving birth to countless things and the sage’s always giving himself to many others; and to the Chinese Buddhist concept of huixiang (turning one’s merit towards others). Indeed, this is a moment of history when people feel both close to each other and very vulnerable. Now should be the critical moment for opening oneself toward the Multiple Other rather than keeping within one’s self-enclosure. In responding to today’s conflicts created by the self-enclosure of different parts (e.g. different disciplines, economic interests, cultures, political and religious groups), we should be more concerned with each other and the possibility of

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mutual enrichment. In order to overcome antagonism by appealing to effective dialogue, I have proposed in recent years “strangification”3 and “language appropriation” as viable strategies. The neologism “strangification” may appear strange in English, yet is much more understandable in Chinese, where the etymology of waitui signifies the act of going outside of oneself to the Multiple Other, or going outside of one’s familiarity to strangeness and to the foreigners. This act presupposes the appropriation of language by which we learn to express our ideas or values in languages understandable to others. In their turn, “strangification” and “language appropriation” presuppose an original generosity toward the other, without limiting oneself to the claim of reciprocity, and without which there is no reciprocity. In my view, the original generosity is the sine qua non of social relationships and ethical rules. Whitehead’s philosophy offers us an onto-cosmological vision that is always inspiring in the search for a profound philosophical foundation for understanding creativity, generosity and strangification, most urgent for the world today in the process of globalization. Chinese Philosophy and Whitehead’s philosophy will surely be mutully inspiring and mutually enriching for each other, especially because of their common concern with creativity, harmony and universal relatedness.

2. Creativity, Harmony and Universal Relatedness The philosophy of Whitehead—despite its deductive character4 that differs significantly from Chinese thought—agrees well with some basic Chinese ideas, especially the notion of cosmic creativity. Whitehead puts “creativity” in the Category of the Ultimate.5 For him, “creativity” is the principle of togetherness, by which many enter into one, a complex unity; it is also the principle of novelty, by which the new complex unity adds to the many and they in turn strive for a new togetherness. Taken together, creativity is the Ultimate metaphysical principle of “novel togetherness,” in which there is the unceasing advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating thereby a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the “many” it finds, and is one among the disjunctive “many” which it leaves: “The many become one, and are increased by one” (PR 21). Creativity is therefore not limited to the Christian understanding of creatio ex nihilo, according to which only God creates, while other seeming creations by creatures simply imitate God’s creativity. Now, in the Whiteheadian sense, there is creativity wherever there is integration of many into one and the adding of a novel one to the many. This process from many to one and from one to many is quite similar to the ultimate principle, established by Yijing (the Book of Changes) of unceasing creativity (shengshend buxi), and Huayan Buddhism’s idea of mutual penetration of one and many. Whitehead’s emphasis on harmony is also very close to the Chinese notion of mind or heart. Both of them do not limit themselves to a static and purist vision of harmony. They cherish instead a dynamic idea of harmony that brings differences, contrasts and tensions to an optimal harmony. Take for example Whitehead’s Categoreal obligations. The first category, that of Subjective Unity, states that many feelings in an incomplete phase are compatible for

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integration by reason of the unity of their subject (PR 26). According to the seventh category, that of Subjective Harmony, the valuation of conceptual feelings is determined by the adaptation of those feelings to the contrasted elements congruent with the subjective aim (PR 27). The first category has to do with the data felt, whereas the seventh with the subjective form of the conceptual feeling. Both jointly express a pre-established harmony in the concrescence of any subject (PR 27). This is to say that the many, when integrated into one, should be able to maximize their harmonious integration, though still keeping with the difference of many, thus forming a contrasted tension in harmony. The ideal of harmony is also cherished by Confucianism, Daoism, and Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, especially Huayan Buddhism. Though quite different from each other, both Confucianism and Daoism would agree with what the Yijing says: “The way of the Creative works through changes and transformation, so that each thing fulfills its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony” (Wilhelm 1977, 371; italics added).6 The problem is: if each thing and every person are allowed to fulfill their own nature, how, as many, can they come together to achieve an optimal harmony or to be in accord with the Great Harmony? Confucian and Daoist answers differ: Confucianism attempts to achieve harmony by appealing to the ren in each person and to the coordination by li, the ritual, that is to be transcendentally founded on it; Daoism refers to the original union with the dao and the spontaneous coordination of all beings by their following the dao’s original generosity in working for the goodness of the Multiple Other. Huayan Buddhism, on the other hand, would emphasize the ontological vision of mutual penetration of one and many, thus offering a world vision of what Thomé Fang calls “comprehensive harmony,” very much closer to Whitehead’s vision (Fang 1981, 294). This is one of the reasons why I choose in this paper to compare Whitehead and Huayan Buddhism. Now, both concepts of creativity and harmony are closely related to and founded on the vision of universal relativity, or dynamic relation among all things in the universe. In this paper, I will take Whitehead’s philosophy and Huayan Buddhism as illustration, focusing on Whitehead’s ontological principle as central to his vision of process and relativity. The ontological principle refers to actual entities as the final explanation of all, including eternal objects. This principle leads to the idea that all eternal objects rely upon God’s thoughts or conceptual prehensions to exist. In Huayan Buddhism, we have a similar principle in which we find the Gate of Relying on shi (actualities, events or phenomena) in Order to Explain All Dharmas (especially Buddha’s laws) and Create Understanding. Furthermore, Huayan Buddhism puts the emphasis on the mutual penetration of one and many, depicting thereby a vision of universal relatedness, or better, an ontology of dynamic relation. Huayan’s philosophical doctrine of universal causation of realms of dharmas says that the Absolute Mind, non-substantial and uncaused, is the ontological foundation upon which all things, including the realm of events or phenomena, the realm of principles or reasons, the realm of events and principles mutually penetrated, and the realm of all events, all arise. There are some philosophical problems involved in this comparison, to be dealt with in this paper, to show an ontology of dynamic relation inviting creativity, optimal harmony and enlightenment.

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3. Process, Relativity and Ontological Principle We should say the dynamism of going outside of oneself to others, understandable metaphorically as an original generosity to the Multiple Other, and contributing thereby to the constitution of the Multiple Other, as a kind of gift to the other, is essential to Whitehead’s ideas of creativity and universal relativity leading to optimal harmony. We should make explicit this original generosity and gift from Whitehead’s Category of Explanation (Category XVIII) that presents the ontological principles, together with the Category IV that presents the principle of relativity and Category IX that presents the principle of process. The principle of relativity says that all entities, both actual and non-actual (such as eternal objects, feelings and propositions),7 have the potentiality for being an element in a real concrescence of many into one. In other words, it belongs to the nature of a “being” that it is a potential for every “becoming.” This is the “principle of relativity.”8 This means that all actual entities, with their vector energies, always go outside themselves to become objectified, together with objects and feelings, in the concrescence of many others, or better of the Multiple Other. The term “concrescence” etymologically comes from the Latin concrescere, which signifies the process of growing together in biological sense, such as many cells growing together. In Whiteheadian metaphysics, it means the process of many actual entities integrating into a complex unity: “the production of novel togetherness is the ultimate notion embodied in the term “concrescence” (PR 21). Therefore, the many in question are related to each other internally and dynamically by this dynamic energy of going outside of each being to the Multiple Other. The principle of process says that how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is; so that the two descriptions of an actual entity are not independent. Its “being” is constituted by its “becoming.” This is the principle of process. According to Category VIII, there are two descriptions required for an actual entity: one is analytical of its potential for “objectification” in the becoming of other actual entities, while the other is analytical of the process which constitutes its own being (PR 23). The term “objectification” represents a process somewhat similar, though in different context, to my understanding of “strangification.” Both concepts are commonly concerned with the process of going outside of oneself to the Multiple Other. For Whitehead, the doctrine of objectification is not limited to mental or conscious activity, as Descartes and Locke would conceive. Rather it refers to the extensive continuum that exists in the “mutual objectification” by which actual entities prehend each other (PR 76). I understand the term “extensive” as the character of extending to the Multiple Other, in which the act of objectification happens and we can translate mutual objectification as a primary process of communication even before mental or consciousness come into play. This extensive character, if seen from one actual entity, is called “prehension” of that entity, but, conversely, when seen from the other, it is called “objectification.” That is why Whitehead defines a nexus as “[…] a set of actual entities in the unity of the relatedness constituted by their prehension of each other, or—what is the same thing conversely expressed—constituted by their objectification in each other” (PR 24).

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But, we may ask, where does this original generosity ultimately come from? Whitehead’s answer is found in his Category XVIII, the Category of Explanation: That every condition to which the process of becoming confirms in any particular instance has its reason either in the character of some actual entity in the actual world of that concrescence, or in the character of the subject which is in process of concrescence. This category of explanation is termed the ‘ontological principle’. It could also be termed the ‘principle of efficient, and final, causation’. This ontological principle means that actual entities are the only reasons; so that to search for a reason is to search for one ore more actual entities. It follows that any condition to be satisfied by one actual entity in its process expresses a fact either about the ‘real internal constitutions’ of some other actual entities, or about the ‘subjective aim’ conditioning that process (PR 24). This principle, namely the ontological principle, allows us to understand that, unlike Plato’s Ideas, for Whitehead, eternal objects do not give us the ultimate explanation of everything, and thereby saves us from a Platonic reading of Whitehead’s philosophy. Eternal objects themselves should find their reasons in an actual entity. Even if eternal objects represent the ideal constituents of cosmic and individual experiences, these ideal constituents should themselves have their ultimate explanation in an actual entity. For Whitehead, they exist in the conceptual prehensions of God, or, in the thinking of God, the Ultimate Actual Entity. This is the reason why for Whitehead, God is needed to explain why there are ideals in the world. According to Whitehead, God, in his primordial nature, conceives with His conceptual prehension the entire realm of eternal objects. His magnanimous mind is generous in conceptually prehending all possible worlds of potentialities constituted by eternal objects. Again, in his consequent nature, God perceives with his physical prehension the totality of the real world. As Whitehead writes: “Thus the consequent nature of God is composed of a multiplicity of elements with individual self-realization. It is just as much a multiplicity as it is a unity; it is just as one immediate fact as it is an unresting advance beyond itself” (PR 250). Here, at the end of his system, Whitehead is giving us a hint that God does not stop and will never stop. He is still changing: “But the principle of universal relativity is not to be stopped at the consequent nature of God. This nature itself passes into the temporal world according to its gradation of relevance to the various conscrescent occasions” (PR 350). In my language, God is still strangifying. Sometimes this is called by Whitehead the Superjective nature of God. We see from the Category of the Ultimate that the Creativity that proceeds from many to one and again from one to many involves in its own creative process a kind of ontological generosity. I have argued elsewhere that Creativity itself is generosity;9 but in Whitehead’s vision of cosmological process, this is to be realized through the contrast between God and the world. In referring to the ontological principle, we understand that it is God who in his thinking perceives the nature and structure of all eternal objects, and that he adapts the eternal objects so as to become suitable for ingression into the real world; and that He uses the ideality of eternal objects to attract and engage the world of actual entities into a more universalizable and intensely related integration. The world is going into ever larger and more intensely integrated societies, and God perceives them all in his consequent nature, so as to immortalize the inner values and meaningfulness of all that happened, is happening and will happen, in his physical

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prehensions and his loving memory of them all. God still goes on objectifying in endless adventures. This is a Whiteheadian vision of creative creativity, which could be said to work by the logic of dynamic contrast. On the one hand, the socialization of actual entities needs to refer to eternal objects in order to attain their universalizable characters and objective structures. On the other hand, all possible universalizable characters and objective structures unfoldable by eternal objects should only be realized by the social activity of actual entities, to go from potentiality to actuality. In this process, the world goes towards higher and higher degrees of complexity, that is, towards the fuller realization of the universalizing characters and intelligible structures brought by eternal objects to this world. Eternal objects are the ideal paradigms that attract creative novelty in the cosmic process of creativity: to create is always to introduce new eternal objects and their abstract hierarchy in the real world, or to realize them in a new way or new shape. The process of creativity is penetrated through and through by the dynamic contrast between God’s thinking and his operating the eternal objects in the real world constituted by the sum total of all actual entities. Therefore, the contrast between God and the World is the ultimate dynamic contrast pushing the universe in an unceasing process of creativity and strangification. Concerning the dynamic contrast between God and the World, Whitehead writes: It is true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent. It is true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God is many. It is true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently. It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World. It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God. It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God. God and the World are the contrasted opposites in terms of which Creativity achieves its supreme task of transforming disjoined multiplicity, with its diversity in opposition, into concrescent unity, with its diversity in contrast. In each actual entity there are two concrescent poles of realization—‘enjoyment’ and ‘appetition’, that is, the ‘physical’ and the ‘conceptual’. For God the conceptual is prior to the physical, for the World, the physical poles are prior to the conceptual poles (PR 348). For me, the truth implied in this dynamic contrast of God and the World is not that God would satisfy Himself with this contrast, or that He would prefer to stay in this situation of contrastive tension, but rather that this is the logic or economy by which God the Ultimate Explanation of all, as made clear by Whitehead’s ontological principle, always goes beyond. In other words, God always strangifies in the World in the making, and that the optimal harmony is always to work out by way of contrasting tensions, not to say contradictory oppositions.

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4. Huayan Buddhism’s Gate of Relying on shi and Ten Mysterious Gates When we come to Huayan Buddhism,10 we find, in its doctrine of Ten Mysterious Gates (shi xuan men), that the Gate of Relying on shi (actualities, events, phenomena) to Explain Dharmas (or Laws) and Produce Understanding is somehow similar to Whitehead’s ontological principle, especially when combined with the doctrine of Causal Dependence of the Realm of Dharma. The doctrine of Ten Mysterious Gates expresses the idea that all things in the world are involved in a network of dynamic relation; or in Huayan’s term, the realm of dharmas is such that all shi (actualities, events, phenomena) penetrate each other without any obstruction. Through understanding the Ten Gates, one can enter the Mysterious Sea of the Great Huayan Sutra. These Ten Gates mutually approach each other and penetrate each other, act and function on each other without obstructing each other. This doctrine was said to be proposed by Du Shun, the first patriarch, and elaborated by his disciple Zhiyan and by Zhiyan’s disciple Fazang, in what is sometimes called the Old Ten Mysteries (Gushixuan).11 Then, Fazhang, in his Huayanjing Tanxuanji propose New Ten Mysteries (Xinshixuan), which were further developed by Chengguan, the fourth patriarch. Concerning this particular Gate of Relying, Zhiyan, in his Huayan Yisheng Shixuanmen, explains that it is “focusing on intellectual understanding, in relying on shi (event, actualities or phenomena), to manifest the dharma of li, using various kinds of shi to illustrate various kind of li. By this we are approaching one of Buddha’s Laws in illustrating it by a particular event or phenomenon.”12 In this perspective, Su Shun seems to put emphasis on the epistemological priority of shi. Zhiyan’s disciple, Fazang, in the explanation of this Gate, says that understanding an event— In this case the li of no birth and death—is similar as to seeing dust. Fazang therefore seems to refer to li as the emptinesss or without-self-nature of each event or actuality. For Fazang, dust as round and small, and this resembles shi; whereas the nature of the dust is empty, as is li. Since shi has no substance of its own, the shi as shi, or event as event, should follow always the li and be understood with reference to it.13 In this perspective, Fazang’s understanding of this principle seems to put emphasis on the epistemological priority of li.

5. Dependent Causation of the Realm of Dharmas This Gate, because of the network of explanation constituted by the mutual penetration and mutual support of all ten mysterious gates, should always be understood in the context of the doctrine of ten mysterious gates, itself very much related to the doctrine of six characters and the doctrine of universal causation of realms of dharma. Briefly, the doctrine of six characters says that each dharma possesses the six characteristics of universality, particularity, similarity,

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difference, integration and disintegration, so that each dharma is at once one and all and the world is in a perfect harmony. When one dharma arises, all dharmas arise, and vice versa. The doctrine of “universal causation of realm of dharmas” involves two concepts—the “Dependent Causation,” according to which all things arise from dependent causation, and “Realm of Dharma” (Dharmadtu), according to which the universe includes four realms—the realm of events, the realm of principles or reasons, the realm of events and principles or reasons mutually penetrated, and the realm of all events mutually penetrated. The following quotation from Fazang may help us to understand its meaning: This little particle of dust arises through causes. This means a dharma. This dharma is manifested in accordance with wisdom and possesses a variety of functions. This implies a realm. Because this has no nature of its own, it can never be divided nor equalized. It is harmonious without the twofold character of similarity and difference and is identical with reality. It is like the realm of empty space, which extends everywhere, permeates everything, manifests itself wherever it may be, and is always very clear. But this one particle of dust and all other dharmas do not know each other. Nor do they perceive each other. Why? Because each of them is a complete perfect realm of dharma, universally involving everything, and apart from it there is no other realm of dharmas. Therefore they no longer know or perceive each other. Even if we speak of knowing or perceiving, it is none other than the realm of dharmas knowing and perceiving itself, and at bottom there is no other of dharmas to be known or to be perceived […]. If neither nature nor character exists, it becomes the realm of dharmas of principle. Without both fact and character are clearly in existence without obstacle; it becomes the realm of facts. When principle and fact are combined without obstacles, the two are at the same time one and one is at the same time two. This is the realm of dharmas.14 Here the term “realm” (ji) could be understood as the actual differentiation and limitation in the case of shi (events, actualities and phenomena), and as “true nature”(xing) in the case of li (principles or reasons or laws). I tend to express the distinction between li and shi is another, more Chinese way. This is reflected in what Fazhang writes in Huyan Yuxin Fajie Ji: “when we talk about the ‘Mind of True Thusness,’ there li means the true view; whereas when we talk about the Mind as life and death, there shi means the mundane view.”15 But instead of taking Sanlun Buddhism’s position of negative dialectics, Huayan Buddhism positively affirms the realm of shi and li mutually penetrated, and the realm of all shis mutually penetrated. The concepts of li and shi refer also to the two Gates manifested by the One Mind in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, the book that has most influenced all schools of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. As Du Shun, the first patriarchal of Huayan Buddhism, says: To say that the two gates of li and shi are roundly fused into One Reality, is to see again two gates in this Reality: the first is the Gates of the Mind of True Thusness, the second is the Gates of Mind of Life and Death. The Gates of the Mind of True Thusness is the li, whereas the Gates of Mind of Life and Death is shi. This is to say emptiness and being are not two, they exist in themselves roundly fused together, although they differ in being either manifest or implicit, but they have no obstruction to each other.16 Therefore, li and shi are the two manifestations of the One Mind, which is the Mind of all sentient beings. This is quite different from God with his conceptual prehensions, as in the case of Whitehead’s philosophy.

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6. Li, shi and the One Mind Ultimately speaking, both li and shi should refer to the doctrine of dependent causation for their ultimate explanation. This doctrine emphasizes that Mind, which is non-substantial and therefore uncaused, is the ontological origin from which all things arise. For example, when a dust is perceived, it is a manifestation of one’s own mind, it means that one’s own mind is the cause. It is only because of the cause before us that dharmas of the mind arise […]. Now that we understand that causes are really not causes, any arising will be wonderful. So long as the substance of things arising through causation is void, there will never be any arising even though there seems to be, and if it is understood that substance is in accordance with causes, there will always be arising even if there seems to be none.17 This reference to the Mind as the ultimate explanation of the dependent causation of all dharmas, is quite similar to Whitehead’s ontological principle that refers to God’s conceptual prehensions as the ultimate ground on which all other actual entities, eternal objects and reason arise. Both of them refer to Mind as conceiving all li and shi. They differ in that, for Whitehead, God is the final interpretation of actual entity. He is the greatest among all actual entities. But for Fazang, the Mind, though it could it manifest through li and shi, is itself not to be seen as one of the shi. For Du Shun, to say that li and shi are mutually penetrated, is to say that li comprehends and penetrates all differentiated and limited shi events and all shi events identify themselves with li. To say that all shi events are mutually penetrated is to say that, all shi events, when comprehended by li and identify themselves to li, reflect li in all other shi events and reflect them in all Realm of shi events in accordance with li. It is worthy of mentioning here that Huayan’s concepts of li and shi will have great impact on the neo-Confucianism of the Song Dynasty. The relation between li and shi, as two manifestation of the One Mind, depicts a world of perfect harmony, as shown by the theory of Ten Mysterious Gates, according to which all things are co-existing, interwoven, interrelated, inter-penetrating, mutually inclusive, reflecting one another. But what do li and shi mean? Briefly put, li means principle, universal, reason, the abstract, law, noumenon, judgment, knowledge, whereas shi means a thing, actuality, event, the particular, the concrete, phenomenon, matter (Chang 1963, 142). Fazang explains thus: It means that as the character of dust has already ceased to be, deluded consciousness also perishes. Because an event has no true nature, it follows principle and become perfectly harmonized with it. Because true nature involves events, therefore principle follows fact, is in complete accord with it. Thus they always exist and but are at the same time ever empty, for Emptiness does not destroy existence. They are always empty but at the same time ever existent, for existence does not obstruct Emptiness. The Emptiness that does not obstruct existence can harmonize all phenomena, and the existence that does not destroy Emptiness can complete everything. Therefore, all phenomena clearly exist before us and one does not obstruct the other (Chan 1963, 424). If the li and shi could be mutually penetrated and thereby let all shi events be mutually penetrated, there is one in many and many in one, and the whole universe is an organic whole—

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as in the Net of Indra, where every particular pearl reflects all the others. Therefore there is mutual inclusion and mutual implication of one and many: the one and the many established each other. Only when the one is completely the many can it be called the many, and only when the many is completely the one can it can it be called the many. There is not a separate one outside the many, for we clearly know that it is one within the many. There are not the many outside of the one, for we clearly know they are the many within the one. The reason is that they are not many (separately) and yet they can be many coincided with the one, and that it is not independently one and yet it can be one coinciding with the many. Only when we understand that dharmas have no self-nature can we have the wisdom about the one and the many (Chan 1963, 423). But this ultimate reference to the One Mind has the consequence of reducing the dimension of Multiple Other and the dynamic energy to strangify, to go beyond, and this can be seen in the historical development of Huayan Buddhism. As we know, the influence of Awakening of Faith in the Mahayanas on later Chinese Buddhism was overwhelming. Not only Huayan, but all other schools of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, such as Tiantai, Chan and Pure Land, come to take the One Mind as Ultimate Reality. The fourth patriarch of Huayan Buddhism, Chengguan (738-839 A.D.) has also studied Tiantai and Chan Buddhism. Especially under the influence of Chan, and his own re-reading of the certain verses,18 Chengguan changed the concept of li in Fazang’s philosophy into the concept of xin (heart), and the concept of nature of principle (lixin) into the concept of nature of heart (xinxing). He seemed to have been fond of Tiantai’s method of zhi guan (cessation and insight) and the doctrine of mutual prehension of li and shi. In his response to the Emperor Shun’s question concerning the Essential Dharma Gate of Mind, he says: In order to attain the origin of pure heart One should understand that the self is empty. In body and form you’ll find nothing real. All thoughts and deliberations have no true origin, really. All of a sudden the spiritual enlightenment arise Penetrating all worlds immediately. Like the real gold discovered from hidden treasure As if the sun shines off the darkness misty. If you compare your heart to the Buddha You’ll see your heart with Buddha forms an identity.19 It seems that what Chenguan was seeking was to see the Buddha’s heart in our ordinary heart, to achieve Buddha’s wisdom on the basis of the spiritual resources of one’s own wisdom. Without further support from the state and deprived of praxis accessible to general public, Huayan was to become merged in Chan Buddhism, though in itself it could still be seen as a most comprehensive system of philosophy.

7. Aftermath of the One Mind In Chan’s idealistic position (and that of Tiantai and later Huayan), we find infinitely rich spiritual resources in the Mind that is one’s own, to be realized also in the details of everyday life. This is one of the most important contributions of Chan Buddhism to Chinese wisdom. Yet

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it is also here that Chinese Mahayana Buddhism tends to lose its dimension of the Multiple Other. Chan Buddhist interprets the life of wisdom as the enlightenment of one’s own heart in everyday life and in ordinary virtues. In everything great or small, there is the dao of enlightenment, and there is no need of any transcendence whatsoever. As Huineng says: If one’s heart is even, there is no need of obeying obligations. If one’s act is right, there is no need of practicing dhyna (concentration). There is gratitude when one is filial and nourishing his parents; there is justice when the superior and the inferior are sympathetic one to another. When one knows how to cede to elders, there is harmony among the noble and the mean […]. Prajñ is to be sought in one’s heart, there is no need of searching for metaphysical truth in the external world. Just to listen, to say and to cultivate one’s self in this way, the Western paradise appears just in the present moment (TSD 48, 352). It is here that the openness and unconditional generosity to the Multiple Other in Buddhism have undergone a radical process of reduction in Chan Buddhism. Chan Buddhism radicalizes the proposition “All sentient beings can become Buddha” into “all sentient beings are originally already Buddha.” If all sentient beings are already Buddha in their hearts, they have no need of any exteriority. Also, since the self-nature of everyone, the bhtatathat, reveals itself in the self-sameness of the absolute mind/heart, there is no place for the Multiple Other. Chan Buddhism has long penetrated both the intellectual and everyday life of the Chinese people. We should say that the loss of dimension of the Multiple Other in Chan Buddhism has brought huge changes to Buddhism in China. According to Ngrjuna and Asanga in the Indian tradition, the Buddhist way of life should lead to compassion and altruism for the benefit and enlightenment of the Multiple Other, of all sentient beings. Yet Chan Buddhism would interpret it as the enlightenment of one’s own heart in everyday life. Though this has the merit of unfolding the infinitely rich resources in people’s minds and infusing Buddhism into everyday life, it has also limited Chinese life and philosophy, removing the necessity for openness to the Multiple Other, to go outside of one’s self to outsiders and foreign lands. This has had a huge effect on Chinese thought, unfortunately making it more insular and selfregarding. Today, greater efforts should be made to bring Chinese culture back to the dimension of the Multiple Other. There we need the strategy of strangification and the original generosity toward the Multiple Other, in order to give Chinese culture, already rich in immanent spiritual resources, a new cultural dynamism, complemented by infinite resources from the Multiple Other.

8. Conclusion In contrast to Huayan’s tendency to reduce the Multiple Other and the comprehensive harmony of the Many to One Mind, the most inspiring idea of Whitehead’s philosophy today is that every actual entity tends towards the Multiple Other by its own dynamic energy, that every actual entity receives objectifications from the Multiple Other and objectifies itself upon the Multiple Other. When thinking of God, the final interpretation for Whitehead, besides His primordial nature that apprehends conceptually all eternal objects, and His consequent nature that apprehends physically the whole universe, there is His superjective nature, by which God, out of

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his own generosity, again and again goes out of Himself and projects Himself into the Universe. This unceasing process of strangification has important cosmological and religious consequences: the process of cosmic creativity should not be seen as a process of self-reflexion or bending upon itself. Inspired by Whitehead, the whole process of creativity is ever enlarging, enriching and intensifying process by the generous dynamism of going to the Multiple Other. Although Whitehead’s philosophy concerns itself too much with the cosmic process without paying enough attention to the human life-world and human historicity,20 as I see it, his vision of cosmic strangification could inspire us also on the level of human affairs, such as a new social and political theory. The reason is that, before we can establish any sort of reciprocity as the principle of society (see, for instance, Mauss’ Essai sur le don), there must be a generous act of going outside of oneself to the Multiple Other. The idea of reciprocity, although introducing notions of intersubjectivity, presupposes still a philosophy of subjectivity. But for me, the new principle for society and ethics today should base itself on the original generosity and strangification as act of going outside of oneself to the Multiple Other.21 In other words, the spiritual resources that I can find within my own mind/heart are never sufficient. If they were sufficient, then the Truth of Reality Itself would become finite, which is not the case. Therefore, my mind/heart should always be enriched by my unconditional openness and generosity to the Multiple Other. The Multiple Other, either as all things in nature, or as so many people, or as the divine and the ideals, always demands respect from me and my act to go outside of myself to them in an originally generous act. On the other hand, self-transcendence and strangification create moments of nothingness that also bring experience of enlightenment. Here Whitehead’s cosmology might itself benefit from Huayan Buddhism in particular or Chinese Mahayana Buddhism in general. In my view, nothingness or emptiness has a profound meaning, not limited to the ontic level of non-being. It extends to spiritual freedom and ontological possibilities or potentialities. In Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, according to my interpretation, we can discern three basic meanings of the term “emptiness” (kong). First, at the ontological level, emptiness means that all things come and go by (inter)dependent origination and therefore without any substance of their own. Second, at the spiritual level, emptiness means that the spiritual achievement of a sage consists in total freedom, not to attach himself to any achievement, neither being nor non-being, neither dualism nor non- dualism; he should not attach himself to any spiritual achievement, not even to that of emptiness. Finally, at the linguistic level, emptiness means that all words we use are artificially constructed, without any correspondence to reality. In my view, the most important of these senses of emptiness is the spiritual one, and this is also what is most emphasized by Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. For example, although all these three meanings could be found in Sengzhao’s On the Emptiness of the Unreal, he would interpret it, using Daoist language, as the spiritual achievement of a sage: Unless one possesses the wisdom and special penetration power of a sage, how can he harmonize his spirit with the realm of neither being nor non-being? The sage moves within the thousand transformations but does not change, and travels on ten thousand paths of delusions but always go through.22 I would say that this spiritual freedom or emptiness is most important for human selfcultivation, a factor neglected by Whitehead’s cosmological discourse. It is in Chinese

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Mahayana Buddhism and Chinese Philosophy that we can learn the richest resources for selfcultivation and the mind/heart’s spiritual freedom.

Notes 1

This definition concerns more the process of globalization rather than its political implications. Politically, some might be in favor of globalization, while others against it. Mine is only a philosophical attempt to define it as a historical process. 2 I use the concept of “Multiple Other” to replace, ontologically and ethically, the concept of “the Other” used by Levinas, Derrida and Deleuze. For me “the Other” is abstract and artificial. In reality, we are born into the context of the Multiple Other, and at no time do we simply face “the Other.” Keeping the concept of “Multiple Other” will justify a position that is ontologically, ethically sound, and that is the basis of the good life. 3 The idea of strangification was first proposed by F. Wallner of the University of Vienna, as an epistemological strategy for interdisciplinary research. This concept was later extended by me to intercultural interaction and religious dialogue. 4 This is true especially in the Process and Reality, where Whitehead starts by positing his Categorical Scheme before illustrating it with examples from the history of philosophy and generalized experiences. 5 I understand that Whitehead’s system of Categories is a deductive system, in which the Category of the Ultimate is to be interpreted further by the other three Categories, such as those of Existence, of Explanation and of Obligation (or Categoreal Obligations). 6 Where Baynes’ translation reads “receives,” I have substituted “fulfilled” as more faithful to the Chinese. 7 There are four main types of entities: the two primary types are actual entities and pure potentials (eternal objects); the other two are hybrid types—feelings and propositions or theories (PR 188). 8 Whitehead’s original text reads: “(iv) That the potentiality being an element in a real concrescence of many entities into one actuality is the one general metaphysical principle character attaching to all entities, actual and non-actual; and that every item in the universe is involved in each concrescence. In other words, it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming’. This is the ‘principle of relativity’”(PR 22). 9 See Shen 2004, 9-13. I acknowledge with appreciation Michel Weber’s comments regarding this paper and regarding two types of generosity—the generosity of the Ultimate and the generosity that is realized through the dynamic contrast of God and the World. According to Weber, “Perhaps the two generosities have to be distinguished: fundamentally, the ontological generosity belongs to the Ultimate, which boils down to the concept of creativity. I see the ultimate as being dipneumonous, as having two lungs: the world and god. Second, God expresses a refined form of generosity, a generosity that lures the occasions towards higher intensities of experience.” 10 Huayan School is named after its core scripture, the Avtamsaka Sutra (The Flowery Splendor Scripture), which has three Chinese translations—the 60 Chapters version, the most popular one, translated in 420 A.D. by Buddhabhadra (359-429 A.D.); the 80 Chapters version, translated in 699 A.D. by Sikshananda (652-710 A.D.); the 40 Chapters version, translated in 798 A.D. by Prajna. In India, we do not find a school of Buddhism that relies only on one sutra. The first patriarch of this school is Du Shun (557-640 A.D.) who might have launched some basic philosophical positions of Huayan School, such as the Dharma of dependent causation, the mutual penetration of li and shi. His disciple, Zhiyan (602-668 A.D.), the second patriarch, started to systemize the doctrine of five divisions of Buddha’s teaching and that of Causal Arising of Realms of Dharma (Dharma-dhtu). Zhiyan’s disciple Fazang (643-712 A.D.), the third patriarch, was conventionally recognized as the real builder of this school’s philosophical

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system, later to be carried on by Chen Guan (738-839 A.D.), the fourth patriarch and Zongmi (780-841 A.D.), the fifth patriarch. 11 Here are the Ten Gates: (1) The gate of simultaneous completion and mutual dependence; (2) the gate of full possession of the attributes of purity and mixture by the various storehouse; (3) the gate of mutual compatibility and difference between one and many; (4) he gate of mutual identification of all dharmas existing freely and easily; (5) the gate of the completion of the secret, the hidden, and the manifest; (6) the gate of the compatibility and peaceful existence of the subtle and the minute; (7) the gate of the realms of the Indra’s net; (8) the gate of relying on events in order to explain dharmas and create understanding; (9) the gate of different formation of separate dharmas in ten ages; (10) the gate of the excellent completion through the turning and transformation of the mind only (Wing-tsit Chan, 1963, 411-13). 12 Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text No.1868.0518c06. 13 Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text No. 1875.0630b03; Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text No. 1875.0631c27. 14 Taisho shinshu daizokyo, Vol. 45, pp. 627-628 (English translation in Chan 1963, 415). 15 Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text No. 1877.0644a01 (my translation). 16 Du Shun, Hua Yan Wu Jiao Zhi Guan, in Zhongguo Fojiao Sixiang Ziliao Xuanbian (Selected Materials of Chinese Buddhist Thought), Vol.2, Book 2, p.7. 17 Taisho shinshu daizokyo, Vol. 45 pp. 627-628 (English translation in Wing-tsit Chan 1963, 414). 18 For instance the verse “Heart, like a painter, is able to depict the worlds. All five elements come from it. No dharma was not produced by it” in the Avatamsaka Sutra in 80 Chapters version, Taisho shinshu daizokyo, Vol. 10, p.102 19 In Zhongguo Fojiao Sixiang Ziliao Xuanbian (Selected Materials of Chinese Buddhist Thought), vol.2, book 2, p.375 (my translation). 20 It is true that Whitehead’s later works such as Adventures of Ideas and Modes of Thought attempt to remedy this, although they do not do so entirely. 21 This could also be seen in Derrida’s ethics of gift and Levinas’ Totalité et Infini, characterized by Derrida as a “masterpiece of generosity” (chef-oeuvre de générosité). 22 Taisho shinshu daizokyo, Vol. 45, pp. 152-153.

Works Cited and Further Readings Aydin, Mehmet S. 2000. Islam Felsefesi Yazilari [Writings on Islamic Philosophy] (Istanbul, Ufuk Kitaplari). Aydin, Mehmet S. 2001. Alemden Allah’a [From Cosmos to God] (Istanbul, Ufuk Kitaplari). Barbour, Ian G. 1997. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (New York, Harper Collins). Barciauskas, Rosemary Curran. 1985. “The Primordial and Ethical Interpretations of Evil in Paul Ricoeur and Alfred North Whitehead”, Modern Theology 2 No 1, 64-77. Basile, Pierfrancesco and Leemon McHenry (eds.). 2007. Consciousness, Reality and Value: Essays in Honor of T.L.S. Sprigge. Bourgine, Benoit, David Ongombe, Michel Weber (éd.). 2007. Religions, Sciences, Politiques. Regards croisés sur Alfred North Whitehead, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag. Berthrong, John. 1994. All Under Heaven: Transforming Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Berthrong, John. 1998. Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of Chu Hsi, Whitehead, and Neville (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Bracken, S.J., Joseph A. 1985. The Trinue Symbol: Person, Process and Community (Lanham MD, University Press of America). Bracken, S.J., Joseph A. 1991. Society and Spirit: A Trinitarian Cosmology (Cranbury NJ, Associated University Presses). Bracken, S.J., Joseph A. 2006. Christianity and Process Thought: Spirituality for a Changing World (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press). Bracken, S.J., Joseph A. (with Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki), ed. 1997. Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God (New York, Continuum). Chan, Wing-tsit. 1963. Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Chang, Chung Yuan. 1963. Creativity and Daoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry (New York, Harper & Row). Chang, Garma C.C. 1971. The Buddhist Teaching of Totality (State Park, Pennsylvania State University Press). Cheng, Chung Ying. 1979. “Categories of Creativity in Whitehead and Neo-Confucianism,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6, 3, 251-74. Cheng, Chung Ying. 2002. “Ultimate Origin, Ultimate Reality, and the Human Condition: Leibniz, Whitehead, and Zhu Xi,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 29, 1, 93-118. Ching, Julia. 1977. “Buddhist Emptiness and the Christian God,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45, 5, 11-26. Ching, Julia. 1979. “God and the World: Chu Hsi and Whitehead,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6, 275-95. Ching, Julia. 2000. The Religious Thought of Chu His (New York, Oxford University Press). Cleary, Thomas (trans.). 1984. The Flower Ornament Scripture, A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Boulder & London, Shambhala). Cobb, Jr., John B. 1965. A Christian Natural Theology, Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead (Philadelphia, Westminster Press). Cobb, Jr., John B. 1975. Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia, Westminster Press). Cobb, John B., Jr. 1977. “Buddhist Emptiness and the Christian God,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45, 5, 11-26. Cobb, John B., Jr. 1979. “Post-Conference Reflections on Yin and Yang,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6, 421-26. Cobb, Jr., John B. 1982. Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism (Philadelphia, Fortress Press).

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Cobb, Jr., John B. 1999. Transforming Christianity and the World: A Way Beyond Absolutism and Relativism, edited and introduced by Paul F. Knitter (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis). Cobb, John B., Jr. and Griffin, David Ray. 1976. Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia, Westminster Press). Cook, Francis. 1979. “Causation in the Chinese Hua-yen Tradition,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6, 367-85. Dar, Bashir Ahmad. 1956. Iqbal and Post-Kantian Voluntarism (Lahore, Bazm-i-Iqbal). Engineer, Asghar Ali. 2001. “Humankind’s Relationship with Nature and Participation in the Process of Creation by Technology from an Islamic Point of View,” in Nature and Technology in the World Religions, edited by Peter Koslowski (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers). Enver, Ishrat Hasan. 1944. The Metaphysics of Iqbal (Lahore, Sh. Muhammad Ashraf). Fang, Thomé H. 1981. Chinese Philosophy: Its Spirit and Its Development (Taipei, Linking Press). Ford, Lewis S. 1978. The Lure of God: A Biblical Background for Process Theism, (Philadelphia, Fortress Press). Ford, Lewis S. 1984. The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics: 1925-1929 (Albany, State University of New York Press). Ford, Lewis S. 2000. Transforming Process Theism (Albany, State University of New York Press). Fox, Alan. 2005. “Process Ecology and the ‘Ideal’ Dao,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 31, 1, 47-57. Franzese, Sergio & Felicitas Krämer (eds.). 2007. Fringes of Religious Experience. Crossperspectives on William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag. Fu, Charles Wei-hsun. 1979. “The Underlying Structure of Metaphysical Language: A Case Examination of Language and Chinese Philosophy,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6, 339-66. Gilkey, Langdon B. 1976. Reaping the Whirlwind: A Christian Interpretation of History (New York, Seabury Press). Graham, A.C. 1989. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, Open Court). Griffin, David Ray. 1973. A Process Christology (Philadelphia, Westminster Press). Griffin, David Ray. 1976. God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy (Philadelphia, Westminster Press). Griffin, David Ray. 1988. “Introduction: The Reenchantment of Science,” in The Reenchantment of Science, edited by David Ray Griffin (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Griffin, David Ray. 2000. Religion and Scientific Naturalism (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Griffin, David Ray. 2000. Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts (Albany, State University of New York Press). Griffin, David Ray. 2001. Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, Cornell University Press). Hall, David L. 1978. “Process and Anarchy—A Taoist Vision of Creativity,” Philosophy East and West 28, 3, 271-85. Hang, Thaddeus. 1986. “Notes on the Concept of Creativity in Chinese Philosophy,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 13, 283-91. Hartshorne, Charles and Reese, William (eds.). 1953. Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Hartshorne, Charles. 1948. The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven, Yale University Press). Hartshorne, Charles. 1972. Whitehead’s Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1935-1970 (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press).

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Works Cited and Further Readings

Hartshorne, Charles. 1979a. “‘Emptiness’ and Fullness in Asiatic and Western Thought,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 6, 411-20. Hartshorne, Charles. 1979b. “Process Themes in Chinese Thought,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6, 323-36. Hartshorne, Charles. 1986. “Some Perspectives on Chinese Philosophy,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 13, 267-70. Haught, John A. 2000. God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Boulder CO, Westview Press). Hosinski, Thomas E. (1993). Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance: An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead (Lanham MD, Rowman & Littlefield). Huff, Toby E. 1993. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Iqbal, Sir Muhammad. 1930. Six Lectures on the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore, The Kapur Art Printing Works). Kelly, Joseph F. 2002. The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition: From the Book of Job to Modern Genetics (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press). Khundmiri, Alam, 2001. Secularism, Islam and Modernity: Selected Essays of Alam Khundmiri, edited by M. T. Ansari (New Delhi, Sage Publications). Kiyimba, Abasi. 1998. “Islam and Science: An Overview,” in Knowledge and Responsibility: Islamic Perspectives on Science (Izmir, Kaynak (Izmir). Kushner, Harold S. 2004. When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Anchor Books). Leaman, Oliver. 1999. A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge, Polity Press). Lee, Robert D. 1997. Overcoming Tradition and Modernity: The Search for Islamic Authenticity (Colorado, Westview Press). Liu, Shu-Hsien. 1974. “Time and Temporality: The Chinese Perspective,” Philosophy East and West 24, 145-153. Liu, Shu-Hsien. 1978. “Theism from a Chinese Perspective,” Philosophy East and West 28, 4, 413-17. Lowe, Victor. 1990. Alfred North Whitehead, The Man and His Work, Volume II: 1910–1947 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press). Mathews, Freya. 2003. For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism (Albany: State University of New York Press Press). Moris, Zailan. 2003. Revelation, Intellectual Intuition and Reason in the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra: An Analysis of the al-Hikmah al-‘Arshiyyah (London, Routledge Curzon). Nasr, Seyyed Hossain. 1996. The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, edited by Mehdi Amin Razavi (Richmond, Surrey, Curzon Press). Neville, Robert. 1977. “Wang Yang-Ming’s ‘Inquiry on the Great Learning’,” Process Studies 7, 4, 217-37. Neville, Robert. 1978. Soldier, Sage, Saint (New York, Fordham University Press). Neville, Robert C. 1980. Creativity and God: A Challenge to Process Theology (New York, Seabury Press). Neville, Robert. 1982. “Process and the Neo-Confucian Cosmos,” in The Tao and the Daimon (Albany, State University of New York Press Press),147-70. Neville, Robert. 2002. “Daoist Relativism, Ethical Choice, and Normative Measure,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 29, 1, 5-20. Neville, Robert. 2003 “Conscious and Unconscious Placing of Ritual (Li) and Humanity (Ren), Journal of Ecumenical Studies 40, 1-2, 48-58. Odin, Steve. 1982. Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration Vs. Interpenetration (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Pannenberg, Wolfhart. 1994. Systematic Theology, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids MI, Eerdmans). Paper, Jordan. 2005. The Deities Are Many: A Polytheistic Theology (Albany: State University

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of New York Press Press). Pike, Sarah M. 2001. Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community. Berkeley: University of California Press. Quiring, John. 1996. “The Two-Self Concept: East and West,” Journal of Asian and Asian American Theology 1, 63-76. Rahman, Fazlur. 1975. The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Raschid, M. S. 1981. Iqbal’s concept of God (London, Kegan Paul). Reese, William L. 1991. “Categories of Creativity in Whitehead and Chu His,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 18, 287-308. Ricoeur, Paul. 1969. The Symbolism of Evil, translated by Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press) [Philosophie de la volonté. II Finitude et culpabilité. ii La symbolique du mal, Paris, Aubier. Éditions Montaigne, 1960]. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1983. Sexism and God-Talk, Boston, Beacon Press. Ruzgar, Mustafa. 2005. “Islam and Deep Religious Pluralism,” in Deep Religious Pluralism, edited by David Ray Griffin (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press). Shen, Vincent. 1996. “Harmony Among Humans, Nature and God: A Comprehensive Vision of Optimal Harmony,” Inter-Religio 30, 46-62. Smith, Huston. 1972. “Tao Now: An Ecological Testament,” in Earth Might Be Fair, edited by Ian Barbour (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall), 62-81. Sprigge, Timothy L. S., The God of Metaphysics. Being a Study of the Metaphysics and Religious Doctrines of Spinoza, Hegel, Kierkegaard, T.H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, Josiah Royce, A.N. Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, and Concluding with a Defence of Pantheistic Idealism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt (with Joseph A. Bracken, S.J.), ed. 1997. Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God (New York, Continuum). Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. 1982. God-Christ-Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (New York, Crossroad). Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. 1988. The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context (Albany, State University of New York Press). Tong, Lik Kuen. 1974. “Care, Wonder, and the Polarization of Being: An Essay on Human Destiny,” Chinese Culture 15, 4, 51-76. Tong, Lik Kuen. 1974. “The Concept of Time in Whitehead and the I Ching,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 1, 373-93. Tong, Lik Kuen. 1979. “Whitehead and Chinese Philosophy from the Vantage Point of the ‘I Ching’,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 6, 297-321. Vahid, Syed Abdul. 1959. Iqbal: His Art and Thought (London, John Murray). Weber, Michel. 2004. “James’ Non-rationality and its Religious Extremum in the Light of the Concept of Pure Experience”, in Jeremy Carrette (ed.), William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Centenary Celebration, London and New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 203-220. Weber, Michel. 2005 “On Religiousness and Religion. Huxley’s Reading of Whitehead’s Religion in the Making in the Light of James’ Varieties of Religious Experience”, Jerome Meckier and Bernfried Nugel (eds.), Aldous Huxley Annual. A Journal of Twentieth-Century Thought and Beyond, Volume 5, Münster, LIT Verlag, 117-132. Weber, Michel. 2006a. “The hyperdialectics of religiousness and religion” in Michel Weber et Samuel Rouvillois (éditeurs), L’expérience de Dieu. Lectures de Religion in the Making, Actes du troisième Colloque international Chromatiques whiteheadiennes, Paris, Aletheia. Revue de formation philosophique, théologique et spirituelle, 115-136. Weber, Michel. 2006b. “Les enjeux d’une théologie africaine caractérisée et consistante”, in Léonard Santedi Kinkupu et Modeste Malu Nyimi (sous la direction de), Épistémologie et théologie. Les enjeux du dialogue foi-science-éthique pour l’avenir de l’humanité. Mélanges en l’honneur de S. Exc. Mgr Tharcisse Tshibangu Tshishiku pour ses 70 ans d’âge et ses 35 ans d’épiscopat, Kinshasa, Éditions des Facutlés catholiques, 615-623.

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Works Cited and Further Readings

Weber, Michel and Pierfrancesco Basile (eds.). 2006. Subjectivity, Process, and Rationality, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. 1976. The Philosophy of Kalam (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). Xie, Wenyu, Wenyu Xie, Zhihe Wang, George E. Derfer (eds.) 2005. Whitehead and China: Relevance and Relationship (Frankfurt, Ontos). York, Michael. 2003. Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion (New York: NYU Press). Yu, David. 1980. “The Conceptions of Self in Whitehead and Chu His,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 7, 153-73.

XIV. Theory of Knowledge Symbolism: The Organic Functioning of Reason Murray Code

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1. Philosophy and Symbolism In his famous lecture on “Vagueness,” Bertrand Russell claims that many more questions in philosophy than is generally acknowledged are connected with the problem of symbolism. Maintaining that the system of symbolic logic which he and Whitehead developed together in their monumental Principia Mathematica is capable of eliminating those troublesome characteristics of natural language, vagueness and ambiguity, Russell upholds the Leibnizian dream of a formal language of symbols with atomic meanings connected by precise rules and legitimated by “exact” science. It appears that Whitehead was never tempted by this idea, although he does not doubt the importance of logical or mathematical symbolisms for acquiring knowledge of nature. Contrary to Russell and his followers, he sees philosophy as a neverending investigation of matters that are important for human well-being, an investigation that is, however, fated to end as it has begun—”in the rough.”1 Some progress in understanding can nonetheless be hoped for, as witnessed by the development of highly abstruse mathematical symbolisms that have helped advance the inquiries of physicists. But lacking a clear point of entry and a definite method of attack, it is preferable to refer not to a problem but rather to an open problematic of symbolism. At its heart stands the question of the relationship not between what means and what is meant (to use Russell’s phrase), but rather how to illuminate the efficacy of various modes of symbolizing which attest to obscure connections between minds and world.

2. “Letting the Dialectic Go” Briefly, then, the problematic of symbolism is generally concerned with the powers of symbolisms tout court. But to tackle this large question requires a fairly clear idea of what philosophy is and how it might best be done. For this is one of the principal challenges that i

Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada, [email protected].

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Whitehead presents to modern philosophers who sense the importance of his contributions to both systematic and philosophic thinking. But in following Whitehead, as Victor Lowe notes, “almost no one is really willing to let the dialectic go” (Lowe 1961, 254). Thus, before trying to present Whitehead’s theory of symbolism, it is worth trying to clarify what “letting go” might mean. For Whitehead, this evidently involves an unequivocal renunciation of the modern faith in system: the faith that everything worth explaining can be accounted for by “exact” methods based on universal and immutable “laws of nature.” On the contrary, he holds that “Nature is patient of interpretation in terms of Laws that happen to interest us” (AI 136), thereby implying that it is a fatal error to begin by divorcing nature from culture. In other words, a whole-hearted “letting go” calls for a “nonmodern” approach to this inescapably complex world which consists of a plurality of what Bruno Latour refers to as nature-cultures. An overriding condition of a nonmodern philosophy, in other words, is that its rational explanations must not presume that sharp boundaries can be drawn between nature, culture, and discourse.2 So in so far as Whitehead’s general aim is to frame a comprehensive naturalism, his own approach to philosophy bespeaks a “letting go” of modern presuppositions that involves both a rejection of the centrality of science in natural philosophy and a recognition of the need for a highly unorthodox “artful” dialectic informed by an artful reason. Indeed, he defines the proper function of reason as the promotion of the “the art of life” (FR 4). Philosophy is herewith accorded a central role in the evolution of both life and thought, for “[a]s we think we live” (MT 63); it is also invested with therapeutic responsibilities. The early moderns, Whitehead suggests, poisoned Western thought by promoting the narrow and constrictive doctrine of scientific materialism which devitalizes life (and thought) even as it denatures nature. This doctrine not only reflects an endemic “sickness of the understanding” (to adopt Wittgenstein’s phrase), it poses a threat to the long-term health of this civilization, since “the degeneracy of mankind is distinguished from its uprise by the dominance of chill abstractions, divorced from aesthetic content” (MT 123). Thus one of Whitehead’s chief concerns, which is to rescue the more intangible aspects of experiencing from narrow and constrictive doctrines, explains in part his return to Heraclitus—which is bound up with his denunciation of the tendency to dichotomize such fundamental contrasts as subject-object, body-mind, and so on. Holding that “[t]hroughout the universe there reigns the union of opposites which is the ground of dualism” (AI 190), he indicates that only an artful dialectic can resolve the tensions between fundamental conceptual contrasts. In other words, “letting go” implies a search for an artful reason that includes a deployment of the powers of imagination; a type of reason that is clearly exemplified in Whitehead’s choice of “method” for doing speculative metaphysics—which he terms “imaginative generalization.” This anti-Cartesian “method” involves an attempt to utilize the tropic resources of language, for there is a certain wisdom, he believes, embedded in ordinary word-symbols. The implication for a Whiteheadian theory of symbolism is that an adequate account of the powers of symbolisms requires not only a radical rethinking of standard conceptions of reason, knowledge, truth, and meaning but also a serious engagement with the problem of the relationship between good philosophizing and a perspicacious use of figurative language. Indeed, Whitehead concludes his

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philosophical investigations with the claim that “philosophy is akin to poetry, and both of them seek to express that ultimate good sense which we term civilization” (MT vii). Thus in view of the elusiveness of good sense and the extreme vagueness of the notion of civilization, it is not surprising that he also concludes that a philosopher can only aspire “to rationalize mysticism: not by explaining it away, but by the introduction of novel verbal characterizations, rationally coordinated” (MT 174).3 But by thus turning the standard conception of a rational explanation on its head, he thrusts his followers into an awkward position which puts them at odds with those who think, for instance, that the backbone of philosophy is logic. By the same token, it is not clear what a truly Whiteheadian approach to the problems of philosophy might look like. Should the would-be Whiteheadian naturalist adhere faithfully to the categoreal scheme as laid out in Process and Reality? Or would it be better to concentrate on the intuitions and insights that inspired the theory in the first place? Recommending the second of these alternatives, A. H. Johnson regards the categoreal scheme as an attempt to formalize certain premise-like observations that in Science and the Modern World are couched in a homelier and hence more accessible language.4 Hence in view of the centrality of imagination in his “method” of doing philosophy, as well as his metaphysical decision to make creativity the category of the ultimate, it may be asked whether Whitehead’s own “letting go” is as thoroughgoing as one might wish. In other words, should one of the initial goals of the “nonmodern” Whiteheadian naturalist be to locate imagination in the class of natural entities, to show perhaps that it deserves to be regarded as the pivot of an adequate account of a self-creative Nature (or nature-culture)—as Johnson seems to imply when he observes that “unless imagination can produce a picture of what might be […] creation is impossible” (1983, 17)? There can be no doubt that Whitehead endorses the cognitive significance of those obscure mental entities called intuitions and insights: he states, for instance, that it is an “axiom of empiricism” that “all knowledge is derived from, and verified by, direct intuitive observation” (AI 177). Maintaining that the natural philosopher ought “to search whether nature does not in its very being show itself as self-explanatory […for] the sheer statement of what things are, may contain elements explanatory of why things are” (SMW 92, my italics), he herewith opens wide the problematic of symbolism to intuitions. And inasmuch as whatever shows itself to minds presupposes a prior enlistment of some sort of symbolic expression, a close scrutiny of particularly efficacious symbolisms may reveal which insights or intuitions might represent “perspicacious intuitions.” Or perhaps better, “intuitive imaginings.” But it is a moot question what sort of language might be suitable for speaking about the relations between minds and nature “in its very being.” Whitehead’s elaborate exposition in Process and Reality of his theory of organism generally bears witness to an artful reason guided by an anthropomorphic metaphysical imaginary. That is to say, he adopts a picture of nature grounded essentially in a metaphor of organism that exploits the wisdom in such ordinary words as “appetite,” “satisfaction,” “aim,” and so on.5 Since the adequacy of any metaphor depends on the quality of the intuitions and insights that underwrite it, and inasmuch as these derive from a contemplation of the salient aspects of human concrete experiences, one is obliged to assess

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Whitehead’s would-be comprehensive investigation of experience on the basis of very general observations. For Whitehead, the full range of experiencing extends from the material through the mental to the spiritual. The moderns can therefore be accused not only of poisoning thought but also of betraying philosophy since this activity, in Whitehead’s view, is “the most effective of all the intellectual pursuits” just because it is “the architect of the buildings of the spirit” (SMW viii). Claiming moreover that “the spiritual precedes the material,” Whitehead indicates that some of the most valuable insights into the relation between minds and nature stem from the work of artists. He praises in particular the so-called Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Shelley who, along with Berkeley, “are representative of the intuitive refusal seriously to accept the abstract materialism of science” (SMW 86). He thereby implies that one of the more egregious errors perpetuated by scientific materialists is a nihilistic denial that the world is intrinsically meaningful. Before proceeding further, then, it is worth noting that frequent complaints about the obscurity of Whitehead’s philosophy are misguided, especially if they overlook the fact that “its complexities emerge from a scruple for justice,” as W. E. Hocking observes in his invaluable summary (recollected from numerous conversations) of Whitehead’s key intuitions which carry “the main load of his argument” (1963, 386). Drawing particular attention to Whitehead’s “sense of scandal to intellectual conscience at some of our commonly accepted maladjustments between thought and fact,” Hocking also stresses the violence done to experience not only in the Newtonian epoch but also by “the excess-revisions of Minkowski and Einstein” (1963, 384). Hocking also suggests that this violence is directly related to the “poison of bifurcation” (1963, 387), thus confirming the essentially nonmodern character of Whitehead’s thinking—which is especially evident in his rejection of the tendency to divide nature into an “internally” grasped half which is apprehended in sense awareness and an “external” half that provides the reasons for this awareness. Indeed, this principled rejection of the “bifurcation of nature” is arguably the key to understanding what motivates Whitehead’s “return to the root,” as Hocking puts it, in search of a more just and balanced view of rational thought. Such a “return” requires finding a way to reconcile a good many of the arbitrary divisions instituted by modern philosophers who assume, for instance that a gulf separates mind and matter and the latter is essentially inert or lifeless—that there is a distinct border separating the organic and the inorganic. Yet this assumption has been undermined, ironically enough, by advances in quantum physics which indicate that the “mattering of matter” refers at bottom to only more or less “localized” and interconnected structures of activity that bespeak sentient awareness. This development lends support to Whitehead’s guiding intuition that the world is an ever-changing “realization of events disposed in an interlocked community” as—where an event is understood as a “unit of things real” (SMW 152). Thus central to the issue of what an essentially Whiteheadian naturalism might look like is the question of how to interpret this posited “interlocking” of “events.” A Whiteheadian event is nothing like the point-particle abstraction promoted by classical physicists; it is rather like a “drop of experience” as we know it, which suggests that the actual entities of the formal theory may be best understood in an informal, everyday context. This primary consideration indicates

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that the formal theory requires some adjusting, for Whitehead’s view of the real world as inherently complex, as Hocking notes, does not sit easily with his assumption that the realm of actual entities consists of one kind of unit being.6 This reservation resonates with the philosophical-historical studies of Ivor Leclerc who argues that a resurrection of the Aristotelian notion of a living body is needed to model an actual entity (Leclerc 1972 and 1986). The need for an informal approach to actuality is thus indicated, one that is consonant with the spirit of Whitehead’s central insight that the nature of an actual thing is dependent on how it relates to other things. This insight can be said to infuse his theory of symbolism, wherein he declares that “every actual thing is something by reason of its activity” (S 26). At the same time he observes that a living organism, such as a man, is “one occasion of his experience. Such an occasion, or act […] is the most concrete actual entity, and the life of man from birth to death is a historic route of such occasions” (S 27). Herewith opening up the question whether every integral sentient event can be viewed as an actual entity, Whitehead brings a very tricky puzzle to the forefront of the search for a comprehensive naturalism.

3. On the Imaginal and the Conceptual Assuming that symbolisms always mediate between minds and nature, as Whitehead suggests in Symbolism: its meaning and effect, I am suggesting that a good place for a Whiteheadian naturalism to begin is with a rough idea of how mind relates to nature. Such a beginning is in fact implicit in one of his informal observations (which has the ring of a fundamental insight): Mind is inside its images, not its images inside the mind: I am ‘immersed in a topic’ in mathematics, not the reverse. We are actors in scenes, not the scenes inside us (quoted from memory by Hocking 1951, 385). That this is a key to understanding both the import and centrality of Whitehead’s theory of symbolism is partly evident in his express denial of “the tacit presupposition of the ‘mind’ as a passively receptive substance” (S 32). More specifically, the term “mind” generally bespeaks an activity which is more accurately referred to as “minding.” Hence if minding is indeed “inside its imaging,” appearances (or phenomena) can be viewed as the products of ongoing precipitations of the “stuff” of thought. The problem of a proper choice of language, or imagery, thus emerges as crucial, for the provenance of this “stuff” lies beneath the surface of conscious awareness where relationships between images, ideas, signs, and symbols are formed, intuited, and/or discovered. I have already alluded to an essential reciprocity between minding and mattering, a consideration that is borne out by the transmission theories of physics which indicate that existence tout court involves communicative interactions which are mediated by signs and signals. When this line of thought is viewed from the more inclusive perspective of metaphysics, Whitehead’s anthropomorphic imaginary invites complementation by a metaphorics of signs, such as that which infuses the semiotic musings of C. S. Peirce (Code 1999). Briefly, in a conjoined Whiteheadian-Peircean imaginary, every organism is engaged in a selective interpretation of signs. Hence this conjoined imaginary promises to do justice to the fact that every “higher” organism is immersed in a flood of cultural (or communal) symbols as

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well as natural signs. That is to say, every nature-culture can be generally depicted as exemplifying a continual, evolving or devolving, precipitation of meanings by means of interconnected, indeterminate acts of interpretation—since signs carry only potential meanings. Hence one arrives at an organo-semiotic picture of the world which can be roughly likened to an intricate cosmic dance of occasions of sensibility wherein the immense variety of performances illustrate a spectrum of kinds of interpretative activity.7 This image of a cosmic dance accords with Whitehead’s Heraclitean depiction of the world as a flux of body-mind-souls, a flux that is neither utterly chaotic nor completely orderly. Participants in the dance partially compete and partially cooperate with other subjects while restlessly building new worlds on the remains of the old in new acts of becoming. Thus as ordinary visual perception indicates, imagination may hold the key to understanding both the kind of connections that emerge in acts of becoming as well as the more or less “sensible” connections that come to be formed between occasions of sensibility. This complex image of the world is not only compatible with the “messiness” of reality-aswe-find-it, it is consonant with Whitehead’s principal aim to rescue thought (and life) from the nihilistic modern tendency to divest the world of meaning and value. More specifically, this image indicates that percepts are more fundamental than concepts, for a generalized conception of perception in Whitehead’s view ultimately provides the “glue” that holds the world together. The connectivities established in perception are never rigid, however, since novel connections can always emerge from established modes of communication.8 While no doubt gesturing toward a highly convoluted situation, the image of a cosmic dance points toward the centrality of imagination in world-making tout court, a view that is consonant with Whitehead’s estimation of Kant as “the great philosopher who first, fully and explicitly, introduced into philosophy the conception of an act of experience as a constructive functioning, transforming subjectivity into objectivity, or objectivity into subjectivity; the order is immaterial in comparison with the general idea” (PR 156). But the order becomes highly significant when contemplating the relation between percepts and concepts, if the Kant of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason is also right that the faculty of imagination is “a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever.” Herewith indicating that the imaginary ought to be given precedence over the conceptual, Kant also prompts the question whether the kind and quality of the synthesizing performed by the faculty of imagination is bound up with the degree of spirit present in the synthesizing agency. That is to say, Kant can be read as lending credence to a Whiteheadian picture of the world as a Heraclitean flux of ensouled, living (and dying) bodies linked by communicative acts whose nature depends on the character of the relevant exchanges of signs and symbols.9 Or to put this elusive notion another way, does Whitehead’s theory of actuality lead to the view that more or less imaginative mind-body-souls are at work wherever there is the possibility of novelty emerging in the interpretative-communicative links that hold the world together—that is, everywhere?

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4. On Perception and Symbolism To accept the centrality of perception in world-making is tantamount to saying that would-be Whiteheadian naturalists will never do proper justice to the salient aspects of experience (which is “one of the most deceitful [words] in philosophy” (S 16)) unless they can also take into account the quality of intuitions, instincts and, above all, the kind and quality of relevant powers of imagination. Perhaps the most valuable exercises of the latter attest to perspicacious functionings of sensitive souls. However, the fallibility of everyday imagination testifies to an inherent fallibility in all communicative-interpretative activity which “gathers together” “inner” and “outer” influences to yield “drops” or units of experience. At this point, then, one might try to unravel this mysterious business by contemplating the problematic precipitation of symbols in acts of minding-mattering, for the etymological meaning of a symbol is a “something” that is “thrown together.” It is thus worth noting that advances in modern science, and especially in quantum physics, lend weight to the urgings of the quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli that it would be better to speak of a “reality of symbols” than an “objective” or “external” reality.10 Pauli also draws attention to the pervasive error in divorcing subjects from their “objects,” and confirms the wisdom of adopting a Whiteheadian perspective on the world in which perception, and hence cognition, is invested with an “irrational” (for want of a better word, says Pauli) spiritual component. Pauli’s efforts to interpret the bizarre results of quantum theory recall the efforts of the poetphilosopher S. T. Coleridge to overcome the tyranny of “abstractive intelligences” in which he was led to call for a “true naturalism” informed by a “true and original realism”—which “believes and requires nothing more nor less than that the object it beholds or presents to itself is the real and very object” (Coleridge 1956, 149). Since Whitehead’s quest for a comprehensive naturalism can be viewed as an extension of Coleridge’s quest for a “true naturalism,” the latter’s positing of a reality-producing imagination (called “primary” or “esemplastic” imagination, which is required to bring together subjects and objects into unities of experiencing), the question arises whether his theory of symbolism is an exemplary antidote for the modern disease that generally splits the ontological from the epistemological sides of cognition. Especially noteworthy, therefore, is Coleridge’s claim that “objects” always appear in the guise of symbols.11 It can be argued, in brief, that Coleridge is the most relevant of the Romantic poetphilosophers for a would-be Whiteheadian naturalist who acknowledges the need for an organosemiotic imaginary in which perception involves an ultimately mysterious interpretative interplay of real signs and symbols. Coleridge’s concern to do justice to what he calls “the organs of spirit” as well as the “organs of sense” indicates moreover that the sort of naturalism that Whitehead is aiming for, when he addresses the problem of the meaning and effect of symbolism, must revolve about a theory of symbolism capable of doing justice at once to the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral/ethical capacities of embodied souls. The implication is that

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especially well-cultivated souls are able to “see” more deeply into the “reality of symbols,” or better, an actuality of symbolisms (since reality has the connotation of monolithic Being). Whitehead appears to hold that “real” or genuine meanings are at times embedded in what on the face of it is a merely conventional production of symbols: We enjoy the symbol, but we also penetrate to the meaning. The symbols do not create their meaning: the meaning, in the form of actual effective beings reacting upon us, exists for us in its own right. But the symbols discover this meaning for us (S 57). However, it is not clear how to interpret the word “discovery.” Although Whitehead claims that knowledge depends on “direct perceptions,” if imagination is the key to understanding perception, one must face head-on an even more fundamental question: how do these obscure “mental entities” come together to engender effective symbolisms? In analyzing an act of perception, Whitehead posits two distinct modes of perception—causal efficacy and presentational immediacy—which are symbolically linked, at least in the case of human perceptions: “human symbolism has its origins in the symbolic interplay between two distinct modes of perception of the external world” (S 30). As for the nature of this “symbolic interplay,” Whitehead variously refers to it as “symbolic referencing,” or “organic functioning” (whereby “there is transition from the symbol to the meaning” (S 8)). What to make of the idea of “transition” is thus a question that needs elucidation. In his formal treatment of perception, Whitehead speaks of the relations that link events in nature in terms of the notion of prehension.12 It is thus important to note that this term is in part designed to forestall the misleading connotation of conscious apprehension. It is also designed “to signify the essential unity of an event” (SMW 72). Thus indicating that the character of sentient behaviour is what is chiefly at issue, consciousness is hereby stripped of some of its mystery. That is to say, consciousness is a rare, and late, aspect of the emergence of human sensibility in an evolutionary world, but this is no more strange than sentience itself, which Whitehead explicitly links to the mystery of existence. For the latter is quite different from the mystery which the moderns make of “meaning” on account of a “failure to lay due emphasis on symbolic reference” (PR 168). “Hang it all. Here we are!” says Whitehead, “We don’t go behind that; we begin with it” (Hocking 1963, 717). Hence philosophy begins already immersed in the problem of symbolism. As for the pronoun “we,” this implies that “symbolic referencing” refers to a fundamental aspect of communicative connectivity which implies that there must be “some community between the natures of symbol and meaning” (S 8). However, the dynamic character of every community in a Heraclitean world precludes simple descriptions of symbolizing in terms of, say, definite or immutable essences (e.g., eternal objects). Neither does it help to try to determine what exactly is symbol and what meaning: “there are no components of experience which are only symbols or only meanings” (S 10). In other words, what “symbolic referencing” ultimately, but loosely, refers to is “the active synthetic element contributed by the nature of the percipient” (S 8). I have suggested that the self-creative aspect of the synthesizing activity in the construction of experience that Kant initially linked to the faculty of imagination—which is “a blind but indispensable function of the soul”—in a Whiteheadian naturalism leads to questions about the

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state of development of relevant souls. In other words, the activity of “symbolic referencing” can be viewed as directly related to another of Whitehead’s primary concerns, which is to reinvest experience with a moral dimension. This is a good reason, he suggests, for insisting on the factor of self-creativity: without it moral responsibility would have no meaning (since “the potter, and not the pot, is responsible for the shape of the pot” (S 8-9)). Yet there is nothing to prevent the view that a moral or ethical faculty, like the faculty of imagination, is but one of many capacities of the soul which are, as every infant bears witness, only given in potentia. In sum, then, if symbolic reference is “the interpretative element in human experience” (PR 173), it can be viewed as the core of the “organic functioning of reason” which alludes to a capacity, or better, to a complex of capacities that range from the intellectual through the moral/ethical to the spiritual. So if the power of symbolic referencing is the semiotic key to unifying nature, culture, and discourse in a truly nonmodern naturalism, this power brings in its train a great many responsibilities. At the cultural or public level, the “interpretative element” refers chiefly to a collectivity of private imaginations which can on occasion introduce significant changes into extant systems of symbolization through novel interpretations. For those symbolisms that evidence a capacity to get something right suggest that minding, and more generally imaging, is not really a private affair. Indeed, it is an everyday fact that supposedly individual and isolated imaginations can agree in considerable detail on innumerable aesthetic, moral/ethical, and spiritual as well as material aspects of experiencing.13

5. On Symbolizing “Rightly” The upshot is that it is not possible to assess the “rightness,” or otherwise, of a system of symbolism in a purely analytical or pragmatic manner, as though a final ground of meanings can, at least in principle, be uncovered. As Whitehead notes, there is usually a “chain of derivation of symbol from symbol whereby finally the local relations, between the final symbol and the ultimate meaning, are entirely lost” (S 83). Hence in keeping with the afore-mentioned organo-semiotic imaginary, one can think of meaning-making in the case of the so-called “higher organisms” as differing from that of the “lower” organisms in terms of the level of sophistication in species-specific capacities for interpreting signs and symbols. At the “highest” levels, a cohesive and vital community of organisms bespeaks an integrated collective imagination that testifies to the fact (inasmuch as “culture” refers to a certain complex of ways of world-making) that there are as many “realities” (nature-cultures) as there are modes of symbolic referencing, not all of which necessarily foster healthy relations between living and thinking. All that one can generally assert about the relations established in perception is that they begin in the mode of causal efficacy with elements that are “antecedent to thought about [them]” (S 39). Any reference to the quality of perceiving in this mode must therefore be unavoidably vague. Clarity is characteristic of deliverances in the second mode of perception which the moderns (such as Hume and Kant) mistakenly regard as “the primary fact of perception” (PR 173). By wielding this “neolithic weapon of ‘critical’ philosophy,” they unjustly invert causal

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efficacy and presentational immediacy. Hence to redress this injustice it is necessary to insist that “[t]he how of our present experience must conform to the what of the past in us” (S 58). In other words, “the animal body is the great central ground underlying all symbolic reference” (PR 170); so to speak of an objective or external reality is merely to allude to the “stubborn fact that whatever is settled and actual must in due measure be conformed to by the self-creative activity” (S 36-37, my italics). The intimate connection in a “symbolic interplay” between conformation (or habit) and selfcreative activity once again reminds us of the need to find a just and appropriate way to speak of a “fusing” of the two distinct modes of perception into a “coming together” that yields “what the actual world is for us” (S 18). In Whitehead’s account, this fusion takes place somewhere “in-between” the two different “schemes of presentation of the same world” (S 30, my italics). In searching for a metaphor to clarify this obscure matter, Whitehead fastens upon the notion of catalysis. He observes, for instance, that “the qualities entertained as objects in conceptual activity are of the nature of catalytic agents, in the sense in which that phrase is used in chemistry” (MT 168). But if, for example, a visual experience depends on healthy eyes and sufficient light, how can a quality-laden visual image arise from a catalysis involving a flood of signs that are presented, say, in the form of colourless electromagnetic “wave-particles?” Eyes do not themselves generate spatio-temporally located colored shapes so much as they provide the first links in chains or networks of interpretations that involve many different kinds of cells in the body, interpretations that lead eventually (but who knows how?) to a projection of visual images. Indeed, the metaphor of projection, as Whitehead himself points out, is seriously misleading: “There are no bare sensations which are first experienced and then projected” (S 14). A quite different figurative language is needed which can take into account the fact that “the projection is an integral part of the situation, quite as original as the sense-data.” Both projection and catalysis, in short, fail to do justice to the self-creative aspects of the integration of the two modes of perception, wherein appearances become linked by “colours, sounds, tastes, etc., which can with equal truth be described as our sensations or as the qualities of the actual things which we perceive” (S 21-22). But once qualities are regarded as “relational between the perceiving subject and the perceived things,” where the perceived things “are actual in the same sense as we are” (S 21), the problem of language is rendered still more acute when Whitehead states that there cannot be symbolic reference between percepts derived from one mode and percepts from the other mode, unless in some way these percepts intersect. By this ‘intersection’ I mean that a pair of such percepts must have elements of structure in common, whereby they are marked out for the action of symbolic reference (S 49). This crucial step of “marking out” renders otiose the systematic analogy of a catalysis, for the “precipitations” of a chemical catalytic reaction are predetermined by the “fixed” laws of chemistry and physics. It also puts paid to the Cartesian dream of a systematic, or scientific uncovering of the secrets of knowledge-making. In other words, a “marking out” seems best understood as referring to a partly habitual and partly creative activity which lyric poets (and innovative scientific investigators) often exemplify, at least those who demonstrate an uncanny ability to divine novel connections between apparently disparate entities.

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Whitehead in fact points toward this conclusion when he adduces the example of a poet who enters a forest in order to contemplate trees in the hope of producing not just another description of the ordinary but rather a glimpse of the extraordinary—something that would normally go unnoticed in everyday life.14 Thus an instinctive belief in the possibility of getting something right in the creation and use of symbolisms may account for the high value accorded to poetry and indeed all art in every vital culture. By the same token, if a degenerate culture is one that has surrendered itself to “chill abstractions, divorced from aesthetic content,” one may suspect a low degree of cultivation of the imagination of the souls that are guiding that culture. The supposed independence of poetry and philosophy thus turns out to be an egregious modern error with a great potentiality for doing long-term damage to the entire civilization. In other words, the importance of imagination in the making of good sense through good symbolizing cannot perhaps be exaggerated. As for the implication of getting something right, it is thus worth noting the stress that Whitehead puts on the affective nature of perception in the mode of causal efficacy, thereby indicating that a fruitful interplay of symbols and images ultimately depends on a preponderance of well-educated imaginations allied to carefully nurtured emotions, for these can be viewed as volatile mixes of feelings and concepts. Indeed, Whitehead ties the advance of philosophy to “some purification of the emotions by understanding” (MT 168-69).15 Given the high status that feelings are accorded in Whitehead’s metaphysical imaginary, what else but an artistic sensibility guided by an expertise with feelings could explain a successful “marking out” in symbolic referencing?16 This line of thought accords anyway with Whitehead’s claim that “the object of symbolism is the enhancement of the importance of what is symbolized” (S 63). It also helps explain why the task of philosophic reason is inescapably therapeutic: for it should aim “to understand and purge the symbols on which humanity depends” (S 7). The very ideas of knowledge and truth are thus not only released from the tyrannical grip of futile Cartesian yearnings for absolute, pure, or final meanings. Knowledgemaking in general emerges from this line of thought as closely allied to human artistic creativity, which is manifestly experimental and prone to error. Indeed, if “error is primarily the product of symbolic reference, and not of conceptual analysis” (S 19), error is an inescapable fact of all life, even of the lowliest forms. “Error in symbolic reference,” Whitehead continues, “is the discipline which promotes imaginative freedom” (S 19). By the same token, it is the discipline that exacts a high price for a failure to deploy the freedom of imagination properly and responsibly, since this freedom can lead to catastrophic forms of world-making. Yet when everything goes well, symbolic referencing can be called a “localized,” organic functioning of reason which is capable of approximating to the Heraclitean Logos.

Notes 1 See Code 1995, especially Chapter 6. 2 See Latour 1993, 64, who depicts a “nonmodern” (or truly modern) philosophy as one capable of achieving a satisfactory unification of these “three great resources of the modern critique.” For it is a characteristic assumption of the moderns, he argues, that nature and culture can be totally separated, an

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assumption that is legitimated by a contradictory hidden Constitution which associates modernity with a quest for purity while at the same time allowing for the proliferation of impure “hybrids” of nature and culture. 3 See Code 1998 for further discussion of the mystical dimension of a comprehensive naturalism. 4 See Johnson 1983, ix and 151ff. 5 In one of his Harvard lectures, Whitehead notes that “any metaphysics is a good metaphysics which takes you a good long way without its metaphors breaking down” (Ford, 1984, 197-298). Again, “philosophic truth is to be sought in the presuppositions of language rather than in its express statements” (MT vii). 6 Hocking cites Whitehead’s explicit declaration in PR 110: “The presumption that there is only one genus of actual entity constitutes an ideal of cosmological theory to which the philosophy of organism endeavours to conform.” For a survey of different approaches to this issue, often termed the “problem of compound individuals,” see Moses 2003. 7 Peirce remarks, for instance, that the universe “is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs” (Collected Papers 5.448n). In Peirce’s view, natural signs must be distinguished from symbols whose meanings are established by consensus. 8 This implies that novel eternal objects can also emerge: see Code 2002. 9 “While we exist, body and soul are inescapable elements in our being, each with a full reality of our own immediate self” (MT 161). 10 Wolfgang Pauli, one of the leading figures in the development of quantum theory, argues that quantum physics, which shows the need for a non-classical conception of the relation between subjects and objects, also indicates that the idea of an “objective reality” should be replaced by a “reality of symbols”: see Laurikainen 1985. 11 See Modena 1985, 72, who notes that for Coleridge symbol-making is “an innate function of the mind coinstantaneous with the act of thinking.” 12 See e.g. SMW 69-72. 13 For an exploration of the natural and cultural intersection of modes of symbolizing, see Lachmann 2000. He attempts to link Whitehead’s theory of perception, which is mainly focussed on the relation between minds and nature, to the extension by Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer of Kant’s theory of knowledge that focuses on the culturally oriented topics of language, myth, art which supply the spiritual foundations of understanding. 14 The word “tree” and the image of a tree “enter into our experience on equal terms; and it would be just as sensible, viewing the question abstractedly, for trees to symbolize the word ‘tree’ as for the word to symbolize the trees” (S 12). 15 In the Whiteheadian-Peircean imaginary I have referred to above, feelings can be regarded as metaphysically First (in Peirce’s sense of being sui generis). Poets, or artists in general, may thus be exemplary philosophers, if Susanne Langer is right and artists are experts in feeling (see Langer 1957). 16 Causal efficacy refers to “the most insistent perception of a circumambient efficacious world of beings” (S 55). That is, this mode of perception can be understood as referring to the vague feelings that Peirce links to Firstness whereby natural signs convey real possibilities.

The Method of Extensive Abstraction: The Construction of Objects Guillaume Durand

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1. A Core Method Whitehead’s Method of Extensive Abstraction (MEA) has been often treated in secondary literature as a purely technical device that can be introduced without reference either to its place in Whitehead’s intellectual development or to its general philosophical context. This paper claims that the method needs to be understood both developmentally and philosophically. On the one hand, the method originated in the Memoir of 1906 (MCMW) and the Parisian paper of 1916 (“La théorie relationniste de l’espace”) and was elaborated between 1917–1922 in seminal works such as “The Anatomy of Some Scientific Ideas,” PNK, CN and R. On the other hand, even in the forceful critical commentaries of Theodore de Laguna and Jules Vuillemin, the authors are concerned only with the logical and epistemological problem of the link between scientific concepts and sense-experience. They never consider the philosophically puzzling theory of objects in itself. Such an approach, however, seems inadequate to the ideas involved. The central tension in the three major works of Whitehead’s philosophy of nature is the relation between events and objects—how to connect flux, durability and recurrence within a philosophy of events. Or, more precisely: if everything is to be thought in terms of events, how can we distinguish different types of elements of recurrence and durability in the most immediate sense-experience—as for instance this particular shade of color (which is called “sense-object”), this tree (“perceptual object”), this cat that I recognize as remaining the same through time (“physical object”), and this molecule or this electron (“scientific object”) as in physics. The fundamental problem in the philosophy of nature, therefore, is not events, which are once and for all defined as ultimate elements of experience, but rather objects—their status and place within nature. But scholars have usually conflated objects and events, overlooking the fact that Whitehead defines objects as abstract entities vis-à-vis ultimate concrete senseexperience which is defined by events: The concrete facts are the events themselves—I have already explained to you that to be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only one factor of a more concrete element of nature (CN 171). From this standpoint, the main part of the method of extensive abstraction is acquiring a new rightfulness. It is the central point of the theory of abstraction that Whitehead develops in PNK and CN. The method in its most abstract primitive forms (MCMW, TRE and ASI) consists in defining a geometric point by a class of convergent volumes. Later, it allows us to express different types of abstract objects—such as colors—in more concrete terms of abstractive i

Département de philosophie, Université de Nantes, France; [email protected].

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classes and series of events. The aim is an empirical foundation of the most abstract objects, as well as a new semantic of events and relations. The method of extensive abstraction is thus the basis of the construction of a new concept of nature, one that is based on events and their relations (cf. Durand 2005, 2006).

2. Method and Process The method of extensive abstraction involves four essential steps, from the most concrete elements—events—to the most abstract entities—sense-figures and sense-objects:

Fig. 1 From PNK to R, Whitehead starts from the immediate fact of sense-experience, defined as an event, a duration, or a “complete whole of nature” (PNK 68). It is the whole of nature that is passing in a certain duration. A duration is defined as a special type of event, and as such, it is spatio-temporal. It is spatially infinite, but temporally finite. The separation of space and time— a volume, a duration—comes second and is abstracted by means of the method. In discussing this abstractive process, we will consider the example of some color enduring through a span of time. As an event, a duration is defined in the first place by its non-recurrence (e.g. PNK 61-62). In the second place, it is defined by its essential nature of relata in the homogeneous and internal relation of extension: Every event extends over other events which are parts of itself, and every event is extended over by other events of which it is part (PNK 61). This concrete slab of nature is not a mere undifferentiated passage: it includes on the contrary a complex infinity of relata and relations—at this stage, only confusedly perceived, like events connected by the general and fundamental relation of extension. Events form a sort of ether,1 or rather a sort of continuum, defined by the MEA’s axiomatic of the relation K as a relation of extension: (i) aKb implies that a is distinct from b, namely, “part” here means “proper part;” (ii) Every event extends over other events and is itself part of other events: the set of events which an event e extends over is called the set of parts of e; (iii) If the parts of b are also parts of a and a and b are distinct, then aKb; (iv) The relation K is transitive, i.e. aKb and bKc, then aKc; (v) If aKc, there are events such as b where aKb and bKc;

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(vi) If a and b are any two events, there are events such as e where eKa and eKb (PNK 101). Accordingly, the relation of extension is non-reflexive (i), transitive (iv), and consequently asymmetric, since if a extends over b, then b cannot extend over a. The second axiom demands that there is neither a “minimum” nor “maximum” event. To guarantee the continuity of the continuum, Whitehead adds to this essential relation of extension the relations of intersection,2 of junction, adjunction and injunction between events. For the sake of our argument, we will add two axioms to the general axiomatic: (vii) Every event has junctions (and adjunctions) with other events; (viii) Every event has injunctions with other events. But now, if the relation of extension is asymmetric, transitive and compact, it is still neither connex, nor, therefore, serial.3 The second step of the process corresponds (i) to the birth of a real connexity and setting in series of events, or, in more general terms, to the birth of an order; and (ii) to the birth of distinctive forms, different abstractive classes or type or relations, that we must bring closer to entities that approximate rhythms in PNK rhythms. Events form spatio-temporal patterns (cf. PNK 195-200), particular geometrical figures, defined within the method as abstractive classes, and classes of classes called abstractive elements. An abstractive class is defined with these two conditions: (i) Given any two of its members, one extends over the other; (ii) There is no event which is extended over by every event of the set. Given that it is asymmetric, transitive and connex, the first condition consists in turning the relation of extension into a serial relation. The second implies that an abstractive class has no last term: it builds up an infinite series. Every member of the series extends over other smaller members. By the means of these different abstractive classes (infinite as a matter of principle), and the classes of abstractive classes, the method makes it possible to express—in the concrete terms of events and relation of extension—different figures abstracted from a Euclidean threedimensional and quadri-dimensional geometry: rects, levels, routes, stations and matrices.4 Instantaneous Spaces

Space-Time

Time-less Spaces

PNK, III, IX

PNK, III, X

PNK, III, X

Punct

Event-particle

Point

Rect

Route

Straight line

Station Point-track, Null-track Level

Matrix

Plane

Volume

Solid, volume

Volume

Now it is from the immediate comparison of these different figures that the first type of objects will be abstracted: in PNK, sense-figures, then sense-objects. It is to this topic that we now turn.

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3. The First Objects: Figures and Colors 3.1. From Series to Figures Sense-figures are the first types of objects immediately recognized by experience.5 First of all, recognizing a sense-figure presupposes the perception of congruent6 volumes within a single duration: a sense-figure is not a singular volume of a particular shape, but it presupposes several volumes perceived as congruent through a duration. We are referring now to the appearance of a kind a periodicity: now these geometrical figures, defined in the first steps of the method in terms of abstractive classes and elements, appear in sense-experience to be congruent. Whitehead specifies that such a congruence is only an ideal condition, one that can only be approached through perception but that is sufficient to recognize a sense-figure (PNK, 190). Finally, if there were changing and perpetual motion, it would be difficult, or even impossible to recognize such figures. Secondly, the recognition of a sense-figure does not imply the recognition of equality between several volumes, but rather the recognition that there is one and only one volume during the duration. What does this abstraction of figures consist of? This is indeed the first real step in the “climb”7 towards abstraction from events to objects: the reduction of several congruent volumes to one and only sense-figure; in other words, the reduction of the relation of equality or congruence between sets of events to the relation of identity. In the MEA this comes down to considering the limit-element of an abstractive series in itself and for itself, apart from the most concrete series, that just approaches it:

Fig. 2 Let there be two types of convergence and abstractive series: the first is the type of classes and abstractive elements that allows us to define any volume. Convergence is mainly spatial and temporal. The second type of convergence requires more: the convergence does not reduce to an element of smaller dimensions, but to a common identity that different elements of the series seem to share. Abstraction is no longer the mere cutting or reduction of the given fact; it is an almost immediate induction or generalization. First, the various members of the series are taken as equal. Then, we pass from the Many to the One. The sense-figure is posited and recognized as independent from the convergent series. It is this transformation from the series to the object, from the series to the limit-element, that brings about the origin of our most primary thoughts.

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Now, the MEA requires and allows the expression of an object (i.e. a sense-figure) in terms of the convergent series of events. Therefore, our understanding of the method does not lead to the exclusion of objects from nature: it only suggests a concrete and relational expression of these objects. What does the abstraction of a sense-object consist of? How can we express a color in terms of events?

3.2. Colors and Harmonics Each particular sense-object, such as a certain color, smell, or sound, is always linked to a particular sense-figure in sense-experience: I do not experience blue, but only a blue patch or a blue volume. Now, as we have seen before, a sense-figure is already an abstraction, an object. Consequently, the recognition of a sense-object—that particular shade of red—requires at least two more steps: The abstraction of a sense-figure is the first element of identity, only approached through concrete experience; The abstraction of the sense-object itself—this particular shade of red— from its figure. In this way, any color, when grasped in itself, is always more abstract than a corresponding colored figure. With regard to the first step: should we admit two simultaneous applications of the method? One would concern the mere geometrical properties of events—events as congruent volumes— from which the figure is abstracted; the other would consider the particular sense-qualities from which the quality with the sense-figure would be abstracted. Given a particular sense-quality q, let’s state an infinite series of qualities, converging to the sense-object O: q1, q2, q3, …, qn, qn+1,…
O. This is one of Russell’s interpretations of MEA, in Our Knowledge of the External World (1914).8 Whitehead himself suggests such an idea in R (Chapter 3, 42-43), although in fact the MEA is never applied to sense-qualities in Whitehead’s works. Such an analysis would suppose the abstraction and separation between figure and quality, which are only second in experience. In the most concrete experience, a sense-quality is always linked to a particular figure. So let’s distinguish here between 1. Geometrical forms of events, and their sense-qualities that are by themselves events: in R, events are “a part of the becomingness of nature, colored with all the hues of its contents” (R 21.) 2. Kinds of objects that are both sense-figures and sense-objects, from the most concrete to the most abstract. Now, how must we think the abstraction of a particular color? Let’s take for example a series of events, illustrated by a series of colored squares:

Fig. 3

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Let’s suppose that the congruence of these figures were only approximate. Each figure is singular, just as the color which is linked to it: it is also defined as an event. What can we deduce from this? First of all, according to Whitehead, these are first analogies between geometrical forms and events that lead to the recognition of one and only colored figure and so one and only color, by abstracting the identity of a color from events. It does not imply that we do not have a direct experience of analogies between colors. But the abstractive process, the convergence of the abstractive series, relies on mathematical and quantitative analogies between extensive properties of events. Figures and colors belong to concrete experience as well, but the first are more important in ordinary experience: Perceptive insistency is not ranged in the order of simplicity as determined by a reflective analysis of the element of our awareness of nature. Sense-figures possess a higher perceptive insistency than the corresponding sense-object. We first notice a dark-blue figure and pass to the dark-blueness […]. This perceptive power of figures carries us to the direct recognition of sorts of objects which otherwise would remain in the region of abstract logical concept. For example, our perception of sight-figures leads to the recognition of colour as being what is common to all particular colour (PNK 192). In sense-experience, figures and analogies between figures are first and fundamental to the recognition of sense-objects as “generalised sense-objects.” Second, if a color is always essentially linked to a particular figure, we can deduce that quantitative analogies between figures, which are the basis of convergence, are at the same time qualitative analogies between colors. The separation of quantity and quality is also an abstraction. This is one of the examples of the Pythagoreanism which underlies Whitehead’s Platonism in PR, as reflected in the recurrent references to the Timaeus: The practical counsel to be derived from Pythagoras, is to measure, and as to express quality in terms of numerically determined quantity (SMW 41). Third, the abstractive process is composed of an infinity of infinite series, containing an infinity of events, or analogue forms and colors, in the recognition of a particular color within a present duration. I propose the following schema: infinite vertical series are the first kinds of abstractive series, showing the abstractive classes and elements that determine ordinary volumes or figures. The infinite horizontal series is the second kind of series, converging into a superior type of identity—the particular sense-figure or colored figure, recognized as one and identical within a duration. Sense object and figure are there abstracted from a harmonic or scale of colored figures, which is the concrete expression of the only ideal figure and color, that is, the figure and color considered by the mind to be simple and independent entities.

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Fig. 4 Such harmonics are not only applicable to sense-objects of the other senses (such as sounds or smells), but also to physical and scientific objects. The MEA thus forms the basis for a periodic or rhythmic theory of different types of objects.

4. Conclusion A first conclusion that we can draw is that the different applications of the method allow us to express the most abstract objects in concrete relational terms. For the different types of simple and substantial identities of traditional philosophies of nature—conceived on the basis of the classical dyadic relation between substance and attribute—Whitehead’s philosophy of events substitutes new forms of identities and relations which are more complex: rhythms, configurations of events, which go beyond the second and more abstract dualism of mere events and objects. The notion of rhythm appears briefly at the end of PNK, but it is bound to the axiomatic of the method and to the ultimate issue of the articulation between events and objects; it acquires here the fundamental place suggested by the author himself. A rhythm is defined as the primitive unity of events and objects within an ultimate flux: it is a form that is produced in and by the flux. It is not a mere structure or configuration, but an ongoing “structuration”—a mode of flowing, a particular configuration that the motion takes. The Whiteheadian rhythm is thus closer to the Heraclitean “panta rei” than to the Platonic rhythm: it is the flux which is primary, or rather, it is a condition of identity, which is itself immanent in the flux. Thus, this primary unity remains essentially an event: a rhythm is not defined by periodicity or repetition, as it is usually understood. Between these patterns, there are only analogies within experience, never pure repetition. Periodicity pattern, conceived abstractly in itself, is always bound and subordinated to the passage of nature, itself ultimately defined as an event. This passage or flux is not a pure event, it is essentially rhythmical, and this is what Whitehead calls “life.” A second conclusion is that MEA allows us to overcome the bifurcation of nature: in the first steps of the abstractive process, the passage of nature, by its own flowing in which the percipient event takes part, reveals spatio-temporal configurations, formed and bound by relations of extension, equality and congruence. The classes and elements of the MEA are proposed as the primary sense-forms produced by the passage of nature, which spread out into space-time, and are immediately apprehended by a percipient event.

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Finally, the different applications of the MEA all converge towards the essential thesis which is here defended, that objects as abstract, independent and self-sufficient entities are not necessary either for an adequate conception of the passage of nature, nor for theories of the sense-experience of identity, repetition, durability, and potentiality: rhythms and abstractive elements, understood essentially as events, are enough to describe the immediate senseapprehension of such characters in the creative advance. Given this, the Aristotelian category of substance must be relativized and reconstructed in accordance with a metaphysics of events.9

Notes 1

See PNK 102, although Whitehead adds that “it is not necessary here to pursue the analogy.” PNK 102 (“Two events ‘intersect’ when they have parts in common”). In CN, such relations are referred to as “overlapping” (77). 3 Broad comments: “This means that, although all events extend over some events and are extended over by others, yet there are pairs of events which do not stand to each other either in the relation K or not-K” (1920). Cf. Lango’s paper on “Time and Extension” in this volume. 4 On the relations of these three spaces, see Durand 2006, Part IV, Chapter I, and Palter 1960, 5455: “[…] Whitehead distinguishes three general types of ‘space’: (1) the three-dimensional instantaneous (or momentary) space to which the ‘observed space of ordinary perception is an approximation’ (PNK 138); (2) the four-dimensional space-time introduced by Minkowski; (3) the time-less (or permanent) three-dimensional space corresponding to the space of physical science. The second of these types of space is unique […]; the first and third, being relative to the state of motion of the observer, are potentially infinite in number, although the third is uniquely determined for any observer in a fixed state of motion, while the first changes from instant to instant even for an observer in a fixed state of motion.” 5 See PNK 190-194: “Indeed the high perceptive power of figures is at once the foundation of our natural knowledge and the origin of our philosophical errors” (192). 6 Here we will not develop the theory of congruence as presented in PNK, Chapter IV and XII, and later in R, I, Chapter III. In this paper, “congruence” simply means the concordance or spatiotemporal coincidence between perceived volumes. 7 PNK 186: “The climb from the sense-object to the perceptual object, and from the perceptual object to the scientific object […] is a steady pursuit of simplicity, permanence, and selfsufficiency, combined with the essential attribute of adequacy for the purpose of defining the apparent characters.” 8 See especially Chapter IV and Appendix. 9 I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Elie During, Michel Weber and Charlotte Yver for their help in translating this paper. 2

Time and Experience John W. Lango

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The purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to Whitehead’s philosophy of time in Process and Reality. For lack of space, his other writings are not considered.1 The question of how his categoreal scheme should be understood has been answered in very different ways. Consequently, there have been very different interpretations of his philosophy of time. Thus, for the sake of simplicity, I shall present my interpretation of his philosophy of time in terms of my understanding of his categoreal scheme.2 In accordance with the overall purpose of this Handbook, my assumption is that it is best to have a comprehensible introductory account of what could be a bewildering topic.3

1. Temporality and Subjective Experiencing Process and Reality is primarily a work in metaphysics, and thus Whitehead's philosophy of time is primarily a metaphysics of time. However, this article is placed in a part of the Handbook that is entitled “Theory of Knowledge.” It should be realized that Process and Reality does not contain a conventional theory of knowledge. Instead of focusing narrowly on human knowledge, Whitehead was concerned broadly with human experience. Hence this part of the Handbook might have been entitled “Theory of Experience.” It also should be realized that Whitehead thought that metaphysics and the theory of experience are interlinked. Note, in particular, his revealing declaration that he “fully accepts Descartes’ discovery that subjective experiencing is the primary metaphysical situation which is presented to metaphysics for analysis” (PR 160).4 Therefore, in interpreting his philosophy of time, it is crucial to grasp the following point: the primary metaphysical situation for the metaphysical analysis of time is the subjective experiencing of time. This crucial point needs further clarification. By means of the method of imaginative generalization, which is “the primary method of philosophy” (PR 10), Whitehead generalized the concept of a human being’s experiences as the concept of an actual occasion’s prehensions. Actual occasions are “drops of experience” (PR 18): their prehensions are their experiences. In this broad use of the term “experience,” an experience need not involve “consciousness, thought, [or] sense-perception” (PR 36). Accordingly, the crucial point is, more exactly, this: the primary metaphysical situation for the metaphysical analysis of time is an actual occasion’s subjective experiencing of time. In this article, the central question to be answered is: how do actual occasions experience time?

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Philosophy Department, Hunter College of the City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065; www.hunter.cuny.edu; [email protected].

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Whitehead’s philosophy of time is grounded in his categoreal scheme. Consider, in particular, the Category of the Ultimate—namely, “that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively” (PR 21). This process of the many becoming the one is summarized by the term “creative advance” (PR 21). The creative advance of actual occasions is intrinsically temporal. Each actual occasion is a temporally novel act of becoming.5 Accordingly, the central question to be answered is, more specifically, this: how does an actual occasion experience the temporality of this creative advance?6

2. Temporality and Human Subjectivity However, since the method of imaginative generalization is the primary method of philosophy, it is illuminating to explore the following question first: how does a human being experience time? According to common sense, human beings distinguish between events that have happened in the past, events that are happening in the present, and events that might happen in the future. “The great question about time is,” D. H. Mellor plausibly asserted, “what past, present and future are and how they differ from each other” (1988, 7). And, correspondingly, a key question about our experience of time is: how do we human beings experience the past, the present, and the future and how do these experiences differ from each other? One answer to this key question, based on what has been termed a “dynamic view of time” (Tooley 1997), and involving such metaphors as “passage” and “flow,” can be sketched as follows. We experience events as looming in the future, occurring in the present, and passing into the past. Consequently, it might be said that we experience the future, the present, and the past themselves as the principal loci of events. Furthermore, we experience the passage (or flow) of events from the future into the present, and from the present into the past. Consequently, it might be said that we experience the passage of time itself. Although Whitehead accepted Descartes’s discovery about the metaphysical primacy of subjective experiencing, he did not accept Descartes’s twin dualisms of mind and matter and mind and external world. For the sake of comparison, let me outline part of a Cartesian answer to the above key question. From the standpoint of the human mind, ideas of material objects loom in the future, occur in the present, and pass into the past. Such ideas represent material objects in the external world. Therefore, by means of the temporal passage of such ideas in our minds, we experience—albeit indirectly, through representation—happenings to material objects as looming in the future, occurring in the present, and passing into the past. Correlative to the stated two dualisms, there is a third dualism of the subjective time of ideas and the objective time of material objects. In contrast, Whitehead’s metaphysics was monistic: actual occasions are the “final real things of which the world is made up” (PR 18). Moreover, rejecting Descartes’s conception of minds and material objects as substances, Whitehead conjectured that a human mind is comprised of actual occasions. More exactly, his conjecture was that a human mind is comprised of a linear series of actual occasions that are intermingled with the actual occasions comprising a brain (but

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“dissociated from the physical material atoms” of the brain) (PR 109). Thus he did not construe the question of how a human being experiences time as the question of how an endurant human mind experiences time. Instead—and this is an important point—he construed that question as follows: how do the occurrent actual occasions of a human mind experience time? Therefore, the key question raised above about our experience of time needs to be reformulated as follows: how does an actual occasion of a human mind experience the past, the present, and the future and how do these experiences differ from each other? It is essential to understand that Whitehead’s answer to this reformulated key question is radically different from the above answer to the original key question. Rather than the metaphor of “passage,” Whitehead used the metaphor of “advance.” Rather than the passage of ideas through a mind-substance, there is a creative advance of actual occasions of a human mind. Thus it cannot be said that each actual occasion of a human mind experiences the passage of events from the future into the present, and from the present into the past. For there is no endurant present, from the standpoint of which endurant human minds experience the passage of events. There is no endurant future in which events loom, and there is no endurant past into which events pass. Instead, Whitehead relativized the notions of past, present, and future to each actual occasion of a human mind. Each actual occasion of a human mind has its own past, its own present, and its own future.

3. Causal Pasts and Simple Physical Feelings And, by means of his method of imaginative generalization, he generalized those relativized notions to every actual occasion. Every actual occasion has its “causal past,” its “contemporaries,” and its “causal future” (PR 123, 319).7 Its causal past is the locus of actual occasions in the past relative to it; the set of its contemporaries is the locus of actual occasions contemporaneous with it; and its causal future is the locus of actual occasions in the future relative to it. Therefore, the reformulated key question should be generalized as follows to all actual occasions no matter how rudimentary, even “the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space” (PR 18): how does each actual occasion experience its causal past, its locus of contemporaries, and its causal future and how do these experiences differ from each other? Distinguishing three component questions in this generalized key question, let us start by exploring the question: how does each actual occasion experience its causal past? (The questions about how it experiences its locus of contemporaries and its causal future are considered later.) In terms of common sense, and typical theories of knowledge, the objects of human visual perceptions are in the present. But, in Whitehead’s metaphysics, “sense-perception” is not one of “the basic elements of experience” (PR 36). Instead, the most basic elements of an actual occasion’s experience are termed “simple physical feelings,” each of which is “an act of causation” (PR 236). In accordance with the doctrine that the cause temporally precedes the effect, the objects of an actual occasion’s simple physical feelings are in its causal past. “In virtue of these [simple physical] feelings,” he remarked, “time is the conformation of the

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immediate present to the past” (PR 238). In contrast to the traditional emphasis on the (absolute) present, Whitehead emphasized the (relativized) past. The fundamental metaphysical situation for the metaphysical analysis of time is an actual occasion’s subjective experiencing of its causal past. Whitehead rooted this emphasis on the past in his categoreal scheme. Most significantly, the ontological principle is “That every condition to which the process of becoming conforms in any particular instance has its reason either in the character of some actual entity in the actual world of that concrescence, or in the character of the subject which is in process of concrescence” (PR 24). The concept of actual world in the ontological principle is coextensive with the above concept of causal past. The actual occasions in the subject’s actual world are identically the same as the actual occasions in its causal past. Hence the question of how an actual occasion experiences its causal past is tantamount to the question: how does an actual occasion experience the temporality of its actual world? Whitehead summarized the ontological principle thus: “actual entities are the only reasons” (PR 24). Therefore, in his metaphysics, actual occasions are the reasons for time. In terms of the ontological principle, the question we are exploring is, more exactly, this: how does an actual occasion experience the temporal character of the actual occasions in its actual world (i.e., its causal past)? To comprehend how actual occasions are the reasons for time, Whitehead’s notion of simple physical feelings needs to be explained (PR 236-39). Let M be an actual occasion. The creative advance of M is intrinsically temporal. M is a temporally novel act of becoming. Moreover, M’s simple physical feelings “also become” (PR 22). M comes into being through a process of concrescence. In the first phase of M’s process of concrescence, M has simple physical feelings of all of the actual occasions in M’s causal past. Each of M’s simple physical feelings is a feeling of a single actual occasion in M’s causal past. Let N by an actual occasion thus felt by M. M is the “subject” of the feeling and N is the “initial datum” of the feeling. In brief, a present subject has a simple physical feeling of a past datum. In this way, a simple physical feeling also is intrinsically temporal. By representing the “vector character” (PR 19) of a simple physical feeling by an arrow (i.e., a directed line), we can represent it as pointing from the present to the past. Finally, having burrowed into the core of Whitehead’s metaphysics, the very first metaphysical situation for the metaphysical analysis of time has been unearthed—namely, an actual occasion’s simple physical feeling of a single actual occasion in its causal past. By way of illustration, let us return to the question of how an actual occasion of a human mind experiences the past, the present, and the future. Again distinguishing three component questions, the relevant question is: how does an actual occasion of a human mind experience its causal past? A human mind is comprised of a linear series of actual occasions, which are interrelated by (among other things) “memory” (PR 239). Each actual occasion of a human mind has simple physical feelings of temporally preceding actual occasions of that human mind. A human being’s memories of her past experiences are grounded on such simple physical feelings. The very first metaphysical situation for the metaphysical analysis of the human experience of time is the simple physical feeling by an actual occasion of a human mind of a single temporally preceding actual occasion of that human mind—especially the one that is temporally proximate (i.e., the one that is immediately in the causal past).

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Presumably, Whitehead held a relational theory of time (cf. PNK 62). In accordance with the ontological principle, temporal relations hold primarily among actual occasions. In particular, the creative advance of actual occasions is temporally ordered. The concept of temporal order is a relational concept, which can be expressed by the term “earlier than.” A main point is that a relation of temporal order among actual occasions is inherent in their relative acts of becoming. Through their acts of becoming, actual occasions are the reasons for their temporal order. In the above schematic illustration, M and N are acts of becoming, and N comes into being earlier than M comes into being. For, relative to the process of becoming of the subject M, the initial datum N has “already become” (PR 65).8 The relational fact that N is temporally earlier than M is inherent in the relational fact that, relative to the becoming of M, N has already come into being. This relation of temporal order is asymmetric: if one actual occasion comes into being earlier than another, then the latter cannot come into being earlier than the former. This “irreversibility of time” is grounded on the notion of simple physical feelings (PR 237). Simple physical feelings are “concrete facts of relatedness” (PR 22), and this relatedness is asymmetric: if one actual occasion feels another actual occasion, then the former cannot feel the latter. This account of Whitehead’s notion of simple physical feelings is incomplete. M’s simple physical feeling of N has N as its initial datum, but it also has an “objective datum”—namely, one of N’s feelings (PR 236). (It also has a “subjective form,” but this complication may be ignored.) In the theory of knowledge, the claim is sometimes made that the objects of immediate sensory experience are qualia. In contrast, in Whitehead’s theory of experience, the objective data of simple physical feelings are relational. Just as M’s simple physical feeling is a concrete fact of relatedness to N, so the objective datum—one of N’s feelings—is a concrete fact of relatedness. In short, “a simple physical feeling is one feeling which feels another feeling” (PR 236). Also, in the theory of knowledge, the claim is sometimes made that qualia represent properties of objects in the external world. But Whitehead did not accept the Cartesian dualism of mind and external world. Although calling the objective datum a “perspective,” he did not mean that the objective datum is a representation (PR 236). Rather than being a representative realist, Whitehead was a direct realist about simple physical feelings. The objective datum of M’s simple physical feeling of N is not a quale in M that represents a property of N. Instead, the objective datum of M’s simple physical feeling of N is (numerically identically) one of N’s feelings. Drawing upon the etymology of the term “prehension,” a simple physical feeling can be said to be an act of seizing or taking hold of its initial datum by means of its objective datum. To illustrate, let us return to the question of how an actual occasion of a human mind experiences its causal past. Human memories are grounded on simple physical feelings. In having such feelings, an actual occasion of a human mind directly experiences the actual world external to it—especially the single actual occasion of that human mind that is immediately in its causal past.9

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4. Subjectively Experiencing the Temporal Order in the Causal Past We are exploring the question of how an actual occasion experiences the temporal character of the actual occasions in its causal past. In light of a main point in the preceding section—namely, that a relation of temporal order among actual occasions is inherent in their relative acts of becoming—I want now to reformulate this question more specifically as follows: how does an actual occasion experience the temporal order among the actual occasions in its causal past? To answer this question methodically, let us begin with a simple case. In the above schematic illustration, let O be a third actual occasion, and suppose that N has a simple physical feeling of O. Furthermore—and this is the critical supposition—the objective datum of M’s simple physical feeling of N is a simple physical feeling by N of O. In short, M’s simple physical feeling is one feeling which feels another simple physical feeling. Instead of being merely qualitative, the objective datum of M’s simple physical feeling is relational: it is a concrete fact of relatedness between N and O. This relatedness between N and O involves a relation of temporal order. Just as N comes into being earlier than M comes into being, so O comes into being earlier than N comes into being. The relational fact that O is temporally earlier than N is inherent in the relational fact that, relative to the becoming of N, O has already come into being. Therefore, when M has this simple physical feeling of N, the objective datum of which is N’s simple physical feeling of O, M experiences this temporal ordering of O and N. However, it is assumed that, even though an actual occasion feels all of the actual occasions in its causal past, it does not feel all of their feelings. Therefore, it does not experience the totality of such temporal orderings in its causal past; instead, its experience of them is partial. With this qualification in mind, let me sketch how the simple case can be generalized. Let X and Y be actual occasions in M’s causal past, and suppose that X has a simple physical feeling of Y. Then, if M has a simple physical feeling of X the objective datum of which is X’s simple physical feeling of Y, M experiences the temporal ordering of X and Y. “The philosophy of organism is,” Whitehead declared, “the inversion of Kant’s philosophy” (PR 88). Whitehead summarized what he meant thus: “For Kant, the world emerges from the subject; for the philosophy of organism, the subject emerges from the world” (PR 88). In particular, Whitehead’s philosophy of time is the inversion of Kant’s philosophy of time. For Kant, time stems a priori from the subject; for Whitehead, the subject actual occasion experiences time. Presupposing Whitehead’s interpretation of Kant, and expressing some of Kant’s views about time very briefly (and thus inadequately), I shall expand this comparison, utilizing the above simple case. According to Kant’s Second Analogy (entitled “Principle of temporal sequence according to the law of causality”), the objective temporal order of events “cannot be perceived in itself”; instead, the subject obtains knowledge of the objective temporal order of events by applying the “law of causality” to the subjective temporal succession of sensory impressions (Kant 1998, B 233-34). Note that Kant assumed that sensory impressions are not in and of themselves objectively temporally ordered. In general, “Kant, following Hume,

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assumes,” Whitehead asserted, “the radical disconnection of [sensory] impressions qua data” (PR 113). In contrast, in Whitehead’s metaphysics, “the datum includes its own interconnections” (PR 113). A main point is that the objective datum of M’s simple physical feeling includes its own interconnections—in particular, it includes the temporal interconnection of O and N (i.e., that O is temporally earlier than N). Rather then imposing a temporal order on O and N, M experiences their temporal order. In brief, Kant was an apriorist (and idealist) about temporal order, whereas Whitehead was an empiricist (and realist). But I have only begun to answer the above question about the experience of temporal order. Whitehead had a conception of the “integration” of simple physical feelings (PR 26), which is similar to (but quite different from) Kant’s conception of the “synthesis” of sensory impressions (Kant 1998, B103). In the first phase of an actual occasion’s process of concrescence, it has many simple physical feelings that are not integrated. Consequently, in this first phase, it only experiences a multiplicity of unintegrated temporal orderings. For illustration, the simple case can be augmented as follows. Let P be an actual occasion, and suppose that O has a simple physical feeling of P. And suppose that M has a simple physical feeling of O, the objective datum of which is O’s simple physical feeling of P. Consequently, in addition to the above experience of the temporal ordering of O and N, M experiences the temporal ordering of P and O. But these experiences are not integrated. Of course, N comes into being earlier than O comes into being, and O comes into being earlier than P comes into being. Nevertheless, the question remains: how does M experience this temporal ordering of P, O, and N? In later phases of the process of concrescence, an actual occasion integrates its simple physical feelings of actual occasions into complex physical feelings of nexuses.10 The ontological category of nexuses is crucial to Whitehead’s metaphysics. Most importantly, he categorized the enduring things of ordinary experience and scientific theories as nexuses. A nexus is constituted (or composed) of actual occasions; it is “real, individual, and particular” (PR 20); it comes into being when its constituent actual occasions have simple physical feelings of one another (PR 24). In terms of the simple physical feelings listed above in the simple case, the following nexuses can be listed: the nexus of M and N, the nexus of M and O, the nexus of N and O, the nexus of O and P, the nexus of M, N, and O, the nexus of N, O, and P, and the nexus of M, N, O, and P (cf. PR 226). Also, since each actual occasion feels every actual occasion in its actual world—e.g., M has a simple physical feeling of P—other nexuses are implicit in the simple case—e.g., the nexus of M and P. Accordingly, let us make an additional supposition: in later phases of M’s process of concrescence, M integrates the simple physical feelings of N, O, and P into a complex physical feeling of the nexus of N, O, and P. A main point is that, when M has this complex physical feeling of this nexus, the members of which are temporally ordered, M experiences their temporal ordering. From M’s experiences of the temporal ordering of O and N and the temporal ordering of P and O, and by means of such a process of integration, M experiences the temporal ordering of P, O, and N. However, since M does not experience the totality of temporal orderings of pairs of actual occasions in M’s causal past, M can have a complex physical feeling of a nexus without experiencing completely the temporal ordering of the actual occasions in the nexus.

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In conclusion, the actual occasions in a subject’s causal past are temporally ordered. In general, there is a metaphysical relation of temporal order among actual occasions that is irreflexive, asymmetric, and transitive. The actual occasions in M’s causal past have simple physical feelings of one another, and so a unique nexus of them comes into being by means of their simple physical feelings. Let us term this nexus, thus constituted of the actual occasions in M’s causal past, the “total” nexus (relative to M). In intermediate phases of M’s process of concrescence, M integrates various simple physical feelings of actual occasions into various complex physical feelings of nexuses. In the final phase of M’s process of concrescence, M integrates all of these physical feelings into “one complex, fully determinate feeling” of M’s total nexus (PR 26, 230). A main point is that, when M has this one complex physical feeling of this total nexus, the members of which are temporally ordered, M experiences partially their temporal ordering. More explicitly, in earlier phases of M’s process of concrescence, M experiences various temporal orderings of actual occasions. From M’s experiences of those various temporal orderings, and by means of the process of integration in the final phase, M experiences partially the temporal order among the actual occasions in M’s causal past.11 With regard to the qualification expressed by the word “partially,” one might wonder how incompletely M experiences this temporal order. Whitehead interpreted the idea of “the order of nature” by means of his metaphysical conception of “society” (PR 89). “Our present cosmic epoch is,” he conjectured, “formed by an ‘electromagnetic’ society” (PR 98)—i.e., a society that grounds “electromagnetic laws” (PR 91). Now suppose that M is in our cosmic epoch. Let us term the part of M’s causal past that is in our cosmic epoch “M’s ordered causal past.” Conceivably, since electromagnetic fields are omnipresent throughout our cosmic epoch—even in “empty space” (PR 92)—M experiences the temporal order among the actual occasions in M’s ordered causal past completely.

5. Contemporaries and Causal Futures Having explored the question of how each actual occasion experiences its causal past, I shall now consider the question: how does each actual occasion experience its locus of contemporaries? In earlier sections, I have endeavored to explain principal ideas thoroughly; henceforth, for lack of space, my discussions are abbreviated. The causal future of M “is composed of those actual occasions which will have M in their respective causal pasts” (PR 319). The locus of contemporaries of M is composed of “those actual occasions which lie neither in M’s causal past nor in M’s causal future” (PR 320). An actual occasion does not have simple physical feelings of its contemporaries, and its contemporaries do not have simple physical feelings of it. In this sense, an actual occasion does not experience its contemporaries. Nevertheless, some actual occasions—archetypically, actual occasions of a human mind, but also actual occasions of a “physical object” (PR 321)—are related to their contemporaries indirectly, by means of perceptions in the mode of “presentational immediacy” (PR 61). Although Whitehead was a direct realist about simple physical feelings, he was (in a sense) a representative realist about sense-perceptions. His theory

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of perception in the mode of presentational immediacy—which includes concepts of “sensedata” and “extension” (PR 61)—is similar to (but still different from) Descartes’s theory of perception. Concerning the concept of extension, Whitehead made this significant remark: “Our direct perception of the contemporary world is thus reduced to extension” (PR 61). Even though we do not experience contemporaneous actual occasions, we do experience geometrical “perspectives introduced by extensive relationships” (PR 61). Additionally, when an actual occasion physically feels actual occasions in its causal past, it physically feels them “with the retention of their extensive relationships” (PR 67). And actual occasions that will come into being in its causal future “must exemplify” such extensive relationships (PR 66). There is a system of extensive relationships, termed the “extensive continuum,” that “underlies the whole world, past, present, and future” (PR 66). Each actual occasion occupies its own “basic region” in the extensive continuum (PR 283). In accordance with his “epochal theory of time” (PR 68), the spatiotemporal volume of a basic region is finite. Extensive relationships—e.g., a relation of contiguity—are definable in terms of the mathematically primitive relation of extensive connection. Whitehead also referred to the extensive continuum as “the extensive space-time continuum” (PR 80). Moreover, “the extensiveness of time is,” he also remarked, “really the temporalization of extension” (PR 289). His theory of extension is the basis of his account of the measurement of time. But the idea of temporal extensiveness should not be confused with the idea of temporal order (Lango 2006). Therefore, it is important to realize that experiences of extensive relationships are not experiences of temporal order. For instance, suppose that O is immediately in the causal past of N. That is, suppose that there is no actual occasion Z such that Z is in the causal past of N and O is in the causal past of Z. It also is the case that N’s basic region and O’s basic region are contiguous. Suppose further that, because M has simple physical feelings of N and O, it is correct to say that M experiences the contiguity of N’s basic region to O’s basic region. Nonetheless, such an experience is different from the experience of the temporal ordering of N and O. For the relation of temporal order is asymmetric, whereas the relation of contiguity is symmetric (i.e., if one region is contiguous to another, then the latter is contiguous to the former). Similarly, suppose that it is correct to say that M experiences the contiguity of the basic regions of two of M’s contemporaries. Nevertheless, M’s having such an experience is different from M’s having an experience of the two actual occasions as being contemporaries of M or as being contemporaries of each other. Note that, in accordance with relativity theory, the two “need not be contemporaries of each other” (PR 320). Even though Whitehead relativized the notion of the present to each actual occasion, he retained an analogue of that notion—namely, his conception of durations. Each duration is a maximal set of mutually contemporaneous actual occasions, and thus it is “a cross-section of the universe” (PR 125). In accordance with relativity theory, each actual occasion “lies in many durations” (PR 125). When an actual occasion perceives a set of contemporaneous actual occasions in the mode of presentational immediacy, that set is the unique “presented duration” (relative to that actual occasion) (PR 321). Although the creative advance of actual occasions is not a “uniquely serial advance” (PR 35), they still are temporally ordered. The temporal order of

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durations is derivative from the temporal order of their members. Relative to each duration D, there is “the past of duration D,” and “the future of duration D” (PR 320). In the final phase of M’s process of concrescence, M could experience partially the temporal order of durations in the following way. Each maximal set of mutually contemporaneous actual occasions in M’s causal past is a subset of a duration. The temporal order of such subsets is derivative from the temporal order of their members. In physically feeling their members, M could experience partially this temporal order. Finally, there is the question: how does each actual occasion experience its causal future? M cannot have simple physical feelings of actual occasions in M’s causal future. For, when M is coming into being, actual occasions in M’s causal future have not yet come into being. Thus M’s causal future is a locus of merely “potential occasions” (PR 123). However, it still can be said that the causal future is experienced in a radically different way. According to the category of subjective intensity, each actual occasion’s “subjective aim” is at “intensity of feeling” both in itself and “in the relevant future” (PR 27). Insofar as the relevant future is an aspect of its subjective aim, it can be said to experience its causal future. In contrast to the causal past, which is experienced causally, the causal future is thus experienced teleologically. Additionally, Whitehead alluded to “anticipatory feelings of the transcendent future” (PR 278), but what he meant is quite obscure. Through an analogy with perceptions in the mode of presentational immediacy, it could be argued that an actual occasion is related to its causal future indirectly, by means of perceptions in the mode of anticipation (cf. PR 204). In this article, a number of overlapping topics in Whitehead’s philosophy of time have been briefly considered or only mentioned—for example, the nonseriality of time, the temporal order of durations, presented durations, the epochal theory of time, the temporalization of extension, the measurement of time, and the subjective aim at the relevant future. The chief goal of this article has been to provide an introduction to a topic that is presupposed by the others: how an actual occasion experiences the temporality of the creative advance of actual occasions in its causal past.

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Notes 1

The subject of time is prominent in his PNK, CN, and R. But the question of how his philosophy of time evolved is too complex to consider here. 2 Some of my views about Whitehead’s philosophy of time are developed more fully in Lango 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2004, and 2006. 3 Usually, books on Whitehead’s metaphysics do not have distinct chapters or sections on the subject of time (although they often contain insufficient discussions of that subject on scattered pages), e.g. Christian 1959, Kraus 1998, and Ross 1983. An important exception is McHenry 1992, whose Chapter 6 is entitled “Time.” For the sake of comparison, it is worthwhile studying writings by other process philosophers—e.g., Bergson 1889, apek 1961, and James 1890. Additionally, it is worthwhile consulting pertinent writings on the philosophy of time that are not specifically about Whitehead or process philosophy—e.g., Gale 1967, Mellor 1988, and Tooley 1997. 4 Since this is not an article about Descartes, Whitehead’s interpretation of Descartes is taken for granted. 5 For a fuller account of Whitehead’s Platonic conception of becoming, see my article on Plato in this Handbook. 6 God is an actual entity, but in this brief article the difficult question of how God subjectively experiences time has to be set aside. 7 Cf. the corresponding concepts of absolute past, absolute elsewhere, and absolute future in the theory of relativity (Hawking 1988, 25-28). Rather than the “classical” view of time, Whitehead was strongly influenced by “the relativity view” (PR 66). 8 Although adhering to a Platonic conception of time as “perpetually perishing” (PR 81), Whitehead did not mean that actual occasions in the actual world are “nonexistent.” Note his remark that an actual occasion “perishes and is immortal” (PR 82). For a discussion of the ontological status of past actual occasions, see Lango 2006. 9 Cf. the concept of duration in Bergson 1889 and the section “The Sensible Present has Duration” in James 1890. 10 Noticing the word “later” in the phrase “later phases of concrescence” (and the correlative word “earlier” in the phrase “earlier phases of concrescence”), we may ask: is the succession of phases in the process of concrescence a temporal succession? For a discussion of this controversial question, see Lango 2001. 11 This summary is incomplete. For instance, nexuses are temporally ordered, and their temporal order can be partially experienced.

Works Cited and Further Readings Bergson, Henri. 1889. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (Paris, Librairie Félix Alcan), translated by F.L. Pogson as Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (New York, Macmillan, 1910). Broad C. D. 1920. “Critical Notices The Principles of Natural Knowledge,” Mind, 29, 216-31. Broad C. D. 1923. Scientific Thought (London, Routledge & Kegan). apek, Mili. 1961. Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (Princeton, Van Nostrand). Christian, William. 1959. An Interpretation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics (New Haven, Yale University Press). Code, Murray. 1995. Myths of Reason: Vagueness, Rationality, and the Lure of Logic (Atlantic Highlands N.J., Humanities Press International). Code, Murray. 1998. “Explanation and Natural Philosophy: Or, The Rationalization of Mysticism,” Process Studies, 27, 3-4, 308-27. Code, Murray. 1999. “Interpreting ‘the Raw Universe’: Meaning and Metaphysical Imaginaries,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Fall, 1999, XXXV, 4, 698722. Code, Murray. 2002. “On Whitehead’s Almost Comprehensive Naturalism,” Process Studies, 31, 1, 3-31. Code, Murray. 2005. “On Mathematical Naturalism and the Powers of Symbolisms,” Cosmos and History: Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 1, 1 (Published online at www. cosmosandhistory.org). Code, Murray. 2007. Process, Reality, and the Power of Symbols: Thinking With A.N. Whitehead (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1956. Biographia Literaria, edited by George Watson (London, J. M. Dent). Durand G. 2005. “Le concept événementiel de nature,” in Chromatikon I. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès, edited by Michel Weber and Diane d'eprémesnil (Louvain-laNeuve, Presses Universitaires de Louvain), 97-114. Durand G. 2007. Des événements aux objets. La méthode de l’abstraction extensive chez Alfred North Whitehead (Frankfurt, Ontos). Durand, Guillaume and Weber, Michel (eds.). 2007. Les principes de la connaissance naturelle d’Alfred North Whitehead—Alfred North Whitehead’s Principles of Natural Knowledge (Frankfurt, Ontos). Ford, Lewis S. 1984. The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics: 1925-1929 (Albany, State University of New York Press). Gale, Richard M. (ed.). 1967. The Philosophy of Time: A Collection of Essays (Garden City, New York, Doubleday). Grünbaum A. 1953. “Whitehead’s Method of Extensive Abstraction,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 4, 215-26. Hawking, Stephen. 1988. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (London, Bantam Press). Hocking, W. E. 1951. “Whitehead On Mind and Nature,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead,” edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (New York, Tudor), 383-404. Hocking, W. E. 1963. “Whitehead as I Knew Him,” in Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy, edited by George L. Kline, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice Hall), 7-17. James, William. 1890. The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 (New York, Henry Holt). Johnson, A. H. 1983. Whitehead and His Philosophy (Lanham MD, University Press of America). Kant, Immanuel. 1998 [1781 and 1787]. Critique of Pure Reason [Kritik der reinen Vernunft], translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge, Cambridge University

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Press). Kraus, Elizabeth M. 1998. The Metaphysics of Experience: A Companion to Whitehead’s Process and Reality, 2nd ed. (New York, Fordham University Press). Lachmann, Rolf. 2000. “Alfred North Whiteheads naturphilosophie Konzeption der Symbolisierung,” Zeitschrift fur philosophische Forshung, 54, 2, 196-217. Laguna Th. De. 1921. “Extensive Abstraction: A suggestion,” The Philosophical Review, XXX, 216-18. Laguna Th. De. 1922. “The Nature of Space,” Journal of Philosophy, XIX, 15, 393-407 and 421-40. Langer, Susanne K. 1957. Philosophy in a New Key: A study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3rd ed. (Cambridge MA, Harvard Universtity Press). Lango, John W. 2000a. “Time and Strict Partial Order,” American Philosophical Quarterly 37, 4, 373-87. Lango, John W. 2000b. “Whitehead’s Category of Nexus of Actual Entities,” Process Studies 29, 1, 16-42. Lango, John W. 2001. “The Time of Whitehead’s Concrescence,” Process Studies 30, 1, 3-21. Lango, John W. 2004. “Alfred North Whitehead, 1861-1947,” in The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy, edited by A. T. Marsoobian and J. Ryder (Oxford, Blackwell). Lango, John W. 2006. “Whitehead’s Philosophy of Time through the Prism of Analytic Concepts,” in Durand & Weber (eds.). Latour, Bruno. 1991. We Have Never Been Modern, translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1993). Laurikainen, K. V. 1985. Beyond the Atom: The Philosophical Thought of Wolfgang Pauli (Berlin, Springer-Verlag). Lawrence N. 1950. “Whitehead’s Method of Extensive Abstraction,” Philosophy of Science, April, 17, 2, 142-63. Lawrence N. 1956. Whitehead’s Philosophical Development. A Critical History of the Background of Process and Reality, with foreword by Stephen C. Pepper (Berkeley, University of California Press). Leclerc, Ivor. 1972. The Nature of Physical Existence (London, George Allen & Unwin). Leclerc, Ivor. 1986. The Philosophy of Nature (Washington DC, Catholic University of America Press). Lenzen V. F. 1926. “Scientific Ideas and Experience,” University of California Publications in Philosophy, VIII, 175-89. Lenzen V. F. 1931. Nature of Physical Theory: A Study in Theory of Knowledge (New York, Wiley). Lowe V. 1950. “Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science,” in Whitehead and the Modern World (Boston, Beacon Press), 3-24. Lowe, V. 1961. “What Philosophers may learn from Whitehead,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 15, 56-57, 251-66. Lowe V. 1962. Understanding Whitehead (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press). Mays W. 1959. The Philosophy of Whitehead (London and New York, Allen and Unwin). McHenry, Leemon B. 1992. Whitehead and Bradley: A Comparative Analysis (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Mellor, D. H. 1988. Real Time II (London, Routledge). Modena, Raimonda. 1985. Coleridge and the Concept of Nature (London, MacMillan). Moses, Gregory J. 2003. “Big Things From Little Things?: The problem of the compound individual,” Concrescence 2003, 5, 1-7 (published online by The Australasian Association of Process Thought). Murphy A. E. 1926. “Ideas and Nature,” University of California Publications in Philosophy, VIII, 193-213. Nicod J. 1924. La Géométrie dans le monde sensible (Paris, F. Alcan). Palter R. M. 1960. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press).

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Ross, Stephen David. 1983. Perspective in Whitehead’s Metaphysics (Albany, State University of New York Press Press). Russell B. 1914. Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. Delivered as Lowell Lectures in Boston, in March and April 1914 (Chicago, Open Court). Russell B. 1927. The Analysis of Matter (London, G. Allen & Unwin). Tooley, Michael. 1997. Time, Tense, and Causation (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Vuillemin J. 1971. La logique et le monde sensible. Etude sur les théories contemporaines de l’abstraction (Paris, Flammarion).

XV. Urbanism and Architecture Cosmological and Urban Spaces Joseph Grange

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There is not much said about urban process in the writings of Alfred North Whitehead. The lengthiest discussion occurs in Adventures of Ideas where he ponders the future of cities in an age where their primary reason for being—the need for human proximity—appears to be vanishing. His response is to stress the need for foresight that mixes creative thinking with “unflinching rationality.”1 In Science and the Modern World, he laments the defacing of the Thames’ estuary by the thoughtless placement of the Charing Cross railway bridge. This concluding chapter is famous for Whitehead’s prophetic call for modern civilization’s need for deeper aesthetic education.2

1. Metageometry and Human Feelings More than such scattered insights is required, however, if a scientifically valid and experientially rich theory of urban life is to be constructed. We find such resources in the theory of perception and its connection with geometric projections in Symbolism: its Meaning and Effect and in Part IV of Process and Reality.3 The basic issue facing any process theory of urban life is the question of the transfer of emotions through complex regions of space-time. The human being dwells amid an immense expanse of built and natural environments that throb with felt values. The complexity of such environments appears to reach its peak in urban centers. Whitehead’s theory of the world as a medium for the transmission of feelings is precisely the doctrine needed to make sense of the bewildering array of feelings felt within any urban space. What happens in any space-time region is that the human body feels itself entwined within lines of transmission that are both projected outward from the body and experience within the body through “strain feelings.” The coordination of both routes—those projected outwards and those felt inward—is due both to the extensively divisible space-time continuum marked out by sense data derived from perception in the mode of presentational immediacy and to the transmission of feelings felt in the mode of causal efficacy and transmitted along routes provided by the bodily organs. Thus the present stands out in its immediacy and the past is felt as efficacious in the becoming of the specified space-time region. The human being dwells in a “seat” of

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Department of philosophy, University of Southern Maine and President of the Metaphysical Society of America; [email protected].

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projected geometric lines of coordination transmitted through the “strain feelings” experienced as part of the body’s immersion in endlessly changing situations. Ron Cooper provides a clear account of what happens to the human being in process space-time: What is important is that the actual occasions [read human being] within a focal region are spatially related in terms of Whitehead’s special sense of straight lines (and “flat loci”). These straight lines and other structures in this metageometry are not just formal features of an abstract mathematics—they are spatial structures experienced by actual occasions. A physical prehension of a straight line is called a “strain.” Strains are not separate feelings, though; they are passed along with physical feelings of the appropriations of the past. By the vector character of feelings, what is there is felt here. By the strain-feelings that are part of these vector feelings, what is there is felt as coming from some particular direction relative to the spatial standpoint of the experiencer (1993, 121). The experiencer’s standpoint is a “seat” of intersecting lines. The straight lines felt in strains delineate “a region of dense concurrence of straight lines defined by the “seat” (PR 312). Although the lines that define these regions are structures already (potentially) in the extensive continuum, the perception of a region by an actual occasion actualizes and projects these structures onto a presented locus. Through strain feelings, the actual occasion “lifts into importance the complete lines, planes, and three-dimensional flats, which are defined by the seat of the strain” (PR, 310). This argument can be summarized as follows. The human body feels through its organs the strains experienced when it perceives a presented locus comprising a contemporary nexus. Due to the “withness of the human body,” a “seat” is established within which converging spacetime lines can take on deeply felt concrete experiential values. Urban regions rich in vector and scalar values transmit forces that the human body feels with rich emotional tones due to their amplification through various regions of the human body. These preliminary concepts, together with the doctrine of symbolic reference as the mixed mode of perception most important in human experience, make possible a sophisticated analysis of the felt tones of urban regions. This is what I have tried to do in my book The City: An Urban Cosmology (1999). The rest of this essay is given over to presenting the main discoveries of that work.

2. Cosmological Method and the Categoreal Scheme My own attempt to apply Whitehead’s process philosophy to urban environments consists of the creation of a set of categories designed to capture what is most salient in the city. The categories are “vague” in Peirce’s sense of that term; that is, they are neither general nor universal but rather require additional empirical application if their full meaning is to be understood. Thus I can say there will be sports on TV this afternoon, but to be fully objective I would have to specify that it was baseball. This is why Peirce’s “Logically Vague” is also often called the “Objectively Vague.” This way of using categories defends cosmology from the charge of hegemonic Western universalizing or the Heideggerian “sin” of “the metaphysics of the present.”4 These categories are derived in part from Whitehead’s speculative scheme but are

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mainly due to my own attempt to create a way of looking at urban environments that captures what is fundamental to their processive quality.5 The categories are Inscape, Contrast, Pattern and Transmission. Each specifies a different process that dominates urban space-time experience. Inscape: This category is derived from the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who in turn derived it from the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus who used the term, haeccitas, to express the unique singularity of every actual event in the universe. Both words highlight the way in which process metaphysics must keep ever in mind the creativity that pushes the world (including urban regions) into unceasing advances into novelty. Inscape also translates the Buddhist tathagata (suchness) and the Chinese ziran (so of itself). There is a global aspect to this expression that calls attention to the absolutely singular in our experience. In effect inscape tries to concretely capture the meaning of Whitehead’s subjective and subjective form. Its link to landscape is deliberate, as it expresses for Hopkins as well as this writer what goes on within the concrete reality of experiential process. Pattern: This category refers to the ways in which large-scale unities of relations come together to form the actual entities that make up our urban environments. Patterns are the equivalent of what Whitehead terms a nexus or society. Contrasts: This category expresses the way in which events normally quite distinct can be put together into causally effective unities that have immense influences in environmental regions. Especially important in this regard is the emergence of consciousness which is grounded in the contrast held between the ideal and the actual as felt by the human mind. This affirmationnegation contrast holds the key to the intensity expressed by most urban patterns. Transmission: This category marks the many ways in which values are transferred around urban environments. What is created here is felt over there. The vector character of feelings is a paramount way in which zones of importance come to be and extend their importance throughout city life. Also the human body as the amplifier of these values is the key receiver and transmitter of the moods and feelings that express themselves in city life. The great invisible backdrop against which city experience is felt is space and time. Thus the primary analysis of urban experience concentrates on these all-important dimensions. Space is open in the sense that is an extensive continuum that can be populated by any number of forms without losing its elasticity. The inscape of urban space has three important characteristics— sited directionality, access and habitat. The interlocking matrix of spatial forms establishes both marked places and directional signs. Both qualities, the directional and the sited, establish modes of access for the city dweller. These openings to experiences are crucial if the city is to have both open and closed regions of value. The open and the closed establish shelters for meaning to emerge and without meaning cities turn into vast wastelands despite their seeming majesty. These shelters for meaning are what make up the inscape of habitat. Thus the three qualities of sited directionality, access and habitat weave together the primary inscape of urban space. The patterns of urban space are the vertical, the horizontal and the ambient. The vertical and the horizontal are quite evident in the contemporary city with its looming buildings and the straight geometry of its street patterns. Both patterns are not sufficient to give a city depth of

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feeling. This is provided by the ambient patterns that one can find in cities if one looks hard enough. I am referring to those spatial regions that provide relief from the starkness of the horizontal and the vertical. They are characterized by a certain tone of aroundness that escapes full visual perception. We are bathed in a spatial environment that brims with rich but dim feelings of importance. Curved, spherical and circular spatial regions provide this surrounding quality so vital for a sense of intimacy with one’s environment. The inscape of urban time is epochal in Whitehead’s special sense of the term. By epochal he means the fact that authentic time comes all-at-once or not at all. It is a unitary, seamless drop of experience that cannot be divided into any smaller units.6 Each such epoch is also unique and therefore discontinuous from its successors. These qualities account for a phenomenon often felt by city dwellers; viz., that there are many differently felt types of time. In the city there is time that “flies,” time that “drags” and many other kinds of time. Each of these kinds of time is due to the real felt presence of epochal time within our bodies. The patterns of urban time are past, present and future. Time past is registered through the history of cities that have preserved significant symbols of their past either by way of buildings, monuments or other signs of their continuity with what has been. Time past gives a city an historical weight that is indispensable if its citizens are to feel the real presence of their accomplishments and in so doing have a sense of the importance of preservation. In urban experience time future feels like a concept. It expresses a sense of what can be and what is coming. Living cities abound with witnesses to time future. Cities are always in the process of perishing and becoming. We are surrounded with that which is being torn down and that which is in the process of becoming. Time present harbors a unique potential to draw both time past and time future together into a singular experiential embrace. Without these moments of exceptionally rich experience present time in the city would slide along in an empty succession of ever more thin moments. Unbearable boredom would result. These acts of full individual temporality are the outcome of the third category, contrast. What occurs is that time past and time future are held together in a unique pattern that results in an exceptional expression of individuality. The presence of the past and the future are sufficiently intense that the emergent present must make room for their value in its own expressive present. When this happens remarkable depth of feeling results. It is actually the moment when space and time fuse together so as to create urban place.

3. Urban place: The Matrix of Expressed City Values It is the category of contrast that allows us to understand the power of urban place. The achievements of the past and the call of the future fuse with time present and the ordinary ephemeral nature of urban time thickens so that the striking individuality of a determinate urban place stands forth with great intensity of expression. One can speculate that such places harbor exemplars of epochal time in the sense that the contrast creates a unification of time past and time future in the present, while the spatial component of the occasions of urban experience are enlarged so as to accommodate such a habitat of profound meaning. Such places need not be

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monumental expressions of great events in urban history. Every child raised in a city knows of such places and has cherished memories that form part of their character. What are the inscapes, patterns and contrasts that make them so powerful? In order to answer this question there is need for a discussion of what I term “Normative Thinking.”7 This way of thinking makes valuation, appreciation and the use of norms and standards primary as modes of thinking. To judge is to know why something is a good way to be. It received its first exposition in Plato’s declaration of a proportional relationship between reality, goodness and intelligibility. That doctrine maintains that the more real something is the more goodness it expresses and the more intelligibility it displays.8 The doctrine finds greater elaboration in the process philosophy of Whitehead and pragmatic philosophers such as Peirce and Dewey. Normative thinking is avowedly speculative. This is entirely in accord with Whitehead’s concept of philosophy as a systematic speculative endeavor to be tested in actual experience. The proof of the value of the norms is found in their capacity to provide depth of understanding and synoptic vision. The norms are to be coherent and applicable to the matter in question. I offer as a hypothesis four norms—intensity, integrity, wholeness and depth—for understanding what makes urban place real, good and intelligible. I argue that the value of excellent urban place is made up of the fusion of these qualitative standards of excellent urban place. Taking each in turn these norms are to be understood in the following ways: Intensity which signifies the way in which every event expresses its magnitude of value. These qualitative manifestations are due to the ways in which each event brings together into a unity the diversity of its environment as well as the unity of its creative articulation. Integrity is the measure by which the excellence of the achieved harmony of the one and the many in the becoming and perishing of an urban event finds its apt balance of simplicity and complexity. Ideally, both simplicity and complexity should be raised together as the event displays its value. Wholeness is the norm by which genuine unities can be marked off from deficient ones. A unity is not a mere aggregate. Wholeness is measured by the degree of unity achievable when full multiplicity is taken into account in measuring the excellence of urban place. Otherness finds shelter within domains of identity. Depth is felt when the three other norms are expressed with force and clarity. Affective dimensions of spatial and temporal depth receive concrete expression within the goodness of urban place. Feelings of unplumbed depth invite the city dweller to further her experience of the power of urban regions soaked in wholeness, integrity and depth. What is felt most intensely is the causal power of the category of contrast which stimulates deep experiences of the one and the many. What has now emerged in this application of Whitehead’s cosmology is a way to understand urban experience according to certain lines of excellence. But all forms of goodness need order to sustain themselves. Goodness without endurance ceases to be goodness, especially in urban existence. It is exactly at this point that Whitehead’s theory of order as the interplay between four qualitative ways of becoming assumes vital importance. In Process and Reality Whitehead

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speaks at length of the four orders of cosmological structures. These are the trivial, the vague, the narrow and the wide.9 Here the standard of coherence comes directly into play, for no one type of order can be understood without understanding each of the other three. Goodness wanders within, around, between and along the borders established by these forms of order. It is here that the notion of an organism takes on full expression. The levels of intensity, integrity, wholeness and depth are dependent upon the mixtures of orders in which they express themselves. Orders weave the values expressed through these categoreal normative measures into unique, singular and novel presences. Without some such combinations of order effective manifestations of value disappear and the ineffectiveness of human dwelling would be most sharply felt. The quality of urban orders derives in the first place from the environmental orders within which they find themselves. There can be no good without the endurance to be drawn from order. The reinforcement given by environmental orders establishes a continuum of feeling rooted in deeper, more intimate, and more engaging modes of causal efficacy. The strength of these environmental orders cements varieties of urban place as forms of goodness vital for the growth of the human community. These orders intensify the inscape of urban place and through their interaction strengthen, integrate and deepen the lines of transmission that make up significant urban places. Whitehead organizes these orders around the concept of increasing unifications of the “One and the Many.” He begins with the widest order that is termed “the trivial,” and then moves onto what he calls “the vague.” From there orders called “the narrow” and the “wide” emerge as the most powerful forms of organic interaction. It must be remembered that the “philosophy of organism” maintains that the most important features of the environment are events and their interrelations. Nothing can stand in splendid isolation requiring nothing but itself to exist. Identity derives from the way we handle our relationships. This is an entirely relational world tied together by the processes that makes us what we are. Furthermore, the orders we are about to explore are dependent upon each other for their full meaning. Each needs connections with the others to express more intensely what it really is. My hypothesis is that urban place is determined by the weaving together of these types of environmental order as guided by the ideal normative measures discussed above. In this way Whitehead’s ideal of an abstract speculative philosophy is concretely applied to real cultural situations. What should be gained is breadth of understanding and a method to assure continued synoptic vision. Process philosophy is the act and art of composition. The four environmental orders are as follows: The Trivial emerges when nothing can be felt as important. When everything is unimportant or conversely when everything is important, then the principle of selection which undergirds the very notion of importance is violated. Another word for the trivial is the chaotic and (pace Nietzsche) chaos is not creative but rather merely boring. Its service for order is as a resource for future potential types of order. The Vague establishes itself when certain dimensions begin to stand out as representative of the presence of order. Vagueness does not signify ambiguity or fuzziness. It has the exact

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opposite meaning as my earlier explanation of its function in Peirce’s theory of the logically vague indicates. The vague calls out for instantiation so that its truthfulness can be tested. The Narrow is precisely what the vague needs in order to establish a wide region of truthfulness. Narrowness is purely determinate and by definition intolerant of what cannot be brought under its wing. Its straightforward insistence on its own meaning brings great intensity to experience. Through narrowness specificity can asserts its value alongside vagueness. Width expresses itself when narrowness is woven onto patterns of vagueness. The resultant regions of value and experience display great tolerance and great intensity. Much can be incorporated into urban places that express wide order. Width makes room for the presence of rich contrasts that can have immense causal power within urban places. Each of these orders brings with it a special tone or mood that is vital for securing the kind of qualities that urban place needs in order to be the paradigmatic form that an urban process environment requires for excellence of expression. Therefore trivial orders evoke moods of indifference and the four ideal norms of intensity, integrity, wholeness, and depth cannot be felt. All is the same. No difference registers itself and therefore indifference results. Indistinguishable neutrality broods over the urban scene. Vague orders, given their need for specification, call forth a tone of expectation. Urban place awaits some final element in order to complete its ambient framework of directed access. Narrowness brings a powerful mood of intensity into urban place as it does not hesitate to assert its presence. Finally, width allows for the emergence of depth as layer upon layer of meaning expresses itself throughout the region in question. What is felt here most powerfully is a mood of involvement. Sets of intense contrast invite felt participation as urban place opens itself to further depths of felt intelligence. What is to be noted in the above discussion of urban place is how the categories of inscape, pattern, contrast and transmission, the norms of intensity, integrity, wholeness and depth as well as the orders of triviality, vagueness, narrowness and width conspire together to express the various ways in which urban process manifests itself.

4. The Evolution of City Forms Three normative ideals have governed the creation of cities since their appearance on the planet.10 There is the ideal of the cosmic city which replicates the order of the universe and locates power at an actual center residing in the heart of the city complex. A paramount example of this form would be Beijing’s “Forbidden City” where the Emperor drew all power to himself by residing at the center of the cosmos. From this urban place of power it was possible to send forth world-lines of transmission such that the Empire itself could be integrated into the unfolding propensities of things. Establishing physical, communal and spiritual harmony with cosmic forces was the ideal governing these ways of urban dwelling. Many other examples of this form of the good city could be listed. Suffice it to say that the form has expressed itself throughout the Greek, Roman, European, Asiatic, Egyptian, Incan, Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Its grip on the human psyche has been intense and its continuing influence continues to be seen in every urban complex.

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The second model of the ideal city is that of the machine. It was brought forward by the International School and its major advocates are Paolo Soleri, Le Corbusier and Miliutin.11 It advocates envisioning the city as a machine and thereby introduces norms of efficiency and understands city growth as continuing sets of “add-ons.” Its basic vision of urban goodness revolves about the question of functionality. It therefore falls into step with those visions of human dwelling that would subtly “force” human beings into certain definite ways of life. A machine is the sum of its parts, neither more nor less. It simply is what it is and this is why cities built according to this image take on an aura of explicit rationality. It is the ideal vehicle for the transmission of goods and services and is therefore the urban expression of Weber’s “Iron Cage.”12 It, too, remains present in our cities and expresses itself most vividly in those urban hubs devoted to transportation, shopping and education. The final type of city form is the one that most nearly expresses Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. In fact Christopher Alexander, its major proponent, explains it through the central idea of “a growing whole.” He provides an operational definition of his New Theory of Urban Design: In each of these growing wholes, there are certain fundamental and essential features. First, the whole grows piecemeal, bit by bit. Second, the whole is unpredictable. Third, the whole is coherent. Fourth, the whole is full of feeling, always (1987, 14). Now this reads as though it could have been written by Whitehead himself. It sees wholeness as possible, in fact as indispensable for human health and growth. It allows for creativity in the sense that piecemeal growth and unpredictability go hand in hand. It is entirely coherent. Most importantly it is “full of feeling, always.” Alexander’s architectural design and his theoretical work stand as representative of the best organic philosophy of urban dwelling so far achieved in our times. What is also significant about his work is that he insists upon human participation in the building of his projects. One cannot build without the involvement of the people who live there. Creativity is inherently social for it depends upon the relations established between the actors in the urban scene. Furthermore, such participation is essentially normative for Alexander demands that those who live in his creations express what it feels like. These feelings become the coin of the realm for addressing improvements, assessing new developments and putting forward alternative ways of building and dwelling.13 One can draw a line from the cosmic city to the machine city to the organic city by noting how each in its own way is seeking to harness the power of the real for its own sense of what is important. Thus the cosmic city sees its task as the act of bringing transcendental forces down to earth. In this way the real world is soaked in the divine powers of the cosmos. Reality is made intelligible when the connection with cosmic forces is established as an everyday fact in the lives of city dwellers. On the other hand the machine city seeks to employ the methods and tools of scientific materialism so as to foster human happiness through the efficient delivery of power. Here urban goodness is judged by reason of its capacity to express an explicit rationality. In turn this rationality is judged to be the very meaning of the good as experienced in city life. The organic city refuses to determine in advance what the good should look like. Furthermore, it begins by acknowledging the fractured nature of contemporary existence. It does not solely rely

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on some supernatural divinity to supply both the intelligence and the power needed to bring about wholeness. Rather it trusts in the innate capacity of human beings to feel wholeness as it begins to express itself throughout forms of city life. It settles on the fact that life is essentially unfinished and always in play when it comes to creating new, more fulfilling forms of experience. In sum, the cosmic city waits upon the revelation of the cosmic deities to fashion norms to guide the personal, social, public lives of its urban dwellers. The machine city lays out beforehand grids of rationality that will push human beings toward their urban destiny—to be efficient producers and consumers of goods and services. The cosmic city has faded in importance as a guide for good urban dwelling. The machine city appears to be in a holding pattern with its dwellers unsure as to whether this is the right way to live a human life. The organic city offers a novel, self-creative form of city life that urges us to seeks wholeness in each particular and thereby continually drive toward relationships worthy of the norms sketched in this essay.

5. Urban Semiotics Whitehead’s theory of symbolic reference has been at the heart of this study of urban experience. The way he brings together presentational immediacy and casual efficacy is just the kind of creative insight needed to make sense of the feelings we have in city life. Still there remains a vacuum at the center of Whitehead’s philosophy of symbolism. This lack is no fault of Whitehead but rather simply the result of the fact that no person can do everything. In my own work I have found it useful to call on another process philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, in order to fill out and deepen Whitehead’s insights. In particular I have employed Peirce’s metaphysics of firstness, secondness and thirdness in order to provide a “thick description” of urban life.14 I have also coupled his semiotics of icon, index and sign to his metaphysics in order to round out a process understanding of the city. 15 Valuable results spring from this employment of Peirce’s thought. One finds in his concepts of one, two and three a simple but richly evocative scheme for grasping the felt quality of city life. Firstness is in the register of pure creativity. It expresses that freshness and spontaneity that is the joy of every human life. In the city the creativity emergent as firstness finds its iconic representation in the powerful existential reality of “The Street.” What is coming down the street is surprise clothed in a thousand styles of dress and a thousand ways of walking. This is what gives the city its verve and its passion. But firstness always meets another and thereby encounters secondness. Collisions are an inevitable part of city life as various and sundry forms of life drive toward their full expression. City life would grind to a halt if secondness did not supply the urban sign reader with an index that would point the way toward resolution of the collision of forces brought about by the struggle of individuals to express themselves. The index I choose to express this struggle for domination is the Empire State Building. As an index “The Empire Skyline” carries with it both the strength of our culture and the mean, down and dirty side of market capitalism. At the end of the day, in the evening of our lives, it is not enough to

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have struggled and won or lost. There remains the need and desire for community. It is here that we meet those “generals” that Peirce calls the living habits of any civilization. Without such thirdness we would have no continuity or development in the direction of enlarged consciousness. The sign of thirdness is “The Neighborhood” which demands involvement in the signs that the community lives by and which it is our duty to help grow. Unless these signs encompass more and more of the richness of the world, a puerile, starved and anxious state of mind is our common destiny. Our values cannot rest on the spontaneity of firstness. Such values quickly turn to impetuous grasping that only serves to isolate us from our fellow humans. And the struggle that marks secondness too quickly turns into vicious self-promotion. To live life as an index is to live life as a gesture. Full human participation in the city requires that human beings involve themselves in a neighborhood. For without the resonance afforded by community our signs remain uninterpreted. And an uninterpreted sign is a mute witness to the failure of intelligence. The growth of habits of intelligence is what secures a future for the city dweller. Thirdness is the ultimate destiny of our life as sign takers. A genuine urban semiotics is the necessary counterpart to an urban environmental ethics. The city is the great region of the sign. Urban dwellers live or die, thrive or perish by their capacity to read the city’s signs. This is a two-way street. The city must provide signs that are legible. The newly evolved creature that I have elsewhere called homo urbanus must be able to read the signs.16 Failure on either side of the street spells doom for city life.

6. The Philosopher and the City We come to the real subject of this essay—the philosopher and the city. It was Socrates who made the city his stomping grounds as a philosopher. He did this because he was deeply concerned with the question of justice. He went to the city because he saw justice as a matter of the interaction between person and environment. Justice was an interior state of harmony and balance felt by individual souls in their most intimate dimensions. Unlike some contemporary theories, justice for him was not an external relation marking one’s relation to others in the city. Rather in the starkest terms justice for Socrates was not simply about not getting caught. It was a profoundly active and involved way of being in the political domain. In our day what is most needed is what the philosopher has always traditionally tried to supply. I am referring to a synoptic grasp of what is important and a feel for the right way of achieving the results suggested by such a general philosophical vision. This is precisely what Whitehead was promoting in his chapter on “Foresight” in Adventures of Ideas. It is for the sake of achieving such foresight that I have struggled to express these thoughts about the felt dimensions of urban life as seen from a process perspective. To achieve such a vision requires practice in the art of “heartfelt contrast.”17 The philosopher is to become a master of such a practice. It is by using the category of contrast that breadth of vision is united with practical applications. The human heart has its reasons and the human mind has its forms and patterns of development. Both joined together lead to wisdom. The contemporary city needs the active

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presence of just such a philosopher. It is said that the age of the public intellectual is over. I think not. The example set by the whole range of American philosophers from Emerson to Dewey to Whitehead provides a number of models that are useful inspirations for the present day. What marks our culture is division and separation. This in turn spawns savage fighting for the sake of partial points of view. Whitehead embraced a wider point of view. This brief development of ways in which his thought can be applied to the city indicates how fruitful his thought remains. It remains an ideal pattern for the future of American philosophy.

Notes 1

AI, Chapter VI, “Foresight.” SMW, Chapter XIII, “Requisites for Social Progress.” 3 S, passim and PR, Part IV, “The Theory of Extension.” 4 See Grange 1999, xvii-xviii, xxiii. 5 The categories were first developed in my Nature: An Environmental Cosmology (1997). The ability to use one set of categories for two supposedly different regions is a strong argument against their fundamental difference. This is an important fact to be taken into account by any environmental ethics that would privilege one domain over the other. 6 This is among the most difficult concepts in Whitehead’s philosophy. I have provided an analysis of its genesis and application to natural and urban time in Nature (Grange 1997, 11519) and The City (Grange 1999, 21-24). The most radical interpretation of epochal time remains F. Bradford Wallack, The Epochal Nature of Process in Whitehead’s Metaphysics (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1980). Though it remains controversial, it is in my judgment the most illuminating study that has ever appeared and a valuable challenge to all Whitehead scholars. 7 See Grange 1997, 187-206 8 See Republic, 504-521. 9 PR, Chapter III, IV, “The Order of Nature” and “Organisms and Environments.” 10 See Kevin Lynch, A Theory of Good City Form (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1981) for a thorough elaboration of this understanding of the historical evolution of city form. 11 See Grange 1999, 66-68) 12 See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott Parsons (New York, Routledge, 2001). Chapter V is titled “Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism.” 13 To experience how this works in practice, see Christopher Alexander, The Oregon Experiment (1975). Alexander’s major theoretical work is A Pattern Language (1977). By concentrating on pattern he brings Plato back into the dialogue on city life. At the same time he reinforces process philosophy’s insistence on regarding thinking as always a matter of appreciating forms of composition. 14 I am borrowing Clifford Geertz’s term for what is required if the lives of those studied by anthropologists, sociologists, historians and other scholars are to take on a concrete fullness. See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, Basic Books, 1973). 15 The Second Part of my book The City is entitled “An Urban Semiotics.” It contains a full discussion of what can only be highlighted in this article. 16 See Grange 1999, passim. 17 See Grange 1999, 224-30. 2

Works Cited and Further Readings Alexander, Christopher. 1975. The Oregon Experiment (New York, Oxford University Press). Alexander, Christopher. 1977. A Pattern Language (New York, Oxford University Press). Alexander, Christopher. 1987. A New Theory of Urban Design (New York, Oxford University Press). Antoniades. 1992. Epic Space (New York, Van Nostrand). Cooper, Ron L. 1993. Heidegger and Whitehead (Athens, Ohio University Press). Grange, Joseph. 1997. Nature: An Environmental Cosmology (Albany, State University of New York Press). Grange, Joseph. 1999. The City: An Urban Cosmology (Albany, State University of New York Press). Grange, Joseph. 2004. John Dewey, Confucius and Global Philosophy. The State University of New York Press. Kraus, Elizabeth. 1979. The Metaphysics of Experience (New York, Fordham University Press). Lynch, Kevin. 1981. A Theory of Good City Form (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press). Neville, Robert. 1989. Recovery of the Measure (Albany, State University of New York Press). Schumacher, John. 1990. Human Posture (Albany, State University of New York Press). Secrest, Meryle. 1998. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography (Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1998). Sennet, Richard. 1994. Flesh and Stone (New York, Norton Press).

Analytic Table of Contents Contents ......................................................................................................................................................3

Abbreviations..............................................................................................................10 Preface — Jan Van der Veken ...................................................................................11 Notes ...............................................................................................................................14

I. Introduction — Michel Weber ................................................................................15 1. Brief Vita ..............................................................................................................................................16 1.1. Cambridge, U.K. (1880–1909)...................................................................................................18 1.2. London (1911–1924)...................................................................................................................20 1.3. Harvard (1924–1947)..................................................................................................................21 2. Whitehead’s Legacy.............................................................................................................................25 2.1. United States................................................................................................................................25 2.2. Europe ..........................................................................................................................................26 2.3. Recent Evolution .........................................................................................................................26 3. Handbook’s Framework ......................................................................................................................30 3.1 General Policy ..............................................................................................................................30 3.2. Thematic Entries .........................................................................................................................31 3.3. Biographical Entries....................................................................................................................31 Notes ...............................................................................................................................34

II. Aesthetics...............................................................................................................41 Cosmological and Civilized Harmonies George Allan...................................................................................................................................41 1. Overview...............................................................................................................................................41 2. Whitehead’s Aesthetics........................................................................................................................42 2.1. Art and the Principles of Harmony ............................................................................................42 2.2. More General Kinds of Harmony...............................................................................................43 2.3. Cosmological Harmonies............................................................................................................44 2.4. Practical Harmonies ....................................................................................................................46 2.5. Civilized Harmonies ...................................................................................................................47 3. Secondary Sources ...............................................................................................................................49 4. Concluding Remarks............................................................................................................................51 5. Works Cited and Further Readings .....................................................................................................53

III. Anthropology .......................................................................................................55 Communities and Destinies Donna Bowman ..............................................................................................................................55

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Table of Contents 1. The Lessons of Direct Experience ......................................................................................................56 2. Humans as Communities .....................................................................................................................57 3. The Nature of the Human Individual ..................................................................................................60 4. The Human in Community ..................................................................................................................62 4.1. Human Communities ..................................................................................................................62 4.2. The Divine Community ..............................................................................................................63 4.3. The Non-Human Community.....................................................................................................64 5. Aims, Purposes, Destinies ...................................................................................................................65 6. Works Cited and Further Readings.....................................................................................................68

IV. Ecology ................................................................................................................ 69 Ecology Between Natural Science and Environmental Ethics Barbara Muraca .............................................................................................................................. 69 1. Ecology .................................................................................................................................................69 1.1. Between Predictability and Complexity ....................................................................................69 1.2. Between Holism and Individualism ...........................................................................................70 2. Whitehead and Ecology .......................................................................................................................70 2.1. Philosophy as “the Survey of Sciences”....................................................................................71 2.2. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism .......................................................................................72 2.2.1. Microcosmic Organisms—Actuality between Determination and Teleology .........72 2.2.2. Macrocosmic Organisms—Wholes and Parts in Dynamic Fields of Relations ......73 2.2.3. Life on the Edge of Chaos...........................................................................................74 2.2.4. Whitehead’s Relevance for Ecology: First Conclusions ...........................................75 3. Environmental Ethics and Process Thought.......................................................................................77 3.1. The Ecological Model.................................................................................................................77 3.2. The Ecological Model Discussed...............................................................................................78 3.3. Animal Rights..............................................................................................................................78 3.4. Life-centered Ethics ....................................................................................................................79 3.5. Extrinsic Values ..........................................................................................................................79 3.6. The Kalogenic Model .................................................................................................................80 3.7. Ecofeminist Process Theologies.................................................................................................82 Notes ...............................................................................................................................84

Ecofeminism: Women, Nature, Dualism and Process-Relational Philosophy Carol P. Christ ................................................................................................................................ 87 1. Ecofeminism: Roots and Stakes..........................................................................................................88 2. Ecofeminism and Process-Relational Philosophy..............................................................................90 Notes ...............................................................................................................................96

Works Cited and Further Readings.................................................................................................. 98

V. Economy ..............................................................................................................101 Whitehead on Economics Carol F. Johnston .........................................................................................................................101

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1. Whiteheadian Economics ..................................................................................................................101 1.1. Whitehead’s Observations on Economics and Commerce.....................................................101 1.2. Underlying “Laws of Nature” ..................................................................................................109 1.3. Adventure ..................................................................................................................................110 2. Rethinking Economics .......................................................................................................................111 Notes .............................................................................................................................114

Addendum: Further Commentary on the Work of Economist Herman Daly John B. Cobb, Jr. ..........................................................................................................................115 Contemporary Schools of Economic Thought Julie A. Nelson .............................................................................................................................119 1. Neoclassical Economics ....................................................................................................................119 2. Contrasts with Whiteheadian Thought..............................................................................................120 3. Feminism, Process, and Economics ..................................................................................................121 4. Whitehead and Heterodox Economics..............................................................................................123 5. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................126 Notes .............................................................................................................................126

Management and Organization Studies Mark R. Dibben ............................................................................................................................127 1. Applications of Whitehead’s Thought in Management and Organization Studies........................128 2. Robert Chia.........................................................................................................................................129 3. Robert Cooper ....................................................................................................................................131 4. Martin Wood.......................................................................................................................................132 5. Management in the Process Studies Literatures...............................................................................133 6. Extrapolations.....................................................................................................................................135 7. Management Learning .......................................................................................................................135 8. Relating Individual Experience to Organization ..............................................................................136 9. Furthering a Whiteheadian Understanding of Management and Organization..............................137 10. Conclusion: Moving beyond Beginnings .......................................................................................139 Notes .............................................................................................................................142

Action, Entrepreneurship and Evolution Elias L. Khalil...............................................................................................................................145 1. What is the Question? ........................................................................................................................145 2. The Plan of the Essay.........................................................................................................................147 3. Neoclassical Economics ....................................................................................................................148 4. Classical Economics ..........................................................................................................................150 5. Austrian Economics ...........................................................................................................................152 6. The End-Means Dichotomy...............................................................................................................153 7. What is Missing in the End-Means Dichotomy? .............................................................................154 8. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................156 Notes .............................................................................................................................158

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Ecological Economics and Human Ecology Arran Gare ....................................................................................................................................161 1. Contextualization ...............................................................................................................................161 1.1. The Present Predicament ..........................................................................................................161 1.2. The Challenge of Ecological Economics to Neo-Classical Economics ................................164 1.3. Economics and Philosophy.......................................................................................................166 2. The Importance of Whitehead ...........................................................................................................168 3. History of Whitehead’s Influence on Ecological Economics..........................................................171 4. Assessment: Ecological Economics and Human Ecology ..............................................................174

Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................177

VI. Education ...........................................................................................................185 Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education: Its Promise and Relationship to the Philosophy of Organism Adam Scarfe and Howard Woodhouse.......................................................................................185 1. Main Themes of Education................................................................................................................185 2. A History of Scholarship on the Relationship between Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education and the Philosophy of Organism ........................................187 3. Integrating Whitehead’s Philosophies of Education and Organism ...............................................191 4. Whitehead’s Contribution to Educational Thought .........................................................................194 Notes .............................................................................................................................197

Education as Creative Power Mary Elizabeth Moore .................................................................................................................199 1. Why Education? .................................................................................................................................199 2. Whitehead and his Legacy.................................................................................................................200 2.1. Creativity and Creative Advance .............................................................................................200 2.2. Reason........................................................................................................................................201 2.3. Rhythm.......................................................................................................................................202 2.4. Relationality ..............................................................................................................................203 2.5. Rootedness.................................................................................................................................205 3. Imagining the Future..........................................................................................................................208

Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................210

VII. Ethics ................................................................................................................215 Process and Morality Brian G. Henning .........................................................................................................................215 1. The Paradox of Morality....................................................................................................................215 2. The Perfection of Importance............................................................................................................217 3. Whitehead’s Æsthetics of Morals .....................................................................................................221 Notes .............................................................................................................................224

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Nonhuman Animal Rights Daniel A. Dombrowski ................................................................................................................225 1. Revolt Against Dualism .....................................................................................................................225 2. Scale of Becoming .............................................................................................................................225 3. Continuity with Nonhuman Animals ................................................................................................226 4. Partial Transcendence of Animality..................................................................................................228 5. Two Arguments in Favor of Nonhuman Animal Rights .................................................................230 6. A Whiteheadian Contribution............................................................................................................231

Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................235

VIII. History .............................................................................................................237 Process Interpretations of History George Allan.................................................................................................................................237 1. The Presuppositions of Whitehead’s Philosophy of History...........................................................237 1.1. Ontological Foundations...........................................................................................................237 1.2. Historical Objects......................................................................................................................238 2. The Rise and Fall of Civilizations.....................................................................................................239 2.1. Emergence of a Civilization .....................................................................................................239 2.2. Development of a Civilization .................................................................................................241 2.3. Flourishing of a Civilization.....................................................................................................242 2.4. Collapse of a Civilization .........................................................................................................243 3. Historical Progress .............................................................................................................................245 4. Assessing Whitehead’s Philosophy of History ................................................................................247 4.1. Secondary Sources ....................................................................................................................247 4.2. Comparisons to Other Philosophies of History .......................................................................249 Works Cited and Further Readings .......................................................................................................253

IX. Metaphysics ........................................................................................................255 Metaphysics and Cosmology Jorge Luis Nobo ...........................................................................................................................255 1. The Distinction between Metaphysics and Cosmology...................................................................255 2. Implications for the Interpretation of Whitehead’s Speculative Scheme of Ideas.........................257 3. Implications for the Use of Whitehead’s Speculative Scheme of Ideas .........................................260 Notes .............................................................................................................................264

The Mystery of Creativity William Jay Garland ....................................................................................................................265 1. The Principle of Creativity ................................................................................................................265 2. Three Interpretations of Creativity ....................................................................................................267 2.1. Creativity as Eternal Object?....................................................................................................268 2.2. Creativity and God ....................................................................................................................269 2.3. Creativity and Actual Entities ..................................................................................................271 3. Creativity: A Monistic Interpretation................................................................................................272

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Table of Contents 4. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................276 Notes .............................................................................................................................278

Intensity and Subjectivity Judith Jones...................................................................................................................................279 1. Background.........................................................................................................................................279 2. Intensity in the Cosmology of Process and Reality.........................................................................281 3. Intensity as Aesthetic Complexity ....................................................................................................282 4. Intensity and Whitehead’s Ontology ................................................................................................284 5. Intensity and Morality........................................................................................................................288 6. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................289 Notes .............................................................................................................................290

Extension and the Theory of the Physical Universe Leemon McHenry ........................................................................................................................291 1. Historical Perspective ........................................................................................................................291 2. Pan-Physics and Four-Dimensionality..............................................................................................293 3. The Metaphysics of Process ..............................................................................................................294 4. Interpretations of the Past ..................................................................................................................298 5. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................300 Notes .............................................................................................................................302

Speculative Metaphysics with Applications: A Whiteheadian Way Forward Peter Simons .................................................................................................................................303 1. Metaphysics since Whitehead ...........................................................................................................303 2. The Method of Speculative Philosophy............................................................................................304 3. The Centrality of Categories to Metaphysics ...................................................................................307 4. Grand Speculative Hypotheses..........................................................................................................310 5. Applications........................................................................................................................................312 Notes .............................................................................................................................314

The Unifying Moment: Toward a Theory of Complexity Craig Eisendrath ..............................315 1. The Responsibility of the World for its own Order and Novelty....................................................315 2. The Role of God, or the Second Explanation...................................................................................319 3. The Legacy of Whitehead..................................................................................................................321 Notes .............................................................................................................................323

Pragmatism and Process George Allan ................................................................................................................................325 1. Overview.............................................................................................................................................325 2. General Comparisons.........................................................................................................................325 2.1. Finding the Right Pigeonhole...................................................................................................325 2.2. Developing the Right Schema..................................................................................................327 2.3. Whitehead and Pragmatism: The Fundamental Chasm..........................................................328 3. Specific Issues ....................................................................................................................................329

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3.1. The “Pragmatic” in Whitehead.................................................................................................329 3.2. Whitehead, Peirce, and the Modes of Being ...........................................................................331 3.3. Whitehead, James, and Immediate Experience .......................................................................332 3.4. Whitehead, Dewey, and the Method of Inquiry ......................................................................333 3.5. Whitehead, Mead, and the Social Self .....................................................................................335 3.6. Whitehead, Pragmatism, and Asian Thought ..........................................................................336

Phenomenology and Metaphysics William S. Hamrick......................................................................................................................339 1. The Early Phenomenology ................................................................................................................339 2. The Beginnings of an Ontology and Process Thought ....................................................................341 3. Some Conclusions about Consonance ..............................................................................................344 Notes .............................................................................................................................347

Whitehead’s Interpretation of Zeno Gottfried Heinemann....................................................................................................................349 1. Zeno of Elea........................................................................................................................................349 2. Zeno's Influence .................................................................................................................................350 3. Zeno in Whitehead .............................................................................................................................351 3.1. Relevant Passages .....................................................................................................................352 3.2. Zeno in the Harvard Lectures for 1924-25 ..............................................................................353 3.3. Zeno in Science and the Modern World ..................................................................................354 3.4. Zeno in Process and Reality.....................................................................................................355 Notes .............................................................................................................................355

Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................356

X. Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind ..............................................................363 Process Metapsychology John H. Buchanan.........................................................................................................................363 Consciousness and the Physical World Max Velmans................................................................................................................................371 1. Defining Consciousness.....................................................................................................................371 2. Where Dualists and Reductionists Think Consciousness to Be ......................................................373 3. A Common-Sense View of Conscious Phenomenology .................................................................373 4. A Reflexive Model of How Consciousness Relates to the Brain and the Physical World............377 5. Perceptual Projection .........................................................................................................................379 6. How does the Phenomenal, “Physical World” Relate to the World Described by Physics? ........381 7. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................381 Notes .............................................................................................................................382

Mind-Body Problem and Panpsychism Pierfrancesco Basile .....................................................................................................................383 1. The Case for Panpsychism.................................................................................................................384 2. Whitehead’s Panexperientialism .......................................................................................................387

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Table of Contents 3. After Whitehead .................................................................................................................................390 4. Concluding Remarks..........................................................................................................................392

Hypnosis: Panpsychism in Action Michel Weber ...............................................................................................................................395 1. Consciousness-zero and Substantialism ...........................................................................................396 1.1. Definition of Consciousness-zero ............................................................................................396 1.2. Common-sensical Non-Dualism ..............................................................................................397 1.3. Substantialist Theoretical Dualism ..........................................................................................397 2. Consciousness in Process ..................................................................................................................398 2.1. Re-definition of Consciousness-zero: Relativization of Practical Dualism ..........................399 2.2. Common-sensical Non-Dualism ..............................................................................................400 2.3. Process Theoretical Non-Dualism............................................................................................400 3. Processism and Spectral Consciousness ...........................................................................................401 3.1. The Field of Consciousness......................................................................................................402 3.2. Subliminal Consciousness ........................................................................................................402 3.3. Scale of Consciousness and Spectrum of Vigilance ...............................................................404 4. Panexperientialism and Hypnosis .....................................................................................................406 4.1. Panexperientialism ....................................................................................................................406 4.2. Understanding Hypnosis...........................................................................................................407 4.3. Socio-Political Consequences ..................................................................................................409 Notes .......................................................................................................................................................411

The Experimental Examination of Process Gudmund Smith ...........................................................................................................................415 1. Adaptive Serials .................................................................................................................................415 1.1. Visual Afterimages ...................................................................................................................416 1.2. Spiral Aftereffects .....................................................................................................................417 1.3. The Serial Color-Word Test (S-CWT) ....................................................................................418 2. Perceptgeneses....................................................................................................................................419 2.1. How to Understand a Perceptgenesis?.....................................................................................420 2.2. The Creative Functioning Test (CFT) .....................................................................................420 2.3. Tracing Defensive Strategies....................................................................................................421 3. Concluding Remarks..........................................................................................................................421

Process Neuropsychology, Microgenetic Theory and Brain Science Maria Pachalska and Bruce Duncan MacQueen ........................................................................423 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................423 2. The Main Premises of Microgenetic Theory....................................................................................427 3. The Microgenesis of the Speech Act ................................................................................................430 4. Morphogenesis and the Formation of Symptoms ............................................................................433 5. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................436

A Whiteheadian Enquiry Concerning Ethnopsychoanalysis Claude de Jonckheere ..................................................................................................................437

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1. Assessing the Problem .......................................................................................................................437 2. The Ethnopsychoanalytic Universe...................................................................................................440 2.1. Continuum .................................................................................................................................440 2.2. Symbolism .................................................................................................................................442 2.3. Eternal Objects ..........................................................................................................................444 3. Healing Practices................................................................................................................................445 3.1. Making Fears Live ....................................................................................................................445 3.2. Power .........................................................................................................................................447 4. Processes of Influence........................................................................................................................448 5. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................449 Notes .............................................................................................................................451

Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................452

XI. Public Policy and Natural Law...........................................................................459 Political Theory Leslie A. Muray............................................................................................................................459 1. Unilateral Power vs. Relational Power .............................................................................................459 2. Intrinsic Value and the Individual-in-Community ...........................................................................461 3. Community, Nationalism, and a “Critical Patriotism” ....................................................................465 4. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................466 Notes .............................................................................................................................467

Whiteheadian Public Policy: Depolarization for Network Coalescence John Quiring .................................................................................................................................471 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................471 2. Overview of Policy Studies ...............................................................................................................473 3. Policy Models: Government-Autonomy, Pluralist, Elite Institutions .............................................474 4. Four Levels of Policy Components...................................................................................................476 5. Policy Networks .................................................................................................................................478 6. Political Culture and Public Policy ...................................................................................................480 7. Global Policymaking..........................................................................................................................481 8. Whiteheadian Process Thought Contributions to Levels of Public Policy Thinking ....................483 9. Process Polarity Method and Public Policy......................................................................................484 10. Process Thought Inside and Outside the Box: Process and Political Culture ..............................487 11. Process Policy Making.....................................................................................................................489 12. Process Policy Proposals .................................................................................................................491 13. Concluding Summary ......................................................................................................................495 Notes .............................................................................................................................497

Prolegomena to a Process Theory of Natural Law Mark C. Modak-Truran................................................................................................................507 1. Two Quandaries for Contemporary Legal Theory...........................................................................508 1.1. Legal Indeterminacy .................................................................................................................508

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Table of Contents 1.2. The Ontological Gap.................................................................................................................509 2. Whitehead’s Theistic Teleology of Beauty and his Treatment of Law ..........................................510 3. Process Scholarship on Law and Human Rights..............................................................................511 4. Process Natural Law ..........................................................................................................................514 4.1. A New Theory of Natural Law ................................................................................................514 4.2. Legal Indeterminacy and Closing the Ontological Gap .........................................................515 4.3. The Empirical Side of Process Natural Law ...........................................................................516 Notes .............................................................................................................................519

Saving Civilization: Straussian and Whiteheadian Political Philosophy David Ray Griffin ........................................................................................................................521 1. The Crisis of Western Civilization....................................................................................................522 2. Religion, Morality, and Society ........................................................................................................522 3. The Truth about Reality .....................................................................................................................524 4. Natural Right(s) and Good Government...........................................................................................525 5. The Task of Political Philosophy ......................................................................................................527 Notes .............................................................................................................................529

Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................533 Websites..................................................................................................................................................536

XII. Sociology of Science..........................................................................................537 Kuhn and Whitehead Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas ..................................................................................................537 1. Kuhn’s Winding Route to Whitehead...............................................................................................537 2. Kuhn on Russell and Causality .........................................................................................................539 3. Kuhn, Scientific Objects, and the Process of Physical Science ......................................................543 Notes .............................................................................................................................546 Works Cited and Further Readings .......................................................................................................548

XIII. Theology and Religion.....................................................................................549 Whitehead’s Rethinking of the Problem of Evil Joseph A. Bracken, S.J.................................................................................................................549 1. Historical Overview of the Problem of Evil.....................................................................................549 2. Whitehead’s Approach to the Problem of Evil ................................................................................551 3. Suchocki’s Rethinking of Whitehead’s Approach ...........................................................................553 4. A Neo-Whiteheadian Solution to the Problem of Evil ....................................................................555 Notes .............................................................................................................................559

Whitehead’s Natural Theology: The Implications of Order and Novelty Thomas E. Hosinski, C.S.C. ........................................................................................................561 1. The Problem of Natural Theology ....................................................................................................561 2. Whitehead’s Natural Theology .........................................................................................................562 2.1. The Problem of Possibility and Actuality................................................................................562 2.2. The Primordial Nature of God..................................................................................................564

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2.3. The Consequent Nature of God................................................................................................566 2.4. The Divine Attributes ...............................................................................................................567 2.5. The Complementarity of God and the World..........................................................................569 3. Brief History of Scholarship on Whitehead’s Natural Theology ....................................................569 4. A Personal Assessment ......................................................................................................................570 Notes .............................................................................................................................571

Contact Made Vision: The Apocryphal Whitehead Michel Weber ...............................................................................................................................573 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................573 1. Thomas’ Soteriology..........................................................................................................................574 1.1. Basic Heuristic Tools ................................................................................................................576 1.2. Religion and the Non-Rational.................................................................................................578 2. Whitehead’s Systematic Ontology ....................................................................................................583 2.1. Radical Empiricism ...................................................................................................................584 2.2. Heuristic of Whitehead’s Intuition...........................................................................................586 2.2.1. Scala Naturæ...............................................................................................................587 2.2.2. Reticular Dipneumonousness....................................................................................590 2.2.3. Gnosis .........................................................................................................................591 3. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................591 3.1. Religious Perennialism .............................................................................................................591 3.2. Looking for God........................................................................................................................593 Notes........................................................................................................................................................595

Islam and Process Theology Mustafa Ruzgar ............................................................................................................................601 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................601 2. Religion and Science..........................................................................................................................602 3. Centrality of Constant Creation—Event or Substance ....................................................................604 4. Conceiving the Divine—Omnipotence and Omniscience ...............................................................607 5. The Doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo.....................................................................................................610 6. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................611

Whitehead and Chinese Philosophy: The Ontological Principle and Huayan Buddhism’s Concept of shi Vincent Shen.................................................................................................................................613 1. Whitehead and Chinese philosophy ..................................................................................................613 2. Creativity, Harmony and Universal Relatedness .............................................................................615 3. Process, Relativity and Ontological Principle ..................................................................................617 4. Huayan Buddhism’s Gate of Relying on shi and Ten Mysterious Gates .......................................620 5. Dependent Causation of the Realm of Dharmas ..............................................................................620 6. Li, shi and the One Mind ...................................................................................................................622 7. Aftermath of the One Mind ...............................................................................................................623 8. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................624

690

Table of Contents Notes .............................................................................................................................626

Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................628

XIV. Theory of Knowledge .......................................................................................633 Symbolism: The Organic Functioning of Reason Murray Code.................................................................................................................................633 1. Philosophy and Symbolism ...............................................................................................................633 2. “Letting the Dialectic Go” .................................................................................................................633 3. On the Imaginal and the Conceptual.................................................................................................637 4. On Perception and Symbolism ..........................................................................................................639 5. On Symbolizing “Rightly” ................................................................................................................641 Notes .............................................................................................................................643

The Method of Extensive Abstraction: The Construction of Objects Guillaume Durand........................................................................................................................645 1. A Core Method...................................................................................................................................645 2. Method and Process ...........................................................................................................................646 3. The First Objects: Figures and Colors ..............................................................................................648 3.1. From Series to Figures..............................................................................................................648 3.2. Colors and Harmonics ..............................................................................................................649 4. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................651 Notes .............................................................................................................................652

Time and Experience John W. Lango .............................................................................................................................653 1. Temporality and Subjective Experiencing .......................................................................................653 2. Temporality and Human Subjectivity ...............................................................................................654 3. Causal Pasts and Simple Physical Feelings......................................................................................655 4. Subjectively Experiencing the Temporal Order in the Causal Past ................................................658 5. Contemporaries and Causal Futures .................................................................................................660 Notes .............................................................................................................................663

Works Cited and Further Readings................................................................................................664

XV. Urbanism and Architecture ...............................................................................667 Cosmological and Urban Spaces Joseph Grange ..............................................................................................................................667 1. Metageometry and Human Feelings .................................................................................................667 2. Cosmological Method and the Categoreal Scheme .........................................................................668 3. Urban place: The Matrix of Expressed City Values ........................................................................670 4. The Evolution of City Forms.............................................................................................................673 5. Urban Semiotics .................................................................................................................................675 6. The Philosopher and the City ............................................................................................................676 Notes .............................................................................................................................677

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Works Cited and Further Readings .......................................................................................................678

Analytic Table of Contents .......................................................................................679

Michel Weber and Will Desmond (Eds.) Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Volume 2

PROCESS THOUGHT Edited by Nicholas Rescher • Johanna Seibt • Michel Weber Advisory Board Mark Bickhard • Jaime Nubiola • Roberto Poli Volume X / 2

Michel Weber Will Desmond (Eds.)

Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Volume 2

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

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]

Livraison pour la France et la Belgique: Librairie Philosophique J.Vrin 6, place de la Sorbonne ; F-75005 PARIS Tel. +33 (0)1 43 54 03 47 ; Fax +33 (0)1 43 54 48 18 www.vrin.fr

2008 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 978-3-938793-92-3 2008 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper ISO-Norm 970-6 FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard Printed in Germany by buch bücher dd ag

Contents Abbreviations..............................................................................................................................................4

Volume II — Thematic Entries; Biographical Entries; Critical Apparatus XVI. Language .............................................................................................................5 Stephen T. Franklin Theory of Language .........................................................................................................................5 David G. Butt Whiteheadian and Functional Linguistics.....................................................................................21 Michael Fortescue Pattern and Process.........................................................................................................................33 Patrick J. Coppock Pragmaticism and Semiotics..........................................................................................................41 Sylviane R. Schwer Whitehead's Construction of Time: A Linguistic Approach .......................................................55

XVII. Mathematics and Logic ....................................................................................67 Andrew Dawson Whitehead’s Universal Algebra ....................................................................................................67 Robert Valenza Vector Mathematics: Symbol versus Form ..................................................................................87 Ivor Grattan-Guinness Foundations of Mathematics and Logicism..................................................................................97 Luca Gaeta The Memoir “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World” ..........................................105 Giangiacomo Gerla and Annamaria Miranda Mathematical Features of Whitehead’s Point-free Geometry ...................................................119 Claus Michael Ringel Extension in PR Part IV ...............................................................................................................131

XVIII. Sciences ........................................................................................................157 Biology Jonathan Delafield-Butt ...............................................................................................................157 Chemistry.........................................................................................................................................171

2

Contents Ross L. Stein On Molecules and Their Chemical Transformation..........................................................................171 Joseph E. Earley, Sr. Ontologically Significant Aggregation: Process Structural Realism ...............................................179

Computer Science Granville C. Henry and Robert J.Valenza ..................................................................................193 Quantum Mechanics .......................................................................................................................205 Michael Epperson Quantum Theory and Process Metaphysics.......................................................................................205 Shan Gao Quantum Mechanics and Panpsychism..............................................................................................223

Relativity Physics............................................................................................................................235 Ronny Desmet and Timothy E. Eastman Physics and Relativity .........................................................................................................................235 Elie During Relativistic Time in Whitehead and Bergson ...................................................................................259

XIX. Biographical entries .........................................................................................283 Whitehead’s Historico-Speculative Context .................................................................................283 Whitehead’s Contemporaries .........................................................................................................345 Whitehead’s Scholarly Legacy: American Pioneers ....................................................................547 Whitehead’s Scholarly Legacy: European Pioneers.....................................................................627

XX. Critical Apparatus .............................................................................................687 General Bibliography......................................................................................................................687 Index of Subjects.............................................................................................................................688 Index of Names ...............................................................................................................................705 Analytic Table of Contents ............................................................................................................716

Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Thematic Entries II Biographical Entries Critical Apparatus

Abbreviations AE

The Aims of Education, 1929 (Free Press, 1967).

AI

Adventures of Ideas, 1933 (Free Press, 1967).

CN

The Concept of Nature, 1920 (Cambridge University Press, 1964).

D

Lucien Price, Dialogues, 1954 (Mentor Book, 1956).

ESP

Essays in Science and Philosophy, 1947.

FR

The Function of Reason, 1929 (Beacon Press, 1958).

IM

An Introduction to Mathematics, 1911.

IS

The Interpretation of Science, 1961.

MCMW “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World”, 1906. MT

Modes of Thought, 1938 (Free Press, 1968).

OT

The Organisation of Thought, 1917.

PM

Principia Mathematica, 1910-1913 (Cambridge U. P., 1925-1927).

PNK

Principles of Natural Knowledge, 1919/1925 (Dover, 1982).

PR

Process and Reality, 1929 (Corrected edition, 1978).

R

The Principle of Relativity, 1922.

RM

Religion in the Making, 1926.

S

Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect, 1927.

SMW

Science and the Modern World, 1925 (Free Press, 1967).

TSM

“Time, Space, and Material”, 1919.

UA

A Treatise on Universal Algebra, 1898.

XVI. Language Theory of Language Stephen T. Franklin

i

Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy explores themes that have increasingly dominated Western philosophy, as well as the broader culture, from the time of Descartes until now— themes such as mind, subjectivity, contingency, finitude, and relativity, as well the role of the subject in constructing our lived worlds. Indeed by exploring these themes with utter seriousness and consistency, Whitehead uncovers their limitations and reveals the vulnerabilities in some of our culture’s most highly valued assumptions. In their place, Whitehead created an alternative vision that may strike many as a strange and counterintuitive system precisely because it revises and challenges so many of our prized assumptions. Once one becomes familiar with the basic outlines of his philosophy, however, it is not particularly difficult; and, in my view at least, it seems in most regards adequate. Whitehead has a subtle and powerful theory of language. In sharp contrast to much twentiethcentury philosophy, however, Whitehead does not view language as the sole or even the primary key to philosophical understanding nor does he believe that attending to this-or-that aspect of language will automatically dissolve philosophical conundrums. Rather he uses his philosophical scheme to give an account of how language functions. Philosophy, like all other reflective disciplines, uses language to state its vision, but philosophy is vastly more than language. Thus it is easy to focus on his larger system and to miss Whitehead’s theory of language. But precisely because language serves as an important test-case for his philosophy, Whitehead works hard to position language within his system and, in the process, creates a fascinating and highly original philosophy of language.

1. Process Philosophy as an Alternative to the Western Bifurcation of Reality Throughout his philosophical career, Whitehead protests against the “bifurcation” of reality. The term “bifurcation” can have two meanings. In the first, a single entity develops in two

i Former President and Special Professor of Theology and Philosophy, Tokyo Christian University; Director of Graduate Studies for the School of Theology and Christian Ministry and Professor of Theology, Olivet Nazarene University; [email protected].

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directions, such as branch of a tree putting forth two new twigs or a river splitting into two streams. Whitehead has no particular problems with bifurcation in that sense. In the second meaning, a bifurcation means the renting of an organic whole into two distinct parts that do not need each other and do not communicate with each other. The most notorious example of such a vicious bifurcation is Descartes’ theory of two basic substances, mind and matter. Here, material substances do not need minds, and mental substances do not need matter. Each is fully understandable by itself. With mind and matter thus separated, the central task for postCartesian philosophy was to find hooks with which to reconnect them. The mental and physical had to be reunited because we live in one connected world, not two isolated worlds. Generations of philosophers did not succeed however. Commenting on this failure, Bertrand Russell once mentioned the wag who distilled the last four hundred years of Western philosophy into four phrases: “No matter? Never mind! No mind? It doesn’t matter!” The debate is still very much with us. Kant, however, may have provided the more provocative and thorough-going bifurcation when he divided reality into its phenomenal and noumenal sides. We can expand Kant’s insight in the following way.1 Let phenomenal reality refer to our lived world of perception, thought, consciousness, and intellection—that is, the world as we directly experience it. And let noumenal reality refer to “whatever-it-is” that grounds and makes possible that lived-anddirectly-experienced world. According to Kant, human beings create this phenomenal world through the interaction of the noumenal world with the “categories of mind.” Kant searched for “universal” categories with which we are all born and that are the same in every age and culture. In the two hundred years since Kant, scholars have switched their focus from such universal factors to the shaping power of history, culture, psychology, language, and a host of other structures that are relative, localized, and diverse—anything but universal. Our post-modern world has extended this emphasis to the capacity of each human to create an individual identity. And the post-modern world tends not only to dismiss the search for universal categories of the mind, but it often looks askance on the categories of history, gender, culture, religion, and sometimes even ethics as unnecessarily and often unjustly restrictive on the individual’s personal freedom to choose a particular identity. From a Whiteheadian perspective, however, the key problem with Kant’s philosophy is the mystery of just how the noumenal and the phenomenal worlds communicate or interact.2 In a Kantian-type philosophy, the only world that we can know is the world as we have shaped it— by the “categories of the mind,” by culture, by language, by history, by gender, by economic position, or whatever. If we focus on the power of culture to shape our lived world, then we can never know the world prior to its shaping by culture. If we focus on this same power in language, then the world as it stands prior to that linguistic shaping never enters into our experience. Whitehead denies such a bifurcation. We do indeed shape our experienced worlds; and language has a prominent role in that shaping. But we also have access to the world prior to its shaping. This dual capacity—to shape our phenomenal world even while keeping contact with our noumenal world—is key to grasping Whitehead’s philosophy of language.

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2. Language and the Drive for Intensity of Experience This is also the context for Whitehead’s repeated claim that language (under the rubric of “propositions”) functions, not just to describe the world, but also to intensify experience. It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest, and its importance (AI 244). The interest in logic, dominating overintellectualized philosophers, has obscured the main function of propositions in the nature of things. They are not primarily for belief, but for feeling at the physical level of unconsciousness (PR 186). At one level, Whitehead is merely stating a commonplace of twentieth-century philosophy. Language has many functions, of which communicating factual information is but one. We use language to tell jokes, to express sorrow, to bless, to curse, to cheer, to make miserable, to proclaim guilty or innocent, and much else. We want to laugh; we need to cry. We humans, in every age and culture, use language to intensify experience in a myriad of ways. At another level, however, Whitehead’s view of language gains power as it is viewed through his speculative metaphysics. The basic unit in his speculative system is the actual entity. Actual entities underlie stars, rocks, iguanas, human beings, carrots, and even empty space. And every actual entity strives for intensity of experience—or, as Whitehead would more likely say, intensity of feeling. That is not to claim that a rock strives for intensity of experience, but it is to claim that the actual entities that constitute the rock do.3 It is, of course, absurd to say that all actual entities strive for intensity of experience, if we take “experience” or “feeling” in its everyday meaning. But Whitehead has turned “experience” into a technical term. As a technical term, it includes ordinary, conscious human experience; but it now has a vastly wider and more generic meaning as well. Whitehead has taken ordinary human experience, stripped it of what is unique to humans or even to animals, and generalized the concept as broadly as possible. As concepts closely connected with experience or feeling, we might point to striving, directedness, intensity, inclusion, or even value. These words also, however, have their home base in ordinary human life, and thus they too must be stripped of those characteristics that are particular to humans, or animals, or any specific kind of things. Only as completely generalized would they truly illumine the notion of feeling or experience in Whitehead’s technical sense. Whitehead uses the term “concrescence” to describe the drive for intensity of feeling4 in an actual entity. An actual entity is a concrescence. All concrescences share certain common traits that are relevant to our understanding of language. For example, each concrescence—that is, each actual entity—begins its existence as the inclusion of the past.

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3. Whitehead’s Ontology of Events Here again Whitehead defies the conventions of our Western philosophical tradition, our culture, our Indo-European languages, and perhaps even of our biological nervous system. As we will soon see, Whitehead’s alternative leads either to an “Aha! I get it” moment or to a “This is poppycock and claptrap” moment. We explain as follows. We are used to thinking in terms of substances such as rocks, trees, fish, stars, and human bodies. And without much good warrant from science itself, we even tend to think of atoms, electrons, photons, etc. as unimaginably tiny substances—things that keep their basic identity as they endure through time even though some of their non-essential characteristics might change. And evolution may have honed our nervous system so that we see the tiger ahead of us and not the plethora of buzzing photons, molecules, and the like. The central unit for our survival is the tiger and not the buzz of atoms, photons, and molecules. A tiger is a substance in Aristotle’s sense, but not a Whiteheadian actual entity. As Aristotle said, we cannot predicate one (primary) substance of another. That is, one substance cannot include another, except in the trivial sense that a carton includes the eggs or a jar contains the honey. Even less can a substance include the past of some other substance. Considered as a substance, I do not include within myself the computer on which I am writing this essay—neither the computer as it exists in the present nor as it existed in the past. And yet Whitehead wants to say that as a current actual entity, I definitely and literally include within myself the actual entities that made up the computer a few seconds ago. It is not that I include the past actual entities as they have survived into the present. Rather I include them as they are in, and remain in, the past. When applied to substances, this is incomprehensible gibberish, as Whitehead fully understood. Therefore, we must conclude that an actual entity cannot be a substance. In looking for a metaphor that would shed light on this way of thinking, Whitehead suggested an “event” or a “process.” One event can include another. World War II was an event. It included within itself other events such as the Battle of Britain, Pearl Habor, D-Day, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus the actual entity is a concrescence, and a concrescence is best understood as an event or process. Each actual entity is a vast cosmic event that includes all past events (or, more precisely, portions of all past events) within itself. There is, of course, a contemporary perspective from which it includes that past. For us, in our cosmic epoch, this contemporary perspective is a four-dimensional region (the three dimensions of space plus the dimension of time).5 In sum, an actual entity is a process which aims at intensity of experience. This intensity can be profoundly rich in some cases: say the human experience of sailing on a good day with the wind in one’s face and the spray overhead. Or it can be trivial in the extreme, say the “experience” of an actual entity in intergalactic empty space. In every case, however, this process includes its past within itself.

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3.1. Ontology of Events and Overcoming of Western Bifurcations One may wish to question Whitehead’s ontology of events, but it has at least this enormous advantage. It utterly demolishes every bifurcation which has dominated Western thinking in the last four hundred years. The past, which is a kind of noumenal world, is very much present in our current experience.6 We are not cut off from that reality out of which we emerge. Indeed that reality is included in us, as a part of our real constitution, of who and what we are. It is never lost. Thus, there are two sides to each concrescence—that is, to each basic event, each fundamental process. On the one hand, there is the foundational past that the new concrescence includes within itself. This is the noumenal reality which is present at the beginning of the concrescence. And, on the other hand, there is the drive towards intensity of experience. This is the phenomenal world we create, and it is the outcome of the concrescence. That drive towards intensity is the same as the urge to create a new identity. This new identity cannot ignore the past, for the past is part of the real internal constitution of the new event. But that new event can react to that past in new ways, invoke new possibilities, and most certainly occupy a new “perspective” from which it incorporates its past. Let us restate this. For Whitehead, the past is, according to our heuristic, the noumenal reality from which we emerge and with whose resources we create a new phenomenal experience. On the one hand, contrary to Kant and to much linguistic philosophy, that noumenal reality is never lost, never disappears, and remains, to different degrees, available to us. On the other hand, out of that noumenal reality, we really do create different identities that are influenced by our histories, our cultures, our biological and psychological constitutions, and even our religious traditions. The key point is this. We can, in some sense, compare the world out of which we come with the identities that we create, for both are co-present in the one event of concrescence. Thus Whitehead can fully acknowledge the powerful roles of our biological construction as well as of sense perception, symbolism, consciousness, intellection, and language in shaping who we are. He fully accepts these motifs of modernity and post-modernity. However, most modern philosophers, dealing only with a substance philosophy and focusing on human consciousness as the touchstone of “experience,” have argued that we are therefore isolated from whatever noumenal reality may lie beneath and prior to the worlds we construct. Whitehead’s ontology of events, in contrast, allows him to include that noumenal world as co-present in the new actual entity. And from that, everything else follows.

4. Language within an Ontology of Events Language, then, is one among many tools that have evolved in the quest for intensity. As a group, these tools—biological organization, sense perception, and (probably) consciousness— can be found in most higher animals. So far as is known, however, only humans use language in any developed form. Language is a form of symbolism. An actual entity uses symbolism whenever it uses one element in its world to elicit, promote, foster, enhance, identify, or isolate

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another factor in its experience (S 2-8). In particular, language is a form of symbolism (S 2) that promotes the grasping (that is, the inclusion or prehension) of propositions (PR 264-5). We may think that, as educated people, we know what a proposition is. And, in the ordinary sense of proposition, perhaps we do. But Whitehead has generalized the term proposition and given it a new context in his philosophy. What, then, is a proposition in Whitehead’s process philosophy, a philosophy that denies the bifurcation of reality into mind and matter or into noumena and phenomena, a philosophy with an ontology of events rather than substances, and a philosophy that recognizes the shaping power of perception and intellection while retaining access to the pre-shaped world? In a Cartesian world, a proposition presumably is an element in a mental substance and, therefore, is itself a mental thing. But as Whitehead noted, Descartes’ mental and physical substances do not communicate with each other, nor do they need each other for their full description. In that case, how does a Cartesian proposition about a physical substance succeed in referring to that physical substance? For that matter, how does the proposition in my mind (one mental substance) succeed in referring to your mind (a separate mental substance). We can simply assert, as obvious on the face of it, that the proposition does in fact successfully refer to physical objects and to other “substances”—and perhaps challenge anyone to prove that it doesn’t. But we have no explanation of how it does so. In the musical, The King and I, the tensions of Western culture flummox the King of Siam, and he exclaims, “It is a puzzlement!” The working of a proposition in a Cartesian world is truly a “puzzlement.” Likewise, in a Kantian world, how does a proposition as an element in my phenomenal world refer to anything in the noumenal world? That also, if it were in fact possible, would truly be a “puzzlement.” The “puzzlement” stems from our traditional assumption that the proposition exists on one side of the bifurcation (the mental substance, the phenomenal world), while “referring” to something on the other side (the physical substance, the other mind, the noumenal reality). We hide the resulting gap by using the verb “refer.” If there is no communication between the two sides, how does the proposition cross that gap and “refer” to something on the other side? In contrast with the traditional view, Whitehead’s process philosophy asserts that both the past actual entities and the new proposition are co-present in the same event. Let us assume that the proposition refers to the past.7 For example, “My dog barked at the paperboy this morning.” According to a philosophy of substance, the barking dog and the paperboy are separate substances that existed in the past and have endured into the present as the self-same substances. But on Whitehead’s philosophy of events, the actual entities that constituted the barking dog, the paperboy, and my own past self are all past events, and they remain past events. But these past events are included in the new actual entity (the new event) which is the current me. Whitehead therefore suggests that we should think of a “proposition” not as a mental entity that somehow refers to the past paperboy and howling dog. Rather the proposition literally includes the (actual entities in the past of) the paperboy and the yapping dog. A proposition is a composite reality that combines the physical paperboy and dog (to the extent that they were composed of past actual entities) with certain characteristics (such as howling, being boyish and

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doggish, etc.). Whitehead calls the past actual entities in the boy and dog the “logical subjects” of this proposition. And he calls the characteristics the “predicate.” Whitehead provides a detailed analysis of just how the past actual entities function as logical subjects in the proposition. Among other things, the past actual entities are reduced within the current actual entity to mere “its.” And he provides an explanation of the predicate in terms of his theory of universals (which he calls “eternal objects”). The point, however, is this. On the one hand, the past actual entities in the dog and boy are included in me, as a part of who I am. One event, it will be recalled, can include other events. And on the other hand, the predicate is also within me as something that can be variously described as a universal, an eternal object, or a pure potential. Thus the proposition is a reality within me that joins together certain actual entities with some predicate. The proposition is not simply “about” the boy and dog; it includes the boy and dog within itself. Thus Whitehead totally overcomes the bifurcations implicit in earlier analyses of a proposition: bifurcations between physical and mental substances, noumena and phenomena, and between inner and outer. It is almost impossible to overstate the extent to which Whitehead rethought the idea of a proposition within the context of his speculative metaphysics. Propositions are essential, for example, not merely for language and thought, but they are also a key ingredient in sense perception. And the purpose8 that God gives each new actual entity is, according to Whitehead, a proposition—or, to use Whitehead's technical vocabulary, a hybrid feeling of a proposition. Once we get rid of the idea of a proposition as a purely “mental” reality and once we reconceive it as a composite of concrete actuality with focused potentiality, we should not be surprised that propositions are not just linguistic and intellectual factors but also crucial elements in sense perception. In Whitehead’s drive to overcome the bifurcations of recent Western culture, he also re-thought sense perception. For him sense perception, like language, includes both concrete actuality and focused potentiality. He discusses the concrete physicality under the rubric of “perception in the mode of causal efficacy,” and he described the focused potentiality under the heading of “perception in presentational immediacy.” Whitehead interprets ordinary sense perception as the symbolic interaction between these two types of perception. That is, if we take sense perception in its pre-philosophic and pre-scientific sense as the explicandum, then its interpretation as a symbolic interaction between these two types of perception is the explicans. Perception in the mode of causal efficacy (which Whitehead often abbreviates to “causal efficacy”) is the inclusion of past events within the new event and therefore the paradigmatic illustration of power, physicality, and coercion. Perception in presentational immediacy (or simply “presentational immediacy”) requires propositions and therefore provides the concrescing entity with an important mechanism for organizing and structuring the world as given in causal efficacy into that concrescing entity’s new self-identity. Presentational immediacy, through its embedded proposition, enhances freedom within sense perception. Since both sense perception and language are symbolic activities, and since both integrate physicality with focused potentiality, it follows that they should work well together, as in fact they do. Language is more advanced and complex than sense perception. It presupposes sense perception while the reverse is not the case. Thus language can often direct and give depth to

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our sense experience. It is a common experience to focus on some object after being given directions. Sometimes language even helps us see things we never saw before. As a teenager in the American Canal Zone in Panama, nearly fifty years ago, I used to swim occasionally at a particular Caribbean beach. The sand was gritty, with many different pebbles. My biology teacher mentioned in class that this beach had a small grey-white plant with the shape and size of a silver dollar. The next time I went, I checked, and “sure enough” the beach was loaded with them. Before I had seen a beach with lots of pebbles; but after the lecture, I saw a beach with lots of pebbles strewn with silver dollar plants. That is the power of language to shape our sense perception. It gave me greater freedom and more nuance in how and what I saw. While Whitehead certainly notes—and provides an explanation for—the connection of language with freedom, potentiality, and mentality, his greater contribution may well be his connection of language with physicality. In most cases, it would be “odd” to say that we “feel” a proposition. But Whitehead repeatedly uses this language. A feeling—also called a prehension, in his technical system—is an act of inclusion or exclusion. To feel a proposition means to include that proposition in the concrescence of the new actual entity. Even an excluded item leaves its traces, like a rejected lover who haunts one’s memories long after disappearing from one’s life. The primary case of power, coercion, and force is causal efficacy. Perception in the mode of causal efficacy is the inclusion of past actual entities in the new occasion. The new occasion, as an event which includes past events within itself as part of its own identity, must adjust to that past. There is no choice, nor freedom. This is physicality at its rawest. The point to note is that the proposition is not a mental entity about some set of past actual entities. Rather it is a composite entity which includes those actual entities. Within the proposition the past actual entities are “reduced” to mere “its,” to use Whitehead’s phrase, but they are there as part of the proposition. Thus when a concrescence “feels” a proposition, it is feeling something that is physical. To be more precise, when a concrescence feels a proposition, it feels something that has a physical side, the included actual entities, and that has a mental side, the predicate or set of characteristics. Thus language, as it symbolizes our feelings of propositions, not only adds to our freedom and increases our capacity to shape our own world, but it also links us to the concrete physical world out of which we emerge. It is hardly a new thought that language connects us to our concrete world. It probably never occurred to anyone but a philosopher to doubt it. But the bifurcations endemic to Western philosophy in the last several centuries had made that connection puzzling, to say the least. Whitehead metaphysics makes the double function of language—its liberating and shaping power and its connection to the concrete, physical world—natural and fully explicable.

5. Language and Truth It is, says Whitehead, more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. Nonetheless, sometimes we do care about the truth of a proposition. Whitehead has a

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correspondence theory of truth, or as he sometimes calls it, a “conformal” theory (PR 186). The key to his theory of truth is to remember that the actual entities that function in the proposition are in fact present in the new concrescence in two ways. On the one hand, they have entered as concrete actualities felt in causal efficacy, and they remain present in the new concrescence in this role. On the other hand, the concrescing entity has incorporated them into some proposition as the logical subjects of that proposition and as reduced to mere “its.” In doing so, the concrescing entity retains their location (as events in space and time) and their sense of concreteness, but “strips” them of their characteristics. This means that the concrescing entity can compare (A) the actual entities as they function as the logical subjects in the proposition with (B) the same actual entities as they were originally included in the concrescing entity apart from their role in the proposition. Is the predicate which, in the proposition, applies to the actual entities considered as mere “its,” the same as the characteristics of those actual entities as felt in causal efficacy? If so, the proposition is true. If not, it is false. It is important to note that this is not simply a criterion of truth. Truth is the functioning of the same predicate/characteristic in the proposition and in the past concrete actual entities. And error is the lack of this functioning. Let us state this more dynamically: the actual-entity-in-the-making, assuming that it is sufficiently complex and adequately endowed with resources from its past, actively creates propositions. And in cases in which the concrescing entity is endowed with even richer capacities, it may actively compare (a) the actual entities in the proposition as reduced to mere “its” with (b) those same actual entities as they originally entered the actual-entity-in-the making. Without actively creating the comparison of these two roles, the proposition will be neither true nor false in that concrescence.9 The proposition in itself is indifferent to its own truth or falsity, as Whitehead repeatedly stresses. But sometimes we care very much whether it is true or false. Whitehead does not focus on how much we sometimes care about truth and error, because he wants to balance the typical scholar’s one-sided emphasis on truth and error which often obscures the other roles of a proposition. In any case, it is obvious on that face of it that we sometimes care deeply about truth and error. We are more likely to live if our propositions, both in sensation and language, about the crouching tiger are true, and more likely to die if they are false. The point, however, is that Whitehead has worked out a detailed and powerful theory of truth that overcomes many of the problems that previous philosophers, dominated by theories of substance and working within bifurcated worldviews, had found so puzzling.10 In an important sense, Whitehead’s metaphysics of propositions reverts to an older view of truth. Truth connects us with the noumenal world. In a Kantian world, statements can only give us information about the phenomenal world which we have constructed, not the truth about things as they are in themselves. In contrast, Whitehead suggests that propositions can also give us knowledge about the world as it is in itself, because that noumenal world is part of the very identity of the concrescence entertaining the proposition. Language is not caught up in itself, nor is it trapped in an endless cycle of self-reference. In sum: we can know the world as it is prior to its shaping by language because that pre-linguistic world is part of the real internal constitution of the concrescing entity.

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Language can be “true” in this classical sense of “factual statements about what is really the case.” But as we have seen, Whitehead is also fully and deeply aware of the capacity of language (and of other symbolic systems such as sense perception as well as of culture, economic interest, and even our nervous system) to shape the concrescence’s search for a selfidentity. In other words, Whitehead allows us to affirm both sides of the modern dilemma of language. That is, we can affirm and explain (A) the capacity of language to give us true propositions about noumenal reality as well as (B) the contribution of language to the creation of relativistic self-identities and diverse cultural patterns. In providing an alternative to the bifurcations of Western culture, he also provided a way of reconciling the classical and modern/postmodern views of truth and language. Is it too much to say that Whitehead’s philosophy might provide a route of reconciliation in Western culture between the conservatives and the liberals, between what Americans call the Red States and the Blue States? And if not a reconciliation, perhaps it could at least stimulate a more civil and respectful dialogue between these two groups, because Whitehead’s philosophy recognizes and affirms the key insight of each group into the nature of language and truth.

6. Religious Language To conclude this essay, we will turn to religious and ethical language. In the West, religious language has traditionally centered on God, although even Western religious language is hardly limited to “God-talk.” All the many traditional Western views of God have this in common: God is not an idol. Anything we can make or control is an idol. Thus God must be associated in some sense with the noumenal world, with the world prior to our creaturely shaping of reality, whether that shaping be caused by the categories of the mind, by cultural or linguistic relativity, by psychological needs, or by anything else. Obviously, we do have our human images of, and ideas about, God. These are deeply shaped by our cultural backgrounds, psychological needs, and our languages. No one doubts that we shape our image of God. But a God that is “only” a product of our culture and psychology, is no God, but an idol. Whitehead seems to have first introduced God into his system as the source of cosmic novelty. His deep sense of process led him to believe that genuine, radical novelties have emerged in cosmogonic time, in biological evolution, as well as in human history—novelties that are more than the mere rearrangement or recombination of possibilities inherent in the past, that is, inherent in the world. One can dispute Whitehead on that point; but it must be said that in embracing radical novelty, Whitehead has embraced one of the primary motifs of the modern and postmodern world. He needed, therefore, a storehouse of all possibilities—a source of those radical possibilities that were not inherent in the past, nor derivable from a mere rearrangement of the past. This storehouse became the earliest version of “God” in his system. Of course, there must be some mechanism by which these new possibilities from God are introduced into the world. This mechanism was God’s gift of an initial subjective aim to each new concrescence. We explain as follows. Each new concrescence begins with the incorporation of the past world from which it develops its own way of organizing that world—what we have called the

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creation of a new self-identity or, alternatively, what we have described as the drive towards an intensity of experience. The degree of novelty can vary from the most trivial to the most radical, and the degree of experienced intensity can range from the most piddling to the most profound. The new concrescence needs, however, a possible self-identity towards which it can work. This is the initial aim, or the initial subjective aim. This initial subjective aim can be modified as the actual entity concresces, and the final identity can be quite different. According to Whitehead, each actual entity feels God at the very start of its concrescence, and that feeling gives the actual entity its initial aim. Thus the felt purpose inherent in each actual entity derives, in major part, from God’s gift of a subjective aim. Thus God operates so to speak in the noumenal world. This is the world of power, physicality, and purpose. It is prior to all forms of symbolism such as ordinary sensation, consciousness, and language. The dual nature of language becomes profoundly significant at this point. It both enhances the intensity of experience in the concrescence, and it connects us with the concrete world out of which we come. This applies to religious language as well as any other. Even in the twenty-first century, the capacity of religious language to intensify our experiences can be startling: Christian Pentecostals speaking in tongues, Shiites weeping as they re-tell the story of Ali’s murder, Hindus in ecstasy as hear the myths of Krishna, Japanese Buddhists telling the tale of Nichiren’s exile, and Roman Catholic monks chanting the Kurie. Whatever we may think of these emotions, it would be foolish to deny the power of religious language to produce intensity of experience. And it would be foolish to deny the power of different religious traditions to channel that emotion in very different directions. And to some extent, the truth (if any) of the stories seems quite beside the point. It is their capacity to shape our worlds and to intensify our experience that counts: Again, consider strong religious emotions—consider a Christian meditating on the sayings in the Gospels. He is not judging ‘true or false’; he is eliciting their value as elements in feeling. In fact, he may ground his judgment of truth upon his realization of value (PR 185). We should not stop with this insight, however. Nobody questions the power of religious language to sharpen and shape our experience. The question is its truth. For Christians and Jews, and perhaps others, this has two sides. The first is the historical truth of the Exodus or the Resurrection. The second is the ability of religious language to connect us with the noumenal world. We will focus only on the second: the connection of religious language with the noumenal world. As composite entities, propositions incorporate both predicates and actual entities. It follows that language, because it facilitates the feelings of propositions, gives us access to both the predicates and the actual entities. The past actual entities, as we have said, are present in the new concrescence both as the logical subjects of the proposition and as embedded in feelings of causal efficacy. The past actual entities are the noumenal world. This includes God. God is also an actual entity. God is also felt in causal efficacy. Some aspects of God become parts of the real internal constitution of the new concrescing entity and, thus, become available for inclusion in propositions. By this means, propositions, and so language, give us access to the noumenal world. This includes religious language about God.

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Whitehead does not hold that God as a whole is present in each new concrescence. Rather the new entity feels only a small part of God. The key is the initial subjective aim for that new concrescence. God, as the storehouse of all potentiality, creates a suggested identity for that new concrescence. This takes the form of a proposition about the concrescing entity. In Whitehead’s technical vocabulary, this means that God creates a proposition with the new entity itself as the logical subject. When the new entity feels this proposition about itself, it also feels God as the source of that proposition. As a result, God as a noumenal reality is present in the new entity through that new entity’s feeling of this proposition—which is not to deny that God may be present in other ways as well. Language elicits the feelings of propositions. Religious language elicits the feeling of the initial aim, which is a proposition. In doing so, religious language elicits God into greater significance and into a finer, but not perfect, clarity within the new concrescence. As Whitehead stresses repeatedly, this can have many purposes besides the theoretical interest in the truth of these propositions. God’s initial subjective aim provides the basic source of our ethical convictions, our aesthetic values, and our sense of an organized world. We can use religious language to enhance any of these functions. It is primarily through religious language that we can elicit God’s purposes into consciousness and, thus, into greater effectiveness, in our lives. We can also ask the question of the truth of religious and ethical language. Is this really God’s will for me, for my culture? A proposition is true when the same predicate that applies to the actual entity (the logical subject) in that proposition also applies to that actual entity before being reduced to a logical subject. How does this apply to the initial aim? In the sense that the logical subject is the new actual entity itself, there is no particular problem. The new entity surely has access to itself. More importantly, God as the source of the initial aim is also present in the new actual entity, as part of its real internal constitution. Therefore, the truth of religious language—the two-way functioning of the predicate—can be directly established within the concrescing entity itself. To establish the truth of religious language may not be easy. And because God is first present in the new actual entity at a foundational, pre-sensory, pre-conscious, and pre-linguistic level, propositional awareness of God, even with the help of language, will not normally take the form of clear and distinct ideas, nor of perfectly precise and conscious feelings. But awareness of God can be real because we have direct access to the noumenal world. And thus religious language about God, as a noumenal reality, can be true. Here is an extremely important part of the “cash value” of Whitehead’s overcoming of the philosophical bifurcations of Western culture. Westerners often associate religion and ethics with the “spiritual,” the “ethereal,” the “abstract,” and the “subjective.” And there can be no doubt that religion can take on these qualities, both in a negative and positive sense. Negatively, many secularized Westerners view religion and, to a far lesser degree, ethics as disconnected from the serious business of life. Surely this disconnect has many sources; but one of them may have been the bifurcations that have haunted our philosophy in the last several centuries. Positively, religion can be pregnant with new possibilities. If science studies the world as it is, religion dreams of the world as it

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might be. Whitehead has an explanation for this when he posits God as the storehouse of possibilities, which become real potentials in specific historical situations through God’s gift of an initial subjective aim to each new concrescence. The initial subjective aim is a propositional feeling in the new concrescence. Language draws out propositional feelings into greater prominence and effectiveness, and religious language thus draws out these possibilities into the consciousness of prophets, poets, and dreamers who shape the world to come. Whitehead does not, to my knowledge, ever express it this way, but I think it is faithful to the spirit of his work to say that religion is one of the primary mechanisms by which a culture continues and greatly speeds up the changes that occur more randomly in the development of the universe and in biological evolution. And within the sphere of religion—granting, to be sure, the roles for many people of meditation, icons, incense, non-verbal rituals, and much else—it is language that hones this process to its sharpest edge. Religion is not always good, notes Whitehead, but it always important. In considering religion, we should not be obsessed by the idea of its necessary goodness. This is a dangerous delusion. The point to notice is its transcendent importance; and the fact of this importance is abundantly made evident by the appeal to history (RM 17). Where does this sense of importance come from? Religion lives not just in the realm of ideals, new possibilities, and imagination. It also carries within itself overtones of the heaviest physicality and noumenal reality. Propositions, which play such an important role in the sense perception of all animals and which have an enhanced role in human language, are composites that include not just predicates and characteristics (in short, not just universals or, in Whitehead’s language, eternal objects) but that also include the embedded actual entities. To elicit the past actual entities as reduced to mere “its” also makes it far easier to elicit those same past actual entities as they are felt in causal efficacy. Our previous discussion of power and purpose can be applied directly to religious language. It will be recalled that the new concrescence is an event that, from a particular perspective in the present, includes its past events within itself, as a part of its real internal constitution. The new entity must conform to these past events, at least initially, because they constitute its own identity in the making. Thus, this act of inclusion is power in its purest form. This is perception in the mode of causal efficacy. Whitehead is not saying that the new entity has a perception with “power” as its datum. Rather he is saying that the inclusion of these past entities in the new entity is power in its most basic and physical form. Lastly it must be remembered that these past entities are the noumenal world. This noumenal world includes God and the divine gift of the initial subjective aim. Therefore, in addition to being the realm of power, the noumenal world is also the realm of purpose, value, and the world’s directedness. This connection to the noumenal world of power and purpose gives sense perception, propositions, and language their sense of overwhelming significance and “gravitas.” Religious language, more than any other single factor, brings this noumenal world into the twilight of semi-consciousness and, very occasionally, into the focal light of full consciousness. Thus, for those people who cultivate religious language in their lives, it not only opens up dreams of a different and alternative world, but it also connects them to that deep noumenal world of power, purpose, significance, and overwhelming weightiness. As Whitehead reminds

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us, all this can be distorted in the process of concrescence so that religion becomes destructive and even evil, while retaining its transcendent importance. But Whitehead also provides a way of examining the truth of religious language as it connects us to the noumenal world, where that noumenal world has been included, deeply, in our own being. It thus becomes possible to critique, correct, and improve how we talk about God and how we live as human beings.11

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Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

In this essay, I do not present the technicalities of Kant’s system. Rather, I use one Kantian theme, the division of reality into noumena and phenomena, as a heuristic device to highlight the problem of, to use Whitehead’s vocabulary, the bifurcation of reality—to highlight it both as a narrowly philosophical issue and as a larger cultural issue. As a heuristic device, the distinction between noumena and phenomena allows me to connect Whitehead’s theme of bifurcation with later nineteenth and twentieth Century developments in anthropology, linguistic philosophy, historical relativity, and the like. My goal is to show the significance of Whitehead’s theory of language, as it is embedded in his metaphysics, not only for philosophy but for our larger culture as well. Whitehead himself would speak of causation (or, to be more specific, of causal efficacy) in this context. Aristotelian philosophy would classify a rock as a substance. In Whitehead’s philosophy, a rock, tree, or human is actually a collection of actual entities or, as Whitehead would say, a “society.” The actual entities in the society share certain traits that are passed on among themselves. These traits define the society, and the presence of these traits are crucial for the way that our nervous systems, cultures, and languages organize our perception of the world. In this world as perceived, there are many “substances” such as the tigers and trees. A “society” of actual entities can often, upon reflection, be broken down into subordinate societies which Whitehead calls “enduring objects” (PR 35). The key point, however, is this: the metaphysically basic situation is not the society (that is, not the so-called substance, such as a tiger) but the constituent actual entities. Thus our essay, to be brief, will focus on the connection of language with the ingredient actual entities and not on the more abstract notion of a “substance” or a “society.” But a full exposition would have to develop the connection of language with the “substances” of common sense. This drive for intensity requires the actual entity to have a “subjective aim” which we will discuss later. In the previous paragraphs, I used the past actual entities in the computer as my example. I said that the present actual entity includes them in itself. This does not mean that those past entities have survived into the present. They always remain in the past. We need to say three things. First, the vast number of patterns that make up the computer and its parts are inherited from one generation of actual entities to the next. Thus the pattern survives into the present, and that is why we think of the computer as a substance that existed in the past and has survived into the present. Second, the new actual entities, as events, are not simply located in the present. As new events they include the past events from a perspective or region in the present. But no actual entity is limited to the present region that serves as its perspective from which it surveys and includes that past. And, finally, the “present region” in this context is never an “instant” but always an “endurance” (my word) with temporal thickness. Whitehead develops his metaphysics in terms of the presence of the past within the concrescing entity. He also works out the senses in which contemporary and future entities may be said to be present within the concrescence entity. But this is far more complex. And in any case, the presence of the contemporary and future worlds in the new concrescence is derivative from the more direct presence of the past. Therefore, in this essay, we will only deal with the way in which the past is noumenally present in the new concrescing entity. In this essay, we will discuss, with one exception, only propositions about the past. In his effort to reconceptualize the nature of a proposition, Whitehead focuses primarily on propositions about the past. But this is not an exclusive focus. He also gives some attention to propositions about the contemporary and future worlds. These propositions are, however, more complex, and they are derivative from propositions about the past. The single exception is the initial subjective aim which God gives to each new concrescence. The initial aim always includes a proposition, but in this case the proposition is about the concrescing entity itself and thus about “the present.” We will discuss the initial aim later in this essay.

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Whitehead calls this purpose the “initial subjective aim.” Other actual entities can also create that comparison, even if the concrescence in question does not. Whitehead argues that God includes (prehends) all aspects of each actual entity in the world, without any omissions or exclusions, and thus the world as included in what Whitehead calls the “consequent nature” of God becomes the “standard” of truth. Presumably God makes every possible comparison and thus knows every truth in the world. 10 Whitehead distinguishes between the truth of a proposition and a judgment about its truth. We may say that he has a correspondence theory of truth, but a coherence theory of judgment. Our focus in this essay, however, is on truth and falsity as such and not on judgments about that truth or falsity. 11 A detailed and technical survey of the claims in this essay, along with full documentation, may be found in Franklin, 1991. 9

Whiteheadian and Functional Linguistics David G. Butti The world of linguistic theorizing is typically divided into two hemispheres—one which regards itself first of all as “functional,” and one which describes itself as “formal.” At the center of the functionalist (and pragmatist) tradition is a school which is explicitly Whiteheadian in its guiding principles, although few of the leading proponents of that tradition have been aware of the Whiteheadian connections. This Whiteheadian school of linguistics comes out of the leadership provided by J. R. Firth (1890-1960), the first Chair of General Linguistics in Great Britain and professor of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Firth himself was explicitly Whiteheadian in his approach to symbolic experience. He made many direct references to Whitehead, and a number of his crucial ideas were expressed in an idiom which echoed Whitehead’s formulations on epistemology and science: for instance, Firth emphasized language as “pattern” and “process,” and the importance of the linguist not engaging in ontological debates about language as a “thing” or about the “existence” of linguistic tools— which are themselves just a “scaffolding” for “language events” (Firth, 1968, 24; 1957, 190192). Clinically, and often acerbically, he highlighted the anomalies generated by linguistic methods which reified units or hypostatized the “system” of language. He dismissed the relevance of bifurcations like mind/ body, form/ content, subjective/ objective, word/ idea (Firth 1957, 192; 1968, 90). Functional linguists work to clarify the relational matrix which underpins semiotic values. And it is in sciences of value—specifically in the description of relations of meaning—that Whitehead’s work can provide an immediate renewal of engagement for researchers working for practical outcomes in their enquiries. My claims here do not depend on linguists and other scientists becoming explicitly and self-consciously Whiteheadian in their views. What I am suggesting is that functional linguistics needs to develop along the lines of a science which was adumbrated by Whitehead and which is implicit in the critiques he turned on the scientific assumptions of his time, in particular concerning substance and causation. For functional linguists, Whiteheadian ideas are not so much a metaphysical option as a practical necessity of more realistic accounts of human interactions. The critical affinities between the perspectives of Whitehead and of Firth were across a wide front of issues concerning process and its representation. But it is also worth emphasizing their common attitude towards the creativity inherent in each moment of experience—that point of convergence between the patterns of past, one’s history as an organism, and the potential of a future in which novelty depended on the elaboration of established patterns. In Firth’s work, one is confronted by the extent and depth of social regularities; but equally, one is never permitted to forget the concrete embodiment of language in phonetic behavior (Firth, 1957 [1948], 143).

i Professor in Linguistics, Director of the Centre for Language in Social Life, Linguistics and Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; [email protected].

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Echoing the analogy of plane flight used by Whitehead, Firth too emphasized a return to the ground of concrete data, after the rigorous application of rarefied theory: Renewal of connection with the processes and patterns of life in the instances of experience is the final justification of abstract linguistics (Firth 1968, 24). Firth’s direct and implicit uses of Whitehead are pervasive in his two volumes of papers, with titles like “Modes of meaning” being direct allusions (cf. Modes of Thought, Whitehead (1938)). Others who have followed Firth in his social orientation to linguistics—in particular, Firth’s student M. A. K. Halliday and the many scholars who have worked closely with Halliday’s developing theory—have contributed to a drift towards Whiteheadian thinking, even when the connection with Whitehead has not been an explicit or conscious research goal. Those who consciously drew from the work of both Firth and Halliday, and who saw clearly the connection between Firthian linguistics and Whitehead also deserve a full treatment. Here I will just mention Margaret Masterman (1910-1986), who led the Cambridge Language Research Unit, and who tried to integrate the views from the work of all three scholars. According to Yorick Wilks, Masterman was “ahead of her time by some twenty years” in “language processing by computers” (Masterman 2005, Introduction, 1). This situation is sketched out below, drawing only on perspectives from one stratum of the complex organization of language. In this discussion, I illustrate what might be regarded as Whiteheadian, process-oriented techniques as they developed in phonology—i.e. in the description of the ways in which sound is organized in the realization of human languages. As emphasized at various points in my survey, phonology is only one of four or five interrelated levels of intricacy in languages. Other levels, like grammar and semantics, multiply the problems and intensify the need for process thinking. In the bandwidth of the present discussion, the ideas of Whitehead which will most resonate with the linguistic issues include: “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness;” “occasions of experience;” “causal efficacy/ presentational immediacy;” and, more obliquely, “internal and external relations” and “negative prehensions.”

1. The “Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness” The most straightforward demonstration of the relevance of Whitehead’s work for functional linguistics comes from reflecting on segmentation, and the discreteness of segments in a linguistic account of speech. The flow of speech is a paradoxical stream of relations between at least four simultaneous levels of organization. At one level, we can recognize the fuzzy, phasal “units” of our culture—this unfolding of interlocking behaviors is a wedding; that ensemble constitutes a funeral; these are the moves in buying and selling something expensive, and these contribute to transactions of another kind. This level of “context” encompasses pragmatics and the social networks of an actual speaking community—an enormous undertaking, but one which can be addressed, like other forms of complexity, by regionalizing and finding parameters which have semantic consequences for the direction of the social processes at stake in the given research.

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To express (or “realize”) these fuzzy units of cultural convention, one needs the resources of stating, enquiring, commanding, and convincing—namely one draws on the great legacy of “tropes” discussed in traditional rhetoric. This second level we could call our “semantics.” We cannot do without this level and go straight to the words and grammar because there are many strategies for making a case, an argument, or even an offer. This is to say there is a many-tomany relationship across the levels of semantics and of lexis and grammar (hereafter “lexicogrammar”). These levels are different kinds of abstract patterning, requiring quite distinct forms of descriptive techniques. The words and grammar of a language can be recruited to all kinds of semantic purpose, just as a diverse range of meanings might be brought to the “articulation” of a given context of situation, with each dimension of meaning attuned parametrically to the specific demands of the social relations. Equally, we must say that each strand of meaning creates the context with an appreciably different semantic “spin” or “structure.” The level of lexicogrammar manifests the “forms” which are the realization of meanings; but these are recorded into patterns of sounds (i.e. realized according to the sound patterns of the given language) and instantiated as actual sounds, i.e. phonetically. But the acoustic reality of what we call speech is a function of all these levels happening together—their co-dependency is NOT causal, but realizational. Therefore, to say language is a meaning coded as a sound is utterly misleading. A number of codings have to take place altogether (not serially) for the locution to happen; and such codings (and therefore the locution) carry the implication of speakers and hearers who are themselves a bundle of relationships with respect to a speech community. In this speech community, a whole history of cross-calibrated behaviors has had to develop. We have to think of this development as a process of semantic evolution in which the complex currents of the present are functionally motivated elaborations of more narrowly restricted contexts. This is to say that we infer such semantic diversification over the 1.9 million years since the initial semiotic endeavors of Homo habilis (Leakey 1995, 163ff). The “organic,” layered, interdependent character of this development is not easily described. Something of the difficulty of description can be seen in trying to track language development in children; but the latter process receives its vector character, its teleonomic dynamism, from the semantic pressure exerted constantly on a child. There is a world of language-users who get things done through employing this intricate “realizational system”: layers of interdependent values. Of course, in early Hominid behaviour every extension of such values, and their interrelations, would be an innovation in “mind” (Noble, 1996). And the fact that such elaboration is constantly in progress ensures that any synchronic, idealized snapshot of the system can only be a fiction, not just a reification of the system as such, but a hypostasis—a freezing out of exactly those characteristics of flow and variation which most define the phenomenon and which both Whitehead and Firth most demanded of representations. A further level of “thingifying”—fallacious concretization—might be put on notice here, albeit just to direct readers to a fuller exposition (Halliday, 1998; Butt, 1985/1989; Halliday, 1993). As the tempo of semantic evolution has been raised by the diversity of forms of work, by the interlacing of communities, and by tools for exchanging symbols, the texts of English have

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shifted towards nominal structures in their grammatical regularities. In particular, the technological preoccupations of talk and of writing have produced an intensification of the pattern “x is/ becomes/ means/ equals/ has y.” Such a pattern facilitates the expression of equivalence between entities, the coding of attributes and of quantities, and the nesting of embedded structures (e.g. where a process appears in a defining relative clause that qualifies a head noun as the x or y term in the verbal equation: “That is the one that I want” rather than “I want that one”). The empire of the noun has been on the rise—and relentlessly. Our construals of experience—from scientific enquiry to sport and human relations—are being uttered as growing aggregations of fallacious entities! There are two problems on the work bench, then: the segmentation of language by the analyzing linguist; and the segmentation of experience by the forms which speakers project onto their experience by using the grammatical resources to hand. Such formulations of experience take on the force of a semantic tide, a “drift” (Sapir, 1970 [1921], 154-55). The latter constitutes a “fashion of speaking” which, in ‘standard average European” languages (Whorf, 1956: 138), has become a covert tendency towards greater and greater reliance on nominalizing (see Whitehead’s many condemnations of the related subject-predicate formulations of experience, 1978 [1927], eg. xiii, 7, 13, 30, 159 et al). However we might protest about the need for “process thought,” we must attend to the fact that the grammar in which we protest may be itself at cross purpose to our metaphysical goals. Whitehead’s “magnum opus” (1978 [1928]) is an extreme case of the grammar of axiom and definition (virtually a semantics of “frozen sections”) pulling against its own declared aims: process. By contrast, the poet Wallace Stevens can create the linguistic texture of a Whiteheadian reality—its evanescence, its relational felicities, its creativity over and above causality—without defining the terms of that reality philosophically (Butt, 1988; Melrose, 1996, 120-39). But let us return to the linguist’s difficulties with the segmentation of language as “object.” The difficulties are in many respects like the difficulties confronting other life sciences, and biology in general. If we take an extended quotation from Lewontin, Rose and Kamin (a quotation cited also by the biologist Charles Birch in offering background to his ecological thinking in Birch 1990, 46), the isomorphism is remarkable: A living organism—a human, say—is an assemblage of subatomic particles, an assemblage of atoms, an assemblage of molecules, an assemblage of tissues and organs. But it is not first a set of atoms, then molecules, then cells; it is all of these at the same time. This is what is meant by saying that the atoms, etc., are not ontologically prior to the larger wholes that they compose. Conventional scientific languages are quite successful when they are confined to descriptions and theories entirely within levels. It is relatively easy to describe the properties of atoms in the language of physics, of molecules in the language of chemistry, of cells in the language of biology. What is not so easy is to provide the translation rules for moving from one language to another. This is because as one moves up a level the properties of each larger whole are given not merely by the units of which it is composed but of the organizing relations between them. To state the molecular composition of a cell does not even begin to define or predict the properties of the cell unless the spatiotemporal distribution of those molecules, and the intramolecular forces that are generated between them, can also be specified. But

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these organizing relationships mean that properties of matter relevant at one level are just inapplicable at other levels. Genes cannot be selfish or angry or spiteful or homosexual, as these are attributes of wholes more complex than genes: human organisms (Lewontin, Rose & Kamin1984, 278). Here we see the “levels” of a realizational system—all parts assume the whole rather than the whole being explicable as an aggregation of the parts. On each level the functions performed are of an order removed from the levels of “performance” above or below (if one can artificially think of single patterns for the purpose of talk). Now, let us turn to “discreteness” and segmentation in language, specifically at the level of phonology. Linguists routinely achieve useful descriptions of unwritten languages by conceiving of the chain of speech as a succession of elements which can carry a contrast for speakers of the given language. If one finds two words which are semantically differentiated by one element alone (such as /pill/ and /bill/) then such a “minimal pair” provides a basis for the contrastive sounds to enter the inventory of phonemes for that language. By extracting such contrasts from a data set, there is empirical support (which is replicable) for a phonological interpretation of the speakers who provided the data. A phonemic analysis delivers the generalized, idealized version of the segments of words in speech. This abstraction is derived from a more realistic rendering of the flow of speech—the phonetic transcription. In the latter, the acoustic reality is of a higher order because the rendering is more faithful to the articulatory details of the individual segments. But the successive segments remain, only enhanced by diacritics and by noting the allophonic variation: i.e. the changes that a particular segment undergoes because of its contingent neighbors. So, two different sounds can be taken as versions of the “same” phoneme (i.e. they are allophones) if it can be argued that the sounds are only different because the specific segments around each have affected their articulatory instantiations. Equally, we could say the two sounds cannot occur in the “same” phonetic environment, and thus cannot be contrastive as a “minimal pair”. They cannot contrast if they are the same form in two contexts. It is worth noting three points about this traditional phonemic approach to phonology. First, it depends on information from other levels, from the meanings (semantics) and wordings (the lexicogrammar)—one cannot seal off or isolate linguistic techniques from each other. Second, there is a great potential for creeping Platonism when the actual sound/ articulation is set aside for an underlying ideal, atomic component. Third, the unit “phoneme” creates a considerable problem of junctures and boundary conditions which are difficult to substantiate either perceptually (by human judgments) or acoustically (by instrumental analysis of consonant and vowel “clusters”). One attitude we might adopt towards this conventional picture is that it is a “good enough” method for many purposes, even for some specialist activities like the evaluation of writing systems. Bernard Shaw (and many others) might chafe at inconsistencies between sounds and spelling, between what we ‘sound’ and what we ‘write’, but most non-specialists accept the trade off between a rough fit and the result—a standardization of writing across the global community of speakers (particularly useful in the case of English). Firth’s position was both more accurate theoretically and more practical than the conventional techniques of the 1940s and 1950s. In linguistics, and perhaps in many sciences, one must “eat

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the cake and have it too”: by demanding more of theory, practical matters become more tractable. I have taken this figure of speech from Firth’s student, M. A. K. Halliday, as well as from the spirit of pragmatism: although practical men generally prefer to leave their major premises inarticulate, yet even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end (Oliver Wendell Holmes 1899, 420) Firth’s own views were pragmatist—he did not regard linguistics as an enquiry into incontrovertible truths “out there.” Rather, linguistics was for him a “scaffolding” by which linguists could make useful statements about authentic texts. The scaffolding needed to be set aside after the statements have been arrived at. The framework was not to become the thing in itself of the investigators.

2. Process over Substance in the Stream of Speech Firth’s techniques with respect to the sounds of a language can be characterized as processoriented: they were a proposal to capture the actual flow of sound resulting from the flow of articulatory performance. First of all, he highlighted what segmental, discrete representations omitted, namely, the ongoing influence of articulations across a spread of possible units. The influence and the spread were addressed in the term “prosody.” Such prosodies included necessary extensions of the conventional phoneme and syllable, as well as the problems raised by intrusive sounds, namely, those that link units of articulation at the boundaries of standard units (like words). The process character of speech needed to be represented, then, for the sake of the extended nature of articulatory effects and for the reason that putative segments were in fact carried over through “junction prosody” (Tench 1992, 2). This is to say that they were not discrete units of sound although they may be “heard” as discrete words and meanings (from the point of view of other linguistic levels like the lexicogrammar). A second point of contestation is more general, and represents a rejection of what was implied by the standard techniques of phonology. Firth’s alternatives to any “monophysite doctrine” (Firth, 1957 [1948], 123) were a clear anticipation of what today we would classify under complexity theory and its techniques for managing non-linear dynamics: The time has come to try fresh hypotheses of a polysystemic character. The suggested approach will not make phonological problems appear easier or oversimplify them. It may make the highly complex patterns of language clearer both in descriptive and historical linguistics. The phonological structure of the sentence and the words which comprise it are to be expressed as a plurality of systems of interrelated phonematic and prosodic categories. Such systems and categories are not necessarily linear and certainly cannot bear direct relations to successive fractions or segments of the time-track of instances of speech. By their very nature they are abstractions from such time-track items. Their order and interrelations are not chronological (Firth 1948, 151, cited in Tench 1992, 2). This kind of thinking opened the way for a number of related developments in phonetics, including a parametric framework which was developed by the leading phonetician of the

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twentieth century, David Abercrombie (see Abercrombie 1965). In this, as set out by Tench (1992, 4), the activity and non-activity of many physiological variables of speech production could be displayed, including their degrees of engagement in the actual speech process. Overall then we can say that the prosodic approach encompassed problems that had fallen off the linguist’s work bench: some phenomena which had been treated as if of no significance for speakers; or others which were clearly recognized in the world’s languages, but which were relegated to the status of an oddity or exception. One such typological issue, illustrating the importance of Firth’s way of seeing co-existing processes in all speech, was vowel harmony in Turkish and Hungarian. Of particular interest in vowel harmony is the way one vowel determines the form of a following, non-contiguous vowel. But this determination in the flow of sound has a number of more complex strands—one cannot focus on the vowel change as an issue of swapping one segment which we might have expected for another which was actually articulated. The word under examination can have certain prosodic effects which extend over the articulation of the whole word. Other influences may be specific to the first syllable only. And, as is always the case, each consonant introduces its own dynamics of plosiveness, nasality and so on. The “piece” under analysis is always a convergence of numerous extended events, each of which has a dynamic character that varies with the variability of the “phonematic” structures, that is, across any of about seven domains of possible relevance—consonant and vowel, word and word part, syllable and syllable part, as well as sentence and sentence part. In the Systemic Functional Linguistic theory of Firth’s student, M. A. K. Halliday, one can see all these convergent complexities take on an explicit role in the phonological method. One has a hierarchy (or rank scale) of units that appears straightforward enough: phoneme, syllable, foot, tone group. But this is not a phonemic system as such—the smallest unit of phonological contrast can be different from language to language and will need to be ascertained specifically for each language (Firth 1957 [1948], 122). So too, phenomena that are manifested at one rank in one linguistic system may be consequential at a different rank in another language. In Halliday’s “A systemic interpretation of Peking syllable finals,” one can follow a detailed application of the Firthian approach through non-segmental features (Halliday 1992, 98). Halliday notes the compatibility of Firth’s theory with traditional Chinese phonology as interpreted by Halliday’s own teacher in China, Wáng Lì (Wáng, 1936). The detailed exposition of Halliday’s article cannot be summarized here. But two extracts (one here, and one in the section on “occasions of experience,” below) serve well our concerns with Whitehead’s programs for science (and metaphysics). When the reader considers the linguistic issues raised in the extracts, the direct relevance of Whitehead’s ideas to the work practices of functional linguistics takes on a more concrete form. For in linguistics, I am claiming, Whitehead’s universe is not a metaphysical program, but an operational necessity. This necessity is spelt out in the following paragraph as Halliday looks back over the early moves of his paper and contrasts the prosodic (extended process) method with the segmental: We can now see the difference in what is implied by a prosodic and a segmental interpretation. Consider the syllable zhan, in contrast (i) with zhai and (ii) with zhang. The pair zhan/ zhai may have identical vowel quality, differing only in that one is nasal, the other oral. On the other hand, zhan/ zhang may have identical

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nasal resonance (no tongue contact, hence no segmental realization of alveolar/ velar), differing only in that one has a fronted vowel, the other a backed vowel. Likewise, zhao/ zhang have the same posture with different resonance; zhao/ zhai the same resonance with different posture. It is difficult to explain this in segmental terms, with a segment /a/ followed by the four distinct segments /i/, /o/, /n/, /ng/. But it becomes predictable if we explain these four as the product of two intersecting two-term prosodic systems: posture (y-prosody or w-prosody) and resonance (nasal or oral) (Halliday 1992, 104). The prosodic techniques required a representation which was adequate to the process reality demanded of the theory. Phonetic symbols can be enhanced by diacritics to convey all kinds of specific modifications of a segment, or what one might regard as variation resulting from the specifics of its environment and its contribution to systemic contrast. But, like all alphabets, the implication of the symbols is that a string of discrete elements is produced and processed as “successive fractions” (Firth 1957 [1948], 137). While not denying that linearity is a fundamental concept in linguistics (since both written and spoken texts unfold in time), it should be clear from the foregoing that the linearity is that of a multidimensional behavior, and that such multidimensionality applies on each of the four levels of language as well as in a realizational relationship across all these levels (i.e. phonology, lexicogrammar, semantics and context). An enormous number of pieces in the game are “in motion.” In fact, what we are trying to do is manage the ensemble effects across continuous motion or variability. For if the parameters of sound, of grammar, and of rhetorical (semantic) strategies could be thought of, heuristically, as constant, the social parameters of the context would still be creating new “values” in the totality of linguistic relations.

3. System Networks and the Relational Matrix of Language An elegant resolution to the problem of modeling relational complexity is the system network, presented by Halliday in 1964 (Halliday, 1969) and later also adopted by the stratificational, cognitive linguist Sydney Lamb (Lamb, 1970). The system network is a diagram of simultaneous relations: by combining notation for five basic relations (“or,” “and,” “only if X then Y,” “all of X lead to Y,” and “re-enter to choose over”), Halliday could represent the numerous complex dependencies on each level of language patterns. These simple terms create a picture of relations that is counter-intuitive in its coverage of complexity: one might doubt that five relational operators could encompass the labyrinths of language and the “looms” of neurons (which are the additional target of Lamb’s Stratificational Linguistics; see Lamb 1999). The explanation arrives after only a little reflection. First of all, language does not have to be imagined through the metaphor of “rules,” with vast qualifications and anomalies. Halliday’s guiding metaphor is “choice,” even creative “option”—what are the alternatives available to the speaker? This is addressing the paradigmatic axis of linguistic organization (see de Saussure 1974 [1915], 125-127). Next, we need to clarify the environment in which the choice arises.

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Since language is polysystemic, the environment is set by an ENTRY condition—to enter a specific system one has to set out from the relevant structure. For example, one might set out from a set of alternatives which applies to a major clause (in the grammar), or to a tone group (in the phonological system) and so on.

Fig. 1. Network Conventions taken from Butt, D. (2001: 1823) What the network achieves is an account of all the convergent complexity pertaining to a given node of semantic potential. Halliday’s metaphor of choice extends to the concept of mapping: the linguist is mapping the “meaning potential” available to a specifiable community of speakers (what Firth referred to as a “speech fellowship;” Firth 1957 [1950], 186). One can set the scale and human co-ordinates of such mapping to the coverage of a narrow band of textual practice, like a single register (e.g. the language of jazz musicians explaining improvisation). At the opposite pole, one might be concerned centrally with what many (or most) registers share. This would be the pole of ‘system,” as opposed to the “instance,” in mapping meaning. Between these two poles, there are any number of registers or clusters of language “games” (after Wittgenstein; see Glock 1997, 193-94) which may be of central concern to linguistic enquiry— from political bias in news reports of war to forensic analysis of scraps of written exchanges for courtroom examination. Yet these enquiries rely on the quality of grammars and descriptions of the wider system, which are in their turn enhanced by the actual instances (along with

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probabilities) involved in specific registers. The power of one’s linguistics is the strength of interplay between these two poles of generalization.

4. Parameters, Networks and “Occasions of [phonetic] Experience” When we return, then, to the Peking syllable, Halliday shows us how we can manage the complexity with a network which brings the parameters of articulation into a single map. This is a “flow-and-return” model which discriminates between peaks. These peaks, in their form, anticipate a final state (namely, where the syllable is “going”). This contrasts with the situation in Cantonese in which “the features selected at syllable final have little effect on the quality of the vowel” (Halliday 1992, 107). Here are Halliday’s observations on this network: The network combines four principles of analysis. One is the Chinese phonological principle whereby all syllables are structured simply as initial plus final. The second is the Firthian prosodic principle whereby features such as posture (y/a/w) and resonance (nasal/ oral) are treated non-segmentally. The third is the paradigmatic principle whereby features are interpreted as terms in systems, each system having a specified condition of entry. [Note that in Firthian systemstructure theory the entry condition is specified syntagmatically, whereas in a system network it is specified paradigmatically: entry to one system depends on selecting a certain term in (at least one) other.] The fourth is the dynamic principle whereby the syllable is envisaged as a wave, a periodic pattern of movement characterized by a kind of “flow-and-return.” What this last means is that the syllable is construed as a movement from an initial state to a final state, each of these states is specified as a “selection expression” (a cluster of features from different prosodic systems); and there is variation both temporally, in the extent to which a particular feature persists across the syllable, and spatially, in the route that is traversed from the initial to the final state (Halliday 1992, 106-107; emphasis added). This technique—for managing the relational intricacy of the flow of speech—is a Whiteheadian resolution. It maintains the reality of process while at the same time displaying the dependent relations that motivate enquiry. The metaphors of flow-and-return, of pulse, of rhythmic structure, of legato-like extensions, and of punctiliar dispersions, all provide good service to linguists in conceptualizing linguistic irregular regularities. These terms may not seem surprising given the linguist’s attention to sounds. But the value of these terms applies across all the levels of linguistic organization: we can find rhythmic relations (or at least we can usefully apply the metaphor) in semantics, in the deployment of cross-sentence cohesive devices (see the final section of Halliday & Hasan, 1976), in the typical and changing densities of grammatical texture, in the interactive patterns of turn-taking, and even in the visual structures of arts and architecture, which have often been analyzed through semiotic “grammars” closely aligned with techniques of functional linguistics (O’Toole, 1989, 1994, 1995; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Butt, 2003; Stewart, 2002, Chapter 10; O’Halloran, 2004).

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Fig. 2. Network Specifying Syllable Types taken from Halliday, M.A.K. (1992:113) While “buildings as texts” may provoke groans of “linguistic imperialism” or of “reductionism” (a fashionable charge against structure statements of any kind), it should be noted that architectural structures and analogies from physics, chemistry, mathematics, law, geology, biology and music have all supplied linguists (in all traditions) with ways of discriminating between the intricate relationships of order in language. Verbs are described by their valence; grammatical cases are nuclear or non-nuclear (or oblique); there are strata; word forms are the morphology of the language; we can take measures of lexical density and clausal complexity; and so on. None of these metaphors prevents a direct engagement with the semantic content of a text. As pointed out by Firth, the terms we use when we “turn language back on itself” (to paraphrase Firth, 1957 [1951], 190) are themselves a form of meaning making (not a Platonic universal liberated from the semantic processes it purports to be describing). Exchanges of metaphors are a requisite of our growing understanding in any enquiry. They are indicative of a more general character to knowledge; and they assist in ascertaining how phenomena and relations in one domain of study actually differ from those in another. An analogy is a contract of difference as well as a proposal about similarity.

5. A Science of Relational Values I have claimed for functional linguistics the status of an emerging science along Whiteheadian lines. In urging this description, I have referred to some general issues (like segmentation and discreteness of units) and I have taken the phonological application of prosody from Firth to demonstrate how the approach is practiced in the quotidian problems of the science. As complex and subtle as the phonological reality appears to be, the whole challenge for relational modeling undergoes inflation when we remind ourselves that Firth’s methods utilized (rather than

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excluded) the implications of structures from other levels in the realizational codings of codings of codings. We have had to invoke both “word” (from lexicogrammar) and meaning (semantics) in order to encompass unit boundaries and significant contrast in the phonological representation. We should also add that “prosody” addresses a problem that arises at other levels of linguistic description—the issues of process-ness, extended influence, of units and discreteness, and of fluid values (i.e. that changing environments mean that same is different) all arise in the grammar, in the semantics, and (perhaps more obviously) at the level of context. We are dealing with a realizational system; and such systems cannot be productively described if one addresses them through the metaphors of engineers—with inputs/ outputs, serial events, and causation. The conditions under which linguistics operates are everywhere paradoxical, or at least an inversion of what even specialists might have expected. The study of meaning demands that the metalanguage is always to be renegotiated for each task. No system of categories sits over and beyond the traditions of meaning from which we have drawn those categories in the first place. The difficulty of getting this relativistic message across to the wider public is always daunting. This “ineffability of grammatical categories” (Halliday, 2002) is just what many people— experts and wider community—do not want to countenance. Both the wider public and some experts will have to accept the epistemological limit inherent in the linguist’s predicament. It is not that “God plays dice with the universe” of meaning. Rather, it is clear that different dice will be incommensurable (for some purposes, at least) on each throw! If language pulls people together into semantic transactions, this unifying activity is also the basis for us performing our differences—it is important for society, wrote Firth, that we recognize our “roles,” and remember our “lines” as social actors and so on (Firth 1968 [1959], 207). He emphasized that we are, as people and as linguists, concerned with the “typical actual” by contrast with just an “ideal potential” of community behavior (Halliday: personal communication); and this can be pursued productively by diary studies and other instances of close observation, much as social theorists were to argue decades later as “grounded theory” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). To Firth, however, these recommendations were not novel but clearsighted advice about what ought to be carried forward from established tradition in linguistics and ethnography. The critical issue was to ensure that the abstraction of method did not belie the principles of realism and authenticity. Realism requires that we attend to the phenomenon, and authenticity demands that enquiry cannot cut loose from empirical support. Firth (1968, 19) urged the “renewal of connection” with the facts which motivated the investigation. This was, I believe, another one of numerous adoptions of Whitehead’s idiom and gnomic insights: The true nature of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation (PR 5)

Pattern and Process Michael Fortescuei 1. The Issue at Stake Linguists, whether of the formalist or functionalist persuasion, are in the habit of speaking of grammar in quasi-processual terms, as if the patterns they describe and attempt to explain were themselves dynamic entities, whereas what they often are doing is in fact describing static relationships between the layers or modules of their theoretical frameworks which can be “projected” the one onto the other for various explanatory purposes. This has all too often resulted in a thorough ambivalence (if not downright confusion) as to what is best described as enduring linguistic pattern and what is best described as linguistic process. Much of the confusion is due to the conveniences of descriptive practice and the persisting influence of the computational model of thought, and can be avoided if one treats language patterns (individual grammars) in the manner of Whitehead as “eternal objects” that define the grammatical norms adopted by a community and treats linguistic process—the creative application of those norms to the communicative needs of individuals—as “prehensions.” This perspective is hardly revolutionary in itself, indeed it is quite reminiscent of the Humboldtian distinction between language as energeia—creative human activity—and language as ergon—culturally maintained product (Humboldt 1988), but its particular Whiteheadian formulation can help sharpen our understanding of the murky ontological basis of the Saussureian dichotomy between langue and parole (or, in its more syntactically defined Chomskyan guise, between competence and performance).1 What the Whiteheadian perspective more specifically offers modern linguistics is a handle on the psychologically real processes lying behind the deployment of language pattern in thought and communication (two sides of the same coin for Whitehead). By “psychologically real” I do not refer to the level of neurons (which has excited cognitively minded linguists in recent years, perhaps prematurely), but to that of phenomenologically meaningful experience, which must of course in turn be relatable—if only indirectly—to a more inclusive neural “nexus.” Many linguists otherwise interested in these matters still tacitly accept the digital computer analogy of the mind/brain, which precludes real-life meaning and intentionality. Even in more recent “neural net” and “connectionist” approaches to language modelling the mind/brain is simply a black box, whose inscrutable “hidden layers” are in themselves quite meaningless. The Whiteheadian perspective allows a degree of penetration into the workings of the black box in terms of his general theory of the conscrescence, in so far as this can be applied to neural networks.2 It provides a smooth transition between low-level, analogue connectionism and

i Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, 2300 Copenhagen S; [email protected].

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higher level digitalized/symbolic processes and reflects the emergence of complex rational behaviour from simple cellular activity obeying basic physical laws. The successive steps of the Whiteheadian concrescence (where a simple conformal stage precedes more complex “aesthetic” and “intellectual” ones) suggest how distributed neural networks might function within thinking, communicating beings, with numerous processes occurring “at once” in real time although logically ordered and under mutual constraints. Moreover, Whitehead’s subtle theory of prehensions allows for the differentiation of what is often assumed by network theorists to be undifferentiated neural activity into a battery of specific prehension types that operate at hierarchically accruing levels of complexity. In this way, simple physical and conceptual prehensions (such as those involved in the recognition of patterns by specific areas of sensory cortex) are woven into propositional prehensions and, beyond this, into the most complex kinds of intellectual and judgemental prehensions. Much of this is relatable to what is in fact known about the workings of the hierarchically organized human cortex and the processes surging through it—including those of sub-cortical provenance. Prehensions (that is, positive ones) are feelings, and feeling in its broadest sense lies at the heart of the Whiteheadian framework. Applied to linguistic memory—both semantic and episodic—it offers an alternative way to conceive of the storage and access of meaning (and its components) to the computer-based one involving labelled nodes or “addresses.” Furthermore, Whitehead’s theory of “subjective aim” deals with the dimension of internally-generated intentionality (and therefore of pragmatics) that is lacking from all existing computer simulations of linguistic behaviour. It allows us to see the gradual working out of the complex and largely indeterminate intentional dynamic that lies behind the production of individual utterances. This involves the gradual adjustment of a subjective aim towards its determinate “satisfaction”—its resolution (re)attaining maximally intense homeostasis—via specifically activated prehensions, e.g. of relevant parts of the “eternal object” of the grammar of English. The distinction between direct and indirect speech acts seems over-simplified by comparison, though Whitehead had little to say himself on specific grammatical ways of encoding complex linguistic intentions. I have attempted to fill out some of the missing detail in my own work.

2. An Interpretation of Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism as Applied to Linguistics In a monograph on what I have called the Pattern and Process (or Whiteheadian) perspective on linguistics I attempted to illustrate how some of the central ideas of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism can be applied with benefit to that broad and fragmented discipline (Fortescue 2001). The central point that I argued there was the importance of upholding two complementary perspectives, that of language as Pattern (in terms of conceptual “repeatables” that include the norms and socially sanctioned rules of grammar) and that of language as Process (in terms of individual occasions of use, and the prehensions and subjective aims of which they consist). In Whitehead’s universe, Process is complemented by Pattern, which is pure potentiality (although itself dynamic). Pattern only exists in so far as it is borne by actual occasions engaged in

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processes of concrescence. In any self-organizing system, one might say, Process is both the source and the result of Pattern, and this applies equally to language. Process is in general the passing on of feeling into expression, and feeling (or prehension) is the reception of expression (MT 23). What is in focus in on-line language use—as it is in perception—is dynamic, transitive action and what remains in the background is the more static context, largely presupposed and outside of conscious awareness. But without that static background—including, crucially, the constraints on the form of what can be expressed if one wishes to be understood—there can be no structured communication at all. I presented in my monograph a cognitive interpretation of the Whiteheadian framework in relation to such areas as speech act theory and pragmatics, syntactic patterning, propositional semantics, language processing, information structure in written texts, language acquisition and historical change. An appendix contains a sketch of the logically successive stages in the concrescence of a single output utterance in English, indicating both the eternal object types and the prehension types relevant at each stage (Fortescue 2001, 251-53). In a number of articles since then I have attempted to apply this approach to somewhat more detailed linguistic matters of speech production, ranging from the simple phonetic level to the most complex intentional phases (see especially Fortescue 2007a, 2006 and 2007b).3 Here follows a preliminary list over the types of “eternal object” relevant to language Pattern, as proposed in these works (taken from Fortescue 2007c). Whitehead himself, note, was no taxonomist (of eternal objects or otherwise), and was less than specific as regards the intended range or variety of these “forms of definiteness.” A. Concepts i. predicates (of activity, state, quality, etc.) ii. logical subject types B. Relational/structural patterns i. morphosyntactic ii. phonological iii. (co)referential iv. logical-relational v. semantic C. Types of subjective form i. discourse modulation functions ii. epistemic stance iii. validatory attitudes D. Intentional types i. discourse acts ii. strategies (and patterns of inference) iii. behavioural norms iv. background communicative principles E. Nexus types i. contexts of situation ii. social/historical and textual embedding iii. sign (e.g. word) types F. Propositional types i. simple ii. complex

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Compare the following list of the main Whiteheadian prehension types that I have used in my treatment of linguistic Process (here taken from Fortescue 2007a). About these Whitehead was quite specific, but the application to language is my own. a) Physical. From the afferent (comprehension) perspective, this simple type of prehension— typical of the early “conformal” stage of a concrescence—is involved in the analysis of the raw speech “data” (phonological, prosodic, gestural accompaniments, etc.) and of relevant perceptual aspects of the communicative setting. Such conformal prehensions occur automatically at the neural level of the speech organs, not at the level of the conscious “personally organized nexus.” Physical prehension of the speech signal in the mode of “causal efficacy” leads via abstraction from the input data (by negative prehensions that isolate the signal from “noise” and allow for higher-level contextual variation) to the recognition of sequences of individual phonemes in the more fine-grained mode of “presentational immediacy.” This constitutes a bridge to the following, “supplementary” phase of the concrescence. b) Conceptual. This kind of prehension is involved in ensuing phases of the concrescence where specific concepts are recognized as being associated with the speech input chain (via phonological form and symbolic reference links). From the efferent point of view of the speaker, corresponding eternal objects (“concepts” in the widest sense of recurring patterns) are prehended as potentially contributing to the satisfaction of the initial aim (the overall discourse goal). The lexical items evoked (along with their respective argument frames, etc.) are then integrated according to mutual compatibility with the general morphosyntactic patterns associated with the complex discourse act aimed at. Negative prehensions are needed in order to select for expression only the most suitable items thus prehended. In this way the subjective aim of the concrescence (inherited from the speaker’s immediate past) becomes more and more determinate and specific through successive conceptual and propositional prehensions. c) Hybrid. Hybrid prehensions are the type involved in recognizing the intention behind another person’s utterances (by empathy and abduction) or one’s own previous intentions. They are also involved in accessing relevant presuppositions and making necessary “bridging inferences” in order to fill in inconsistencies in accruing “mental models” (the enduring objects of memory). d) Indicative. This is the kind of physical prehension involved in acts of reference (to a logical subject—including those “labeled” by proper names), or of establishing a discourse topic (if there is a choice among multiple logical subjects). Such a prehension will highlight certain regions of the relevant nexus (or contextual network of relations) for potential predicative comment. e) Propositional. This kind of prehension combines types (b) and (d) above, in the simplest case assigning a predicate to a singular logical subject. The “imaginative” propositional subtype integrates the prehension of a predicative pattern with the “indicative” prehension of a logical subject that does not actually display the pattern—it assigns, one might say, a predicate to a logical subject in a relationship that is “imagined” rather than perceived in the immediate physical setting. A proposition as such, note, is neither an “eternal object” (a repeatable pattern) nor a nexus, but a hybrid relationship between logical subjects prehended within a nexus (as

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under d) and a predicate (an eternal object) of a kind that the human mind/brain is especially attuned to prehend. It is not necessarily expressed or articulated verbally. What is prehended (as with all higher level prehensions) is a species of contrast (between the nexus and the eternal object). f) Intuitive judgments. This kind of complex prehension is a combination of (d) and (e) at a still higher level of complexity within the supplementary phase of a concrescence, whereby a whole proposition is grasped within its overall nexus (thus allowing the assignment—or suspension—of a truth value). Differences of “subjective form” here may reflect varying epistemic stances on the part of the speaker. The intuitive judgment forms the basis of processes of inference and abduction of various kinds. g) Anticipatory. These “feed-forward” prehensions monitor the progress of the concrescence towards the intended satisfaction of its initial subjective aim, in particular as regards the effect on the hearer that the final utterance can be expected to have (this may involve general principles of communication or specific knowledge concerning the recipient and the given situation of context). The later stages of the specification of the “subjective aim” involve anticipatory prehensions.

3. Whitehead’s Impact on Contemporary Linguistics In assessing Whitehead’s influence on linguistics one must bear in mind that Whitehead the holistic thinker was for a long time totally eclipsed in these quarters by his atomistic erstwhile colleague Bertrand Russell, who—via formal semantics in particular—was far more in tune with contemporary linguistic concerns. Whitehead’s larger scheme of things does not obviously connect either with formal (as opposed to “natural”) logic or with Wittgenstein and Ordinary Language philosophy (which arose by reaction to Russell and the semantic formalists). These were the principal areas of interface and communication between philosophy and linguistics in the years immediately following the war (cf. however Butt, this volume, on Whitehead's influence on Firth). This lack of recognition is perhaps not surprising, given that Whitehead’s writings on language—apart from broad generalizations—is limited to his slim monograph on Symbolism (S) plus the corresponding section of Process and Reality, a work that makes such daunting terminological demands on non-specialists and is so permeated with metaphysical speculation that most hard-nosed linguists have shied away from approaching it directly. With the florescence in recent years of Cognitive Science (in its broadest, interdisciplinary sense), there are signs of a rekindling of interest in Whitehead on the part of some linguists, however, this time not in the formal symbolism of the Principia, but in the perspective on the ontological underpinnings of language production and comprehension that his full-blown philosophical system provides. It remains to be seen how far this will lead. In general, psychologists have been more open to Whitehead’s ideas than linguists have.4

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Noam Chomsky, the most influential linguist today, is not unaware of Whitehead’s work, but he appears not to have appreciated his full potential significance for the field. In fact he began the book that introduced the notion of “Cartesian Linguistics” to the world (Chomsky 1966) with a citation from Whitehead, though this was only in connection with Whitehead’s approving attitude towards the “genius” of the sixteenth century and did not refer to his own philosophy. Now Chomsky has always claimed that his generative approach to linguistics is part of the “cognitive revolution” of the post-war years, but by this he is referring primarily to the “new” computer analogy of thought. It has become more and more difficult to see how the various avatars of his original generative theory have anything much to do with psychological reality. Only his reiterated—and untestable—belief in the Cartesian “innateness” of the language (read “syntactic”) facility remains constant. The principal difference between the perspective of realist Whiteheadian and that of arch-rationalist Chomsky lies precisely in the question of the ultimate anchoring of the language facility, both in individual cognition and in human evolution. For Whitehead it clearly has its roots in pre-linguistic cognition, in particular in perception, and is not an autonomous “device” that appeared suddenly out of the blue by some freak mutation. Language for Whitehead is both symbolic and propositional in essence, but his term “symbolic reference” covers both perception and language. The proposition structures not only language but also perception (in the mode of “immediate presentation”)—the correspondence between “proposition” in this broad sense and linguistic “sentence” is far from direct. Language “elicits propositional prehensions,” i.e. invites the hearer or reader to adopt the “subjective form” of the proposition referred to, the whole intentional background of the utterance or sentence concerned. Symbolic reference, by coordinating perception in the mode of presentational immediacy (of sensory symbols) with that of causal efficacy (the holistically “felt” meaning or intention behind the act), lies close to the theory of meaning as “affordance” now widespread in psychology (cf. MacWhinney 1999, 216f.), but unlike the latter—basically a matter of distributed sensory associations—it is bidirectional (the intended meaning may also evoke the symbol).5 What language introduces beyond the propositional prehensions of perception (and which raises it above the simple exchange of social signals) is a vastly increased clarity and intensity of experience, and this it does by liberating the speaker/hearer from mere sensory fact. It opens new vistas of abstraction and creative imagination. The primary function of language is to share our feelings about the world, not to communicate facts about the world (compare Franklin1990, 244). This is a definite advance on the Saussure-inspired “conduit” metaphor of linguistic communication, and represents a side of Whitehead that must have appealed to Chomsky and his Humboldtian insistance on the creativity of language. What the Whiteheadian approach promises, then, is an account of the “emergence” of language from prelinguistic reality, one that does not rely on any unknown—and probably unknowable— ”language acquisition device” in the manner of Chomsky himself. In this, Whitehead actually lies closer to the functionalists of today than to the formalists (despite Chomsky’s proprietary claim on the term “generative”). For Whitehead, the source of grammar is to be found in the subjective form of propositional prehensions which act as “lures for feeling,” and this is close to the heart of speech act theory. The most typical grammatical marking of subjective form is in the choice of mood, which reflects the speech act type, although it enters into many other

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aspects of intentionality and function that are reflected in grammar (including, for instance, adverbial modification). This said, it must be admitted that there are nevertheless drawbacks to generalizing Whitehead’s philosophical system directly to speech production and comprehension, drawbacks mainly of a terminological nature. Nowhere is this clearer than in connection with his key term “eternal object.” Whitehead’s system needs interpretation—if not translation—to become accessible to mainstream linguists. This term, which is innocent in itself, since all that is “eternal” about such “forms of definiteness” is that the patterns are repeatable and therefore communicable. I have elsewhere suggested equating these with “concepts” in the broadest sense (including percept and intention types), though this may mean wrenching the purely cognitive aspects of Whitehead’s system out of its broader metaphysical context. I for one happen to believe that this is perfectly justifiable and results in an internally consistent perspective on cognition in general and on language in particular.6 This may still not be enough to satisfy empirically-minded sceptics, however well the system seems to cohere as a purely psychological framework. Many would see Whitehead’s system as all too vague and general, even if “right” as regards the larger picture. It is certainly true that there are aspects of linguistics where a Whiteheadian perspective has little to contribute (one thinks especially of purely inductive linguistic typology). However, there is no reason that predictions deriving from the Whiteheadian “model” should not be tested empirically—and this is indeed a direction I am currently working on. Another objection that may be levelled at Whitehead by linguists is his simplistic or at least “old-fashioned” understanding of the proposition as consisting simply of logical subject(s) and predicate. Information structure theory—not to mention various schools of syntax—have advanced far beyond that, it might be claimed, for instance as regards the distinction between “topic” and “subject” and the varying valency frames (both semantic and syntactic) of individual predicates that may require anything from zero to three arguments. In fact the broader contextual setting of a predication (which determines such matters of linguistic expression as topic assignment) is easily accommodated within the framework of Whitehead’s higher prehension types, and, as is well known, Whitehead made a point of promoting “polyadic” relations beyond the traditional binary structure of the proposition. However, the objection misses a more important point, since sentence type and “underlying” proposition are for Whitehead only very indirectly linked (here he sides with Chomsky—and with Plato). The Whiteheadian perspective supports the modern version of linguistic relativity whereby the sentence types provided by the language we speak may influence (but not determine) the kind of propositions we entertain. What is quite up-to-date about Whitehead’s understanding of the “proposition” is precisely that he treats this hoary abstraction in processual terms, namely as the combining of an indicative act (prehending the logical subject(s) of the proposition) and a predicative act (prehending an eternal object or concept, the affordances that constitute the contents of the predicative expression).7 The propositional prehension organizes these into a higher order unity corresponding to a state of affairs, which may in turn be elaborated by a further prehension of the logical-subject-in-context that allows the assignment of a truth value (or other attidudinal indicator of subjective form). This is reminiscent of the way in which

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complex predications are built up in layered varieties of functional grammar. Far from being a hindrance, the centrality of the “proposition” in Whiteheadian thought may afford new vistas on the nature of linguistic processes.

Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

One of Chomsky’s principal calls to arms in heralding the transformational/generative “paradigm shift” of the late 1950s was an appeal to Humboldt’s emphasis on the dynamic, creative aspects of language a century earlier. This was part of his attack on the static, structuralist kind of linguistics that had prevailed within mainstream American linguistics since Saussure’s equally “revolutionary” replacement in the early twentieth century of the diachronic, historical approach to language by a synchronic one that focused on grammatical systems as such. It should be borne in mind, however, that Chomsky’s “competence” (like Saussure’s “langue”) corresponds to Whiteheadian Pattern, not Process. Dynamism for Chomsky is a matter of the mathematical generation (not the “on-line” production) of sentences. Which is precisely what I have argued for in Fortescue (2001) and elsewhere. It should be pointed out that recent “hybrid” versions of neural network models (“constraint satisfaction networks”) are now exploring the possibility of combining a “hard” symbol-processing capability with a “soft,” holistic connectionist architecture—see Pinker (2005, 13) for a brief discussion. This opens the way in theory for the modelling of higher level, proposition-based Whiteheadian prehensions within a neural “substrate” nexus. One specific area where an extension of the basic Whiteheadian perspective into areas of speech production has proved conceptually fruitful is that of the involvement of the “hybrid” type of prehension in the inheritance from actual occasion to actual occasion of “sub-routines” whose satisfaction has to be completed before a superordinate aim can itself be satisfied (Fortescue 2003). Another is the incremental building up of mental models from linguistic input (Fortescue, 2007b). See for example Damasio (2000, 226 & 287) for the relevance of Whitehead’s notions of “causal efficacy” to background feeling and of the non-continuous, “quantized” self for consciousness (the latter notion may in fact have been inspired by William James, who greatly influenced Whitehead). Thus one may say that the left temporal lobe connectivity around Wernicke’s classical language centre corresponds in Whiteheadian terms to the “faint” nexus pertaining between certain finegrained auditory percept types in the mode of presentational immediacy (“symbols”) and widely distributed “affordances” felt in the mode of causal efficacy (their “meaning”). The nexus is “faint” in the sense that the relationship between the expression and the content of symbols is arbitrary. It is nevertheless deeply entrenched within the individual language user’s mind/brain. The participation of the frontal lobes is needed for this static nexus to enter into linguistic processes of any kind (interpretative as well as productive). The persisting internal dependencies between the twin poles of the symbolic relationship are bilateral (mutually determining), whereas linguistic processes as such (initiated by the left frontal lobe) are essentially in a relationship of unilateral dependence vis-à-vis the patterns they draw upon— they utilize whatever conventional patterns are available for moulding an intention into communicable verbal form. Note that Whitehead himself allowed for this interpretation by introducing his “category of reversion,” which is unnecessary if one prefers (as he himself did) to explain subjective aim in terms of hybrid prehensions of God (PR 250). Franklin, one of the few besides myself who has expanded on Whitehead’s theories concerning language, follows him in this (Franklin 1990, 39). This is the approach now taken in recent versions of Functional Grammar (cf. Mackenzie and Gómez-González 2004, for instance). It can be traced back at least to Searle (1969).

Pragmaticism and Semiotics Patrick J. Coppocki In this article I shall examine some convergences between Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and contemporary semiotics, with particular reference to the Umberto Eco’s theory of general semiotics, rooted in Charles Sanders Peirce’s normative theory of inquiry, pragmaticism. 1 I shall first discuss how some central themes in the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle color the work of Peirce and Whitehead, especially their treatments of notions such as continuity and teleology, matter and mind, structure and process. I shall then consider how similar themes also color Eco’s philosophical approach, thus qualifying general semiotics as a mature philosophy of language capable of understanding all types of meaning negotiation in terms of inferentially based communication and signification processes.

1. Whitehead, Peirce, Plato and Aristotle Whitehead and Peirce, as the scientist-mathematician-philosophers they both were (albeit with 2 rather different views regarding the need for empirical research ), had a keen perception of the need to situate their philosophical projects within a broad cultural framework of the history of the sciences, philosophy and religion. Consequently, Plato and Aristotle were the inspiration for many of their most fundamental notions. In the two following sections we shall look more closely at possible intersections in this respect.

1.1. Whitehead, Peirce and Plato Well known is Whitehead’s succinct comment at the beginning of the first chapter of Section II of Process and Reality: “[t]he safest characterization of European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (PR 39). He then goes on to underline the extent to which his philosophy of organism is indebted to the general current of ideas stimulated by Plato’s thought. Alluding to the latter’s “wealth of general ideas” as “an inexhaustible mine of suggestion,” Whitehead writes: Thus, in one sense, by stating my belief that the train of thought in these lectures is Platonic, I am doing no more than expressing the hope that it falls within the European tradition. But I do mean more: I mean that if we had to render Plato’s general point of view with the least changes made necessary by the intervening two thousand years of human experience in social organization, in aesthetic attainments, in science, and in religion, we should have to set about the construction of a philosophy of organism (PR 39).

i Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy; http://www.unimore.it; [email protected].

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Peirce would no doubt have agreed with Whitehead that Plato was one of the most significant figures in the history of philosophy and natural sciences. However, he seems to have differed somewhat regarding the Platonic Forms or Ideas. While Whitehead weaves the Platonic Forms into his notion of “eternal objects” (PR 42-43, and see below), Peirce does not seem to conceive of such forms as eternal, but refers to them rather as “potentiality of […] some quality” (CP 6.220).3 He sees the process of cosmic evolution in some sense as “prior” to the Forms or Ideas, a vital living potential for birthing quality in the universe, capable of spawning spontaneous change and growth, as well as the Platonic Forms. Peirce writes: “The evolutionary process is […] not a mere evolution of the existing universe, but rather a process by which the very Platonic forms themselves have become, or are becoming developed” (CP 6.194). We shall return to Peirce’s conception of the evolutionary process in more detail later. Peirce has other clearly voiced opinions regarding Plato. One example is to be found in a manuscript for his Philosophy and the Conduct of Life, the first of eight Cambridge Conferences Lectures given in February-March 1898. Speaking of a proposed general classification of the sciences, Peirce places mathematics at the top of his list of theoretical sciences of research, 4 since it requires the most abstract forms of reasoning. Philosophy he ranks second in this respect. He continues: Having thus presented to you a schedule of all the sciences, a very imperfect one, I dare say […] we come to the question, what is the upshot of all these sciences, what do they all come to? Now in minor particulars I am hostile to Plato. I think it most unfortunate that he should in his most brilliant works have eviscerated his Ideas of those two elements which especially render ideas valuable. But in regard to the general conception of what the ultimate purpose and importance of science consists of, no philosopher who ever lived, brought that out more clearly than this early scientific philosopher (EP 2, 37). The “two elements which especially render ideas valuable” that Plato, according to Peirce, “eviscerated” from his Ideas, are the same two external causes that Aristotle had criticised Plato for ignoring, namely Efficient Cause and Final Cause (or End). Plato’s positing of an intimate relationship between Form and Matter to cope with the question of being is not seen by Peirce (or Aristotle) as particularly problematic, and, indeed, he lauds Plato for his “correction of that error of Heraclitus which consisted in holding the Continuous to be Transitory and also from making the Being of the Idea potential” (EP 2, 37). The main problem, he continues, is that “[…] not only does Plato only recognize internal causes, but he does not even recognize Matter as anything positive. He makes it mere negation, mere non-Being, or Emptiness, forgetting or perhaps not knowing that that which produces positive effects must have a positive nature” (EP 5 2, 37). He complains too, that “Although Plato’s whole philosophy is a philosophy of Thirdness […] he himself only recognizes duality, and makes himself a disciple of Dichotomy,— which is a misunderstanding of himself.” Peirce winds up this little diatribe with a gentlemanly rhetorical flourish, noting that “It is a characteristic of the man that he sees deeper into the nature of things than he does into the nature of his own philosophy, and it is a trait to which we cannot altogether refuse our esteem” (EP 2, 37). Here one might be tempted to imagine that Peirce is paying tribute to his recognition in Plato of practical problems similar to those he himself as a philosopher had experienced in trying to work out and formulate a coherent system of metaphysics. As we shall see in some more detail

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later (Section 3), in his system of metaphysics Peirce envisions the evolution of the cosmos as a generalized gradual emergence of what he calls “concrete reasonableness” out of an initial condition of entropic disorder. This occurs initially as Firstness (pure feeling), which by way of Secondness (actualities tending to repeat themselves) enters over time into Thirdness (relational lawfulness, conceived of as relatively stable forms of habit). Matter is thus seen as a habitual form of more or less stable relational lawfulness embodying what Peirce refers to as “effete mind.” In his own words: “The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws” (CP 6.25). Thirdness for Peirce is the processual generator of objective and phenomenal being that makes it possible for the characteristic qualitative and quantitative aspects of Firstness and Secondness to enter into a living relation with one another. Whitehead, too, believed Plato made too rigid a distinction between a static spiritual world and a fluent experiential world. He incorporates Plato’s notion of perfect Forms or Ideas into what he called “eternal objects,” hedging that “the entities in question are not necessarily restricted to those that he would recognise as forms” (PR 44). In fact, Whitehead postulates two general types of eternal objects that he denotes respectively as “objective” and “subjective” (PR 291; cf. Weber 2005 for discussion of this particular distinction). Like Peirce, he valorizes Aristotle’s innovative role in “naturalizing” aspects of Plato’s Forms as potentially active agents in the flow of lived experience. In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead defends the utility of the abstract notion of eternal objects in attempting to account for the consequences of the new relativity and quantum theories in physics. “Science,” he writes, “is becoming the study of organisms. Biology is the study of the larger organisms, physics is the study of the smaller organisms” (SMW 103). In order to cope with the problem of the existence of “primary organisms incapable of further analysis” (SMW 103), a non-materialist theory of science must “start with the event as the ultimate unit of natural occurrence” (SMW 103). “An event,” he says “has to do with all that there is, and in particular with all other events” (SMW 103). He continues: “This interfusion of events is effected by the aspects of those eternal objects, such as colours, sounds, scents, geometrical characters which are required for nature and are not emergent from it” (SMW 103).

1.2. Whitehead, Peirce and Aristotle In Process and Reality Whitehead portrays Aristotle as a significant interpreter and modifier of Platonic thought, since he opens up for a more active role for the Platonic Ideas in the flux of everyday life, by underlining that the only way we can hope to gain experience of Ideas or Forms, is through observing those ways in which they may affect our experience by way of the twin mediums of substance and attribute: Plato found his permanences in the static, spititual heaven, and his flux in the entanglements of his forms amid the fluent imperfections of the physical world. Aristotle corrected his Platonism into a somewhat different balance. He was the apostle of ‘substance and attribute’ and of the classificatory logic which this notion suggests. Aristotle in his own person expressed a useful protest against the Platonic tendency to separate a static spiritual world from a fluent world of superficial experience. The later Platonic schools stressed this tendency: just as the medieval Aristotelian thought allowed the static notions of Aristotle’s logic to formulate

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some of the main metaphysical problems in terms which have lasted till today (PR 209). Peirce is generally positive towards Aristotle, especially regarding his metaphysics, categories and syllogisms. He devotes considerable attention in certain of his writings to subsequent interpretations of Aristotle by the Schoolmen, especially Duns Scotus. In a piece entitled The Seven Systems of Metaphysics (1903) he candidly shows his team colors: “I should call myself an Aristotelian of the scholastic wing, approaching Scotism, but going much further in the direction of scholastic realism” (EP 2, 180) He then goes on to discuss “two grades of being” recognized by Aristotle: The doctrine of Aristotle is distinguished from substantially all modern philosophy by its recognition of at least two grades of being. That is, besides actual reactive existence, Aristotle recognizes a germinal being, an esse in potentia, or I like to call it an esse in futuro. In places Aristotle has glimpses of a distinction between e)n e/rgeia and e)ntele/xeia (EP 2, 180). The Greek words e)ne/rgeia (energeia) and e)ntele/xeia (entelecheia) in the last period of the passage above are translatable to English as respectively “actuality” and “entelechy.” In Metaphysics IX.8 (1050a22-23), Aristotle uses   
to speak of a possible meaning of “actuality” in a context where motion (or activity in general) needs must be conceived of as “end.” His metaphorical example is an educational context where activity and actuality can appear to merge in the performance of a student, offering teachers a potential sign of success of their own didactic achievements. In this context he has    
take on the meaning of “complete reality”: Further, matter exists potentially, because it may attain to the form; but when it exists actually, it is then in the form. The same applies in all other cases, including those where the end is motion. Hence, just as teachers think that they have achieved their end when they have exhibited their pupil performing, so it is with nature. For if this is not so, it will be another case of “Pauson’s Hermes“: it will be impossible to say whether the knowledge is in the pupil or outside him, as in the case of the Hermes. For the activity is the end, and the actuality is the activity; hence the term “actuality” is derived from “activity,” and tends to have the meaning of “complete reality”. In New Elements of Logic (1904) Peirce notes that “Aristotle gropes for a conception of perfection, or entelechy, which he never succeeds in making clear” (EP 2, 304). He continues: “We may adopt the word to mean the very fact, that is, the ideal sign which should be quite perfect, and so identical—in such identity as a sign may have—with the very matter denoted united with the very form signified by it” (EP 2, 304). Peirce’s appropriation here in semiotic terms of “entelechy” is interesting. He equates an “ideal sign which should be quite perfect” with a unification of “the matter denoted” and the “very form signified by it.” In this case, he says, “[t]he entelechy of the Universe of being, then, the Universe qua fact, will be that Universe in its aspect as a sign, the ‘Truth’ of being. The ‘Truth,’ the fact that is not abstracted but complete, is the ultimate interpretant of every sign.” Readers familiar with Whitehead’s notion of “satisfaction” (see below, Section 2) as the final phase in the concrescence of an actual entity or occasion, with its attendant “determination as to the realisation of possibilities” in a “concrete unity of feeling,” will doubtless be able to see some degree of convergence with Peirce’s definition of the “ultimate interpretant” as that “fact that is not abstracted but

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complete.” In this connection, in a process perspective, where for both Peirce and Whitehead it is only hypothetically conceivable that there could be some end to the series of potential meanings that may be developed, the notion of completeness or perfection must be taken as denoting a transitory (i.e. non-eternal) phenomenon of discreteness that forms part of the narrative history of a wider, potentially unlimited process, or semiosis, in Peirce’s terms. In De Anima (On the Soul), Aristotle also speaks of 
in a way that foregrounds a completion of the unification of form and matter, which is seen as satisfying or perfecting an “appropriate” telos or end. Speaking of the soul as the actuality of some appropriate body, he writes: it is the nature of the entelechy of each thing to be in what is potentially is and in its own matter. It is clear from all this that the soul is a kind of actuality and account of that which has the potentiality to be of the appropriate kind (De Anima, II.2 = Aristotle 1986, 161-62). Here of course we are left with the problem of how best to understand what is meant by “appropriate kind,” especially in the light of Peirce’s conception of teleology as “developmental,” and that to such an extent that even Platonic Forms can “inherit” from the evolutionary process a potential for their own development and growth over time.

2. Whitehead: Mind, Matter and Organism Whitehead’s philosophy of organism posits a mutual reciprocity of being and becoming—a coexistent confluence of both static and process perspectives on Being—by way of his notion of 6 “organism.” In his “speculative cosmology,” process represents a living potential for the continuous emergence of discrete, transitory, relatively stable structure—in Whitehead’s terms, “enduring objects”—out of “actual occasions.” The philosophy of organism is built around a criticism of Cartesian metaphysical dualism, with its categorical distinction between mental and material substance. If mind and matter are seen as categorically independent, one will not require the other in order to exist. Consequently, there can be no relation of continuity between two such independent substances. This lack of mind-matter continuity requires epistemological justification if we are to link what goes on in the “internal” mental environment to what goes on in the “external,” material environment. Whitehead considers such a dichotomous conception of mind and matter a “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” The concepts of mind and matter are no more than abstractions from that which is continually becoming realized as actuality emerges from process. Abstractions like mind and matter may be pragmatically useful as cognitive “technologies” for thinking and making everyday judgments, but philosophically ruinous if taken to be real entities (SMW 55). To account in process terms for the “facts” of embodied human experience, “all the way up” from the fleeting traces of presumed subatomic “particles” studied by physicists, to “enduring” material facts like mountains, deserts, pyramids etc., to biological facts like plants, trees, animals, to human beings with their different languages, cultural practices and institutions such as science, art, religion, politics, commerce, Whitehead posits the concept of “organism.”

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As he puts it: “the concept of the order of nature is bound up with the concept of organisms in process of development” (SMW 73). Organism is a “full expression of process;” it “takes the place of matter,” and “the mind involved in the materialist theory dissolves into a function of organism” (SMW 193-94). He continues: “[t]he psychological field then exhibits what an event is in itself. Our bodily event is an unusually complex type of organism and consequently includes cognition.” Consciousness, or mind, emerges from material and bodily processes, and space and time become the “locus of events.” An organism is “the realisation of a definite shape or value.” An event is “a matter of fact, which by reason of its limitation is a value for itself; but by reason of its very nature it also requires the whole world to be itself” (SMW 194). Into the categorical vacuum created by Descartes between mental and material substance, Whitehead infuses the ontological category of “actual entity” or “actual occasion,” a defining characteristic of which is that it encapsulates a continuous mutual interdependency between being and becoming, between relative stability and process, at one and the same time. “How an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is; so that the two descriptions of an actual entity are not independent. Its ‘being’ is constituted by its ‘becoming.’ This is the principle of process” (PR 23). Process is “the realisation of events disposed in an interlocked community” (or “nexus”). Out of process transitory stability of identity may emerge. This is fundamental if we are to talk of “structure” or “system.” Identity is manifested as “emergent enduring pattern” and becomes “fact,” through the “stabilisation of emergent achievement” (SMW 152). This is Whitehead’s way of taking philosophical account of the scientific “fact” that the complex, slow moving processes we perceive as “enduring objects” (things, bodies), appear to us as such only because we (fallibly) attribute concreteness (or substantiality) to them. Once thus “objectified,” we begin to weave attributed meanings regarding them into increasingly complex narrative and descriptive texts and “paratexts,” sometimes rising to quite absurd levels of abstraction in the process (cf. Eco 2005). Whitehead conceives of complex enduring objects such as human beings, their societies and cultural institutions as becoming actualized as “communities” of actual occasions, or “nexus.” All actual occasions stand in relation to all other actual occasions, be they near or far in time and space, through (1) the “ingression” of eternal objects (subjective and objective) into their concrescences (a kind of growing together), and (2) through their own “prehensions” (a kind of blind “grasping” or “feeling,” without any active exercise of consciousness) of various “aspects” that derive from the concrescences of other occasions. Actual entities are spatiotemporally located concrescences that emerge when aspects of “eternal objects” (e.g. color, space, time, mathematical form) are “prehended” by the “subjective,” “feeling” character of each actual occasion. A limited number of eternal objects enter into any given actual occasion as prehended “aspects” of these. As concrescence proceeds, a portion of the latent potential of possibility, actuality and purpose in the cosmos is in the process of becoming realized. Each process of realization in an actual occasion is thus a value in itself, since it is the “attainment” or “satisfaction” of some of this greater latent potential. Higher, complex organisms (like human beings) have developed an active consciousness of this potential, and of their own potential value in this connection, and they are also empowered to think, speak and behave in many different ways because of this self-consciousness.

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3. Peirce: Mind, Matter and Synechism Peirce’s philosophical strategy for “naturalizing” the conceptual gap between Cartesian mental and material substance is a key element in his pragmaticism that he terms synechism—the doctrine of continuity of being in experience. In Immortality in the Light of Synechism (1893), Peirce introduces synechism as follows: The word synechism is the English form of the Greek sunexismo/j, from sunexh/j, continuous. For two centuries we have been affixing -ist and -ism to words, in order to note sects which exalt the importance of those elements which the stem-words signify. Thus, materialism is the doctrine that matter is everything, idealism the doctrine that ideas are everything, dualism the philosophy which splits everything in two. In like manner, I have proposed to make synechism mean the tendency to regard everything as continuous […]. I carry the doctrine so far as to maintain that continuity governs the whole domain of experience in every element of it (EP 2:1). 7 Synechism is grounded in the evolutionary cosmology developed by Peirce in the 1890’s, by building on the idea that the evolution of the cosmos represents a general teleological drift towards a “growth of concrete reasonableness.” The guiding idea is of a gradual emergence of ordered matter from initial disorder, as “effete mind,” as clusters of “lawfulness” in the cosmos, actualized in their becoming “habits” through iterative forms of activity. This in fact sounds quite like Whitehead’s notion of “concrescence.” Peirce’s idea of cosmic telos is not that of a process moving inexorably towards a predetermined, stable perfection as its end. His teleology is a “developmental” one (Hausman 1993), since spontaneity or “chance” always plays an important role, since it allows for the continuing possibility of unpredictable novelty and growth in the cosmos in an indeterminate future. Peirce argues that our minds are particularly well adapted through evolutionary selection to interpreting and understanding the world. It is this adaptation that has paved the way for our present knowledge, both acquired scientifically and otherwise. But we cannot be certain that our current adaptations to the world will remain eternally functional, since the chance element in evolution makes it impossible to predict how things will actually turn out in the long run. This is why we need a coherent theory of cosmic evolution to ground a normative theory of inquiry that is able to take account of chance, to help us develop an idea of what sorts of laws we might reasonably expect nature to follow in the longer run. If successful, this theory will offer conceptual tools for coping with the emergence of unpredictable novelty in an indeterminate future. Synechism lies at the core, built as it is around a (mathematically inspired and logically justified) doctrine of continuity between mind and matter. The physical universe is seen as “effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws” (EP 1, 293). The “creative,” “feeling” aspects of evolution facilitate the spontaneous emergence of “habits” into (natural) “laws” that govern the creation and consistent “behavior” of physical matter in nature. This behavior—i.e. the “properties” or characteristics normally associated with physical matter—is observable and can thus be studied and documented by science.

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But such cosmic habit-forming processes, Peirce conjectures, can hardly be radically different from those underlying our own thought processes as we attempt to fix our beliefs as mental habits allowing us to behave reasonably, and to conduct ourselves consistently over time. The three logical patterns—of hypothesis (or “abduction”), deduction and induction, which correspond respectively to Peirce’s three phenomenological categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and which lead to the formation of new habits of thought and thus new knowledge—must be similar to those cosmic patterns that lead the universe (to which we belong as particular instances) to create order, or “concrete reasonableness,” out of pure chance. The indeterminacy of pure chance, of which the developing universe is the most positive example, correlates with the vividness of feeling of human consciousness, and the degree of consciousness of each single being is correlated inversely with the degree to which its mind is ruled by habit, and thus concretely reasonable. The real world is the “universe of mind and matter,” real objects are aspects or elements of the mind-matter continuum that have “taken habits” and assumed specific forms. The universe is slowly evolving towards greater concrete reasonableness out of a continuum of pure feeling, in itself indeterminate. This occurs as initial, spontaneous breaks in the continuity of feeling constitute concrete instances of a novel generalizing tendency. This generalizing tendency “wants” to repeat itself, even though it is initially a result of an unlimited, arbitrary variation of primal feeling. But once this tendency to repeat (i.e. to take habits) has appeared, there will be an increasing tendency for it to perpetuate itself. Peirce hypothesizes a general evolution of the cosmos from Firstness (pure feeling) through Secondness (actualities that repeat themselves) to Thirdness (relational lawfulness as habit). Since the universe is not subject to the same evolutionary selection and the struggle for survival that human beings and animals are, there must be some further purpose directing the evolutionary process. Peirce calls this an “agapastic development of thought […] distinguished by its purposive character, this purpose being the development of an idea” (EP 1, 369) To explain agapé, Peirce invokes St. John’s statement “God is love,” and takes the example of an idea that he himself cherishes and helps grow: It is my creation. It is my creature […] it is a little person. I love it; and I will sink myself in perfecting it. It is not by dealing out cold justice to the circle of ideas that I can make them grow, but by cherishing them and tending them as I would the flowers in my garden. The philosophy that we draw from St. John’s gospel is that this is the way the mind develops; and as for the cosmos, only so far as it yet is mind, and so has life, it is capable of further evolution. Love, recognizing germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely. That is the sort of evolution which every student of my essay “The Law of Mind” must see that synechism calls for (EP 1, 354). Conceptually speaking, Whitehead’s treatment of teleology in cosmic evolution has much in common with that of Peirce, though it is broached in somewhat different terms. His discussion of such themes is framed by his conception of an intimate, inherently reciprocal relationship between God—a “unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity”—and the World—a “multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfected unity.” God and World are seen as being in a mutually interdependent cosmic dance with one another constituting an unlimited “creative advance into novelty.” As we can see from the citation below, Whitehead’s “ultimate

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metaphysical ground,” which he equates with this “creative advance into novelty,” seems very close in tenor indeed to Peirce’s synechism, which intimately links the evolutionary process to an agapastic development of thought: Opposed elements stand to each other in mutual requirement. God and the World stand to one another in this opposed requirement. God is the infinite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity. The World is the multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfected unity. Neither God, nor the World reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. Either of them, God and the World is the instrument of novelty for the other (PR 348-49).

4. Traces of Process and Continuity in Contemporary Semiotics In Semiotics and the philosophy of language, Eco characterizes semiotics as a philosophical discipline that takes as its main object of study “the whole of human signifying activity— languages—and languages are what constitute human beings as such, that is as semiotic animals” (1984, 12). Semiotics, he says, “studies and describes languages through languages” (1984, 12). It is “a philosophy of language, which stresses the comparative and systematic approach to languages (and not only to verbal language) by exploiting the result of different, more local enquiries” (1984, 8). In Eco’s view, the principal epistemological presupposition for general semiotics is that when we begin to ask general questions about human signifying activity in the past, present or in the future, we must always be aware that each act of questioning will influence the future course of the selfsame signifying activity being studied. Semiotics, then, like all other scientific disciplines, is constantly transforming itself and its own object of study as a result of its own epistemological, methodological and terminological assumptions (1984, 12). Five years earlier, in A Theory of Semiotics, Eco presented a provisional, unified research model for a discipline “concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign” (1979, 7). Since a sign, by Peirce’s definition, is anything that can be taken to stand (significantly) for something else—which, Eco adds, does not necessarily need to actually exist—this implies too, that semiotics “is in principle the discipline studying everything that can be used in order to lie” (1979, 7). He envisions over time a diversification of a then “disordered” field of semiotics into a vast range of more structured research sub-fields, or “specific semiotics,” all of which aim to deal with negotiation of meaning with different types of signs in different types of cultural contexts, as inferentially based communication and signification processes. Each specific semiotics must develop specialized methodologies and grammars to describe the semantic/pragmatic codes and systems that allow the interpretation and use of different types of signs in different contexts. If a specific semiotics is to aspire to be (or become) a science, it must, says Eco, like any other science, regularly address epistemological issues, and “posit its own theoretical object according to criteria of pertinence” to “account for an otherwise disordered field of empirical data” (Eco 1984, 5).

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In positing general semiotics as an “improved” philosophy of language concerned with the systematic, unified study of all possible ways in which meaning can be created, negotiated and interpreted inferentially in all cultural contexts and semiotic modalities, Eco is aligning himself with Aristotle’s argument that being is best understood as that which may be “said in many ways” (cf. Eco 2000, 9ff). Indeed, he claims that all “good” philosophies of language—and here he cites as examples Cratylus, Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Cassirer, Wittgenstein and Russell (but not Whitehead8)—have always tried to take account of all possible ways of “saying” being, and have thus been operating in semiotic terms. This is why contemporary philosophies of language that claim to be able to focus exclusively on verbal language, delegating the study of signification and communication processes in semiotic systems other than language, to specialized sub-domains of other sciences are somehow missing the point, he argues. General semiotics must continue to take as its principle object of study all types of cultural processes from which meaning can possibly emerge, and it must always attempt to understand these cultural processes as communication processes that depend on an underlying system of significations (Eco 1979, 8). In his view, in order to legitimize itself as an “improved” philosophy of language, general semiotics must continually address at least three main epistemological problems: (1) Can many apparently different phenomena be treated as if they are all potential cases of signification and/or communication? (2) Can a unified approach account for all semiotic phenomena as rule-based systems? (3) Can a unified approach to semiotic phenomena be scientific? The second problem, whether a unified approach can account for all possible semiotic phenomena as rule-based systems, is a quite central one for semiotics. In Eco’s approach, the notion of “rule-based system” is much closer in tenor to the event- and process-oriented metaphysics presupposed by Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, than to any form of linguistically inspired metaphysics based on propositional logic (see Eco 1979, 37, 90; 1984, 167-88; and Eco, Santambrogio & Violi 1988, 3-22). The notion of “rule” in general semiotics is embedded in a broad process conception of systemic, correlational and institutional codes that emerge initially in some socio-cultural context as potential new “habits” as concrete instances of use of language (or any other semiotic system), that over time, in replicating themselves and gaining form in other situations, become “conventionalized.” In semiotic terms the code is a “rule that controls but allows, gives the possibility of inventing beyond itself, by finding new paths, new combinations within the network” (Eco 1984, 187). It is “not only a strict germination of systems, or a correlation, but also a system of inference” (1984, 187). Formal analytical models based on truth functions that “anchor” language to world via intension and extension, are of little use here (Eco, Santambrogio & Violi 1988, 20-21). Definitions developed in propositional logics can only refer to binary values of “true” or “false.” These cannot cope with the continuous change and variation in the “grey” areas of semantic meaning that may emerge in the rich “soup” of semiotic potential represented by contemporary cultural, material and individual diversity. For Eco, meaning is a “cultural unit” (1979, 66ff). Meaning derives from living people and their various practices in connection with what they say and do together in their different

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communities. It is culturally evolved codes, or “the Code”: those rules that “move” us (Eco 1984, 188), that lie at the very heart of his hypothesis of a “global semantic universe,” or “global encyclopaedia.” Eco envisions the semantic universe as pragmatically organized in terms of a Peirce-inspired “infinite semantic recursivity,” or “Model Q,” an “n-dimensional model of semantic space” (Eco 1979, 121ff). But the idea of actually creating and describing such a global semantic structure completely must always “remain a mere regulative hypothesis” (1979, 128). It must be seen as an infinitely expandable, dynamic, multidimensional relational, rhizome-like labyrinth, capable of storing and managing all conceivable tokens of cultural meanings, together with all possible configurations of pragmatic instructions necessary for their (re)insertion, (re)use and (re)interpretation in any conceivable kind of context. Signs of all kinds, which can be conceived of, experientially speaking, more or less in the same vein as Whitehead’s “actual occasions,” grow and change their meanings from context to context, “mutating” from tokens to types and back again in the process, which requires, in its turn, that in any “encyclopaedic representation, semantics must translate into its own terms most of the phenomena studied by pragmatics” (Eco 1984, 69). In process terms, Eco’s “regulative hypothesis” of a global semantic structure could be seen as a complex organism in itself, as an ever-open and growing “community” of “actual occasions” where novel aspects of ideas in nuce in continuing concrescence “feel” a flow of prehensions of one another as they grow and change: a truly “open work” (Eco 1989), with a unlimited multitude of “empirical” and “model” authors and readers (Eco 1984), mindlessly and untiringly incorporating and making available for innovation and recycling, all the novel meanings, and the rules that make their pragmatic use possible, that have emerged, and continue to emerge, from any concrete instance of signification and interpretation in any historic period, any cultural context, anywhere in the world. Implicit in such an encyclopaedic conception of the global semantic universe is that any attempt at a complete description or analysis of the “structure” of the whole system is always “at risk,” since it will be subject to constant pressure from historical, cultural and social factors—novelty and invention in the arts, literature, the pure and applied sciences, technology and engineering, and last, but not least, from the “critical erosion to which it would have been submitted by the analysis itself” (Eco 1979, 128). But semiotics, says Eco, “must proceed to isolate structures as if a definitive general structure existed; but to be able to do this one must assume that this global structure is simply a regulative hypothesis and that every time a structure is described, something occurs within the universe of signification which no longer makes it completely reliable” (1979, 129). It is this continual need to deal epistemologically and pragmatically with the fundamental ontological imbalance and instability characterizing cultural negotiation of meaning, that puts semiotics in the same boat as scientific disciplines like physics, he emphasizes. The physical and biological sciences must operate with epistemological and methodological tools able to cope with the dynamic, processual character of physical reality at its most ephemeral and “discrete” at the atomic and subatomic levels, in the face of extreme indeterminacy and complementarity. The same is also true of semiotics. It must therefore develop an awareness of its own limits and avoid aspirations to absolute forms of knowledge. Only then can it consider itself a scientific discipline (Eco 1979).

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On the basis of this first, rather crude first attempt at a synthesis of possible convergences between Whitehead, Peirce and Eco’s metaphysical world views, we might perhaps venture to conceive of our contemporary globalizing cultures, too, as living organisms where inherent synechism and process are aspects of a relentless negotiation and renegotiation of meaning, full of potential conflicts and attempts at conflict resolution, of loving and hating, understanding and misunderstanding, and perhaps even forgiving each other from time to time for our “fallibilism” or “fallacies of misplaced concreteness,” when we see only barriers, vacuums and voids where there is really only continuity and process that we all can tap into and take part in. Indeed, if we are able to constantly sharpen our (self-)critical gaze, we may all perhaps manage to see how, all the time, small “islands” of relative, temporary stability, with new visions and hopefulness emerge into view and then dissolve away again, as ever new sides of conflicts in progress, new knowledge, new ideas for new ways of living and “speaking being” together come into being, and then pass away into history. If we are only able to “feel,” and “prehend” at least some of the very best of these, nurture them and help them grow into even more “enduring objects,” into more “concrete reasonableness,” then much good can probably be won all in the long run. In any case, what is important to remember—what Plato, Aristotle, Peirce, Whitehead and Eco each in their own way manage to teach us—is that the myriad shades of meaning created, exchanged and negotiated in our rapidly globalizing cultures at any given time may never be said to be dealing with absolute truths or falsities in any “objective” sense, only with a few of the many possible ways we have for “saying being,” all more or less in concord or discord with one another, and all potentially subject to further growth and development—albeit within certain interpretational “limits” (Eco 1994) posited by the “resistances of being” (Eco 2000, 5056)—at least as long as we can manage to “log on” to some of the creative potential and drive inherent in the “actual occasions” of “organism” and in the “unlimited semiosis” of “synechism.”

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Notes 1

Peirce coined the term “pragmaticism” to distinguish his philosophical position from that of William James, a former student of Peirce and known as one of the founders of pragmatism. Areas of disagreement between Peirce and James include free will, continuity and evolutionary theory. I build here in part on a recent article (Coppock 2005), which examines key themes in process philosophy in relation to general semiotics and systemic functional linguistics; cf. Coppock 1997. 2 Peirce had degrees in philosophy and chemistry, and considerable first-hand experience of empirical work in astronomy, geodesy and metrology. For much of his professional life (from 1859 to 1891) he worked at the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Apart from four years (18791884) teaching logic at Johns Hopkins University, Peirce never held a tenured academic position. Whitehead, often described as a mathematician who evolved into a philosopher, spent his entire working life in academia, first in England—in Cambridge University, University College London and Imperial College London, where he was also involved in teaching educational reform. He later emigrated to the USA when offered a chair in philosophy by Harvard University, where he wrote Science and the Modern World and Process and Reality. 3 In this article the acronym "CP" is consistently used to denote both components of the eight volume collection of Peirce's writings: Peirce (1931-35) and Peirce (1958), while the acronym "EP" is used to denote both components of the two volume collection: Houser & Kloesel (Eds.) (1992). 4 Peirce’s main criterion for ranking a science as theoretical is its degree of abstractness. This was the same criteria used by Comte, Peirce’s inspiration in this matter, and also by Whitehead (SMW 34). 5 See also Eco’s discussion in Kant and the Platypus of “the sense of the continuum” (2000, 5256). 6 PR’s full title is Process and Reality: An Essay on Cosmology. 7 Peirce’s cosmology is presented in five articles in The Monist: The Architecture of Theories (1891), The Doctrine of Necessity Revisited (1891), The Law of Mind (1892), Man’s Glassy Essence (1892) and Evolutionary Love (1893). Another particularly representative article, A Guess at the Riddle (1887-88), was never published (EP 1, 245-79 and 285-371). 8 Eco has told me in conversation that he is well acquainted with Whitehead’s philosophy, since when working as a senior editor at Bompiani, he commissioned the Italian translation by Nynfa Bosco of Process and Reality.

Whitehead's Construction of Time: A Linguistic Approach Sylviane R. Schweri Leibniz constructed time as a simple ordering of the moments of a static “nature,” whereas the time constructed by Whitehead is a much more dynamic one. Whitehead’s construction is based on his method of extensive abstraction and makes time the extensive continuum that results from the connection of all real potentialities. The two fundamental properties of that continuum are infinite divisibility and unboundedness (PR 103). In the description of verbal tenses by some linguists, the relational aspect is especially emphasized. Nicolas Beauzée, a French mathematician and grammarian (1717–1789), was the first to argue that verbal tenses express deep relations between temporal locations of particular events—relations between moments such as the moment of utterance, the moment of a term of comparison, and the period in which the process comes into being (1789). These moments have been independently rediscovered and formalized by Hans Reichenbach (1947) with his “three points of time” (speech (S), reference (R) and event (E)), and the two relations of concomitance and succession. When dealing with the indicative mood, Reichenbach represents time as a line: a linear unbounded continuum is divided by the “present” point into two unbounded parts, a left part, representing the dimension of the past, and a right part, representing the future:

Fig. 1: Physical time Traditionally, the structures used for the formal representation of time are based on the set of real numbers. We have argued 1 that (1) in qualitative linguistics, temporality does not need physical time to be expressed; (2) that for any aspectual values of the process concerned (punctual, periodic or iterative), calculation is always done on points or sequences of points, with the two fundamental relations of simultaneity2 and precedence; and (3) that the formalism of the S-languages, as developed by Schwer (2002), is an adequate framework for such a calculation. This model is in accordance with the model of time obtained with the method of extensive abstraction by Whitehead. Note that Whitehead was only concerned with theories of physical time (PNK, CN, R, PR). There are already several linguistic studies that take inspiration from Whitehead’s philosophy, notably those by Firth (1957), Halliday, and Fortescue (2001). Here, however, we will not offer

i Laboratoire d'Informatique de l'université Paris-Nord, UMR CNRS 7030, Institut Galilée/Université Paris-Nord; [email protected]

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another such study, but will rather compare aspects of Whitehead’s thought with the theory of tense and aspect of the French linguist Gustave Guillaume (1883-1960) who founded the discipline of linguistic psychomechanics. Whitehead was concerned with the links between mind and nature, while Guillaume studied those between mind and language. They both evince a shared respect for exact reasoning, careful definitions of terms, and the need to examine actual real facts, whether of the natural world, as in Whitehead’s case, or of languages and discourse, as in Guillaume’s. They both used the method of abstraction in order to have a good understanding of the objects of their study, a relational and process-oriented way of thinking. In addition, they were both ostracized to a certain extent by their contemporaries.3 Since Firth, Halliday and Fortescue do not refer to Guillaume in their work that draws on Whitehead, we will first provide a short biography of the man. Next we compare some of the ideas of Whitehead and Guillaume, and outline Guillaume’s theory of tense and aspect. We end by showing how it is possible to construct time starting from temporal linguistic information: namely, we offer a linguist’s approach to time, based on a linear sequence, and inspired by Whitehead’s overall vision.

1. Gustave Guillaume: A Short Biography Gustave Guillaume was born in Paris on December 16, 1883. Forced at an early age to earn a living and provide for his mother, he gave French lessons mainly to Russian immigrants. Although he had never attended university, he taught himself mathematics, philosophy, physics, literature, and was very curious about linguistic matters. In 1909, when working as a bank clerk, he met Antoine Meillet4 who was impressed by him and invited him to attend his lectures. Guillaume began to publish in 1911. His first works are based on the thought that the use of grammatical forms derives from an unconscious universal mathematical logic that precedes conscious logic. He showed later, that the unconscious logic was not the erudite logic of mathematics, but a logic sui generis. His major ideas were made more widely known in his two most famous publications, Le problème de l’article (1919) and Temps et verbe (1929). In the first, he employed the clear distinction between two levels of linguistic activity: the potential level, or langue and the actualized level, or parole (i.e. “discourse” or actual individual utterances). The article is a part of language that permits one to move from the first level to second. In Temps et verbe, he introduced the notion of operating time, the time which is necessary for the brain to move between the two levels, since “a psychic fact, whatever it is, requests time to achieve itself.” He studied language as a system, which he termed architecture. His theory links closely both structural and cognitive linguistics. He became lecturer in l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1938, where, during more than twenty years, he elaborated his theory. He died on February 3, 1960 and was buried in the cemetery of Montparnasse in Paris. All his lectures were preserved and have been published by Roch Valin.5

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2. Guillaume as a Whiteheadian Thinker In The Concept of Nature, Whitehead argues that the primary task of a philosophy of natural science is to elucidate the concept of nature, considered as one complex fact for knowledge, to exhibit the fundamental entities in terms of which all laws of nature have to be stated, and to secure that the entities and relations thus exhibited are adequate for the expression of all the relations between entities which occur in nature (CN 46). And in Process and Reality, he begins with the following definition of speculative philosophy: “[It] is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted” (PR 3). “Speculative” thought does not remain on the level of the experiment, but uses all the resources of rationality to build a scheme to account for the essence of the universe and to reach first principles. The same concerns are found throughout Guillaume’s linguistic work; they led him to a structural analysis of language and to his theory of linguistic psychomechanics. In his lecture of November 11, 1943, he explained that “the highest sciences in the hierarchy of sciences are those which can use best, in any useful proportion, both attentive observation of the concrete and abstract speculation.” Just as natural laws are not subject to sense perception, so too the important relations that structure linguistic phenomena cannot be actually observed. “The linguist must combine the fine observation of the facts and abstract thinking. Abstract thinking brings power and acuity to the observation of the concrete.”6 For Whitehead, “nature is a process” (CN 53). Nature is always moving on but its principles and the rules are eternal. Analogously, Guillaume’s views have been summarized as follows (Hirtle 1975, 4): “language is a process” on the one hand, and a “system of systems” on the other (PLTGG, 25) language is both “inherited from the past and a human and transcendental organization of that heritage.”7 The whole system has its image inside each subsystem, and the same is true at any level of the hierarchy. The “word” is a system, the “article” is a system, the “verb” is a system, and so forth. On the basis of the fundamental distinction between thought and the power that thought has to understand itself, Guillaume identifies language with the power that thought has to understand in itself its own activity. Thought is free, but the means by which it understands itself are systematized and organized in a restricted number; the structure of language offers a faithful image of these means. What the attentive observer discovers in language, considered in itself, are these mechanisms. This is the set of means that thought has systematized and instituted to give to itself the permanent possibility of attaining a fast, clear understanding of what is happening within it. Psychosystemic,8 as it is termed by Guillaume, studies these mechanisms. It aims to understand two phenomena—potentiality or conceivability, at the level of langue, and the outcome of this, at the level of actual parole. In his lecture of November 26, 1948, he argued that langue is the result of constructive operations whose goal is to divide the thinkable

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into a definite number of representations bringing with them, by their division, the power to express every thought. This division is oriented from the particular to the universal. The universal is here comprised of all that is thinkable. Discourse [parole] is the result of operations of thought that consist in making use of the resulting representations of langue, all of which are parts of the thinkable, in order to provide a momentary expression of a narrow and singular thought (PLTGG, 171). Hence, the fact of langue is a formal instituted representation, while the fact of discourse is a free running of what is instituted inside the langue. Thus, fact of discourse is associated with one fact of langue. The fact of discourse should never transgress the definition of its corresponding fact of langue that allows it with a whole freedom of interior play (PLTGG, 171).

3. Guillaume’s Theory of Mode, Aspect and Tense Time cannot be represented by itself but needs space to be represented. The representation of time differs depending on which langue is used. Germanic languages, such as English, do not represent time in the same way as Romance ones. The expression of time is more recent than its representation. The verb is of course a part of the system but is also a system in its own. It is associated with a notion with duration that is called a process. A process can be situated in time and has its proper time. The path from the mental notion of a process to the word employed also needs some time duration. We get, then, three types of time which Guillaume claims refer to Mode, Aspect and Tense. In other words, Mode, Aspect and Tense refer to the same phenomenon: a stretch of time which is the extension of some events or acts, with a duration and some temporal relationships. But they are related to different kinds of temporality. Within any extension there are three epochs—beginning, end and a middle point. The beginning is characterized by the fact that the act is about to be realized, the middle by the fact that the act has a part realized and a part not yet realized (and which will perhaps not be realized), and the end by the fact that the act is done. This epochal theory of time is applied first to the mental operation of drawing a time-figure: namely, physical time is usually represented by a line. This line is cut in two parts, the past and the future, which meet in the present,9 as illustrated in Figure 1. There is no expression of time at the level of langue, only a representation. This representation allows an expression in the discourse. The passage from the representation in the langue into an expression in a discourse needs some time; Guillaume calls this the operatingtime supporting the process of chronogenesis: “Mind needs time to think time” (Lecture, March 4, 1939). The first epoch (the beginning) of the chronogenesis is named time in posse: an indivisible time-figure, it is the moment where the mind is about to draw the time-figure. At this moment, the verb is very close to the noun. The second (middle) epoch is the time in fieri: it is the moment when the mind is drawing the time-figure; there is not yet the division of Past/Present/Future. For the French representation of time, the line drawn at this level is like an eternal present, without past or future. The third epoch is named time in esse: it is the moment when the mind has achieved its time-figure in the state shown in Figure 1. These three epochs are related to the verbal mood: quasi-nominal mood for the first epoch, subjunctive mood for

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the second, and indicative mood for the third. This last epoch is the only one that inserts the cut of the present, dividing physical time into two unbounded periods, the past and the future. Hence, the mode refers to the stage where the speaker has stopped, inside the chronogenesis, when he made the utterance. The second type of time is the process time. A verb need also a temporal extension, which can be named10 process’s coming-to-be. There are two positions for the speaker to look at the process: from its outside, which is the transcendent aspect or from its inner, which is the immanent aspect. The immanent aspect has three divisions, depending of the position inside the process’s coming-to-be: (1) at its beginning; (2) in the middle, that cut the process’s coming-tobe in two parts (one already achieved and one remaining to be achieved); and (3) the end of the process’s coming-to-be. Hence, with respect to process time, the immanent aspect consists in viewing the process as a transparent box, whereas the transcendent aspect consists in viewing the process as a black box. Figure 2 summarizes the situation.11

Fig. 2: Immanent/transcendent aspect The third type of time is the physical time corresponding to the tenses. The process is then situated inside the time-figure (in posse, in fieri or in esse) with respect to some other process(es): the point of speech and/or an other process’s coming-to-be. We argue that these times 12 are just a support for a linear ordering of the different epochs— that are points on the line—situated with respect to some vision intercepting points, using the two fundamental qualitative (i.e. without measure of any duration) temporal relationships— precedence and simultaneity. We do not get all nature (potential and actual) because we are not able to speak about all the processes. We only get a portion of nature. The equivalence classes of the simultaneity relation over epochs are “perceptible” instants of physical time, ordered by the precedence relation. The order is not linear when future or potential processes are referred to, but there is only one effective linear order. Between two perceptible instants, there can be inserted as many instants as there appear in the discourse. A line can be drawn from one perceptible instant to its follower. Hence the physical time-line can be rebuilt from these perceptible instants, whatever their number be.

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4. Guillaume’s and Whitehead’s Construction of Time Whitehead had, by 1914, applied his method of extensive abstraction to time, presented first in RTS and developed later in PNK and CN. 13 He showed how a bridge could be constructed between the data immediately given to sensory awareness through a slice of time,14 which Whitehead called durations, and the temporal moments of conceptual awareness. This method consists in using the relation of inclusion between durations, particularly on some family of durations, named an abstractive class of durations, which is such that (1) of any two of its members, one includes the other; and (2) there are no members that are included in every duration of the collection. Hence, an abstractive set provides the meaning of convergence to an ideal limit (which is not a duration) that yields the fundamental conceptual temporal components, moments. We claim that Guillaume’s construction of the present as a separation between the past and the future, obtained at the end of the chronogenesis, follows such a method of ideal convergence. We claim also that each point of interception, related to the aspectuality, corresponds to a moment that contains the simultaneity of the perceiver event with the chosen part of the perceived process. Hence, physical time can be constructed from those significant moments, ordered by all the temporal information conveyed by linguistic marks: verb forms, some nouns (predecessor, day), adjectives (earlier, next), adverbs (yesterday, twice), prepositional phrases (at 5:00 pm, for two days), and subordinate clauses (while I was waiting for them), and also with the help of some knowledge of the world (a cause always precedes its effect). These moments forms a linear sequence, which is a chronology, among which any other event can be inserted: either inside an already given moment (in the case this event is simultaneous to one inside this moment) or between two already given moments. We can iterate this insertion of events ad libitum. Hence, physical time is obtained by an iterative procedure of inserting new elements inside a sequence which can begin with only one moment, which is naturally the moment associated with the event of speech, as far as we presuppose a linear ordering of all moments. Any other moment, determined by a temporal relation with the speech, will be either before, after or itself. Two moments of the sequence determine a duration they bound. These durations are qualitative until a system of measurement is given. We have then constructed time from the events described, as Whitehead did in CN and PNK. Our claim is that this construction has built a linear unbounded dense time, fitting the definition required by Whitehead for the ether, which is a continuum, but that it is not necessary to get the mathematically continuous set of the real numbers, since the set of rational numbers is sufficient for modeling purposes. Moreover, I suggest that Whitehead stayed within Weierstrass’ theory of convergence because of the non-existence of a strongly satisfying theory of infinitesimal, in Leibniz’ sense. This theory was developed exactly one century after Whitehead’s birth, in 1961 by Robinson, and is known as non-standard analysis. In this theory, every standard number—the naturals, rationals and reals—is surrounded by a neighborhood of

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infinitesimally small numbers, which are smaller than any positive real number. The multiplication of an infinitesimal with any real, no matter how large, is still an infinitesimal. This theory thus provides a notion of moment which is neither punctual nor durative (its diameter is not a real number) but which has a thickness. I believe that this point of view provides a new and fruitful context for Whitehead’s work on time and space.

Notes 1

Schwer, Traitement de la Temporalité des Discours: une Analysis Situs (forthcoming). Linguists are not concerned with the problem of the “now” moment, and of simultaneity with respect to the theory of relativity, since the speeds relevant to linguistic phenomena are far less than that of light. But simultaneity and the notion of “granularity” do give rise to some questions. At a given level of granularity, two processes can be viewed as punctual and simultaneous, but at some finer level of granularity, one process can be viewed as punctual and the other as enduring. Hence, simultaneity comes to include a point inside an interval. Reichenbach used punctual formalism, but this does not mean that he thought every process to be punctual. 3 There is a contemporary community of linguists, principally in France, Belgium and Canada who work within the framework of linguistic psychomechanics and are affiliated with the Association Internationale de Psychomécanique du Langage. There is an international congress every three years, the last in Montpellier France, in June 2006. 4 The linguist Antoine Meillet (1866-1936) succeeded Ferdinand de Saussure at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1891 and taught at the College the France from 1906 until 1932. Among his students were Emile Benveniste, Marcel Cohen, Georges Dumézil, Lucien Tesnière, and Joseph Vendryes. 5 Leçons de linguistique de Gustave Guillaume, edited by R. Valin, W. Hirtle and A. Joly. 6 Principes de linguistique théorique de Gustave Guillaume (henceforth referred to as PLTGG), p. 101. 7 Lesson of November 11, 1943. 8 Psychosystemics combined with psychosemiotics constitute the psychomechanics of language. 9 Guillaume, Temps et verbe, 9. The present has a duration but can be very narrow, and contains a past part (accomplished) and a future part (to come). In the French language, tenses are related to these three periods: Past/Present/Future. In English language, there are only two periods: Past/non-Past, this last covering present and future. 10 For this description of the time event, see Hirtle 1975, 26. 11 The arrow represents the location of the interception (the speaker’s position) inside the process’ coming-to-be, or outside, in the result phase. 12 We here are interested only in the indicative mood. The other moods can be formalized in a similar way and are related to the notion of “point of view” or “reference universe.” 13 For details of Whitehead’s developing thought on this theme, see Hurley 1985, 93. 14 Of course no one can experience the full scope of the passage of nature, as what we experience are temporally (and spatially) thick chunks of this passage, which Whitehead calls “events.” 2

Works Cited and Further Readings Abercrombie, D. 1965. Studies in Phonetics and Linguistics (London, Oxford University Press). Aristotle. 1986. De Anima (On the Soul), translated by Hugh Lawson-Tancred (London, New York, Victoria, Toronto & Auckland, Penguin Books). Beauzée, Nicolas. 1789. Grammaire générale. Berge, Kjell Lars & Maagerø, Eva. 2005. Semiotics from the North: Nordic approaches to systemic functional linguistics (Oslo, Novus Press). Birch, C. 1990. On Purpose (Kensington, UNSW Press). Butt, D. G. 1985/1989. Talking and Thinking: The patterns of behaviour (Geelong/Oxford, Deakin University Press/Oxford University Press). Butt, D. G. 1988. “Randomness, order and the latent patterning of text,” in Functions of Style, edited by D. Birch & M. O’Toole (London, Pinter). Butt, D. G., and M. O’Toole. 2003. “Transactions between matter and meaning: A functional theory for the science of text,” in Proceedings of the Second International Conference Studies for the Integrated Text Science, 21st Century Centre of Excellence Program International Conference Series No. 2, edited by M. Amano (Nagoya, Nagoya University), 1-23. Chomsky, Noam.1966. Cartesian Linguistics (New York, Harper & Row). Coppock, Patrick John. 1997. “Grammar, Logic and community in science: Charles Sanders Peirce and his presuppositional classification of the sciences,” in Festschrift til Johan Arnt Myrstad i anledning 50 Aarsdagen, edited by Anita Leirfall and Thor Sandmel (Trondheim, Tapir), 27-82. Online at http://coppock-violi.com/web/ Myrstad/ ArntPJC_ToC.html. Coppock, Patrick John. 2005. “Systemic Functional Linguistics, Semiotics and Philosophy of Organism: Part of the same project?” in Semiotics from the North: Nordic approaches to systemic functional linguistics, edited by Kjell Lars Berge and Eva Maagerø, Eva (Oslo, Novus Press), 23-34. Damasio, Antonio. 2000. The Feeling of what Happens (London, Vintage). de Saussure, F. 1974 [1915]. Course in General Linguistics, translated by W. Baskin (London, Fontana/Collins). Eco, Umberto 1979 [1976]. A Theory of Semiotics (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press). Eco, Umberto 1984. The Role of the Reader (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press). Eco, Umberto 1991 [1984]. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (London, Macmillan). Eco, Umberto 1994. The Limits of Interpretation (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press). Eco, Umberto 2000. Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition (London, Random House). Eco, Umberto 2004. “Para peri epi, e dintorni in un falso del XVII Secolo,” Paratesto, 1, 13744. Eco, Umberto, M. Santambrogio, and P. Violi (eds.) 1988. Meaning and Mental Representations (Bloomington, Indiana University Press). Firth, J. R. 1957a [1948]. “Sounds and prosodies,” in Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951 (London, Oxford University Press), 121-28. Firth, J. R. 1957b [1948]. “The semantics of linguistic science,” in Papers in Linguistics 19341951 (London, Oxford University Press), 139-47. Firth, J. R. 1957c [1950]. “Personality and language in society,” in Papers in Linguistics 19341951 (London, Oxford University Press), 177-89. Firth, J. R. 1957d [1951]. “Modes of meaning,” Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951 (London, Oxford University Press), 190-215. Firth, J. R. 1968 [1959]. “The treatment of language in general linguistics,” in Selected Papers of J. R. Firth 1952-59, edited by F.R. Palmer (London, Longmans), 206-209.

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Firth, J. R. 1968. “Linguistic analysis as a study of meaning,” in Selected Papers of J. R. Firth 1952-59, edited by F.R. Palmer (London, Longman), 12-26. Firth, John Rupert. 1957. Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951 (London, Oxford University Press). Fortescue, Michael. 2001. Pattern and Process. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Linguistics (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing). Fortescue, Michael. 2003. “The pattern and process of language in use: A test case,” in Process Theories, Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Dynamic Categories, edited by in Johanna Seibt (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic), 177-218. Fortescue, Michael. 2006. "The non-linear nature of linguistic change," in Competing models of linguistic change, edited by Ole Nedegaard Thomsen (Amsterdam, John Benjamins), 17-31. Fortescue, Michael. 2007a. "The non-linearity of speech production," in Structural-functional Studies in English Grammar, edited by Mike Hannay & Gerard J. Steen (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins), 337-351. Fortescue, Michael. 2007b. "How to catch a mental model by the tale," Acta Linguistics Hafniensia 39, 125-152. Fortescue, Michael. 2007c (forthcoming). "Eternal objects, figurae and memory," in Memory and Language, edited by Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt (Frankfurt, Peter Lang, SABEST). Franklin, Stephen T. 1991. Speaking from the Depths: Alfred North Whitehead’s Hermeneutical Metaphysics of Propositions, Symbolism, Language, and Religion (Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans). Gallie, Walter Bryce. 1952. Peirce and Pragmatism (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books). Glaser, B. G., and A.L. Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Research: Strategies for qualitative research (Chicago, Aldine). Glock, H.-J. 1996. A Wittgenstein Dictionary (Oxford, Blackwell). Guillaume, Gustave. 1919 Le problème de l’article et sa solution dans la langue Française (Paris, Hachète). Guillaume, Gustave. 1929. Temps et verbe (Paris, Champion). Guillaume, Gustave. Leçons de linguistique de Gustave Guillaume, 19ab-19a (b+1), edited by R. Valin, W. Hirtle et A. Joly (Québec, Presses de l’Université de Laval; Lille, Presses universitaires de Lille). These lecture notes are now available online at http://nlip.pcu.ac.kr/gustave/. Guillaume, Gustave. Principes de linguistique théorique de Gustave Guillaume, unedited texts prepared by Roch Valin (Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval). Halliday, M. A. K. 1969. “Options and functions in the English clause,” Brno Studies in English, 8, 81-88. Halliday, M. A. K. 1992. “A systemic interpretation of Peking syllable finals,” Studies in Systemic Phonology, edited by P. Tench (London & New York, Pinter). Halliday, M. A. K. 1993. “On the language of physical science,” in Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power, edited by M. A. K. Halliday and J. R. Martin (London, The Falmer Press), 162-77. Halliday, M. A. K. 1998. “Things and relations: regrammaticalising experience as technical knowledge,” in Reading Science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science, edited by J.R. Martin and R. Veel (London, Routledge), 185-235. Halliday, M. A. K. 2002 [1984]. “On the ineffability of grammatical categories,” in On Grammar: Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, Vol. 1, edited by J.J. Webster (London, Continuum). Halliday, M. A. K., and R. Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English (London, Longman). Hausman, Carl R. 1993. Charles S. Peirce’s Evolutionary Philosophy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Hirthe, Walter H. 1975. Time, Aspect and the Verb (Québec, Presses Université Laval-Québec). Holmes, O. W. 1899. “The theory of legal interpretation,” Harvard Law Review, 12, 6. Houser, Nathan & Christian Kloesel (eds.). 1992. The Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings. Volumes 1-2 (1867-1893) (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press).

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Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1988. The diversity of human language structure and its influence on the mental development of mankind (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). [Original German version 1876-1880] Hurley, Patrick. 1985. “Time in the earlier and Later Whitehead,” in Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time, edited by David R. Griffin (Albany, SUNY Press). Kress, G., and T. van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The grammar of visual design (London & New York, Routledge). Lamb, S. M. 1970. “Linguistic and cognitive networks,” in Cognition: A multiple view, edited by P. Garvin (New York, Spartan). Lamb, S. M. 1999. Pathways of the Brain: The neurocognitive basis of language (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, Benjamins). Leakey, R. 1995. The Origin of Humankind (London, Phoenix). Leirfall, Anita & Sandmel, Thor (eds.) 1997. Festschrift til Johan Arnt Myrstad i anledning 50 Aarsdagen (Trondheim, Tapir). Lewontin, R., S. Rose, and L.J. Kamin 1984. Not In Our Genes: Biology, ideology and human nature (New York, Pantheon). Mackenzie, J. Lachlan., and María de los Ángeles Gómez-González (eds.) 2004. A New Architecture for Functional Grammar (Berlin & New York, Mouton de Gruyter). MacWhinney, B. 1999. The Emergence of Language (New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum). Masterman, M. 2005. Language, Cohesion and Form, edited with Introduction by Y. Wilks (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Melrose, R. 1996. The Margins of Meaning: Arguments for a postmodern approach to language and text (Amsterdam, Rodopi). Noble, W., and I. Davidson. 1996. Human Evolution, Language and Mind: A psychological and archaelogical enquiry (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). O’ Toole, M. 1989. “Semiotic systems in painting and poetry,” in A Festschrift for Dennis Ward, edited by C. Poke, R. Russell and M. Falchikov (Nottingham, Astra Press). O’ Toole, M. 1994. The Language of Displayed Art (London, Leicester University Press). O’ Toole, M. 1995. “A systemic-functional semiotics of art,” in Discourse in Society: Systemicfunctional perspectives, edited by P.H. Fries and M. Gregory (Norwood NJ, Ablex). O’Halloran, K. (ed.). 2004. Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Systemic functional perspectives ( London & New York, Continuum). Parker, Kelly A. 1998. The Continuity of Peirce’s Thought (Nashville and London, Vanderbilt University Press) Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1931-35. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. 1–6, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press). Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1958. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. 7–8, edited by Arthur W. Burks (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press). Pinker, Steven. 2005. “So how does the mind work?” Mind and Language, 20, 1, 1-24. Potter, Vincent G. 1997. Charles S. Peirce On Norms and Ideals (New York, Fordham University Press). Reichenbach, Hans. 1947. Element of Symbolic Logic (New York, Macmillan). Robinson, Abraham. 1996 [1961]. Non-standard Analysis (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Sapir, E. 1970 [1921]. Language. An introduction to the study of speech (London, Rupert HartDavis). Schwer, R. Sylviane. 2002. “S-arrangements avec répétitions,” Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris, Série I 334 261-66. Schwer, R. Sylviane. Forthcoming. Traitement de la Temporalité des Discours: une Analysis Situs (Cahiers Chronos). Searle, John. 1969. Speech Acts: An essay in the philosophy of language (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Stewart, D. B. 2002. The Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture: From the founders to

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Shinohara and Isozaki (Tokyo, Kodansha International). Tench, P. 1992. “From prosodic analysis to systemic phonology,” in Studies in Systemic Phonology, edited by P. Tench (London & New York, Pinter). Wáng, L. 1936. Zhongguó Yinyùnxué [Chinese Phonological Theory] (Shanghai, Commercial Press). Weber, Michel. 2005. “Créativité et réversion conceptuelle,” Chromatikon annuaire de la philosophie en procès (Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain), 159-74. Whorf, B. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected writings (Cambridge MA, MIT Press).

Reference websites Perseus Digital Library (Metaphysics): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgibin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0052:book=9:section=1050a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/#bio http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/ Arisbe—The Peirce Gateway: http://www.cspeirce.com/ The Peirce Edition Project: http://www.iupui.edu/%7Epeirce/index.htm Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Whitehead.html Simon Fraser University: School of Engineering Science: Http://web.ensc.sfu.ca/undergraduate_program/courses/biomedical_engineering_quote/

XVII. Mathematics and Logic Whitehead’s Universal Algebra Andrew Dawsoni 1. Introduction Mathematics has long been regarded as a very special kind of language. Galileo Galilei argued that the great book of Nature is written in language of mathematics, such that “we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written.” Its symbols, he stated, are those of geometry, “without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”1 Galileo’s words express a faith that Euclid’s ideal geometrical truths mirror the spatial geometry of the physical Universe. Newton’s discoveries marked the triumph of this Galilean faith. However, in the nineteenth century a number of developments began to undermine this scientific edifice, calling into question the faith that Euclidian geometry was peculiarly fitted to reveal the truths of Nature. When the young Whitehead arrived at Cambridge in 1880, the scientific model of the world associated with the names of Galileo and Newton was still largely unquestioned. At that time, according to Whitehead, nearly all mathematicians shared the view of Plato and Euclid that “there was only one coherent analysis of the notion of space,” and assumed that the aim of mathematics “was the adequate expression of this unique, coherent notion of spatiality.” That view, Whitehead recalled, was overturned by a few mathematicians, who had invented “fantastic variations from orthodox geometry,” and the subsequent discovery, “between 1890 and 1910 […] that these variant types of geometry were of essential importance for the expression of our modern scientific knowledge.” 2 One of the mathematicians that contributed to this revolution was Whitehead himself. In 1890 Whitehead began to write A Treatise on Universal Algebra With Applications [UA, 1898). This is the work in which the mathematical architecture of his post-Euclidian, postNewtonian scientific vision is first articulated. Although best known in the mathematical community for his co-authorship, with Bertrand Russell, of the three volumes of Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913) and in philosophical circles for his metaphysical system, elaborated in Process and Reality (1927), it was UA that first brought Whitehead national and

i HUMCASS, Monash University, Churchill, VIC 3842 Australia; [email protected].

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international recognition.3 Consisting of over five hundred pages of mathematical notation, the text is far from inviting, and a cursory glance at UA conveys little of the intellectual drama implicit in its unfolding chapters. Hank Keeton, however, has argued that the “importance of UA cannot be overstated” for it is Whitehead’s first expression of the vision that “set the tone for his intellectual life’s work.” 4 My goal in this chapter is to outline the historical context of the project that Whitehead develops in UA, review its contents, and survey its influence on the mathematical community. The central theme is Whitehead’s quest for a new geometrical language for physics, and the mathematical vision that underpinned this ambition. In the concluding section I offer a few comments on the metaphysical orientation of UA.

2. The context of UA: Multiple Algebra and Maxwell’s New Physics Whitehead’s interest in mathematical logic was initially motivated and guided by his quest for a mathematical language suitable for expressing Maxwell’s vision of matter and space. As he acknowledged in 1912, his “logical scrutiny of mathematical symbolism and mathematical ideas,” beginning in 1890, “had its origin in the study of the mathematical theory of Electromagnetism, and has always had as its ultimate aim the general scrutiny of the relations of matter and space.” 5 This practical motivation is essential to an appreciation of Whitehead’s interest in Universal Algebra. Whitehead had entered Cambridge at a crucial time in the development of modern physics. In the early eighties, Cambridge was a center for those interested in Maxwell’s groundbreaking Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. In 1884 Whitehead completed a dissertation on Maxwell’s Treatise, and as a result gained a teaching fellowship at Cambridge’s Trinity College. Although no copy of Whitehead’s dissertation has survived, in later years he recalled that Maxwell’s crucial contribution was the elimination of the notion of empty space: all space was filled with ether. Maxwell’s theory had extended and provided a mathematical formulation of Michael Faraday’s theory of electrical and magnetic lines of force. Fundamental to Maxwell’s interpretation of these lines of force was his rejection of attempts to reaffirm the traditional notion of forces acting at a distance, without mediation of a ‘field.’ As P. M. Harmann has recently reaffirmed, it was the notion of the ether, serving as the “seat of the electromagnetic field, that was the keystone of his theory.” 6 It was this notion, Whitehead relates, that provided the basis for a new vision, in which matter represented entanglements in the ether—knots—that impose “stresses and strains throughout the whole jelly-like ether,” such that agitations of ordinary matter are transmitted (as light, heat, electrical or magnetic energy) “through the ether as agitation of the stresses and strains.” 7 In Whitehead’s early years at Cambridge, the dominant notion of the ether (due more to Thomson than Maxwell) was of a near perfect liquid, which for practical purposes could be regarded as frictionless, continuous and infinitely divisible. The ultimate “atoms” of this liquid,

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it was hypothesized, were analogous to vortex-rings, and the coarser grained matter of our physical universe were constellations of these vortex-rings knotted together to form dynamic enduring patterns of activity. The slightest movement in such a corpuscle will send a shudder through the mediating liquid to the extremities of the universe: this electromagnetic shudder is perceived as light. Thus, for practical purposes, the vortexes in the ether could be viewed as an infinite manifold of contiguous points—perfect for the geometrical formulation of models of the universe—but leaving open the question of what kind of geometrical space was best suited to modelling this domain. During Whitehead’s first decade at Cambridge a number of prominent mathematicians and physicists were devoting attention to simplifying Maxwell’s mathematical formulation of his theory, experimentally verifying key propositions, and exploring the philosophical implications of these developments.8 Whitehead followed these developments avidly and incorporated his findings into his courses. In his early years at Trinity he taught most branches of applied mathematics, but developed a special interest in new forms of geometry, and their scientific applications. One of his students recalls that in the early 1890s he had “a place apart among our teachers, chiefly because his philosophic urge to grasp the nature of mathematics in its widest aspects led him to study what were at that time considered out-of-the-way branches of the subject” such as “Non-Euclidian Geometry.”9 This was a subject that had come to assume a practical significance for interpreters of Maxwell. Maxwell expressed his theory of dynamics in terms of projective geometry (he referred to it as the “geometry of position”).10 Felix Klein, by building on the work of Arthur Cayley, had shown that the varied systems of Euclidian and Non-Euclidian Geometries could be viewed as more restricted variants of the basic set of transformations that define Projective Geometry.11 Klein’s system reinforced the view that Projective Geometry was the real foundation of spatial analysis, and provided a projective alternative to the metrical interpretation of non-Euclidian geometry.12 Klein had visited England in the seventies, and during the eighties was a frequent guest at Trinity, enjoying the hospitality of Whitehead’s good friend and mathematical colleague, Andrew Forsyth.13 Whitehead was deeply influenced by Klein’s standpoint, and became part of a circle of British mathematicians exploring non-Euclidian geometry from a projective viewpoint. The member of this circle who exercised the greatest influence upon the development of this field of research was Cayley’s former student, William Clifford.14 During the 1870s, Clifford began to study the 1844 edition of Grassmann’s Ausdehnungslehre and for the first time it lay in the hands of a British mathematician who grasped the significance of its ideas.15 Clifford was moved to express his “profound admiration for that extraordinary work, and my conviction that its principles will exercise a vast influence upon the future of mathematical science.” 16 In Grassmann, Clifford found the key to classifying and generalizing the results of Geometric Algebras. Behind his analysis is a concern to demonstrate how Hamilton’s quaternions and his own “bi-quaternions” can be expressed in terms of simpler laws and to show how these laws can clarify the form of the “two kinds of vectors which he [Maxwell] calls force and flow.” Clifford had planned to publish a series of papers on the application of Grassmann’s method, but tragically, died in the following year, at the age of 34.17

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Despite his death, his vision exerted a powerful influence upon a number of mathematicians through the eighties, including Whitehead. Although Clifford’s place in the history of mathematics has tended to be neglected, his insights concerning the relationship between Hamilton’s quaternions and Grassmann’s theory of extension are, in the words of Helmuth Malonek, “the key to a fair appreciation of Hamilton’s work as well as a milestone in the progress of this field of algebra.” 18 Clifford was described by one of his contemporaries as the young “lion” of the new generation of British mathematicians.19 He had developed a deep interest in Maxwell’s work, and played a lively role challenging Euclidian models of space and suggesting alternative geometrical models of the cosmos (prefiguring Einstein’s geometrical explanations of space and matter). He argued that the work of Lobatchewsky and his successors, by dethroning Euclidian geometry and its notion of eternal truth, had liberated the mind from the fallacy of theoretical exactness, strengthening our respect for the evidence of experience, and appreciation of the practical, conditional nature of all truth.20 Clifford extended Hamilton’s Quaternion algebra from three to four dimensions, thereby inventing Bi-Quaternion algebra in which the fundamental entities were represented by four rather than three vectors perpendicular to each other. This discovery revealed a simple and systematic way that his scheme could be extended to any number of dimensions, opening the way to a new appreciation of Grassmann’s algebra, and the mathematical language now referred to as Geometric Algebra.21 Clifford’s accessible style of writing made his introductory texts on mathematics and dynamics the logical point of entry for students in that era.22 His enthusiastic endorsement of Grassmann marked a turning point in Grassmannian studies in Britain. Several other young members of Klein’s British circle, including a contemporary of Whitehead’s at Trinity, Homersham Cox, and Arthur Buchheim, an Oxford graduate, were soon to publish papers that became a vital source of inspiration for Whitehead. In 1882 Cox published a long paper, “On the Application of Quaternions and Grassmann’s Ausdehnungslehre to Different Kinds of Space,” the object of which was “following Grassmann, to establish a pure algebraical calculus, the laws of which will coincide with those of actual geometry.”23 Buchheim, after spending time studying under Klein in Leipzig, published in 1884 the first of a series of papers, “The Theory of Screws in Elliptic Space,” which was intended to show that the “Ausdehnungslehre furnishes a complete explanation of the theory of screw and the theory of linear complex,” demonstrating that “they are identical and not merely analogous.”24 Whitehead’s first acquaintance with Grassmann probably came from these British interpreters of Grassmann.25 By the mid 80s he had turned to Grassmann’s original text, and in 1887 announced a course of lectures, open to students from all colleges, on “Grassmann’s Ausdehnungslehre, with special references to its applications.”26 This was the first lecture course devoted to Grassmann’s work at Cambridge. After the course came the book.

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3. The Content of UA In 1888, one of the founders of modern vector theory, J. Willard Gibbs, had suggested that a struggle for existence was “commencing between the different methods and notions of multiple algebra, especially between the ideas of Grassmann and Hamilton.” 27 Whitehead’s work was intended to settle this dispute. But this was a bi-product of a larger design—that of laying bare the architecture of the new field of algebras that Hamilton and Grassmann had helped pioneer. Hence, the stated aim of UA was to “present a thorough investigation of the various systems of Symbolic Reasoning allied to ordinary Algebra,” as exemplified in such systems as “Hamilton’s Quaternions, Grassmann’s Calculus of Extension, and Boole’s Symbolic Logic.”28 These newly invented algebras shared the common characteristic of having extended the principles of ordinary algebra “beyond the traditional domain of pure quantity.” His intention was to exhibit these algebras as “engines for the investigation of the possibilities of thought and reasoning” by showing how each could be interpreted in terms of the “abstract general idea of space.”29 This spatial interpretation is the key to Whitehead’s presentation. “The result of it is,” he writes, “that a treatise on Universal Algebra is also to some extent a treatise on certain generalized ideas of space.” 30 These spatial interpretations provide a basis for investigating the possible applications of algebra, including their uses as “engines” for representing the dynamic processes shaping the Universe. In its arrangement, UA consists of seven books. The first details the basic concepts and general principles of algebraic symbolism. The second shows how these principles are realized in Boole’s algebra of symbolic logic. The remaining five books are devoted to elucidating and extending Grassmann’s theory of extension. The manuscript of this first volume was handed over to the publisher two years before its 1898 publication date.31 A second volume was foreshadowed (but not published), in which he intended to focus on numerical algebras of the first species (leading to a general theory of Linear Algebras), and provide a detailed comparison of the symbolic structures of the various special algebras analysed in both volumes.32 The notion of Universal Algebra had it origins in a paper of 1884, “Lectures on the Principles of Universal Algebra,” by the great English algebraist James Sylvester. In his paper Sylvester spoke of the reign of Algebra the First, as a science and philosophy, ushered in by the publication of Harriot’s “Artis Analyticae Praxis” in 1631 (traditional arithmetic algebra), and the reign of Algebra the Second, ushered in by Cayley’s immortal “Memoir on Matrices,” published in 1858 (abstract multiple algebra). From the standpoint of “Universal Algebra or the Algebra of multiple quantity,” Hamilton’s Quaternions “are but the simplest order of matrices viewed under a particular aspect.”33 Cayley’s revolution, Sylvester argues, was rooted in the discovery that matrices, though “an organism composed of discrete parts,” possessed an essential unity and wholeness, such that it “stood revealed as bona-fide multiple quantity subject to all the affections and lending itself to all the operations of ordinary numerical quantity.”34 Sylvester urged that this unification had a metaphysical significance, since it signified the

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transformation “whereby a multitude is capable of being regarded as an individual, or a complex as a monad.” 35 Though Sylvester’s 1884 article inspired the name, and De Morgan and Hamilton were cofounders of the science of Universal Algebra, the ideas informing Whitehead’s work were due mainly to Grassmann.36 Like his British colleagues, Grassmann had arrived at the fundamental insight that a multiple sum of different quantities can be treated as an independent quantity. His entire new science, he later stated, rests on this “simple idea, which basically consists in no more than regarding multiple sums of different magnitudes (which is how extensive magnitudes appear) as autonomous magnitudes.” 37 Whitehead built upon Grassmann’s genius. “The greatness of my obligations in this volume to Grassmann,” he states at the conclusion of his preface, “will be understood by those who have mastered his two Ausdehnungslehres. The technical development of the subject is inspired chiefly by the work of 1862, but the underlying ideas follow the work of 1844.”38 Many years later he reaffirmed that the ideas in UA “were largely founded on Hermann Grassmann’s two books,” and again noted that the “earlier of the books is by far the most fundamental.”39 This latter comment is of particular significance, as the Ausdehnungslehre of 1844 contains Grassmann’s much-maligned philosophical introduction to mathematics and his methodological justification for the unconventional presentation of his Theory of Extension.40 As Albert Lewis has emphasized, the key to Grassmann’s philosophy of science and of mathematics is the dialectical tension between fundamental contrasts that, unlike Hegel’s notion of the dialectic, imply “no synthesis or resolution of opposites.”41 The scientific mode of presentation, according to Grassmann, consists of two interlocking series of developments. One part leads logically “from one truth to another and makes up the essential content” and the other part, arrived at intuitively, provides an over-view that “governs the process and determines the form.”42 The methodological nexus between existential interpretation and the formal system of rules has an additional ontological significance that is worth noting. Grassmann views the mind as an active body that responds to the movement of other bodies. As Michael Otte has argued, his epistemology is founded on objectively mediated activity (in contrast to Kant), and “synthesis is not foremost subjective construction, which is substantiated by the activity of the Transcendental Subject, but is representation of the real existing connections and relationships.” Hence, in contrast to Euclid’s “God’s eye perspective” of the eternal form of space, Grassmann’s fundamental entities signify “a relational mode of thinking.”43 This is exemplified in Grassmann’s vision of basic entities interacting with each other (through synthesizing operations) to form more complex entities, which are then treated as the autonomous monads of a new class of manifold, or system. From this perspective, the various systems of geometry are the product of entities conforming to a particular set of laws: the ways in which the basal entities interact define the evolution of various sub-species of geometry. Thus, rather than view space as a God-given Absolute, a structure set apart from the activity that takes place within it, Grassmann’s perspective interprets the spatial context as an emergent property of the interaction of the elements of the system. Although Whitehead completed writing the five books on Grassmann before writing the book on Boole’s algebra, the order in which these books appear in UA is reversed—presumably

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determined by the relative simplicity of the Algebra of Symbolic Logic. Whitehead’s analysis of Symbolic Logic thus precedes his presentation of the Theory of Extension and serves as a gentle introduction to his key methodological notion of jointly presenting a formal calculus with its spatial interpretation. Book two thus provides a model for his subsequent style of analysis. A brief outline of the way in which Whitehead weaves together formal analysis and spatial interpretation follows. For a more technical guide to Whitehead’s ideas, consult the relevant endnotes.44 Whitehead begins Book II by positing elements of a manifold,45 represented by the letters a, b, c, etc., and then lists the formal laws of addition and multiplication, including the general laws applicable to all algebras (such as the Commutative Law, which asserts that x + y = y + x, meaning that the two possible orders of synthesis produce equivalent results), and the special laws applicable only to Boole’s algebra. Rigorous formal definitions are a crucial element of Whitehead’s presentation. He then derives certain elementary propositions from these laws and then, before developing further algebraic formulae, shows how these laws and propositions can be interpreted in terms of concrete things and relations between things (regions of space and their intersections). For example, in Boole’s non-numerical algebra, reading the formula a + a = a represents the mental process of combining the same region. Adding the same element together does not reduplicate that region, since equivalent terms bring the same region before the mind, and their sum involves apprehending this identity. And while the addition of a + b is equivalent in meaning to b + a, the meaning is not identical, since “the order of symbols is different in the two combinations and this difference of order directs different processes of thought.”46 Whitehead’s spatial interpretation is notable for the phenomenological terms of its presentation: terms symbolize the mental act of apprehending a region as a concrete spatial presence; operations represent acts that combine these regions.47 Multiplication and the various laws required and satisfied by each operation are interpreted in a similar fashion. This spatial interpretation is then developed concurrently with the algebra. For example, traditional propositions of deductive logic, such as “All a is b,” can then be “conceived as stating that the region of a’s is included with that of b’s, the regions of spaces being correlated to classes of things.”48 Book III, on “Positional Manifolds,” lays out the general theory of addition for algebras of the numerical genus 49 and is the key to Whitehead’s interpretation of Grassmann’s algebra. The first chapter of this book, “Fundamental Propositions,” follows the model adopted in his exposition of Boolean algebra. Basic definitions and the deduction of elementary propositions are combined with suggestions concerning their spatial interpretation. However, these suggestions are not framed in the explicitly psychological terms of his Boolean interpretation. This perhaps indicates an earlier phase in his progress toward an explicit demarcation between a purely axiomatic presentation of mathematical theorems and a discussion of the psychological intuitions motivating the formal propositions.50 In developing his basic definitions and elementary propositions, Whitehead is guided by the intuition that the elements that make up the positional manifold can be identified with “the general idea of a space of any arbitrarily assigned number of dimensions, but excluding all metrical spatial ideas.”51 In adopting a spatial model for the positional manifold, Whitehead

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follows Grassmann and builds his axiomatic definitions on the basis of a unit of extensive magnitude. This extensive unit is envisaged in terms of the transition of a generating element from one state to another, such that position and direction are fundamental properties of all magnitudes.52 Adapting Clifford’s image of stepping out the units that make up a line, Whitehead visualizes the production of Grassmann’s basic elements as “simply the process by which any term p is transformed into the term p + a,” where p represents a null term such that “two steps + a and—a may be conceived as exactly opposed in the sense that their successive application starting from any term p leads back to that term, thus p + a—a = p.”53 Thus, Whitehead builds his axiomatic description of space on the general principles of action and movement within space. By applying rules of change to a generating element (point), the complete system of elements constitutive of a region is defined. Every complete region “can be conceived as representing a gradually altering element which successively coincides with all the elements of the region.”54 For example, a one-dimensional region (line) “may be conceived as representing a variable element travelling through a continuous series of elements” such that, as with all linear elements in projective geometry, it finally returns to its starting point.55 This generation of a line by a moving point is the fundamental geometrical analogy for the abstract notion of extension (a system of the first order). Taking an element from one system and allowing it to undergo a new variety of change generates a new system. Thus, if the elements of the system of the first order are multiplied together (akin to moving a line through the series of points rectilinear to the line, so as to constitute a plane), they form another algebraic manifold (a system of the second order). By multiplying the elements of the first and second order manifolds together, a system of the third order is generated, and so on, up to any number of dimensions.56 One other basic characteristic of the Positional Manifold is worth noting. Each element of this manifold possesses “intensity,” which provides a numerical measure of a secondary, nonextensive property associated with the primary element. For example, it could be interpreted as a measure of the density, temperature or electrical potential of matter. A zero quantity of this scalar property signifies the absence of the element, and any other amount signifies its presence. Thus defined, the notion of intensity is fundamental to Whitehead’s development of the theorems of projective geometry.57 These theorems, he notes, “extended to any number of dimensions can be deduced as necessary consequences of the definitions of a positional manifold.”58 Whitehead’s formulation of the notion of intensity in projective terms is essential to the subsequent books and is the basis of his synthesis of the Cayley-Klein approach to projective geometry and Grassmann’s calculus.59 All subsequent books are grounded in the definitions, propositions and interpretations developed in the chapters of this book. In following this path Whitehead acknowledged that he was building upon Clifford’s pioneering application of multiple-algebra to Non-Euclidian geometry, and Cox and Buchheim’s independent applications of Grassmann’s Calculus of Extension to Non-Euclidian Geometry. Likewise, he acknowledged that in founding metrical geometry on the definitions of his positional manifold he was extending the work of Cayley, Ball and Cox.60 But, as he himself noted, his deduction of these various geometrical spaces from the positional manifold was facilitated because “the general idea of a pure science of extension, founded upon conventional

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definitions, which shall include as a special case the geometry of ordinary experience, is clearly stated in Grassmann’s Ausdehnungslehre von 1844.”61 The last book in UA discloses the practical motivations that have underpinned the entire project. Whitehead begins by stating that a “simple and useful form of the Calculus of Extension for application to physical problems is arrived at by dropping altogether the representation of the point as the primary element, and only retaining vectors,” and notes many of the formulae of physics can be “immediately translated into this notation.”62 He concludes the volume with a final chapter, written to show that “the formulae and methods which have been developed by Hamilton and Tait for Quaternions are equally applicable to the Calculus of Extension.” The final sentence of this concluding chapter is the most direct clue to the field of application against which Whitehead is measuring the capacity of his special algebras to serve as “useful engines for the deductions of propositions.” Building upon his previous work he derives a formula representing the flow of a vector through a line of particles and then recommends that this equation “should be compared with the equations of Electromotive Force in Clerk Maxwell’s Electricity and Magnetism.”63 In the words of Luca Gaeta, this ultimate chapter reveals the true import of UA: “it is one great design for mathematically comprehending nature.”64 A design that performs a similar service for Maxwell’s Treatise as Newton’s Universal Arithmetic had served for his Principia.65 Thus, in the war between the ideas and methods of Hamilton and Grassmann, Whitehead had clearly sided with Grassmann. I have emphasized the way in which formal analysis and spatial interpretation mutually guide the development of Whitehead’s treatise. I have also suggested that Whitehead’s view of Grassmann was deeply informed by the British understanding of the emerging field of Universal Algebra and its historical relation to the mathematical expression of electrical and magnetic forces. Whitehead shows how the pure science of extension can be wedded with projective geometry so as to encompass all the geometries and, following Clifford and Ball, demonstrates the close link between purely geometrical concepts and the physical concept of mass (foreshadowing his later monistic rejection of the distinction between space and the physical body occupying a space).66 Finally, he demonstrates that for representing the flow of electric current, the Theory of Extension has advantages over Hamilton’s Quaternions. Thus Whitehead (in Gandon’s words) presents himself in spirit if not always precisely to the letter of the law, as “the true heir to Grassmann.”67 Yet, despite its scope and practical implications, UA exerted little lasting influence on the thinking of members of the mathematical community. As we shall see, it was to be another century before UA began to find an audience.

4. The Reception of UA and its Subsequent Influence Judging by the reviews, it is clear that Whitehead’s contemporaries saw his project as a call to take Grassmann seriously. G. B. Mathews, who had demonstrated his mathematical prowess by besting Whitehead for the title of Senior Wrangler in the Cambridge Tripos of 1883,68

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commended its remarkable unity of design and thoroughness, and looked forward “with pleasurable anticipation” to the concluding second volume. He identified the keynote of the first volume as “Grassmann’s Extensive Calculus,” interpreted in terms of the general concept of space.69 In a review for Mind, Hugh MacColl registered some surprise that a relatively small portion of the text was devoted to discussion of the general principles of symbolic reasoning, and that “the rest is taken up with applications of these principles, as the author understands them, to the elucidation of Grassmann’s Calculus of Extension;” however he commended Whitehead’s “great service to science” in clarifying Grassmann’s method of research that “from all accounts” was in its original exposition “extremely obscure and difficult to apply.” 70 Alexander Macfarlane, an advocate of Hamilton’s quaternion system of vector analysis, also praised Whitehead’s work, welcoming its excellent “detailed exposition of Grassmann’s system,” and suggesting that the work was “likely to lead to further advances in Universal Algebra.”71 It was also well received on the Continent, especially by Louis Couturat, whose review remains one of the most extensive and comprehensive discussions of UA.72 Perhaps the most significant immediate impact of UA was upon Whitehead’s ex-student and future collaborator, Bertrand Russell, whose efforts to assimilate Whitehead’s ideas are recorded in his notes from March of 1898.73 By April of 1898 he was determined to thoroughly revise his philosophy of mathematics, and declared to his wife, Alys, “I have finished re-reading what is important to me in Whitehead’s book, and now I simply have to sit down and think and write.”74 Reflecting on this time in 1941, Russell recalled that what had greatly excited him about UA was the analysis of important branches of mathematics that were not dependent on number, and the suggestion implicit in the presentation of these “queer algebras” of “a purely formalistic treatment of pure mathematics” coupled with “an exact treatment of the conditions for the truth of formal laws (commutative, associative, etc.).”75 Russell’s Principles of Mathematics, the final outcome of his philosophical reflections from this period, still manifest traces of this influence behind the more visible presence of Cantor and Peano.76 The publication of Russell’s Principles of Mathematics, according to Whitehead, coincided with the realization that his own second volume of UA and Russell’s projected second volume of Principles of Mathematics were “practically on identical topics,” and their subsequent decision to combine forces to produce a joint work. They had hoped to complete this project in a year but a decade and three dense volumes later it was still incomplete.77 Thus Principia Mathematica came into being, a monumental work that signaled a new epoch in the integration of logic and mathematics.78 An indication of the level of mathematical recognition achieved by UA came in 1910, when G. B. Mathews framed his entry on “Special Kinds of Algebra” in the Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of Whitehead’s UA analysis.79 In doing so he gave Grassmann’s “extensive calculus” a central place in his discussion, reflecting his earlier assessment that Whitehead’s “systematic development of the calculus,” combined with an “abundance of illustrative applications,” had deprived English mathematicians of “any excuse for ignoring Grassmann’s magnificent conceptions.”80 Mathew’s optimism, however, proved to be misplaced. As previously noted, in 1888 the American mathematician, Josiah Willard Gibbs had predicted that the 1890s would witness a struggle for existence between the advocates “of different methods and notations of

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multiple algebras, especially between the ideas of Grassmann and of Hamilton.” The outcome of this struggle was a defeat for both Grassmann and Hamilton. In terms of practical application, a new contender emerged, the Gibbs-Heaviside system of vector analysis, and though “only a perverted version of the quaternion system,” this system was to sweep the field.81 A few pure mathematicians, especially those inspired by the Italian school of geometry associated with Peano, Burali-Forti and Pieri, were still promoting a Grassmannian approach—Mathews and Whitehead’s later work on projective geometry bear witness to this influence—but Whitehead’s Grassmannian vision left a very faint imprint on the development of algebra in the new century. As Henry and Valenza recently noted, Whitehead’s mathematical work, including his Treatise on Universal Algebra, “has found little audience in twentieth century mathematics.” 82 However, the dream of a Universal Algebra was to be resurrected. Garrett Birkhoff took the decisive step in defining the modern concept of Universal Algebra in 1933.83 Although he appropriated the name from Whitehead’s original text,84 he ignored the Grassmannian approach at the heart of Whitehead’s work. The problem with Whitehead, G. Gratzer argued in 1968, was that although he “recognized the need for universal algebra, he has no results. The first results were published by Birkhoff in the thirties.” Gratzer argues that Whitehead produced no results because, “before the thirties most of the branches of modern algebra were not developed sufficiently.”85 According to P. M. Cohn, “universal algebra as understood today goes back to the 1930s, when it emerged as a natural development of the abstract approach to algebra initiated by Emmy Noether.”86 Birkhoff argues that Noether’s influence was mediated by the text that defined the course of modern algebra, B. L. van der Waerden’s Moderne Algebra.87 Noether and her school looked to a tradition inspired by the approach of Dedekind, rather than Grassmann. The numerical inspiration behind Birkhoff’s Dedekind-Noether lineage can be contrasted with the geometrical inspiration of Mathew’s Grassmann-Whitehead lineage.88 Emmy Noether’s bias was expressed, according to Gian-Carlo Rota, in her passionate hatred of classical invariant theory and anything that hinted of the “mystifying concoctions of that crackpot Grassmann.” Thus Noether’s influence contributed to what, Rota argues, was “the mathematical tragedy of this [the twentieth] century”: the failure to learn from Grassmann.89 The present-day rehabilitation of Grassmann’s reputation had its roots in the work of Elie Cartan, who had drawn upon Grassmann in formulating his theory of differential forms.90 His work was little understood until the 1930s, when it was rediscovered in the light of the modern understanding of linear algebra.91 This rehabilitation gathered further momentum in 1948, when the Bourbaki group published their rigorous, axiomatically formulated version of the exterior calculus.92 However, it was a flawed presentation of Grassmann’s ideas, stripped of essential insights that Grassmann had arrived at by visualizing his calculus of extension in geometrical terms. The problem with Bourbaki’s set theoretical presentation, as René Thom argued, was that their algebraic focus on logical structure and proofs failed to acknowledge and benefit from the intuitive sensibilities that are an integral part of mathematical insight.93 Hence, important results were neglected and obscured by the Bourbaki presentation. These failings were in part recognized in 1985, when Rota’s group published their seminal article, “The exterior calculus of invariant theory.”94

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Rota’s work on Grassmann reflected a new algebraic trend, away from van der Waerden’s emphasis on an axiomatic approach to deductive systems, toward a focus on relational structures, and themes and techniques that reflect areas of mathematics and applications opened up by computers.95 Rota and his co-workers acknowledged the importance of this factor in 1988, when they noted that their “modern version of Grassmann algebra” had, in the last few years, captured attention “because of its wide applicability to ‘effective projective geometry’ […] [and its utilization as a tool for] computer vision.”96 Under the headline “Hermann Grassmann was right,” Ian Stewart outlined Rota’s findings in an article in Nature, suggesting that by combing the conceptual insights of Grassmann with Bourbaki’s axiomatic rigor such that “the notation reflect the concepts,” Rota had earned the title of “the Edgar Allen Poe of mathematics.”97 Thus, after almost a century of neglect, a revival of interest in Grassmann’s work took place.98 During the 1990s the first English translations of the Ausdehnungslehres were published99 and prominent mathematicians such as William Lawvere, best known for his important contributions to Category Theory, began urging mathematicians to take another look at Grassmann.100 As a consequence of the Grassmann revival, a number of mathematicians have drawn attention to Whitehead’s UA. Barnabei, Brini and Rota initiated this interest when they argued in their 1985 article that Whitehead was one of the few mathematicians that had understood Grassmann. Though their remarks focused on Whitehead’s technical presentation of Grassmann’s theory of extension, Whitehead’s broader vision of a Universal Algebra has also attracted interest. John Browne notes that Grassmann’s work was one of the foundation stones upon which Whitehead had “hoped to build an algebraic theory which united the several important and new mathematical systems which emerged during the nineteenth century,” and suggests that, apart from the translations of the original texts, Whitehead’s UA is “probably the best and most complete exposition on the Ausdehnungslehre in English.”101 David Hestenes, whose work has been a primary factor in promoting the renewed interest in the geometrical approach to algebra inspired by the Grassmann-Clifford-Whitehead tradition, has argued, “Grassmann and Whitehead were just one step away from a mathematical system that truly deserves to be regarded as a Universal Geometric Algebra.”102 “I am still amazed,” he recently commented, “at how little attention was paid to [Whitehead’s] work on “Grassmann’s algebra of extension,” and that “when I finally got around to looking carefully at Universal Algebra I found that I had independently arrived at similar conclusions on most of the topics.” Hestenes also comments that Whitehead was the first to discover “the very powerful idea that I call outermorphism,” although his discovery seems to have remained unnoticed.103 As Rota noted, the interest in Grassmann has been fostered by the advantages of his algebra as a tool for applying projective geometry in the development of computer vision. This concern with practical applications lies behind Stephen Blake’s recent defense of Whitehead’s approach to algebra. In Whitehead’s Geometric Algebra, Blake argues that Whitehead’s interpretation of Grassmann is superior to the approach advocated by Barnabei, Brini and Rota in their 1985 article. This superiority has its roots in Whitehead’s approach to projective geometry, and his recognition that the various kinds of products differentiated by Grassmann are variations of a

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single product.104 Blake’s work points towards some of the current technical challenges motivating the renewed consideration of Whitehead’s work.

5. The Metaphysical Significance of UA At the heart of Whitehead’s presentation of Grassmann’s Theory of Extension was a vector notion of transition. UA was informed by a model of the cosmos in which Newton’s autonomous atoms were replaced by a relational notion of linear strains. Crucial to this move was the notion that strains and stresses be viewed as generative forces, organically binding together and thereby bringing into being, larger unities.105 Whitehead’s subsequent elaboration of this idea can be traced through his later scientific and metaphysical works, culminating in the notoriously difficult “Theory of Extension” presented in Part IV of PR. This is not the place to discuss these later developments in Whitehead’s systems of thought, however, I do wish to make a final comment on a neglected aspect of the Grassmann-Clifford-Whitehead relation. Lowe, in seeking to discover the origins of Whitehead’s relational views, asked Russell if Whitehead, in the early years of their collaboration, had also embraced the absolute theory of space. Russell responded “No,” and added, “I think he [Whitehead] was born a relativist.”106 I have suggested that Grassmann’s philosophy was a source of inspiration for Whitehead’s relational orientation. Clifford’s metaphysical writings dramatically illustrated the cosmological implications of this standpoint.107 Whiteheadian scholars have paid little attention to either figure. After UA, both become largely invisible presences in Whitehead’s works. With Clifford, this issue of invisibility was exacerbated by his early death. Many of his most exciting ideas were still in a tentative form—the seeds of future works. One of these ideas was that the elementary entities of the cosmos, preceding both matter and space, were feelings. This suggestion is outlined in two remarkable articles that together can be read as a charter for the development of a geometrical model of the cosmos, based purely on the notion of extension.108 According to Clifford, the world portrayed by science, in all its material objectivity, had its factual basis in the subjective domain of human thoughts and feelings. He argues that the objective facts of science are socially constituted sensibilities. Basing his views upon “recent advances in the theory of perception,”109 Clifford argued that the universe “consists entirely of mind-stuff.” Particles of mind-stuff make up the ether of Clifford’s universe. “These elements of feeling,” he writes, “have relations of nextness or contiguity in space, as exemplified by the sight-perceptions of contiguous points; and relations of succession in time which are exemplified by all perceptions.” The mathematician, Clifford argued, must build a model of the universe from these two empirical relations, helped by recent work in geometry indicating that distance and quantity can be derived from an analysis based purely on the notion of position, and theories of space curvature that hint “at a possibility of describing matter and motion in terms of extension only.”110 In other words, Whitehead’s notion of equating the vector forces of physics with subjective feeling probably had its roots in Clifford’s work. From this perspective, Whitehead’s UA can be viewed as a first step towards Clifford’s vision of giving rigorous mathematical expression to the basic elements of his metaphysics of feeling.111

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6. Conclusion In my presentation of UA I have emphasized the part Grassmann and his British interpreters played in the formation of Whitehead’s vision, and focused on three interrelated aspects of Whitehead’s work: (i) grounding the development of a formal axiomatic system in a phenomenological reflection on the subjective process of spatial reasoning; (ii) defining basic algebraic entities in terms of dynamic relational processes; (iii) developing Grassmann’s theory of extension as a practical tool for representing Maxwell’s equations. I have also hinted that, while UA exerted little influence on the wider mathematical community, it did represent the first obscure expression of a philosophical vision that was to become prominent in Whitehead’s later writing. Throughout the chapter I have emphasized the leading role played by the notion of space. Galileo believed that Euclid had disclosed the spatial language employed by the Great Designer in the creation of the Universe. Inspired by the Grassmannian approach of Clifford and his followers, Whitehead broke free of this stifling heritage and embarked on a mathematical adventure, the ultimate goal of which was to create a new model of the Universe. In so doing, he adopted a relational view of space, in which ontological priority is assigned to relations between events, rather than to absolute, apriori contexts of action. This radical shift in philosophical perspective was couched in an inaccessible mathematical language. The result was misunderstanding and ill-founded criticism. In the only book review he ever published,112 the genial Whitehead savagely skewered Hastings Berkeley’s Mysticism in Modern Mathematics.113 However, having pilloried Berkeley’s understanding of recent developments in mathematics, Whitehead did concur with some of Berkeley’s criticisms of UA. Henry and Valenza have suggested that Whitehead’s response to Berkeley signals Whitehead’s repudiation of his early philosophical standpoint (a “tentative formalism”). Further, they argue that he then adopts (with Russell) the “logicism of Principia Mathematica,” and then, after abandoning this position, is left floundering “with no explicit coherent philosophy of mathematics.” 114 I contend that Whitehead’s early and late testimony to the importance he attached to the Ausdehnungslehre of 1844 suggest an alternative possibility. Namely, the “philosophical” approach of the first edition, though incomprehensible to most of Whitehead’s mathematical colleagues, struck a chord with Whitehead. This chord was amplified through the writings of Clifford and inspired the monumental production that was to become the mathematical overture to Whitehead’s life work.

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Notes 1

Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore (The Assayer), 1623, quoted in Sussman & Wisdom 2002, 2. Whitehead, in Schilpp 1951, 659-670. 3 In 1903 the Treatise on Universal Algebra led to Whitehead’s election to the Royal Society. The book was also well received on the Continent, according to Russell, who in August 1900 had accompanied Whitehead to the Paris Congress of Philosophy; as he later told G. E. Moore “all the foreigners who knew Mathematics had read and admired his book, and were delighted to meet him” (Grattan-Guinness 2002, 432). 4 Keeton 2004, 32-33. 5 Whitehead, Letter of 1912, in Lowe 1975, 86. 6 Harman 1998, 6. 7 Whitehead 1938, 136-138. 8 Although Maxwell died in 1879, his work had inspired a new generation of mathematicians and physicists. Through the eighties, leading “Maxwellian” physicists such as Oliver Heaviside and J. J. Thomson, continued to clarify Maxwell’s notion of an electromagnetic field, and to simplify the equations he used to describe electrical charges, magnetic dipoles and the relationship between them both. In 1888, Maxwell’s field theory of electromagnetic waves received empirical confirmation through Heinrich Hertz’s production and detection of electromagnetic waves. These technical advances took place in the context of simmering philosophical controversies over the true method of science, the basis of mathematical and scientific concepts used to define dynamic systems, and the nature of the actual realities denoted by those concepts. 9 Whittaker, 1948, 281. 10 These developments are described in chapters 7 and 8 of Harman 1998. 11 Klein spelt out his vision in his “Erlanger program” of 1872. He drew upon the study of the invariant properties of groups, to show that the different classes of transformations defined different branches of geometry. 12 An intuitive sense of the contrast between projective and metrical geometry can be gained by imagining mapping your position in a city by using a photograph, such that the perspective captured in the photograph exactly specifies the position from which it was taken, compared to locating your position by measuring the distance of your position from a triangle of landmarks. 13 Lowe 1985, 151. 14 James Beichler details the influence of Clifford on the key British mathematicians that guided Whitehead’s approach to Hamilton, Grassmann and Maxwell (Beichler 1996). Joan Richards describes the wider context of these developments in her book, Mathematical Visions: The Pursuit of Geometry in Victorian England (1988). 15 Hamilton had initially been enthusiastic about Grassmann but had become increasingly critical, noting certain resemblances between their notions of vectors (directed lines) but failing to appreciate that Grassmann’s concepts and method could be extended to encompass his theory of quaternions (cf. Crowe 1967, 86-87). Klein valued the Ausdenungslehre of 1862, but regarded the 1844 Ausdehnungslehre as “virtually unreadable.” Klein’s relation to Grassmann is analysed by Rowe, in Schubring 1996, 139-144. 16 Clifford 1882, 266. 17 Clifford also emphasized the importance of R. S. Ball’s work, another figure that Whitehead later acknowledges in UA. Clifford thus left behind the contours of a project that the British “Grassmann-Clifford School” developed. For a contemporary mathematical colleague’s estimation of Grassmann’s impact on Clifford’s thought, see Smith’s “Introduction” in Clifford (1882, lv-lxx). 2

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Malonek 2004, 7. Malonek points out that Crowe’s in many respects admirable History of Vector Analysis (1967) follows the tendency of minimizing Clifford’s contribution (perhaps for the same reason that he chooses not to deal with Whitehead). 19 Richards 1988, 131. Clifford achieved notoriety in his day primarily because of his outspoken views on religion. Macfarlane commented that Clifford “could not write on any religious question without using language which was offensive even to his friends”(Macfarlane 1916, 57). He challenged doctrines advanced by Hamilton, Maxwell, and Tait, as outlined by Macfarlane (1916). Tait, in particular, was a recipient of Clifford’s barbs, as a result of his efforts to advance religious conclusions via scientific argument. Tait repaid the favor by accusing Clifford of plagiarism—after Clifford was dead. Clifford’s outraged friends responded on his behalf. See Clifford’s review of Tait in the “The Unseen Universe” (Clifford 1879a), and Tait’s review, “Clifford’s Exact Sciences,” in Nature 32, 11 June 1885 (with responses on the 18 and 25 June, and the 2 July in the same volume). For bibliographic details on this exchange, see Chisholm, 2002. 20 Richards 1988, 109-113. 21 The notion that Clifford or Geometric Algebra can serve as the basis of a unified language for mathematics is advanced in Hestenes 1986, and has been taken up by other enthusiasts. A historical perspective of Clifford’s mathematical legacy is presented in Chisholm 2002; Diek and Kantowski 2005; and Lounesto 2001. 22 Russell, for example, recalls his tutor giving him Clifford’s The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (in his introduction to Clifford 1885, v) in order to introduce him to mathematics. Whitehead refers to Clifford’s Elements of Dynamics (Vol. 1 1878, Vol. 2 1886) in his introduction to UA (without providing bibliographic details, cf. UA 25), in a manner that reflects its wide circulation amongst mathematicians. Much of Clifford’s work was being published posthumously during the eighties, and was the occasion of considerable interest (see previous note). Whitehead makes numerous references to Clifford in the text of UA and notes that he intends to deal specifically with Clifford’s algebra in volume 2 (cf. UA, 370). 23 Cox 1882a, 10. A brief outline of Cox’s paper is provided in Cox 1882b. 24 Buchheim 1884, 88. The mathematical concept of “screw”—the simultaneous rotation around and proportional translation along an axis, like the thread of a screw—was fundamental to Clifford’s theory of the ether. For a short account of Buchheim’s career, detailing the influence of Clifford and Klein, and the series of publications that Buchheim produced in the eighties “promoting Grassmann’s methods,” see Tattersall 2005. 25 Whitehead notes his particular debt to Buchheim and Cox “as the mathematicians whose writings have chiefly aided me in the development of the Calculus of Extension” in UA, x, 248, 346, 370 & 575. 26 Announcement from the Cambridge University Reporter of June 10, 1887, cited in Lowe 1985 150. 27 Letter from Gibbs to Thomas Craig, quoted in Crowe 1967, 182. 28 UA, v. 29 UA, viii & v. 30 UA, 31-32. 31 I base these dates on the preface, dated December 1897, and a concluding note dealing with some recent publications that he was unable to deal with, due to the book already having been “nearly two years in press” (UA, 573). 32 Whitehead gives some indication that this second volume would include detailed analysis of Cayley’s matrices, Hamilton’s Quaternions, Clifford’s Biquaternions, and the vector algebras of Heaviside and Gibbs, see UA v, 32, 370, 573. Whitehead later came to believe that his goal of analysing the symbolic structure of these various algebras had been subsumed within the aims of PM, see Whitehead, in Schilpp 1941, 10. 33 Sylvester 1884, 271. 34 Sylvester 1884, 270-271. For a modern perspective on the historical importance of Sylvester’s work, see McIntyre 1991.

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Sylvester, quoted in McIntyre 1991, 574. For a historical perspective on the 19 th -century British approach to algebra and their notion of a Universal Algebra see Novy 1973 & 1976. 37 Grassmann, 1862, xiv. 38 UA, x. 39 Whitehead, in Schilpp 1951, 9. 40 Hamilton, referring to the 1844 version of the Ausdehnungslehre, wondered whether a pipe of opium would unlock its secrets (Crowe 1967, 86); Felix Klein described it as “extraordinarily obscure” (Klein 1939, 20); Morris Kline summed up the typical response by suggesting that Grassmann had “shrouded the ideas [of 1844] with mystic doctrines,” producing a work that was “vague and unreadable” (Kline 1972, 782). Crowe (1967) provides a detailed account of the reception of the Ausdehnungslehre (1844), 77-88. 41 Lewis 2004, 21. 42 Ausdehnungslehre, 1844, 30. 43 Otte 1989, 25-27. 44 Gaeta 2002, provides a general discussion of the development of UA. Jaques Riche provides a more technical introduction (Riche 2004). Quine 1951, provides a good introduction to Whitehead’s discussion of symbolic logic. There is no text in English, that I am aware of, that examines Whitehead’s presentation of the Theory of Extension, though his work is touched upon in several texts dealing with the development of Geometric Algebra (see section 4). Perhaps the best introduction to Geometric Algebra for the non-specialist, though not directly addressing Whitehead’s work, is Hestenes 1986b. 45 Whitehead’s concept of “manifold,” loosely based on the ideas of Riemann and Grassmann, is defined as the aggregate of all the modes in which something possesses a particular property. For example, the coordinate axes defining an empty space specify all the modes that points in that space can assume. The points are the elements of this spatial manifold. Similarly, Whitehead speaks of the “manifold of musical notes conceived as representing every note so far as it differs in pitch and quality from every other note” UA 15). 46 UA 6. Whitehead’s distinction between identity and equivalence is discussed in Mays 1977 (Chapter 3) and Quine 1951. 47 The following passage exemplifies Whitehead’s interpretive stance: “Let the elements of this algebraic manifold [a,b,c, etc.] be regions in space, each region not being necessarily a continuous portion of space. Let any term symbolize the mental act of determining and apprehending the region which it represents. Terms are equivalent when they place the same region before the mind for apprehension. Let the operation of addition be conceived as the act of apprehending in the mind the complete region which comprises and is formed by all the regions represented by the terms added. Thus in addition the symbols represent firstly the act of the mind in apprehending the component regions represented by the added terms and then its act in apprehending complete region. This last act of apprehension determines the region which the resultant term represents” (UA 38-39). 48 UA, 99. 49 Positional manifolds are defined by the common property of permitting addition of the numerical type, such that, in contrast to Boole’s non-numerical algebra of logic, a and a + a are not equivalent; instead, in numerical algebras, a + a = 2a. 50 This distinction becomes explicit in Whitehead 1906, 17. 51 UA, 30. 52 See Grassmann’s (1844) discussion, 45-46. Note that there is some debate over whether the basic entity of Grassmann’s algebra should be viewed as a point, a vector, or as a unit of change. A similar ambiguity arises in the course of Whitehead’s discussion. See Lewis 2004, nn. 14, 32 53 This provides Whitehead with a very simple visual image of the commutative law (steps can be taken in any order), and the associative law (any number of steps can be replaced by one definite resultant step): see UA 25. 36

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UA, 127. UA, 127. 56 UA, 27. 57 Maxwell, drawing upon Gauss, had used the term “geometry of position” in 1871 for the projective geometry of Lazare Carnot and Michel Chasles. Gauss had been inspired by “Leibniz’s remarks on the need to formulate geometric algorithms to express geometric location (situs)” (Harman 1998, 154). Whitehead’s formulation of the notion of a positional manifold can be viewed as a contribution to the efforts of various Grassmannians to explicate the broader algebraic implications of projective geometry. See, for example, Mr. E. Lasker’s “Essay on the Geometrical Calculus,” in which he attempts to demonstrate that “Grassmann’s Ausdehnungslehre is a shape into which projective geometry or modern algebra may be thrown; that it is coextensive with these two branches of mathematics” (Lasker 1896-7, 217-8). 58 UA, 132. 59 Sébastian Gandon argues that Whitehead’s reformulation and generalization of Grassmann’s notion of intensity in projective terms enables him to demonstrate the great scope of Grassmann’s theory. It enables him to formulate the Absolutes (invariants) of the traditional metrical (Euclidian and Non-Euclidian) geometries in terms of various ‘laws of intensity’ and demonstrate that they are sub-species of projective geometry. See Gandon 2005; also Gaeta 2002, 131. 60 See the note UA, 370, also Gandon 2005. 61 UA, 370. 62 UA, 548. 63 UA, 573. 64 My translation, Gaeta 2002, 132. 65 Newton had written his classic text Universal Arithmetic to help substantiate and advance the theory of equations (an algebraic interpretation of Euclidian proofs) underpinning his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. 66 Whitehead 1906. 67 My translation, Gandon 2005, 6. 68 Lowe 1985, 102-103. 69 Mathews 1898, 385. 70 MacColl 1899, 108. 71 Macfarlane 1899, 328. 72 Couturat 1900. 73 The editors of Russell’s papers from that period describe 1898 as a “watershed” in Russell’s philosophy of mathematics, brought about by fresh ideas, the chief source of which was “Whitehead’s Universal Algebra (1898), which ‘greatly excited’ Russell when he read it in March 1898” (Russell 1990, xxv). 74 Russell, in a letter to Alys, 1st April, 1898 (Russell, 1990, 155). 75 Russell, in a letter dated June 18, 1941, in response to a query from Lowe (quoted in Lowe 1962, 144). 76 It is interesting to note that in this work he affirmed that the essential principles of Universal Algebra had to be sought inductively, through an examination of the various species of Algebra, and suggested that his philosophical writings on this theme complemented Whitehead’s mathematical inquiries in UA. Russell 1996 [1903], 376-377. 77 Whitehead 1951, 10. Russell announces their collaboration in the 1902 preface to his Principles of Mathematics (Russell [1903] 1996). Three volumes of Principia Mathematica were published, the fourth volume, for which Whitehead was responsible, was never completed. For details, see Grattan-Guinness 2000. 78 Consideration of PM raises many questions concerning the role of UA in the early development and later evolution of Whitehead’s mathematical and philosophical thought. In discussing the creation and subsequent influence of UA my narrative has focused on the Grassmannian legacy. 55

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I have noted that deep philosophical questions concerning the relationship between logic and mathematics were of interest to both Grassmann and Whitehead. UA was clearly a significant factor in the development of Whitehead’s and Russell’s approach to the philosophy of mathematics, and arguably this chapter should consider the broader philosophical influence of UA. I have not attempted to do so, but an indication of the complexity of these philosophical patterns of influence are suggested by Juliet Floyd’s analysis of the way in which UA influenced Wittgenstein’s treatment of arithmetic in the Tractatus. See Floyd 2001, 152-155, and Floyd, 2005. For a heroic attempt to provide an overview of the complex tapestry of mathematical and philosophical influences that formed the context of the collaboration between Whitehead and Russell, and an evaluation of the subsequent influence of PM, see GrattanGuinness 2000. 79 When listing the authorities on the subject, Mathews notes the “very comprehensive” nature of Universal Algebra and suggests that his approach to the subject is “in many ways indebted” to this work (Mathews 1910). 80 Mathews1898, 385. 81 cf. Crowe 1967, 215. 82 Henry and Valenza 1993, 157. 83 Burris and Sankappanavar 1981, 25. This was the first in a series of influential articles, Birkhoff 1933, 1935 & 1944. 84 Birkhoff 1976, [The rise of modern algebra to 1936, Graduate Studies, no 13, Texas Tech. University], cited in Fearnley-Sander 1982, 162. 85 Gratzer 1979, vii. 86 Cohn 1981, xv. 87 Birkhoff suggests that “it would be hard to overestimate the influence which van der Waerden’s concept of modern algebra, as popularized by subsequent authors, has had on mathematics,” but makes the point that he and his followers “ignored entirely Boolean algebra.” He acknowledged, in 1946, that Noether’s school “had developed many of the most important ideas of Universal Algebra” (Birkhoff 1969, 431). 88 See Fearnley-Sander 1982, 162-163. 89 Rota 1997, 46-48, 232-233. Fearnley-Sander argues that Birkhoff’s approach to algebra is indebted to the work of van der Waerden’s patron, Emmy Noether, and that the neglect of Grassmann reflects Birkhoff’s indebtedness to the Noether lineage (Fearnley-Sander 1982, 16263) Rota paints a more complex picture, in which Birkhoff is identified with Philip Hall and a tradition that looks back to Boole and Peirce, while van der Waerden and Noether look back to Kronecker and Dedekind. According to Rota the German-French approach to algebra was dominant for most of the twentieth century, promoted more recently by the likes of Emil Artin. Birkhoff, on the other hand, in opposition to Artin, is implicitly grouped with those more open to a re-evaluation of Grassmann (see Rota 1997, 53-54). 90 Stewart 1986, 17. 91 Dieudonné 1979, 11. 92 Rota suggests that all the mathematicians of his generation came to exterior via Bourbaki (Rota 1997, 50). 93 Thom 1971, 695-96 94 Barnabei, Brini & Rota 1985, 120-22. 95 See Birkhoff 1973, 779. 96 Grosshans, Rota & Stein 1988. 97 Stewart 1986, 17. 98 See the collection of articles in Schubring 1996. 99 Translated by Lloyd Kannenberg, cf. Grassmann 1995 and Grassmann 2000. Kannenberg has also produced the first English translation of Peano’s 1888 text on Grassmann (Peano 2000). 100 See Lawvere in Schubring 1996, 255-64, and most recently Lawvere 2005, 99-105 101 Browne 2001, 5.

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Hestenes 1988, 1. Hestenes, personal communication, 28 April, 2005. 104 Blake 2005, ix-x. 105 Douglas Bendall has developed this theme, connecting Whitehead’s early relational view of the material world (Whitehead, 1906) with later works. He quotes Whitehead: “At some stage in our account of stress we are driven to the concept of any extended quantity of material as a single unity whose nature is partly explicable in terms of its surface stress” (Whitehead 1919, 3); Bendall 1973, 21. 106 Interview with Russell in 1965, quoted in Lowe 1975, 91. 107 Although Whitehead acknowledges Clifford as one of the main sources of inspiration for his work on non-Euclidian geometry (UA, x), the nature of broader influences remains speculative, since Whitehead (while acknowledging their importance) quite deliberately avoids making comments on psychological and metaphysical subjects until many years after the publication of UA. 108 See Clifford 1879a and 1879b. Clifford’s approach owed much to the great German polymath, Hermann von Helmholtz, as discussed in Farwell and Knee 1990. In Russell’s Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, Clifford is classified as a “naïve realist” with regard to his views on space, in that he shares the empiricist approach of Riemann and Helmholtz (cf. Russell [1897] 1956, 97). Grassmann was also an empiricist with respect to the mathematical form of space. Helmholtz promoted the ideas of Grassmann, as discussed in Darrigol 2003. Grassmann had first been exposed to the Romantic view of Nature through his father, a disciple of Schelling. According to Schelling: “Nature is visible mind and mind is invisible nature” (Heuser 1996, 50). Nature has an inner being that is self-productive and self-organizing. The mind’s own productive activity was the inner manifestation of the same forces that constitute nature. According to Schelling, these forces did not interact within space, rather, they were generative of space: their expansions and contractions give rise to matter and space, feeding upon themselves to create process of higher orders in a way that pre-figures Grassmann (cf. Heuser 1996, 53). These themes were further reinforced by Grassmann’s reading of Schleiermacher (cf. Lewis 1977). 109 Clifford 1879b, 87-88. 110 Clifford 1879a, 244-45. 111 This charter is still of interest to contemporary physicists, as suggested recently by Meschini et. al., when they noted that “Clifford pursued the conviction that matter and geometry do not lie at the bottom of things, but that, on the contrary, they are themselves an aspect of deeper entities—for him, feelings—and their non-geometric relations, contiguity and succession,” and relate his work to their investigation of the pre-geometrical entities and interactions that give rise to the “the quantum structure of space and time” (Meschini et. al. 2004, 28-29). 112 Whitehead 1911. 113 Berkeley 1910. 114 Henry and Valenza, 1993, 167. 103

Vector Mathematics: Symbol versus Form Robert Valenzai Vector mathematics reveals in its history a splendid tension that may be described both as philosophical and cognitive. In this article we shall review the prevailing technical characterization of the concept of a vector and briefly trace its history, especially in the nineteenth century, where a mathematical fault line long in place opens into a fissure. Whitehead’s use of the term, first in mathematics and later in philosophy, then becomes a source of some insight into his worldview.

1. The Historical Context for Linear Algebra 1.1. Vectors and Vector Spaces The province of vector mathematics of course subsumes any mathematical processes or formalisms concerning vectors, including, for instance, vector analysis, the extension of the fundamental limit constructs of calculus to functions whose domain (space of admissible inputs) and codomain (space of possible outputs) consist of vectors. This begs the question of what exactly counts as a vector, the precise definition of which belongs to the more particular domain of linear algebra, a field of study that we shall characterize presently. Indeed, the point of this section is to sketch formal characterizations of the terms vector and vector space, as they are currently in use, to serve as a kind of standard against which various historical developments may be compared. One’s first encounter with vectors may well be in high school physics, where one learns that a vector is something that has both magnitude (length) and direction. Accordingly, the first graphical depiction may then be an arrow representing, for instance, a force: the arrow has a length proportional to the size of the force represented, and a direction indicating its direction of application. This magnitude-direction characterization adheres so nicely to matters of physics (not just to force, but to velocity, acceleration, linear and angular momentum) that it is genuinely illuminating, and yet with regard to any formal development of vector mathematics, it is hopelessly inadequate. The undergraduate majoring in either mathematics or one of the more quantitative sciences will—or should, at least—give quite a different response than given by our adolescent physicist to the question of what a vector is, a response that makes no direct reference whatsoever to magnitude and direction. As unenlightening as it may seem, he or she might well say that a vector is an element of a vector space, and before we undertake the obvious ensuing question,

i Dengler-Dykema Professor of Mathematics and the Humanities, Department of Mathematics, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California 91711; [email protected].

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let us at least notice that this response does have content insofar as it indicates that the notion of a vector requires some explicit systematic context that is lacking for our more naïve high school student. So what indeed is a vector space? To make matters more palatable for the uninitiated, we shall first work through the definition of the special case of a real vector space and then indicate how the general construction goes.

1.1.1. Some Axioms and Examples A real vector space consists of a set V, whose elements are called vectors, together with two operations of strikingly distinct character. The first operation is called addition, and while it is denoted by the familiar plus sign (+), neither the term nor the symbol is restricted to its ordinary meaning. To say that addition is an operation on V is to say that for any two vectors v and w, their sum v + w must also lie in V (we call this closure). But this is not enough. If V is to be a vector space, this first operation must satisfy certain natural rules of arithmetic which we need not list here. The important thing is that they are ordinary arithmetic laws (for example, the associative and commutative laws) such as we learn in elementary algebra, and they make reference only to this one operation.1 The second operation is called scalar multiplication, and it is an external operation in that one of the two operands (the one on the left) in general does not come from the set V but, in the case of a real vector space, from the set of real numbers. To be more precise, for every real number a and vector v there is defined the product av of the vector v by the scalar a, which then must also be an element of V. (In the context of this form of multiplication, real numbers are called scalars.) Note carefully that this is not the ordinary multiplication of numbers, but something else entirely. Again if V is to be a vector space, certain ordinary-looking rules of arithmetic must hold (for example, the distributive law of multiplication over addition), and, as above, it is not important to list these rules, but only to note that in this latter case they make reference to both vector space operations, addition and scalar multiplication. A pair of contrasting examples should help to clarify this. Consider first the set traditionally 2 denoted R (read R-two) that consists of all ordered pairs (x1, x2) of real numbers.2 We can define the addition of two such pairs component-wise, which is to say that we add the corresponding components. For instance, (2, 7) + (6, 4) = (2+6, 7+4) = (8, 11). This operation has many familiar algebraic properties, including the associative and commutative laws, and all of the other laws needed to qualify it as addition in a vector space. 2

But we are not done until we can say how to multiply an element of R by an ordinary real number in an appropriate way. The answer is again to work component-wise: to multiply the real number a times the pair (x1, x2) we multiply each of the components by a. For instance, 4
(2, 11) = (4
2, 4
11) = (8, 44), or—and this second example is most important for what follows—

(2, 11) = (2
, 11
). Here again we will find some very familiar arithmetic properties, including the distributive law for multiplication over addition, and all of the other 2

laws needed to qualify R as a real vector space with respect to these two operations. Now for the contrasting example: Just as the symbol R generally denotes the set of real numbers, the symbol Z generally denotes the set of integers (the whole numbers, their

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negatives, and zero). We can then follow the pattern above to form the set Z (read Z-two) that 2 2 consists of ordered pairs (m1, m2) of integers. Of course Z is just a subset of Z , and this helps because we can use the definition of component-wise addition given above just as well in this case, and we seem to be on our way to a second vector space. But the road ends here: the definition of scalar multiplication will no longer do. The problem is one of closure; for example, 2 (2, 11) is a bona fide element of Z , and
is a bona fide element of the real numbers, but the 2

scalar product

(2, 11) = (2
, 11
) no longer consists of a pair of integers. Thus Z is not a real vector space under these two very natural operations. To conclude this meager introduction to vector spaces, let us honor a promise made above: if what we have just sketched out is only a real vector space, what is a vector space in general, with no such qualifier? The real numbers are far more complicated than meets the eye. They have not only an arithmetic structure, but an elusive and subtle topological structure that was only finally well understood in the nineteenth century.3 With regard to an effective set of axioms for a vector space, it turns out that only the most fundamental arithmetic properties are needed and the rest can be discarded. The point is that the scalars required by the definition of a vector space can come from any system on which the arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (by everything but zero) are defined and have their usual properties. Such sets are called fields, and two examples distinct from the real numbers are the sets of rational numbers (fractions) and complex numbers. Beyond those two, there are hoards of interesting and important examples of fields, some of which have very little to do with numbers, and a whole class of which are built out of finite sets. The upshot is that a vector space is always defined in tandem with an associated field of scalars, and that field may be at quite a cognitive distance from the real numbers.

1.1.2. Some Reflections While almost no one who has not studied linear algebra will feel any deep rapport with the sketchy definition given above, it is in essence the currently accepted definition, and with nothing more than this in hand, we make three important observations. First, the entire definition is given in symbolic algebraic terms, with no direct appeal to geometry. Whatever the ultimate connection of a vector space with the concept of space, it does not appear explicitly. To give two paramount indications of this, the ideas of length and angle not only are not mentioned, but indeed they are not defined for a vector space in the abstract.4 This is all the more remarkable given that these two geometric notions are at the heart of the naïve definition given in introductory physics. Second, the definition of a vector space fundamentally requires two kinds of objects: vectors and scalars, and the latter act externally on the former. Third, while technically there is no geometry encoded in any of the defining symbols or axioms, one suspects that something of geometry is implicated in the system as a whole. Not only does the use of the word space suggest this, but also the use of the word scalar (as might be associated with scaling factor or the scale of a map).5 Indeed, linear algebra has been called most astutely “the generalization to n-variables of the elementary theory of proportions that is learned in childhood” (Mostow and Sampson, Preface), and here again in this informal appeal to

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the notion of proportionality we find suggestions of space, shape, and similarity. These suggestions are not ultimately misleading: we shall see below that what these austerely algebraic axioms capture in toto is perhaps the most fundamental spatial notion of all.

1.2. The Amphibious Concept Algebra and geometry differ fundamentally not simply insofar as the domain of one is primarily number and the other space. Historically the terms and transformations of geometric discourse have been more difficult to disentangle from the antecedent spatial concepts from which they are abstracted than have been the terms and representations of algebraic discourse from their respective origins in the fundamental activities of counting and reckoning. The symbols and rules of algebra would seem to detach from their abstract semantic base more easily than those of geometry, and in that sense we might assert, with some irony, that of the two, algebra is the more formal, while geometry is more about forms.6 As an introspective illustration of this point, one might consider the difference between calculating a quotient by long division—implicitly an exercise in the rules of algebra—in contrast to the composition of the simplest geometric proof—for which one will find it almost impossible to proceed without semantics. We might in fact partially characterize algebra as the study of formal schemes that address the transformation of symbolic expressions whose underlying symbols remain, by design, opaque, while characterizing geometry as the study of those properties of spatially extended objects that remain invariant under certain transformations (such as rotation, reflection, and translation). In this light, the greater apparent semantic commitment in geometry is perhaps less of a mystery. One’s fascination with the emergence of the vector concept in the nineteenth century lies in its amphibious nature vis-à-vis algebra and geometry. Crowe has presented a detailed historical study of this (1967, especially Chapters Two, Three and Eight). The algebraic movement, Crowe claims, involves the geometric representation of the complex numbers (which indeed constitute a real vector space in the sense defined above) and their later extension to the quaternion algebra of Hamilton. As noted above, the complex numbers are an example of a field, in the technical sense suggested previously, and therefore are primarily algebraic in character. The quaternions are in fact an extension of the complex numbers generated by two new elements which, like the complex number i, have square equal to –1. On general principles, one knows that they cannot constitute a field—the complex numbers exhibit a kind of maximality called algebraic closure—but they come close: the only familiar property of arithmetic lost is the commutative law for multiplication. The point is that again we have an object too algebraic in conception to serve as a basis for linear algebra. The contrary movement, Crowe shows, was carried forward primarily by Grassmann, who attempted to make algebraic (formalistic) certain fundamentally geometric constructs, thus freeing the notion of product, for instance, from arithmetic. Not surprisingly, his system was better adapted to the geometric elements of the vector concept needed in the application of vector methods to calculus, but despite its genius, it, too, proved insufficient as a foundation for linear algebra.

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1.3. Explaining the Resolution How does the tension between algebra and geometry resolve itself in the currently accepted definition of a vector space? We make three broad points. First, although all of the terms in the modern definition seem algebraic, the explicit separation between scalar and vector is in fact a geometric accommodation. Consider the characterization of linear algebra as an extended theory of proportions: it is basic to the notion of similarity in plane geometry that the ratio that relates similar objects is numerical, while the objects themselves are geometrical. Two distinct species of objects are thus implicated. Second, while the abstract definition of a vector space over a field of scalars will not in general accommodate the notions of length and angle, it does, emphatically and spectacularly, accommodate the more primitive notion of dimension. Given the algebraic character of the axioms, it is astounding that one can derive from them the following two statements: (a) every vector space admits a kind of coordinate system, technically called a basis, and (b) while such a basis is generally not unique, any two bases for the same vector space have the same cardinality.7 When this cardinality is finite, we speak of finite-dimensional vector spaces and the number of elements in any basis is called the dimension of the space. All of this is to say that dimensionality—the number of degrees of freedom, the number of independent directions in space—is captured by these axioms. This indeed speaks to the geometric content latent in this formulation. Third—and this is essentially a technical variation of the preceding point—two key associated algebraic constructs, linear transformations and the determinant function, are likewise powerful enough to encompass the elements of Grassmann’s approach needed for vector calculus. These include the so-called inner product and cross product that will be familiar to many from basic physics.8

2. Vectors in Whitehead 2.1. Mathematical Uses Whitehead’s approach to the vector concept in mathematics is certainly best gleaned from his Universal Algebra (UA). This is at best a difficult and knotty work that has had little impact on the development of twentieth-century mathematics, although its early reception certainly enhanced Whitehead’s stature in both the British and international academic community. There is broad agreement that the work is much indebted to Hermann Grassmann, both in its evident respect for the technical approach taken by Grassmann in both versions of his Ausdehnungslehre and in its explicit attempt to give algebraic expression to certain geometric intuitions.9 To broaden the geometric connection thematically, let us first note that a mathematician trained in the latter half of the twentieth century would find himself or herself somewhat at sea with UA insofar as it is not grounded even in naïve set theory, but rather in vague semantics. Thus Whitehead’s key chapter on manifolds (Chapter II) makes the following definitions:

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Consider any number of things possessing any common property. That property may be possessed by different things in different modes: let each separate mode in which the property is possessed be called an element. The aggregate of all such elements is called the manifold of that property (UA 13). Since he precedes this language with his own acknowledgement of debt to Grassmann, one might argue that any discomfort with Whitehead’s mathematical style is merely a matter of idiom. Yet consider a fundamental definition given in a work published just a quarter century later by a far more influential mathematician, the eminent number theorist Erich Hecke: Definition of a group. A system S of arbitrary elements A, B, C… is called a group if the following conditions are satisfied: I. There is a rule (a law of composition) given, by virtue of which from an element A and an element B we can always uniquely derive another element of S, say C. We write this relationship symbolically as AB=C…10 Our point here clearly is not to demean Whitehead, but to indicate that the comparative difficulty in decoding some of his foundational statements lies not in its excessive formalism, but rather in the lack of such. As the example from Hecke shows, given the direction that mathematics did take over the next fifty years, it is not surprising that the style of UA would soon go stale. In this sense, PM, despite its ultimate failure as a foundation for mathematics, may be seen, in its emphasis on formalism, as far more characteristic of twentieth-century methods than UA.11 Against this background of stylistic dissonances, what can one say briefly about vectors in UA? Two things: First, in the later parts of the work (Book VII), where Whitehead in fact uses the term vector, he certainly means it in the geometric sense of direction and magnitude and is at some pains to free the concept from any attachment to coordinate systems insofar as he asserts that two parallel vectors of the same length are to be considered identical, regardless of the point of application. In doing so, he reflects a very modern discomfort which arises in connection with the application of coordinate systems, no matter how useful they might be: they seem to break the symmetry (homogeneity and isotropy) of space in conflating the coordinate system with space itself. In this sense the dominance of algebra over geometry in the current definition of a vector space may sometimes tend to obscure the very deep issue of covariance. Indeed this seems to be very much Whitehead’s point in Chapter IV, Book VII.12 In the earlier parts of the work (Book III, in particular), where Whitehead is developing the idea of a positional manifold, despite the foundational squishiness, one does see some arguments that look very much like present-day linear algebra (pertaining to what we now call the span and linear independence of a family of vectors), but not quite. In his insistence that the “character” of a sum of elements depend only on the ratios of certain associated coefficients (or “intensities,” in his terminology), Whitehead seems to be collapsing the standard (affine) spaces of linear algebra into real or complex projective spaces, and in that respect he is again primarily doing geometry.

2.2. Philosophical Uses The first occurrence of the term vector in Process and Reality is more explicitly related to its etymologically antecedent sense of conveyor than to its mathematical sense (PR 55). In commenting on Locke’s characterization of mind as “being […] furnished with a great number

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of simple ideas conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things,” Whitehead states: Here the last phrase, ‘as they are found in exterior things,’ asserted what later I shall call the vector character of the primary feelings. The universals involved attain that [vector] status by reason of the fact that ‘they are found in exterior things.’ Later he writes more explicitly: “Feelings are vectors; for they feel what is there and transform it into what is here” (PR 87). This of course comports better with the direct geometric interpretation of a vector as bearing both length and direction, and indeed in several instances Whitehead appeals to this more technical sense. We have also a slightly more abstract sense, less explicit in Whitehead’s own use of language, in which this geometric notion of vector applies. To make this point, we turn again to the representation of forces in high-school physics, this time to consider the construction of force diagrams. We might use such diagrams to resolve, either graphically or trigonometrically, a question such as this: What is the resultant of two forces of unit magnitude acting at right angles at the same point? We draw first a directed line segment—an arrow—of unit length, say, from left to right, then a second arrow, again of unit length, originating at the right endpoint of the first and at right angles to it. These, then, are the legs of a right triangle, the hypotenuse of which represents our answer: a force of magnitude
2 acting at an angle of 45 degrees. The point here is that in the vector representation of these forces, the magnitudes do not directly represent length, as might be associated with any sort of conveyance from point A to point B, but have a more general interpretation that only corresponds to length in the mathematical modeling of the physical forces. In the same way, prehensions have in Whitehead not only the sense of direction associated with conveyance from object to subject, but of magnitude in an analogous non-geometric sense insofar as the subjective form of a prehension admits degrees of intensity. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, in the algebraic domain we see one other affinity between process theory and the vector concept. To the extent that modern linear algebra inevitably leads to the representation of vectors and linear processes as, respectively, n-tuples of numbers and the rectangular arrays known as matrices, it implicates the same ontological move, albeit on a far more modest scale, that is at the heart of process metaphysics: the creation of a new object from the structured amalgamation of prior objects. Indeed, Whitehead writes: ‘Concrescence’ is the name for the process in which the universe of many things acquires an individual unity in a determinate relegation of each item of the ‘many’ to its subordination in the constitution of the novel ‘one’ (PR 211). And so, too, as an object of algebra, goes the vector.

3. Relevant Scholarship 3.1. In Mathematics As noted above, there is some literature on the evolution of the vector concept from Grassmann to its later development by Whitehead in UA, but, mathematically speaking, there is little going

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forward from there. Crowe’s History of Vector Analysis mentions Whitehead just twice (1967, 104, 244), to the effect that UA contains a restatement of Grassmann’s ideas in language somewhat at variance with Grassmann’s own. Hence Crowe finds it of limited value to his own research goals. Nonetheless, some later works cited in the Dawson article on UA in this volume suggest a new interest in Grassmann and Whitehead quite beyond the restricted matter of assessing their relation to the actual evolution of vector mathematics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

3.2. In Philosophy In addition to Henry’s Forms of Concrescence (1993), the tension between the algebraic and geometric formulations of mathematical concepts flowers delightfully in the most famous work of one of Whitehead’s own students. In her most famous work, Philosophy in a New Key (1942)—a book in fact dedicated to Alfred North Whitehead—Susanne K. Langer introduces a new dichotomy into the old notion of symbolism. In recognizing that the usual discursive symbols of language are insufficient to the description of human cognition, she extends the concept of symbolism to include a previously unrecognized, ignored or excluded species that she calls presentational symbols. Langer characterizes the difference between the discursive and the presentational, in part, with these words: Visual forms—lines, colors, proportions, etc.—are just as capable of articulation, i.e. of complex combination, as words. But the laws that govern this sort of articulation are altogether different from the laws of syntax that govern language. The most radical difference is that visual forms are not discursive. They do not present their constituents successively, but simultaneously, so the relations determining a visual structure are grasped in one act of vision. Their complexity, consequently, is not limited, as the complexity of discourse is limited, by what the mind can retain from the beginning of an apperceptive act to the end of it (1942, 93) We thus have a cognitive trade-off in these species of symbolism: one has a grammar that detaches the symbols from their content to facilitate recombination and a kind of projective precision, while the other binds meaning so tightly with symbol that detachment and grammar must fail. This, we might recognize, is very close to our previous comparative characterizations of algebra and geometry, and we think that Langer is well worth studying in this connection as the appropriate generalization of this distinction beyond mathematics.

4. A Speculative Assessment We have commented elsewhere (Henry and Valenza 1993a, 1993b) on Whitehead’s deficiencies as a historical force in mathematics, claiming that both his style and content missed the broad sweep of twentieth-century trends. In light of the issues raised in this article, one might well feel that despite the profound failure of Principia Mathematica and the eternally daunting limitative theorems of Gödel, the current foundations of mathematics, such as they are, remain firmly discursive in the particular sense that Langer introduced.13 Generally, the framework (rather than the foundations) of mathematics given by the innovation of category theory may be seen as

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a nod in the direction of presentational symbolism, but, all in all, we must acknowledge that mathematics in its current practice is almost entirely speakable. Think of some of the beautifully suggestive notations from elementary calculus: we still learn to say, for instance, “the integral of f with respect to x over the interval from a to b” when presented with the appropriate symbols, although integration is intrinsically an essentially visual process. Our point here is to affirm the difference between speaking and seeing. Speaking depends on hearing, and hearing is predominantly a matter of a sequence of events in time. Sight, in contrast, is more of an exercise in simultaneity. Mathematics today is much more like speaking. Certainly it is possible to do mathematics in a more presentational way, even if its current systematization is strongly discursive. One might even argue, as one may plausibly suppose Plato was doing in his metaphor of the Divided Line in the Republic, that the discursive is ultimately not the better way to proceed, that we should be working toward the presentational. Conceivably this is how mathematics will someday go. With this in mind—and here we can only speak with a modicum of speculative audacity—it is possible that Whitehead’s general conception of mathematics, and in particular his conception of vector mathematics, may one day be considered not only relevant, but visionary.

Notes 1

To put it succinctly, V is an additive group with respect to addition of vectors. See Valenza 1993 for an elementary group-theoretic approach to the vector-space axioms. 2 By ordered pair we just mean to indicate, for instance, that the pair (2, 7) differs from the pair (7, 2). 3 This involves, for instance, the existence of certain limits as required by the theoretical foundations of calculus. 4 For these ideas, one needs a so-called inner product space, and for this construction the scalars must come from the real or complex numbers. 5 While this point about the term scalar does make sense in terms of its current usage, one needs to be a little careful about its historical origins: see Crowe 1967, 31. 6 See Henry 1993, 19 for a beautiful discussion of these matters using somewhat different language. 7 Two sets are said to be of the same cardinality if there exists a one-to-one correspondence between them. For finite sets this amounts to saying that they have the same number of elements. 8 See Spivak 1965, for an especially elegant treatment. 9 See Dawson’s article in this volume for an extensive discussion of UA, its reception, and its particular relationship to Grassmann. 10 Hecke 1923, 17 (my translation). 11 See Henry and Valenza 1993a and 1993b for a more technical treatment of these issues. 12 See the biographical entry on Einstein in this volume for the development of this problem and its relationship to Whitehead’s philosophical position. 13 When considered in the context of this section, Whitehead’s participation in the entirely discursive exercise of PM is striking for its irony.

Foundations of Mathematics and Logicism Ivor Grattan-Guinnessi We have found it necessary to give very full proofs, because otherwise it is scarcely possible to see what hypotheses are really required, or whether our results follow from our explicit premises. (Principia Mathematica, Vol. 1 (1910), vi) Emphatically I do not mean a neat little set of experiments to illustrate Proposition I and then the proof of Proposition I, a neat little set of experiments to illustrate Proposition II and then the proof of Proposition II, and so on to the end of the book. Nothing could be more boring. (Whitehead, Aims of Education, 5)

1. The Content and Character of Logicism This paper focuses on Whitehead’s philosophical stance developed and held in the context of his collaboration with Bertrand Russell in the writing of Principia Mathematica between 1902 to around 1911; we will also add some remarks on his subsequent interest in mathematical education, and his 1934 paper on logic. For general references to the theme of this paper see Russell Papers, especially Volumes 1-4, 6 and 8; Mays 1959; Lowe 1985 and 1990; GrattanGuinness 2000; Code 1985; Gaeta 2002; and Griffin 2003. The key event for both Whitehead and Russell was the International Congress of Philosophy held in Paris in August 1900, where they learnt of the logical system that had been developed by Giuseppe Peano, and its applications in expressing mathematical theories. Whitehead’s initial reaction was to study the propositional calculus and Cantor’s set theory from various algebraic points of view; in particular, he treated the calculus as a Boolean algebra, and tried out factorising formulae and using group or invariant theory. However, no more general aim or scheme emerged. By contrast, by 1901 Russell converted Peano’s approach into a general philosophy of mathematics (to be explained shortly), which he outlined in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). The task of producing a formalised symbolic version of this position was mammoth, beyond the capacity of one person. Hence, Whitehead’s natural interest in Russell’s progress gradually turned into collaboration. This collaboration began sometime between 1901 and 1902, and continued until the completion of the manuscript of the first three volumes of Principia Mathematica in the autumn of 1909, and to some extent during the years of its publication (1910-1913) by Cambridge University Press. Although their contacts were close—quite a lot of letters survive in the Bertrand Russell Archives in McMaster University, Canada, and they spend some periods of

i Middlesex University at Enfield, Queensway, Middlesex EN3 4SF, England; [email protected].

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time together—Russell seems to have taken most or all of the major philosophical decisions, and Whitehead apparently agreed with them. The main features of the philosophical programme presented in Principia Mathematica are stated in the following seven clauses: 1) They put forward the “logicist” position (to use the normal modern word, which is due to Rudolf Carnap (1929)), that “all” mathematics can be obtained from “logical” objects and devices alone. 2) This logic was mathematical logic, the propositional and multi-order predicate calculi with quantification of variables over individuals, propositional functions and relations, sets, and propositions. Cantorian set theory was subsumed within this logic by defining a set as the collection of objects satisfying some propositional function. 3) They used the theory of definite descriptions as the means especially for defining singlevalued mathematical functions in terms of propositional functions contextually within a proposition. 4) The construction of mathematics started out with an elaboration of set theory itself, much within the account of mathematical logic. Then they founded arithmetic on the (contextual) definition of integers as sets of equipollent sets and moved on not only to rational and irrational numbers but also to Cantor’s theory of infinitely large cardinal and ordinal numbers. Whitehead was due to handle parts of some branches of geometry in a fourth volume of Principia Mathematica. He was to build it upon a logicist theory of both geometry and the construction of space based upon the (non-logical) notion of events. He had outlined this approach in some detail in a long paper (1906a), where he made great use of the logic of relations. In the end, however, the fourth volume never appeared, although by 1917 he had written quite a lot of it (Harrell 1988). 5) Unfortunately the unrestricted use of logic and set theory led to paradoxes of various kinds. The most famous was Russell’s own, concerning the set of sets that do not belong to themselves; but there were others, such as the ancient Greeks’ liar paradox (“I am lying”) and several involving transfinite arithmetic or naming. By way of a solution, they proposed the theory of types, later known as “ramified,” in which the ranges of propositions and propositional functions were stratified into orders and then into types by the criterion of the vicious circle principle (essentially by the kind of variables that were or were not quantified). 6) They followed the contemporary fashion of axiomatizing a (logico-) mathematical theory as fully as possible. But three of the axioms were dubious, as they readily acknowledged. The axiom of choice, found independently by Ernst Zermelo and Russell in 1904, was a nonconstructive axiom essential for many mathematical purposes, especially in set theory and mathematical analysis; but its legitimacy was doubted, or at least reluctantly accepted, by many figures. (It posed a special difficulty for logicism, since it posited an infinitude of selections of members from classes whereas the underlying logic was finitary.) The axiom of infinity was needed to furnish the infinite sets upon which much of the mathematics depended. Finally, the axiom of reducibility was an ad hoc reduction assumption adjoined to the theory of types; it was

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needed to make the mathematics coherent, for without it, for example, four could not be added to seven fifths. 7) Around 1899, under the influence of his friend G.E. Moore, Russell adopted with enthusiasm an empiricist and positivist position in epistemology in general. One of its effects on logicism was that the axiom of infinity had to be an empirical assumption about the infinitude of individuals, because they could hardly be construed as logical objects. For this uncomfortable reason Russell decreed that it be used only when necessary; but Whitehead forgot this and used it liberally in Part III on cardinal arithmetic. He noticed only in 1911, when the second volume of Principia Mathematica was in proof; its publication was delayed for several months while he made difficult modifications. For a positivist orientation, the status of propositions and propositional functions is also unclear: are they fragments of language, or some things more abstract? Principia Mathematica is not clear on the matter, and the question worried Russell more than Whitehead.

2. Whitehead’s Contributions to the Collaboration In writing the book, they divided it into Parts and then into Sections. One of them would carry out the initial basic account of a Section, which was then read and discussed with the other, and so on back and forth. Russell seems to have written out the whole final text for the printer; after publication they destroyed the manuscript. The table at the end of this article indicates the range of material covered. As for Whitehead’s role, he devised the majority of the notations. He also seems to have taken initial responsibility for much of the first chapter of the introduction, which dealt with the basic logic and set theory, though most of the notions described there were due to Russell. He handled Part III on “Cardinal Arithmetic,” several portions of Part V on “Series” and most of Part VI on “Quantity.” This last Part appears to be a rather scrappy ensemble of real-line analysis and vector algebra; much of it was prepared with the needs of the geometry volume in mind. There we would have found a Part on geometry divided into four Sections: on the “projective,” “descriptive” and “metrical” branches, the first two Sections doubtless guided by two of Whitehead’s earlier tracts, (1906b and 1907); and a “Construction of space” presumably elaborating upon the presentation in the paper (1906a). Whitehead’s apparent agreement with “all” the mathematics of 4) seems surprising, since the range of mathematics actually to be covered is unclear. For example, while much of the apparatus of mathematical analysis was laid out, most of that theory was not attempted at all; in particular, not a word is said on the differential and integral calculus or on complex-variable analysis, although all the preparatory material seems to be there. Again, only parts of geometry were to be presented, but not differential geometry, to mention one important part. Furthermore, no applied mathematics was to be treated. Such topics had received some, albeit rather light, attention in Russell’s Principles; why none at all in Principia Mathematica? And what about algebras of various (abstract, linear, and especially for the author of Universal algebra of 1898, Grassmann algebras), which were not treated in the Principles but lay close to the heart of

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Whitehead, an algebraist by inclination (as he implicitly confirmed in a late essay of 1939 (1947, 75-86))? One might expect that Whitehead, the better mathematician of the two, would have worried about these silences. Maybe the answer lies in the implicational form in which Russell cast logicism. For him all mathematical statements took the form “if p, then q,” where p and q were propositions, and where both were required by logicism to contain only logical constants and permitted variables and functions of quantification only if necessary. Unhelpfully he called propositions of that logical form “pure mathematics,” which has no necessary connections with the traditional sense of being free from applications to the physical world, where indeed the same form is often used. While Whitehead did not follow Russell is using “pure” constantly in this sense, he seems to have accepted the implicational form of logicism, perhaps because of its attendant emphasis on variables mentioned in 2). He advocated their importance strongly; they were “the key which unlocks the whole subject” of the philosophy of mathematics as expressed in Russell’s Principles. Further, “the generalised conception of the variable and of its essential presence in all mathematical reasoning” led to a situation “which empties mathematics of everything but its logic” (1911b 234, 237; cf. 239). For in terms of variables propositional functions could be specified, and themselves be the variable arguments of functions of functions, and so on up through the orders and types along with the pertinent quantifications of some variables. The contents of the antecedents or consequents in implications, be they concerned with numbers (say) or with viscous fluids, could be ignored. When the second edition of Principia Mathematica was mooted in the early 1920s Whitehead was initially enthusiastic, and suggested to Russell some revisions; but in the end he played no role in the writing of the new preface and three new articles. Indeed, he stated his noninvolvement publicly and rather pointedly in Mind (1926); maybe he disliked the measure of extensionality that Russell had adopted in the revisions. However, in the 1930s Whitehead sketched out a new logical system in a difficult paper (1934) that took “indication” as a new basic concept (“Ec!x,” meaning “behold x”) and thereafter imitated Principia Mathematica in its definitions and main results. While ingenious in its constructions, it is philosophically rather incoherent apart from some origins in his process philosophy. It is not a form of logicism, since indication cannot be construed as logical. I shall not consider it further, as it received very little reaction and seems to be limited in its mathematical scope. In particular, his graduate student of that time, W.V.O. Quine, dutifully spoke about the paper to the American Mathematical Society (Quine 1934), but neither then nor later did he adopt either the approach adopted in Whitehead’s paper or the philosophy in general; Quine’s logical work was much more close in philosophical spirit to Russell’s positivism, though with some negative as well as positive influences.

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3. On Whitehead’s Later Uses of Logic and Logicism After Principia Mathematica both men turned to other concerns, and collaboration ceased. Their later careers in and around philosophy were very different. Russell developed a “logical positivism,” in which the Moorean spirit of 7) above was maintained, and devices from mathematical logic were used or adapted (in particular, definite descriptions, the notion of type theory, and the importance of relations). For him Principia Mathematica stated all that needed to be said for the philosophy of mathematics (or would have done if the volume on geometry had been written). By contrast, for Whitehead logicism was only a part, albeit a central one, of a broader philosophical picture of mathematics. He stated and defended logicism in various writings after 1913, most amply in 1916 when explaining “the organisation of thought.” In addition to stressing the high status given in Principia Mathematica to variables, the use made of relations of various kinds, and the place of set theory, he also divided the prosecution of the logicist programme into four stages: the “arithmetic,” concerning the propositional calculus; the “algebraic,” or predicate calculus with quantification and the theory of types; “general-function theory,” including set theory and definite descriptions; and the “analytic,” where “the investigation of the properties of special logical constructions” is conducted, so that “the whole of mathematics is included here” (1929, 163-170). However, in this later philosophy Whitehead made little use of the technical devices available from logicism, and also ignored Russell’s positivist rules. The most substantial appearance came from his handling of geometry and space, which from the late 1910s evolved into an extensive account of his own version of the new subject of general relativity theory. Later, especially in his process philosophy he even preferred a version of part-whole theory (sometimes expressed within set theory) to the greater range of relationships available in set theory itself, since “it seems possible that both these conceptions of time-part and space-part are fundamental; that is, are concepts expressing relations which are directly presented to us” (1929, 202). In Whitehead’s more general writings, logicism also played a modest role. For example, in his book An Introduction to Mathematics (1911a) he treated various basic theories but did not mention logicism at all. In an article (1911c) of the same time on “Mathematics” for the Encyclopaedia Britannica he did drew upon logic and set theory, indeed to a rather excessive extent given the space available; but he also included some remarks on applied mathematics as normally understood (and even commented on the history of mathematics), and his main point was to stress that mathematics involved more than number and quantity, not to claim that all of it was reducible to mathematical logic. The scope of Whitehead’s vision for mathematics comes out clearly in a rather neglected part of his thought that emerged in the mid 1910s, after his appointment to a professorship at

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Imperial College in the University of London—mathematical education. He published various articles in and around this topic, and served from 1915 to 1916 as President of the Mathematical Association, the British national society for mathematics teachers. He reprinted some of this material, together with his recent general philosophical papers, as the book The Organisation of Thought (1917); six of these essays re-appeared, along with further educational writings, in the book The Aims of Education (1929). In an essay of 1912 Whitehead stated that “we have to teach what logic is,” but under the assumption that boys “feel by an acquired instinct what it means to be logical, and to know a precise idea when they see it” and that “logic applies to life,” not that teachers “should indulge in the somewhat futile task of affixing names to elementary logical processes after the manner of primers of formal logic” (1947, 132; girls, it seems, were to look after themselves). More broadly, in his paper on the “organisation of thought” quoted above, he also stressed that “One great use of the study of logical method is not in the region of elaborate deduction, but to guide us in the study of the formation of the main concepts of science,” such as geometry (1929, 175). To sum up, Whitehead’s philosophy of mathematics (and of science in general) gave a major place not only to the epistemological justification of mathematical knowledge but also to its creative side, both in research and also in some kinds of imitation in education. Logicism was an important necessary condition for fulfilling these aims, but not a sufficient one. The two quotations at the head of this article do not exhibit a contradiction in Whitehead’s thought, but relate to different aspects of his broad philosophy of mathematics.

4. Table: Summary by Sections of Principia Mathematica The numbers of pages are from the first edition. Volume 2 started at Section IIIA, Volume 3 at Section VD. The titles of the Parts, and numbers of pages (omitting the introductions) were: I. “Mathematical logic” (251); II. “Prolegomena to cardinal arithmetic” (322); III. “Cardinal arithmetic” (296); IV. “Relation-arithmetic” (210); V. “Series” (490); VI. “Quantity” (257).

Section; pages

(Short) “Title” or Description: Other included topics

IA: *1-*5; 41

“Theory of deduction”: Propositional calculus, axioms

IB: *9-*14; 65

“Theory of apparent variables”: Predicate calculus, types, identity, definite descriptions

IC: *20-*25; 48

“Classes and relations”: Basic calculi: empty, non-empty and universal

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ID: *30-*38; 73

“Logic of relations”: Referents and relata, Converse(s)

IE: *40-*43; 26

“Products and sums of classes”: Relative product

IIA: *50-*56; 57

“Unit classes and couples”: Diversity; cardinal 1 and ordinal 2

IIB: *60-*65; 33

“Sub-classes” and “sub-relations”: Membership, marking types

IIC: *70-*73; 63

“One-many, many-one, many-many relations”: Similarity of classes

IID: *80-*88; 69

“Selections”: Multiplicative axiom, existence of its class

IIE: *90-*97; 98

“Inductive relations”: Ancestral, fields, “posterity of a term”

IIIA: *100-*106; 63

“Definitions of cardinal numbers”: Finite arithmetic, assignment to types

IIIB: *110-*117; 121

“Addition, multiplication and exponentiation” of finite cardinals: Inequalities

IIIC: *118-*126; 112

“Finite and infinite”: Inductive and reflexive cardinals,
0, axiom of infinity

IVA: *150-*155; 46

“Ordinal similarity”: Small “relation-numbers” assigned to types

IVB: *160-*166; 56

“Addition” and “product” of relations: Adding a term to a relation, likeness

IVC: *170-*177; 71

“Multiplication and exponentiation of relations”: Relations between sub-classes, laws of relation-arithmetic

IVD: *180-*186; 38

“Arithmetic of relation-numbers”: Addition, products and powers

VA: *200-*208; 97

“General theory of series”: Generating relations, “correlation of series”

VB: *210-*217; 103

“Sections,

segments,

stretches”:

Derived

series,

Dedekind

continuity VC: *230-*234; 58

“Convergence” and “limits of functions”: Continuity, oscillation

VD: *250-*259;107

“Well-ordered series”: Ordinals,” their inequalities, well-ordering theorem

VE: *260-*265; 71

“Finite and infinite series and ordinals”: “Progressions,” “series of alpehs”

VF: *270-*276; 52

Compact, rational and continuous series: Properties of sub-series

VIA: *300-*314; 105

“Generalisation of number”: Negative integers, ratios and real numbers

VIB: *330-*337; 58

“Vector-families”:

“Open

families,”

vectors

as

magnitudes VIC: *350-*359; 50

“Measurement”: Coordinates, real numbers as measures

VID: *370-*375; 35

“Cyclic families”: Non-open families, such as angles

directed

Order and Change: The Memoir “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World” Luca Gaetai Le cose tutte quante hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma che l’universo a Dio fa simigliante (Dante, Paradiso I, 103-105).† In the middle of a difficult decade of work, during which the monumental achievement of Principia Mathematica was completed, Whitehead delivered before the Royal Society a valuable memoir dealing with “the mathematical investigation of various possible ways of conceiving the nature of the material world” (MCMW, 65). The memoir was received in September 1905, and read later in December. Whitehead had not previously published on the topic, nor would he within the next ten years. In despite of this, MCMW was tightly connected to his research programme as sketched in 1912: During the last twenty-two years I have been engaged in a large scheme of work, involving the logical scrutiny of mathematical symbolism and mathematical ideas. This work had its origin in the study of the mathematical theory of Electromagnetism, and has always had as its ultimate aim the general scrutiny of the relations of matter and space.1 As we shall see, the problem of the action between distant bodies is the source of Whitehead’s suspicion of Cartesian physical views, as they were developed according to Newtonian mechanism. Once nature had been divided into separate classes of points, instants and particles, there was no way, Whitehead thought, to restore the relatedness of the material world that we perceive. What needs clearing up is the definite import of the conceptual partitions between space, time, and matter that were introduced during centuries of scientific advancement. Though the use of some scientific terms had become established, and almost unavoidable, the meanings attached to them needed to be revised in order to take new phenomena into account. Such a task is beyond the abilities of any single person. Nevertheless, since the beginning of his career, Whitehead held that mathematics allows the substitution of human thought by the manipulation of conventional signs which, in turn, serve as substitutes for things and their properties.2 Mathematics functions as a mirror of the world, at least of the ordered part of it. The manipulation of signs, according to fixed rules, shadows the course of natural events. On the other hand, mathematicians proceed inductively, seeking the simplest generalizations that will both make individual theories more coherent and provide means of connecting previously

i Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione, Via Bonardi 3, 20133 Milano (Italy); [email protected].

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disparate theories. It was the power of mathematical abstraction and simplification that Whitehead sought to harness in his own work.3 MCMW can be read as the opening of a stream of thought that leads to Whiteheadian philosophy of science. However, the actual purpose of the memoir was to show how geometry is supposed to work when applied to the material world. An improvement of an abstract model of correspondence between mathematical language and observed nature should, in Whitehead’s view, pave the way for the subsequent unification of both geometry and physics. Therefore, the theoretical model of MCMW is not really concerned with the choice between different concepts of the material world. The variety of concepts is of the essence of the hypothetical reasoning as extended to mathematical physics. The final choice must be left to experimental verification, unless the logical scrutiny has revealed some inconsistency affecting the internal structure of the concepts. The following account will stress the epistemological import of the memoir, as well as the variety of intellectual streams that Whitehead synthesized. In addition, the multiple purposes enclosed in this dense masterpiece, variously stated by the author, need to be disentangled. Concerning the historical circumstances of the memoir, I will refer often to the thorough work of Ivor Grattan-Guinness.4

1. The Scientific Context of the Memoir MCMW drew upon at least three lines of research, all of which sought to demonstrate the fundamental cohesion of scientific knowledge. These are, roughly speaking: the subordination of mathematics to formal logic, the axiomatization of geometry, and the unification of physical laws.

1.1. Russell’s Logicism and the Theory of Relations The first of these, in the words of Bertrand Russell, maintained that: all pure mathematics deals exclusively with concepts definable in terms of a very small number of fundamental logical concepts, and […] all its propositions are deducible from a very small number of fundamental logical principles (Russell 1903, xv). In fact, it is doubtful that Whitehead completely subscribed to logicism. The idea that mathematics could be nothing but a branch of logic is in a sharp contrast with Whitehead’s previous statement of mathematics as being “the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning” (UA, vi).5 However, Whitehead’s projected second volume of UA was set aside, and the fruitful co-operation between him and Russell began. Whitehead had perhaps realized that his second volume “did not have the mathematical or philosophical weight carried by Russell’s ambition, whose fulfilment would require too much effort for even that young man” (Grattan-Guinness 2002, 433). On the other hand, it is no surprise that the logical scrutiny of mathematics as a whole could appear to Whitehead as an end in itself. For many years, following Grassmann’s Ausdehnungslehre, he had investigated the general properties of algebra. His own results showed that, for instance, by assigning suitable spatial meanings to the

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symbols, a great number of geometrical propositions could be translated into algebraic language and fully elaborated through it. At the outset of the twentieth century, mathematicians became increasingly aware of the advancements of predicate logic. The symbolism adopted by Giuseppe Peano helped to bring greater attention to the work of Gottlob Frege. Russell was greatly excited when he discovered Peano’s mathematical logic at a congress held in Paris.6 Within the same year, he wrote the bulk of The Principles of Mathematics. Apart from its zealous advocacy of logicism, Russell’s book was a striking catalogue of what could be done with few logical concepts and principles. From Whitehead’s point of view, logic may have well appeared as the valuable formal language through which a higher level of mathematical generalization could be attained. In a sense, logic appeared to be more universal than algebra. Russell’s focus on the logic of relations is perhaps his most brilliant contribution to Whitehead’s intellectual development. It may be true that Whitehead “was born a relativist,” as Russell recalled a long time afterwards (Lowe 1985, 299), yet the logical treatment of relations gave to his natural bent a definite impulse whose relevance cannot be denied. Beginning from MCMW, relation became the fundamental category of Whitehead’s thinking, both mathematical and philosophical, until it was absorbed by the broader notion of process.7 Moreover, the analytical approach of his former pupil to highly controversial matters may have encouraged Whitehead to adopt it also, though more cautiously than Russell. This is perhaps the case for the primacy of atomic entities, which is essential to Russell’s theory of classes, and which dominates the first half of Whitehead’s memoir. Even the absoluteness of space, as opposed to Lotze’s theory,8 is defended by Russell on purely logical arguments.

1.2. Veblen’s System of Axioms for Geometry The axiomatization of geometry was undertaken in its modern form by Moritz Pasch. His Vorlesungen über neuere Geometrie (1882) proposed a system of nuclear propositions about undefined concepts in terms of which all other geometrical concepts must be defined, and from which all other geometrical propositions must be deduced. Though Pasch’s nuclear propositions were still supposed to be empirical, he had developed “the prototype of an abstract science, which ignores the origin of its principles and does not care about the applicability of its conclusions” (Torretti 1978, 211). Pasch’s methods were soon adopted by Peano, who wrote the axioms of projective geometry in a formal language.9 His followers, namely Gino Fano, Mario Pieri, and Alessandro Padoa, stressed that the validity of a system of axioms ought not to depend on the particular meanings assigned to primitive terms such as “point” or “line.” David Hilbert’s Grundlagen der Geometrie appeared in 1899, and was a milestone of the scientific development: it made possible higher levels of comparison between the structures of different geometrical theories, and, against former intuitionalist theories, argued the hypothetical status of the axioms. In April 1903, Oswald Veblen presented to the American Mathematical Society a system of twelve axioms for Euclidean geometry. Veblen’s group of axioms presupposes “only the validity of the operations of logic and of counting” and is stated “in terms of a class of elements called ‘points’ and a relation among points called ‘order’” (Veblen 1904, 344). All remaining

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geometrical concepts are defined in terms of point and order. Whitehead was impressed by the idea of deriving geometry from a single triadic relation. The procedure could be easily translated into the logic he was elaborating together with Russell. Indeed, Veblen’s set of axioms is applied throughout MCMW. Each mathematical concept of the material world is endowed with a set of axioms, according to the varying properties of the fundamental relation of order. Euclidean geometry is then derived from each set of axioms. Instead of providing for the treatment of both projective and metric geometry, as Veblen did, Whitehead dealt exclusively with the former. Metrical ideas are not found in MCMW. The omission may be due to the primacy Whitehead accorded to the notion of order, as opposed to measure, for conceiving of the material world. The preface of his contemporary tract on projective geometry includes among “the triumphs of modern mathematical thought” (APG, v) the theorems by which it is proved that “numerical coordinates, with the usual properties, can be defined without the introduction of distance as a fundamental idea” (APG, v). In the same book geometry is defined as “the science of cross classification,” whose system “dominates all external existence” (APG, 5). From Poncelet to von Staudt, projective geometry had lost many of the original links to perspective view. The character of new entities such as the point at infinity eludes even graphical representation. Accordingly, spaces which are based on projective elements are almost impossible to grasp intuitively. Moreover, Whitehead knew that points and lines are interchangeable, inasmuch as the theorems of plane projective geometry are true of the plane whether we regard it as a set of points grouped in lines or as a set of lines grouped in points. MCMW may be viewed as the extension of the so-called “principle of duality” to threedimensional space.

1.3. Maxwell’s Theory of Electromagnetism Whitehead was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, since the autumn of 1880. During this period, James Clerk Maxwell was reaching the height of his fame and he was teaching at Cambridge10 when the Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism appeared in 1873. However, “the impact of the Treatise was at first muted, and at the time Maxwell’s reputation rested largely on his work on molecular physics and gases” (Harman 1998, 1). It was only after his death in 1879 that the theory of the electromagnetic field received experimental confirmation and “came to be regarded as one of the most fundamental of all physical theories” (Harman 1998, 1). The successful unification of electric, magnetic and luminous phenomena had contributed significantly to the goal of unifying all natural knowledge. The young Whitehead, who had attended lectures on both pure and applied mathematics, wrote his fellowship dissertation (now lost) on the theory of electromagnetism.11 Three years later, he published a paper on the motion of viscous incompressible fluids (Whitehead 1888). As a matter of fact, Maxwell’s first paper about the theory of the electromagnetic field had developed the physical analogy between magnetic lines of force and the flow of an incompressible fluid in tubes of varying section (Maxwell 1856). The analogy showed that the already known hydrodynamics equations could suitably represent the intensity of the electromagnetic force. Maxwell also assumed the primacy of Faraday’s lines of force, though in

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his subsequent works he insisted that a mechanical model of the ether was required in order to explain electromagnetic induction and the generation of electric currents. The man who had turned Faraday’s physical ideas into elegant mathematical equations never got rid of the mechanical mentality he had inherited. Whitehead, on the other hand, grew up without such a mentality. Just as the mathematics was no longer being based on quantitative ideas, so the mechanical paradigm was questioned by the rise of field as a basic concept. In addition, the development of vector physics, to which Grassmann and Hamilton had contributed ante litteram,12 had great formative influence on Whitehead. It is not too surprising, from our modern point of view, that both MCMW and Einstein’s first account of the theory of relativity (Einstein 1905) were written in the same year. Physics has always been the horizon of Whitehead’s mathematical research.13 Is the notion of field, as applied to the logic of relations, really extraneous to the same notion as referred to contiguous elements of the space in the neighbourhood of the electric or magnetic bodies? The answer to such question is intimately bound up with philosophical interpretations of MCMW.

2. The Contents of MCMW 2.1. An Essay of Mathematical Cosmology It is not an easy task to point out the purpose of the memoir. Whitehead himself gives different statements in the introductory section. On the other hand, different disciplines are intertwined, or else amalgamated into a new one. From an overall viewpoint, the memoir turns on the connection between the material world and its mathematical concepts. The material world is defined as “a set of relations and of entities which occur as forming the ‘fields’ of these relations” (MCMW, 466). It is plain that “material world” is the name given to an implicit cosmological theory dealing with both relations and entities. That is, the phrase does not refer to the physical world itself. On the other hand, a mathematical concept of the material world is a “complete set of axioms, together with the appropriate definitions and the resulting propositions” (MCMW, 466). The whole frame is therefore expressive of a definite mathematical theory about a vaguely stated cosmological theory. Mirroring the intuitive description of the cosmological concepts, five mathematical concepts are then developed by assuming the essential relation of order between points as the argument of the various sets of axioms. The mathematical concepts also possess the property that the theorems of Euclidean geometry can be deduced from each complete set of axioms and of definitions. As a consequence, the connection between the cosmological theory and the corresponding mathematical theory is such that different interpretations of the primitive terms do not affect the validity of Euclidean geometry as expressing the fundamental properties of space. Since the axioms settle the formal relation of order holding between points, the notion of order is supposed to be the connecting link between cosmological thought and mathematical reasoning. At any rate, such epistemological ideas are left unquestioned. The pattern of correspondence is purely hypothetical.14

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Along with mathematical concepts of the material world, two alternative theories of space are considered. The absolute theory of space, tailored to the requirements of pure mechanics, dominates both Concepts I and II. According to Whitehead, the theory means at least that points without extension are the real entities constituting space. That is, points exist apart from both particles of matter and instants of time. The relative theory of space is termed “Leibnizian.” Euclidean points are dropped, while the name “point” is referred to a bundle of linear entities which are neither spatial nor material in nature. Rather than absolute essences, space and matter are modes of relating the same primitive entities. Far from being timeless, relative space is altered from instant to instant. In a Leibnizian15 concept of the material world, the essential relation always includes linear entities as well as an instant of time. It is a momentary relation of order, resulting in “a protest against exempting any part of the universe from change” (MCMW, 467). Whitehead proves Euclidean geometry to be sound for each of the Leibnizian Concepts III, IV and V. Hence space can be Euclidean without the further postulation of either the atomicity of points or their absolute separation from time.16 This task was accomplished by suitably chosen geometrical means, namely the theory of intersection points (or interpoints) and the theory of dimensions. The development of such theories, which is proposed as “the main object of the memoir” (MCMW, 466),17 occupies several pages, even though both theorems and proofs are written in the concise language of Principia Mathematica.

2.2. Spaces, Relations, Entities The concepts of the material world can be grouped differently depending on the type of space, the class of fundamental relations, and the kind of entities which are considered. Space is either absolute or relative in the above sense. The class of fundamental relations always includes (i) a polyadic relation R which is called the “essential relation;” (ii) the time-relation holding between instants; and (iii) a set of additional relations containing at least one member. The entities form the fields of the fundamental relations, so that the cosmological theory referred to in the previous section at least means that every entity of the material world bears some kind of relation to other entities. However, no hint can be found that relatedness precedes individual existence as far as the primitive entities are concerned. The whole class of the entities is named the class of the “ultimate existents.” The class includes all the instants of time together with the sub-class of the “objective reals.” Both points and particles are objective reals, yet Whitehead adds a third kind of entity, “the lines of force of the modern physicist” (MCMW, 482). The so-called “linear objective reals” are never found together with points, though they coexist with particles in Concept IVA. (See Table 1 attached infra.) Concept I is a rough account of Newtonian cosmology in which the influence of Russell’s analytical manner is clearly present. The concept is “punctual,” since the class of the objective reals includes points instead of linear entities. It is also “dualistic” as far as the same class includes both points and particles. The essential relation R holds between points, whereas an indefinite number of “extraneous” triadic relations are required holding between each material particle, a point, and an instant of time. Such triadic relations, determining the position of

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particles, are “extraneous,” as are the points and particles between them: “relations between strangers” could be a good paraphrase of the term. Indeed, in the “classical” concept space is absolute. It lies apart completely independent of time, matter, change and motion, perfect in its beauty as revealed in geometry. “Unfortunately,” Whitehead writes ruefully, “it is a changing world to which the complete concept must apply” (MCMW, 479). That is why, he supposed, a separate class of atomistic particles had to be introduced as a necessary substratum for change and perception. Whitehead seems to consider both particles and their extraneous relations to points as awkward remedies for the embarrassing disagreement between the competing claims of logic and experience. From a physical point of view atomicity is best suited to mechanical explanation, though the evidence of actions between distant bodies forces the supposition of an ether filling all space. Instead of multiplying entities in order to keep the absoluteness of space, Whitehead aimed at a more streamlined account of the entities needed for any physical theory: ether is no longer divorced from space, and a different way of conceiving the entities may result in a monistic concept of the material world, with no ultimate ontological barriers between space, time and matter. Concept II gives monistic form to the classical concept in which the particles are abolished. Nothing is left to be perceived but dyadic relations holding between points and instants. This is hardly a concept of the material world. It is in fact an ironic remark that absolute space is much more rooted than matter in the classical concept. As Russell boldly wrote: “it is plain that the only relevant function of a material point is to establish a correlation between all moments of time and some points of space” (Russell 1903, 468). If a choice is necessary between space and matter, so much the worse for matter. The remaining concepts increasingly alter the “classical” assumptions on absolute space, punctual entities, and indefinite extraneous relations without questioning the validity of Euclidean geometry. Indeed, Concept III abandons the idea of absolute spatial position. Since the instants of time are members of the field of the essential relation, “R;(abct) may be read as stating the objective reals a, b, c are in the R-order abc at the instant t” (MCMW 480). Though still composed of punctual entities, which can be either particles of ether or moving points, space is no longer exempt from change. The pattern of the entities which constitute space can vary from instant to instant. As a consequence, the notion of matter as a substratum for change becomes irrelevant. Bodies are simply volumes, and different volumes are defined by some peculiarity of the motion of the ether/points. The rule of change to which a set of punctual entities is subject identifies the latter as a body. In short, bodies resemble waves. What we recognize when looking at a single wave on the sea, for instance, is the persistence of a certain type of motion in a fluid which is continuously changing. However, a slight variant of this concept results if “the persistence is that of the same objective reals in the same special type of motion” (MCMW, 482). The whole class of the objective reals is composed of moving points or ether particles. The specific advance of Concept III, compared to Concept I, is that space and matter become indistinguishable. Instead of many extraneous relations determining the position of each particle of matter, a single tetradic relation S of orthogonal intersection is required which holds between

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three straight lines at any instant of time. In so doing, a system of reference is provided in order to define both velocity and acceleration. According to Whitehead’s early notion of time, “corresponding to any instant t in the fourth term, there is one and only one line for each of the other terms respectively” (MCMW, 481). This is to say that an absolute system of kinetic axes is associated to each instantaneous space of Concept III. As relations between points change in time, so the axes are subject to translation. The continuity of motion, in spite of the atomicity of time, rests on the assumption that different spaces at different times bear similar structures of Cartesian axes. Concepts IVA and IVB enlarge the relativity of space by repealing the idea of points as primitive entities. Here the notion of a projective point becomes Whitehead’s model. The whole bundle of linear entities concurrent “at a point” is to be taken as the point proper. Points are “knots of relatedness,” according to Enzo Paci’s beautiful description (1965, 57). Networks of linear entities appear and disappear ceaselessly. As a consequence, “the points of one instant are, in general, different from the points of another instant” (MCMW 483). Linear objective reals, on the other hand, are enduring entities in a temporal sense as well as indivisible in a spatial sense. Concept IVA is dualistic. A class of particles is associated with both points and instants by means of triadic extraneous relations. Particles may be seen as plunged in a network of linear entities acting as lines of force. Accordingly, “the motion of the particles may be conceived to be influenced by that of the linear objective reals, and vice versa” (MCMW 491). Since any two points (or bundles) have in common a linear entity, the particles of matter which occupy those points cannot be quite separated in a spatial sense, as long as space is the pattern of the linear entities. The problem of action at a distance is avoided, since, in a sense, there is no distance. Absolute separation becomes impossible. The unbroken relatedness of the linear entities is such that any point of space is bound up with every other point. The same spatial structure is found in Concept IVB, which is a monistic variant similar to Concept II. The notion of point as a complex is not without defect. Indeed, the definition of point as a bundle of lines concurrent at a point is circular. To overcome this tricky problem, the geometrical theory of interpoints is worked out. Though the use of terms such as “point” or “intersection” is avoided in its formal statement, the theory can be explained less rigorously as follow. The linear objective real a intersects the objective reals b, c, d in the order bcd at the instant t. The linear objective reals b, c, d are members of three different bundles or interpoints centred on a. That is, the three different interpoints have a single linear objective real in common which is a. The intersection order bcd holds whatever the members of the interpoints which are considered apart from a. In other words, the pentadic relation R;(abcdt) can be read as the statement that every member of any three interpoints upon a has a “similarity of position” with respect to the intersecting member a at the instant t. Accordingly, the intersection of four linear objective reals, as expressed by R;(abcdt), assigns a linear order to the interpoints. This relation of linear order is the essential relation R of both Concepts IV and V. In the respective systems of axioms it takes the place of the triadic relation between points, by the help of few additional definitions.

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Concept V is the simplest from a logical point of view, though its mathematical treatment is by far the most esoteric. The class of the extraneous relations is reduced to one member only, while the class of the ultimate existents includes only the instants of time together with the linear objective reals. Despite the logical simplicity of the scheme, Concept V is completely remote from intuition. As for Concept III, the corpuscles are to be taken as volumes defined by some peculiarity of motion of the objective reals. However, since the objective reals are linear instead of punctual entities, they pass the volumes and proceed at infinity. The distinction between a corpuscle and the surrounding field of force is no longer due to the nature of the respective ingredients. It is rather derivative from different patterns of relation between the same physical entities. In any case, Whitehead is faithful to the hypothetical approach of the memoir. The laws of motion of the linear objective reals are not actually sought, even if the hint is given that “[t]he endeavour to state such laws appears to reduce itself to rewriting with appropriate changes a chapter of any modern treatise of electricity and magnetism” (MCMW, 491-92). The points of Concept V are much more complicated than interpoints. From the outset Whitehead has in mind the physical analogy which is sketched in the final section of the memoir, where different types of points are associated with both negative and positive electrons as the component parts of a corpuscle. The harmonization of the most advanced concept of the material world with modern physical ideas required an increasing number of subatomic particles to be assumed without abandoning the primacy of the linear objective reals. Roughly speaking, different types of points were needed for physical reasons.18 The brilliant achievement of Concept V rests on the “theory of dimensions.” An abstract property of flatness is defined that applies to classes of straight lines in a three-dimensional space. A special case of flatness, which is termed “homaloty,” is then referred to classes of linear objective reals and the notion of “cogredience” is developed as expressing the idea of parallelism. By the aid of three axioms introduced on purpose, the relation of interpoints to points is stated. According to the axioms, a point can contain both a secant and a nonsecant part. The secant part of a point is made up either of one or of several interpoints, while the nonsecant part of it, if present, is a single flat stream of linear objective reals concurrent at infinity. Such baroque architecture is the point of Concept V. As a further step, a point-ordering relation is defined holding between three points and an instant of time. In fact, the relation is the projection of the linear order between three interpoints upon the objective real x (as defined through the theory of interpoints) on three points upon the objective real a, not intersecting x, according to the “universal preservation of order by ranges in perspective on a pair of lines” (MCMW, 509). Finally, Whitehead proves that the point-ordering relation of Concept V has the same properties as the essential relation R of Concept I. Hence, the ordinary Euclidean geometry holds of points, lines, and figures which, at the same time, may represent particles, trajectories and atoms in a physical sense.

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3. The Unfortunate Fate of MCMW Thirty years later, Whitehead still considered MCMW to be “the most original thing he had done.”19 Yet despite the remarkable synthesis it represents, the memoir was destined to oblivion. Not even the fame of the Principia Mathematica, written in the same formal language, could draw attention to it. In 1941, when Victor Lowe published his fundamental work on the development of Whitehead’s philosophy, Morris Cohen alone had referred in print to MCMW (1932). It was not until 1953 that the memoir was reprinted.20 There is no doubt that Lowe’s penetrating account paved the way for all subsequent interpretations of the memoir. His clear statement of the subject is coupled with suggestive links to the scientific advancements of the time. Also, the anachronistic attitude of tracing Whitehead’s metaphysics back to 1905 is wisely avoided. Though MCMW unquestionably presents the first Whiteheadian criticism of scientific materialism, the point is that “[t]he criticism is logical, not physical or philosophical.”21 In 1961 Wolfe Mays wrote the first article about MCMW. Mays considers both mathematical and physical issues at length, though the accent is placed on seeming adumbrations of Whitehead’s mature philosophy. It may be true that the axiomatic method of the memoir bears “a family resemblance” (Mays 1961, 258) to the philosophical method of PR. However, such recognition depends on the reader’s familiarity with PR: the memoir should be evaluated philosophically on its own terms, as much as possible, without reference to Whitehead’s later work.22 Lowe has rightly criticized Northrop’s statement that Concept V is likely to be “the metaphysical system which was stated in [Whitehead’s] technically modified English prose in Process and Reality.”23 On the contrary, he concurs with Bendall’s statement that “it is just as harmful to overestimate the significance of [MCMW] to the development of Whitehead’s philosophy as it is detrimental to neglect it altogether.”24 Robert Andrew Ariel’s examination of MCMW points out the influence of the formal mathematical approach on Whitehead’s later thought.25 Following the above mentioned similarities with PR, he argues that Whitehead was always a philosopher, even in his early writings. In her 1975 article, Margaret O’Rourke Boyle applied the notion of “similarity of position,” on which the theory of interpoints rests, to her model of the spatial relationship between God and the universe (Boyle, 1975). During the last fifteen years, there has been renewed interest, from a mathematical perspective, in Whitehead’s early writings.26 However, MCMW seems to be generally neglected by scholars. The exception here is Ivor GrattanGuinness whose work provides a detailed historical background of the memoir, together with a versed exposition of the geometrical issues (Grattan-Guinness 2002). He also discusses some of the work’s limitations, with regard to mathematical axiomatization, mechanics and physics.

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4. Is there a Philosophical Strategy in View? If a philosophical strategy was hidden behind the cryptic symbols of MCMW, Whitehead did not divulge it. The mathematical investigation of the subject, he wrote, “has an indirect bearing on philosophy by disentangling the essentials of the idea of a material world from the accidents of one particular concept” (MCMW, 465). The accidents of the classical concept were summed up by dualism. As Lowe maintains: “Whitehead looks upon the dualism of points and particles as a challenge to theoretical thought. He was never happy with final, unrelieved dualisms” (Lowe 1985, 297). Accordingly, a philosophical strategy may be supposed which was aimed at, so to speak, “including space in matter” through the notion of bodies as permeable volumes. Concerning Whitehead’s possible philosophical strategy, let us make an analogy with Plato’s Timaeus. In order to provide a likely explanation of the relationship between the receptacle and the physical elements (Timaeus 48A-56C), Plato resorted to the most advanced geometrical methods of his time. The exhaustion of plane surfaces by means of triangles was due to Eudoxus of Cnidus, while Theætetus had discovered that regular polyhedrons were finite in number. Plato’s wonderful vision of the elements as different types of polyhedrons begins with the attribution of depth to bodies. But all bodies with depth are bound by plane surfaces, and plane surfaces are made of triangles. Two types of right triangles are selected as the ultimate entities which compose the five polyhedrons. In a quite analogous way, Whitehead summoned up the resources of both modern axiomatic and projective geometry to strengthen the physical idea of linear entities, neither spatial nor material in the usual meaning, as being the ultimate elements of the universe. This hypothetical strategy involves some kind of correspondence between mathematical theories and physical ideas. The relation of order makes the correspondence feasible. Indeed, the essential relation holds between the symbols occurring in the axioms of the mathematical concepts as well as between the ultimate existents of the physical concepts. In a sense it is the same relation, but what is then a relation within the theoretical frame of the memoir? Does a relation exist apart from its field? It was definitely beyond Whitehead’s resources to answer such questions in 1905. My assumption is that relations belong to unexplored meta-theoretical levels forming the vestibule of Whitehead’s epistemology.27 The direct contribution of MCMW to his intellectual development was due to the practice of axiomatization as a method for connecting different kind of theories. Thus, hypothetical reasoning became the characteristic mode of thought of the future philosopher.

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Table 1 Concepts Nr. I

Relations

Entities

Type

Essential

Extraneous

Field of R

Obj. Reals

Ultim. Existents

classical

triadic

indefinite triadic

points

points

points

particles

particles

Punctual

dualistic

instants II

monistic

triadic

indefinite dyadic

points

points

points instants

III

monistic

tetradic

one tetradic

points

Linear

leibnizian IV

dualistic

A

leibnizian

points

points

instants pentadic

instants

indefinite triadic

linear o.r.

linear

one tetradic

instants

particles

o.r. linear o.r. particles instants

IV

monistic

B

leibnizian

V

monistic leibnizian

pentadic

pentadic

indefinite dyadic

linear o.r.

one tetradic

instants

one tetradic

linear o.r. instants

linear o.r.

linear o.r. instants

linear o.r.

linear o.r. instants

Notes †

“All things that are have order/Among themselves, and it is this their form/That makes the universe a mirror of God.” 1 Letter to the dean of the University College London, in Lowe 1985, 155-56. 2 See UA, Book I, Chapter I, §§ 1-2, 5-6. 3 “By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race” (IM, 59). 4 See Grattan-Guinness 2002, § 3. 5 It is noteworthy that, while announcing his own treatment of Boolean logic in the second book, Whitehead adds “the results of this book are not required in any of the succeeding books” (UA, ix). 6 The first international congress of philosophy was held in Paris in August 1900, under the auspices of the Revue de métaphysique et de moral. See Grattan-Guinness 2002, 431. 7 As Whitehead wrote in a endnote of PNK, “the book is dominated by the idea that the relation of extension has a unique pre-eminence and that everything can be got out of it. During the development of the theme, it gradually became evident that this is not the case, and cogredience had to be introduced. But the true doctrine, that ‘process’ is the fundamental idea, was not in my mind with sufficient emphasis. Extension is derivative from process, and is required by it” (PNK, 202). 8 See Russell 1903, Chapter LI. 9 See Kennedy 1980.

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In 1871 Maxwell had accepted an offer from Cambridge to be the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. 11 See Russell 1959, 43. 12 See Crowe 1967. 13 Cf. Athearn 1997. 14 Whitehead still dress mathematical clothes, and “[t]he business of mathematics is simply to follow the rule” (UA, p. vi). Any investigation of the philosophical import of order would exceed the legitimate scope of mathematics. Indeed, the memoir shows how the primitive notion of order could be applied for connecting geometry to physics, whatever order may be apart from axiomatic definitions. 15 Whitehead knew the Leibnizian theory of space only through Russell 1900 and Couturat 1901. 16 It is worth noting that Whitehead never ceased to prefer Euclidean space in the subsequent years. At Harvard he tried to persuade Albert Einstein that the theory of general relativity should assume space to be Euclidean for philosophical reasons (see R, Part I, Chapter II). 17 The other parts of the memoir are “explanatory and preparatory […], though it is hoped that they will be found to have some independent value” (MCMW, 466). 18 Introducing Concept V, Mays noted: “it looks as if Whitehead first arrived at it by reference to electromagnetic theory rather than as a result of purely logical deliberations” (1961, 248). 19 The remark was made in a conversation with Lowe on December 2, 1936 (Lowe 1985, 296). 20 This is in the Anthology edited by Northrop and Gross (1953). 21 Lowe 1951, 35. The opinion is confirmed in Lowe 1962, 158 and Lowe 1985, 297. 22 See Gaeta 2002, 9. 23 Northrop 1961, xxii, in Lowe 1985, 332, note 16. 24 Bendall 1973, 3, quoted in Lowe 1985, 332 note 16. 25 Ariel 1974; cf. Gaeta 2002, 72-75. 26 See for example Henry and Valenza 1993. 27 Compare the relevance accorded to the inclusion relation in “La théorie relationniste de l’espace,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 23, 1916, 423-454.

Mathematical Features of Whitehead’s Point-free Geometry Giangiacomo Gerlai and Annamaria Mirandaii This paper is devoted to some mathematical considerations on the geometrical ideas contained in PNK, CN and, successively, in PR. Our main point will be to emphasize that these ideas give very promising suggestions for a modern point-free foundation of geometry.

1. Introduction Recently research in point-free geometry has received increasing interest in areas as diverse as computability theory, lattice theory, and computer science. The basic ideas of point-free geometry were firstly formulated by A. N. Whitehead in PNK and CN where the extension relation between events is proposed as a primitive. The points, the lines and all the “abstract” geometrical entities are defined by suitable abstraction processes. Indeed, as observed in Casati and Varzi 1997,1 the approach proposed in these books is a basis for a “mereology” (i.e. an investigation about the part-whole relation) rather than for a point-free geometry. Indeed, the inclusion relation is set-theoretical and not topological in nature and this generates several difficulties. As an example, the definition of point is unsatisfactory (see Section 6). So, it is not surprising that some years after the publication of PNK and CN, Whitehead in PR proposed a different approach in which the primitive notion is the one of connection relation. This idea was suggested in de Laguna 1922.2 The aim of this paper is not to give a precise account of geometrical ideas contained in these books but only to emphasize their mathematical potentialities. So, we translate the analysis of Whitehead into suitable first-order theories and examine these theories from a logical point of view. Also, we argue that multi-valued logic is a promising tool to reformulate the approach in PNK and CN. In the following we refer to first-order logic. If L is a first order language,
a formula whose free variables are among x1,…,xn and I an interpretation of L with domain S, then we write I

[d1,…,dn] to say
is satisfied in I by the elements d1,…,dn. Given a relation RSn, we say that R is defined by
or that R is the extension of
in I, provided that R = {(d1,…,dn): I

[d1,…,dn]}. For example, the extension of the formula r(r
xr
y) is the overlapping relation.

i Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università di Salerno, Via Ponte Don Melillo, Fisciano, 84084, Italy; [email protected].

ii Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università di Salerno, Via Ponte Don Melillo, Fisciano, 84084, Italy; [email protected].

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Giangiacomo Gerla and Annamaria Miranda

2. A Mathematical Formulation of the Inclusion Based Approach In PNK and CN one considers as primitives events and a binary relation named extension. Indeed, Whitehead says: The fact that event a extends over event b will be expressed by the abbreviation aKb. Thus 'K' is to be read ‘extends over' and is the symbol for the fundamental relation of extension. Moreover, Whitehead in PNK lists the following properties of the extension relation. Some properties of K essential for the method of extensive abstraction are, i) aKb implies that a is distinct from b, namely, 'part' here means 'proper part': ii) Every event extends over other events and is itself part of other events: the set of events which an event e extends over is called the set of parts of e: iii) If the parts of b are also parts of a and a and b are distinct, then aKb: iv) The relation K is transitive, i.e. if aKb and bKc, then aKc: v) If aKc, there are events such as b where aKb and bKc: vi) If a and b are any two events, there are events such as e where eKa and eKb. We adopt a slightly different notation which is related in a more strict way to recent research in point-free geometry. So, in accordance with PR, we use the word “region” instead of “event.” Also, we call inclusion relation the converse of the extension relation and we refer to the partial order
rather than to the strict partial order. In accordance, we can reformulate the list of properties proposed by Whitehead into a simple first order theory whose language L
contains only a binary relation symbol
. Definition 2.1. We call inclusion based point-free geometry the first order theory defined by the following axioms: (i) x(x
x) (reflexive) (ii) xyz ((x
zz
y)  x
y) (transitive) (iii) xxy(x
yy
x  x = y) (anti-symmetric) (iv) zxy(x