Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Science - What Does It Mean to be Human?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science - What Does It Mean to be Human?. Show all posts

Thursday, September 23, 2021

What Does It Mean to be Human? - Pachyderms, Podcasts & Process




Imago Dei:
Pachyderms, Podcasts & Process


The question was raised in class "What Does It Mean to be Human?" Certainly an appropriate question given that we were studying the evolution of man from a theistic-anthropological perspective. But next came the ready answer, "Man has podcasts, has built towering edifices across the face of the earth, has transcended into the skies, moon, planets and beyond. Elephants do not give podcasts. They eat grass, wander about, and are elephants doing elephant things."

"Well," I thought, "What is the truer imago dei of God? Man or Elephants?"

From the classical Christian definition and predominant human outlook of science and mankind in general, it seems God has only designated man in His image:

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that [ak]moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.


Now from what I gather in the verses above, man, like the animals, are to be vegetarians, sire progeny, and be what they are. More specifically, God made man and woman in His own image, which is the typical Christian understanding of humanity.

But I wonder, how is God's image in man alone and not in the earth and cosmos He created? It feels like an unnatural distinction to simply conclude God's image can only be found in mankind.

"Well," says the teacher, "And why not? We have been given morality, language, and culture!" This makes us superior to all other created things. It is our natural right to rule over the heavens and the earth!"

And again I wonder, "If man is so high on the scale of morality then why have so many cruel, murderous, and hellish, things been done in God's image? Is God cruel, murderous, and hellish in who He is?" It seems that if the earth becomes any more full of us it will perish under our weight. Is God the kind of God who is destructive and known as the "Destroyer of All Things?" I thought God was good, and kind, and loving. But in man's image God seems to be just the opposite.

And what about this language thing? Can man sing like the songbird in the morning? Can he whisper like the wind through the early morning boughs of spring? Can he call his children together as the ptarmigan her brood on the mountain top? Where is man's speech in the rainstorm, the fire, the deeps of the ocean, or the smallest mews of the kitten under the warmth of its mother? Are these not God's image too?

And finally, man is said to have the ability of culture... but in my experience it has been because of cultural differences we dislike each other, ostracize and discriminate against one another, even go to war with each other under the banners of personal rights, liberties, and holy destruction... all in the name of God though in all cases its in the name of ourselves claiming divine power in the face of human greed, sin and evil.



No sooner had I thought this things another speaks up in class blaming sin and evil on all things - that God's imago in man is marred by sin, distorted by evil, unmirroring the Divine One Himself!

"My, my," I thought, "Here's comes the old Christian canard of blaming sin for the want of God's image become an ugly thing in the transfer." Christianity makes convenient excuses for its theologies. This one runs to the top of the list for many. It gives every ready reason for every ugly thing done by humanity to one another and to this earth we were to caretake.

And so, I thought, "If God's image in man of morality, language, and culture is the highest achievable image of God in creation, then we're all screwed. God must admit a catastrophic FAIL in His divine modus operandi, back up, reset the clock (the Christian teaching of Tribulation, Armageddon, and fiery end of the earth), start over (a new heavens and earth), and learn from his mistake that love and freewill just don't go together. The equation was prejudiced to failure from the start."

All questions of the future aside, I don't think God made a mistake. It is our failure to hear God so one-sidely in Genesis as to think that man alone was created in God's image and none other. Tell me of one artist who paints, sculpts, welds, or builds, who doesn't put their whole self into a project? If it comes from the hand of the artist, then it comes all without division of character.

I don't think of God as dipolar, bipolar, or bearing a personality disorder of some kind. But I do think of man as always hearing things in a selfish, prideful, haughty way. To only think in Genesis that man alone bears God image is to put to fine a touch on the brush of the Master. God's painting of the cosmos does include His imago dei... ALL of it. From the least quark to the largest star. From the smallest cell to the largest biological organism. Man is not alone in God's image. God's image is everywhere we look.

So let us redefine the Imago Dei once and for all from a process Christian outlook rather than by the tired Christian outlook of morality, speech, and culture. Let us see God's image in terms of:

  • creativity
  • novelty
  • relationship and relationality
  • connectivity to all and all back to its parts
  • feelings of connection to one and all
  • feelings of relationship and relationality
  • the ability to respond, react, readjust to external stimuli
  • the ability to affect and be affected by environment
  • to change, to continue forward, to remember the past

In all these attitudes one may find the qualities of creation throughout the qualities of God. A God who is impassable in character but passable in relationship to creation. A God who is deemed Sovereign of the universe but in the ways of partnering with His creation towards divine outcome rather than coercive determination and breaking His own "rules" as set by classical thinking.

And less we have missed the obvious, the limitation of Christian philosophy has always been it's human centric view of the world rather than its process-centered thought of seeing creation - of which we are a part - in its fullness together granting us no greater distinction than any of its parts. We all, as a creative organism, are part of God's imago dei with none of its parts any greater or less greater than the rest of its parts, stamped by God's image.

And like the elephant which does not speak on podcasts but just is in its beingness to what it is in relation to its environment, I don't think man has yet to learn how to be like the elephant. To be. To be content in who we are. To live in relation to nature in a way that is restorative, natural, and unharming.

As evolutionary "superior" creatures I suspect our pride and me-centeredness only sees elephants and trees, colonies of ants and pods of whales, as aspects of isolated normalcies rather than as integral necessities to one another living in balance with the earth's entropy.

We take away from all when we lift our species up higher than it really is. But if, like God, we are generative, good, kind, partnering with each other and creation around us, we might just learn how to be. How to become. How to relax, contribute, and discover purpose in place.


R.E. Slater

September 23, 2021



"Elephants don't listen to Podcasts; they have better things to do"



* * * * * * * *


The Majesty of the Elephant


















Episode 2: The Gentle Giants,
The Elephant




Elephants are the largest land mammal currently in existence. There are two main species of elephant:

  • African elephant (Loxodonta Africana)
  • Asian elephant (Elephant maximus)

History

Both species of elephant can trace their lineage back approximately 7 million years ago when they branched out from the mammoth to the two species we know today. Another ancient elephant-like species, the American mastodon, branched off the elephant family tree over 26 million years ago.

African elephants once roamed the entire African continent and number over 27 million. Today, the African elephant is isolated in small pockets in Central and Southern Africa and number less than 500,000.

CURRENT RANGE OF AFRICAN ELEPHANTS






Asian elephants historically have had smaller populations, but once roamed most of Southern Asia. In 1900 it was estimated there were over 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, Asian elephants are isolated in small pockets within Southern Asia and number around 40,000 animals.


Facts

There are many physical differences between African and Asian elephants (see infographic).


Elephants are incredibly intelligent creatures. They have a wide range of emotions and their intellect is comparable to dolphins and primates other than humans. They have been documented in grieving for their dead, to showing joy, love, anger and other complex behaviors. Typically, elephants are found in a matriarchal society, or those dominated by females. Mature males typically are isolated or live in small bachelor groups and only venture into a family group during the breeding season.

Male elephants enter a periodic condition called musth. During this period, secretions are running down along the sides of the elephant’s head, out of their temporal glands, and is a time when the bull elephant is highly aggressive. The causes of musth are currently not known, and everyone should take extra cautious around an elephant in musth.

MALE ASIAN ELEPHANT IN MUSTH


A large male elephant can eat up to 150 lb (70 kg) of food per day. Both species are herbivores and eat a variety of plants, branches, leaves, and even tree bark. Tusks are used to help dig up roots are strip trees of their foliage. The elephant’s trunk has over 60,000 muscles and is used to help eat, drink, communicate, bathe, amongst other uses. Elephants are crucial for local ecosystems and have been known to spread seeds father than most any other animal.

Elephant Conservation

Asian elephants are classified as endangered with a decreasing population. African elephants are listed as vulnerable and on their way to endangered status. Both species are under threat mainly from human encroachment. African elephants are under severe threat due to poaching and now almost 27,000 elephants are killed a year for their ivory tusks.

POACHING STATISTICS


What Can You Do?
  • Never buy ivory. Never!
  • Great read about Mr. Lawrence Anthony, the Elephant Whisperer mentioned at the end of the podcast here.


Wednesday, September 8, 2021

R.E. Slater - In the Processual Beginning

 



In the Processual Beginning
by R.E. Slater


"And God said let there be process; and
God divided one process from another;
then God saw everything he had made,
and behold, it was very good. And the
evening and the morning were the first day."

"And behold, wherever man looked he saw process;
Then man said to himself let us divide one process
from another; and behold, it was very good. And the
era of ecohumanity and social justice commenced a
healing of processual processes for both man and God."


R.E. Slater
May 19, 2021
rev. September 8, 2021

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved






Process philosophy

[Illustrations added by R.E. Slater]

Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism,[1] defines processes in the ordinary everyday real world as its only basic or elementary existents. It treats other real existents (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as abstractions from, or ontological dependents on, processes. In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory (as argued by Parmenides) or accidental (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, classical ontology has posited ordinary world reality as constituted of enduring substances, to which transient processes are ontologically subordinate, if they are not denied. If Socrates changes, becoming sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, and devoid of primary reality, whereas the substance is essential.

Philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include HeraclitusFriedrich NietzscheHenri BergsonMartin HeideggerCharles Sanders PeirceWilliam JamesAlfred North WhiteheadMaurice Merleau-PontyThomas NailAlfred KorzybskiR. G. CollingwoodAlan WattsRobert M. PirsigRoberto Mangabeira UngerCharles HartshorneArran GareNicholas RescherColin WilsonTim IngoldBruno LatourWilliam E. Connolly, and Gilles Deleuze. In physics, Ilya Prigogine[2] distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.[3][4][original research?]

Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to Continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in Continental departments.[5] However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus Continental methods in contemporary philosophy.[6][7]

History

In ancient Greek thought

Heraclitus proclaimed that the basic nature of all things is change.

The quotation from Heraclitus appears in Plato's Cratylus twice; in 401d as:[8]

τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν
Ta onta ienai te panta kai menein ouden
"All entities move and nothing remains still"

and in 402a[9]

"πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει" καὶ "δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης"
Panta chōrei kai ouden menei kai dis es ton auton potamon ouk an embaies
"Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream"[10]

Heraclitus considered fire as the most fundamental element.

"All things are an interchange for fire, and fire for all things, just like goods for gold and gold for goods."[11]

The following is an interpretation of Heraclitus's concepts into modern terms by Nicholas Rescher.

"...reality is not a constellation of things at all, but one of processes. The fundamental "stuff" of the world is not material substance, but volatile flux, namely "fire", and all things are versions thereof (puros tropai). Process is fundamental: the river is not an object, but a continuing flow; the sun is not a thing, but an enduring fire. Everything is a matter of process, of activity, of change (panta rhei)."[12]

An early expression of this viewpoint is in Heraclitus's fragments. He posits strife, ἡ ἔρις (strife, conflict), as the underlying basis of all reality defined by change.[13] The balance and opposition in strife were the foundations of change and stability in the flux of existence.

Twentieth century

In early twentieth century, the philosophy of mathematics was undertaken to develop mathematics as an airtight, axiomatic system in which every truth could be derived logically from a set of axioms. In the foundations of mathematics, this project is variously understood as logicism or as part of the formalist program of David HilbertAlfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell attempted to complete, or at least facilitate, this program with their seminal book Principia Mathematica, which purported to build a logically consistent set theory on which to found mathematics. After this, Whitehead extended his interest to natural science, which he held needed a deeper philosophical basis. He intuited that natural science was struggling to overcome a traditional ontology of timeless material substances that does not suit natural phenomena. According to Whitehead, material is more properly understood as 'process'. In 1929, he produced the most famous work of process philosophy, Process and Reality,[14] continuing the work begun by Hegel but describing a more complex and fluid dynamic ontology.

Process thought describes truth as "movement" in and through substance (Hegelian truth), rather than substances as fixed concepts or "things" (Aristotelian truth). Since Whitehead, process thought is distinguished from Hegel in that it describes entities that arise or coalesce in becoming, rather than being simply dialectically determined from prior posited determinates. These entities are referred to as complexes of occasions of experience. It is also distinguished in being not necessarily conflictual or oppositional in operation. Process may be integrative, destructive or both together, allowing for aspects of interdependence, influence, and confluence, and addressing coherence in universal as well as particular developments, i.e., those aspects not befitting Hegel's system. Additionally, instances of determinate occasions of experience, while always ephemeral, are nonetheless seen as important to define the type and continuity of those occasions of experience that flow from or relate to them.


Whitehead's Process and Reality

Alfred North Whitehead began teaching and writing on process and metaphysics when he joined Harvard University in 1924.[15]

In his book Science and the Modern World (1925), Whitehead noted that the human intuitions and experiences of science, aesthetics, ethics, and religion influence the worldview of a community, but that in the last several centuries science dominates Western culture. Whitehead sought a holistic, comprehensive cosmology that provides a systematic descriptive theory of the world which can be used for the diverse human intuitions gained through ethical, aesthetic, religious, and scientific experiences, and not just the scientific.[3]

Whitehead's influences were not restricted to philosophers or physicists or mathematicians. He was influenced by the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), whom he credits along with William James and John Dewey in the preface to Process and Reality.[14]

Process metaphysics

For Whitehead, metaphysics is about logical frameworks for the conduct of discussions of the character of the world. It is not directly and immediately about facts of nature, but only indirectly so, in that its task is to explicitly formulate the language and conceptual presuppositions that are used to describe the facts of nature. Whitehead thinks that discovery of previously unknown facts of nature can in principle call for reconstruction of metaphysics.[16]

The process metaphysics elaborated in Process and Reality[14] posits an ontology which is based on the two kinds of existence of an entity, that of actual entity and that of abstract entity or abstraction, also called 'object'.[17]

Actual entity is a term coined by Whitehead to refer to the entities that really exist in the natural world.[18] For Whitehead, actual entities are spatiotemporally extended events or processes.[19] An actual entity is how something is happening, and how its happening is related to other actual entities.[19] The actually existing world is a multiplicity of actual entities overlapping one another.[19]

The ultimate abstract principle of actual existence for Whitehead is creativity. Creativity is a term coined by Whitehead to show a power in the world that allows the presence of an actual entity, a new actual entity, and multiple actual entities.[19] Creativity is the principle of novelty.[18] It is manifest in what can be called 'singular causality'. This term may be contrasted with the term 'nomic causality'. An example of singular causation is that I woke this morning because my alarm clock rang. An example of nomic causation is that alarm clocks generally wake people in the morning. Aristotle recognizes singular causality as efficient causality. For Whitehead, there are many contributory singular causes for an event. A further contributory singular cause of my being awoken by my alarm clock this morning was that I was lying asleep near it till it rang.

An actual entity is a general philosophical term for an utterly determinate and completely concrete individual particular of the actually existing world or universe of changeable entities considered in terms of singular causality, about which categorical statements can be made. Whitehead's most far-reaching and radical contribution to metaphysics is his invention of a better way of choosing the actual entities. Whitehead chooses a way of defining the actual entities that makes them all alike, qua actual entities, with a single exception.

For example, for Aristotle, the actual entities were the substances, such as Socrates. Besides Aristotle's ontology of substances, another example of an ontology that posits actual entities is in the monads of Leibniz, which are said to be 'windowless'.



#965: Primer on Whitehead’s Process Philosophy as a Paradigm Shift & Foundation
for Experiential Design
, by Matthew Segall: "Footnotes to Plato"

Whitehead's actual entities

For Whitehead's ontology of processes as defining the world, the actual entities exist as the only fundamental elements of reality.

The actual entities are of two kinds, temporal and atemporal.

With one exception, all actual entities for Whitehead are temporal and are occasions of experience (which are not to be confused with consciousness). An entity that people commonly think of as a simple concrete object, or that Aristotle would think of as a substance, is, in this ontology, considered to be a temporally serial composite of indefinitely many overlapping occasions of experience. A human being is thus composed of indefinitely many occasions of experience.

The one exceptional actual entity is at once both temporal and atemporal: God. He is objectively immortal, as well as being immanent in the world. He is objectified in each temporal actual entity; but He is not an eternal object.

The occasions of experience are of four grades. The first grade comprises processes in a physical vacuum such as the propagation of an electromagnetic wave or gravitational influence across empty space. The occasions of experience of the second grade involve just inanimate matter; "matter" being the composite overlapping of occasions of experience from the previous grade. The occasions of experience of the third grade involve living organisms. Occasions of experience of the fourth grade involve experience in the mode of presentational immediacy, which means more or less what are often called the qualia of subjective experience. So far as we know, experience in the mode of presentational immediacy occurs in only more evolved animals. That some occasions of experience involve experience in the mode of presentational immediacy is the one and only reason why Whitehead makes the occasions of experience his actual entities; for the actual entities must be of the ultimately general kind. Consequently, it is inessential that an occasion of experience have an aspect in the mode of presentational immediacy; occasions of the grades one, two, and three, lack that aspect.

There is no mind-matter duality in this ontology, because "mind" is simply seen as an abstraction from an occasion of experience which has also a material aspect, which is of course simply another abstraction from it; thus the mental aspect and the material aspect are abstractions from one and the same concrete occasion of experience. The brain is part of the body, both being abstractions of a kind known as persistent physical objects, neither being actual entities. Though not recognized by Aristotle, there is biological evidence, written about by Galen,[20] that the human brain is an essential seat of human experience in the mode of presentational immediacy. We may say that the brain has a material and a mental aspect, all three being abstractions from their indefinitely many constitutive occasions of experience, which are actual entities.

Time, causality, and process

Inherent in each actual entity is its respective dimension of time. Potentially, each Whiteheadean occasion of experience is causally consequential on every other occasion of experience that precedes it in time, and has as its causal consequences every other occasion of experience that follows it in time; thus it has been said that Whitehead's occasions of experience are 'all window', in contrast to Leibniz's 'windowless' monads. In time defined relative to it, each occasion of experience is causally influenced by prior occasions of experiences, and causally influences future occasions of experience. An occasion of experience consists of a process of prehending other occasions of experience, reacting to them. This is the process in process philosophy.

Such process is never deterministic. Consequently, free will is essential and inherent to the universe.

The causal outcomes obey the usual well-respected rule that the causes precede the effects in time. Some pairs of processes cannot be connected by cause-and-effect relations, and they are said to be spatially separated. This is in perfect agreement with the viewpoint of the Einstein theory of special relativity and with the Minkowski geometry of spacetime.[21] It is clear that Whitehead respected these ideas, as may be seen for example in his 1919 book An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge[22] as well as in Process and Reality. In this view, time is relative to an inertial reference frame, different reference frames defining different versions of time.

Atomicity

The actual entities, the occasions of experience, are logically atomic in the sense that an occasion of experience cannot be cut and separated into two other occasions of experience. This kind of logical atomicity is perfectly compatible with indefinitely many spatio-temporal overlaps of occasions of experience. One can explain this kind of atomicity by saying that an occasion of experience has an internal causal structure that could not be reproduced in each of the two complementary sections into which it might be cut. Nevertheless, an actual entity can completely contain each of indefinitely many other actual entities.

Another aspect of the atomicity of occasions of experience is that they do not change. An actual entity is what it is. An occasion of experience can be described as a process of change, but it is itself unchangeable.

The reader should bear in mind that the atomicity of the actual entities is of a simply logical or philosophical kind, thoroughly different in concept from the natural kind of atomicity that describes the atoms of physics and chemistry.


Topology

Whitehead's theory of extension was concerned with the spatio-temporal features of his occasions of experience. Fundamental to both Newtonian and to quantum theoretical mechanics is the concept of momentum. The measurement of a momentum requires a finite spatiotemporal extent. Because it has no finite spatiotemporal extent, a single point of Minkowski space cannot be an occasion of experience, but is an abstraction from an infinite set of overlapping or contained occasions of experience, as explained in Process and Reality.[14] Though the occasions of experience are atomic, they are not necessarily separate in extension, spatiotemporally, from one another. Indefinitely many occasions of experience can overlap in Minkowski space.

Nexus is a term coined by Whitehead to show the network actual entity from universe. In the universe of actual entities spread[18] actual entity. Actual entities are clashing with each other and form other actual entities.[19] The birth of an actual entity based on an actual entity, actual entities around him referred to as nexus.[18]

An example of a nexus of temporally overlapping occasions of experience is what Whitehead calls an enduring physical object, which corresponds closely with an Aristotelian substance. An enduring physical object has a temporally earliest and a temporally last member. Every member (apart from the earliest) of such a nexus is a causal consequence of the earliest member of the nexus, and every member (apart from the last) of such a nexus is a causal antecedent of the last member of the nexus. There are indefinitely many other causal antecedents and consequences of the enduring physical object, which overlap, but are not members, of the nexus. No member of the nexus is spatially separate from any other member. Within the nexus are indefinitely many continuous streams of overlapping nexūs, each stream including the earliest and the last member of the enduring physical object. Thus an enduring physical object, like an Aristotelian substance, undergoes changes and adventures during the course of its existence.

In some contexts, especially in the theory of relativity in physics, the word 'event' refers to a single point in Minkowski or in Riemannian space-time. A point event is not a process in the sense of Whitehead's metaphysics. Neither is a countable sequence or array of points. A Whiteheadian process is most importantly characterized by extension in space-time, marked by a continuum of uncountably many points in a Minkowski or a Riemannian space-time. The word 'event', indicating a Whiteheadian actual entity, is not being used in the sense of a point event.


Whitehead's abstractions

Whitehead's abstractions are conceptual entities that are abstracted from or derived from and founded upon his actual entities. Abstractions are themselves not actual entities. They are the only entities that can be real but are not actual entities. This statement is one form of Whitehead's 'ontological principle'.

An abstraction is a conceptual entity that refers to more than one single actual entity. Whitehead's ontology refers to importantly structured collections of actual entities as nexuses of actual entities. Collection of actual entities into a nexus emphasizes some aspect of those entities, and that emphasis is an abstraction, because it means that some aspects of the actual entities are emphasized or dragged away from their actuality, while other aspects are de-emphasized or left out or left behind.

'Eternal object' is a term coined by Whitehead. It is an abstraction, a possibility, or pure potential. It can be ingredient into some actual entity.[18] It is a principle that can give a particular form to an actual entity.[19][23]

Whitehead admitted indefinitely many eternal objects. An example of an eternal object is a number, such as the number 'two'. Whitehead held that eternal objects are abstractions of a very high degree of abstraction. Many abstractions, including eternal objects, are potential ingredients of processes.

Relation between actual entities and abstractions stated in the ontological principle

For Whitehead, besides its temporal generation by the actual entities which are its contributory causes, a process may be considered as a concrescence of abstract ingredient eternal objects. God enters into every temporal actual entity.

Whitehead's ontological principle is that whatever reality pertains to an abstraction is derived from the actual entities upon which it is founded or of which it is comprised.

Causation and concrescence of a process

Concrescence is a term coined by Whitehead to show the process of jointly forming an actual entity that was without form, but about to manifest itself into an entity Actual full (satisfaction) based on datums or for information on the universe.[18] The process of forming an actual entity is the case based on the existing datums. Concretion process can be regarded as subjectification process.[19]

Datum is a term coined by Whitehead to show the different variants of information possessed by actual entity. In process philosophy, datum is obtained through the events of concrescence. Every actual entity has a variety of datum.[18][19]


Commentary on Whitehead and on process philosophy

Whitehead is not an idealist in the strict sense.[which?] Whitehead's thought may be regarded as related to the idea of panpsychism (also known as panexperientialism, because of Whitehead's emphasis on experience).[24]

On God

Whitehead's philosophy is very complex, subtle and nuanced and in order to comprehend his thinking regarding what is commonly referred to by many religions as "God", it is recommended that one read from Process and Reality Corrected Edition, wherein regarding "God" the authors elaborate Whitehead's conception.

"He is the unconditioned actuality of conceptual feeling at the base of things; so that by reason of this primordial actuality, there is an order in the relevance of eternal objects to the process of creation (343 of 413) (Location 7624 of 9706 Kindle ed.) Whitehead continues later with, "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 (344 of 413) (Location 7634 of 9706 Kindle Edition)."

Process philosophy, might be considered according to some theistic forms of religion to give God a special place in the universe of occasions of experience. Regarding Whitehead's use of the term "occasions" in reference to "God", it is explained in Process and Reality Corrected Edition that

"'Actual entities'-also termed 'actual occasions'-are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything [28] more real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are gradations of importance, and diversities of function, yet in the principles which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level. The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.

It also can be assumed within some forms of theology that a God encompasses all the other occasions of experience but also transcends them and this might lead to it being argued that Whitehead endorses some form of panentheism.[25] Since, it is argued theologically, that "free will" is inherent to the nature of the universe, Whitehead's God is not omnipotent in Whitehead's metaphysics.[26] God's role is to offer enhanced occasions of experience. God participates in the evolution of the universe by offering possibilities, which may be accepted or rejected. Whitehead's thinking here has given rise to process theology, whose prominent advocates include Charles HartshorneJohn B. Cobb, Jr., and Hans Jonas, who was also influenced by the non-theological philosopher Martin Heidegger. However, other process philosophers have questioned Whitehead's theology, seeing it as a regressive Platonism.[27]

Whitehead enumerated three essential natures of God. The primordial nature of God consists of all potentialities of existence for actual occasions, which Whitehead dubbed eternal objects. God can offer possibilities by ordering the relevance of eternal objects. The consequent nature of God prehends everything that happens in reality. As such, God experiences all of reality in a sentient manner. The last nature is the superjective. This is the way in which God's synthesis becomes a sense-datum for other actual entities. In some sense, God is prehended by existing actual entities.[28]



Legacy and applications

Biology

In plant morphologyRolf Sattler developed a process morphology (dynamic morphology) that overcomes the structure/process (or structure/function) dualism that is commonly taken for granted in biology. According to process morphology, structures such as leaves of plants do not have processes, they are processes.[29][30]

In evolution and in development, the nature of the changes of biological objects are considered by many authors to be more radical than in physical systems. In biology, changes are not just changes of state in a pre-given space, instead the space and more generally the mathematical structures required to understand object change over time.[31][32]

Ecology

With its perspective that everything is interconnected, that all life has value, and that non-human entities are also experiencing subjects, process philosophy has played an important role in discourse on ecology and sustainability. The first book to connect process philosophy with environmental ethics was John B. Cobb, Jr.'s 1971 work, Is It Too Late: A Theology of Ecology.[33] In a more recent book (2018) edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Wm. Andrew Schwartz, Putting Philosophy to Work: Toward an Ecological Civilization[34] contributors explicitly explore the ways in which process philosophy can be put to work to address the most urgent issues facing our world today, by contributing to a transition toward an ecological civilization. That book emerged from the largest international conference held on the theme of ecological civilization (Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization) which was organized by the Center for Process Studies in June 2015. The conference brought together roughly 2,000 participants from around the world and featured such leaders in the environmental movement as Bill McKibbenVandana ShivaJohn B. Cobb, Jr.Wes Jackson, and Sheri Liao.[35] The notion of ecological civilization is often affiliated with the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead—especially in China.[36]

Mathematics


Somewhat earlier, exploration of mathematical practice and quasi-empiricism in mathematics from the 1950s to 1980s had sought alternatives to metamathematics in social behaviours around mathematics itself: for instance, Paul Erdős's simultaneous belief in Platonism and a single "big book" in which all proofs existed, combined with his personal obsessive need or decision to collaborate with the widest possible number of other mathematicians. The process, rather than the outcomes, seemed to drive his explicit behaviour and odd use of language, as if the synthesis of Erdős and collaborators in seeking proofs, creating sense-datum for other mathematicians, was itself the expression of a divine will. Certainly, Erdős behaved as if nothing else in the world mattered, including money or love, as emphasized in his biography The Man Who Loved Only Numbers.In the philosophy of mathematics, some of Whitehead's ideas re-emerged in combination with cognitivism as the cognitive science of mathematics and embodied mind theses.

Medicine

Several fields of science and especially medicine seem[vague] to make liberal use of ideas in process philosophy, notably the theory of pain and healing of the late 20th century. The philosophy of medicine began to deviate somewhat from scientific method and an emphasis on repeatable results in the very late 20th century by embracing population thinking, and a more pragmatic approach to issues in public healthenvironmental health and especially mental health. In this latter field, R. D. LaingThomas Szasz and Michel Foucault were instrumental in moving medicine away from emphasis on "cures" and towards concepts of individuals in balance with their society, both of which are changing, and against which no benchmarks or finished "cures" were very likely to be measurable.

Psychology

In psychology, the subject of imagination was again explored more extensively since Whitehead, and the question of feasibility or "eternal objects" of thought became central to the impaired theory of mind explorations that framed postmodern cognitive science. A biological understanding of the most eternal object, that being the emerging of similar but independent cognitive apparatus, led to an obsession with the process "embodiment", that being, the emergence of these cognitions. Like Whitehead's God, especially as elaborated in J. J. Gibson's perceptual psychology emphasizing affordances, by ordering the relevance of eternal objects (especially the cognitions of other such actors), the world becomes. Or, it becomes simple enough for human beings to begin to make choices, and to prehend what happens as a result. These experiences may be summed in some sense but can only approximately be shared, even among very similar cognitions with identical DNA. An early explorer of this view was Alan Turing who sought to prove the limits of expressive complexity of human genes in the late 1940s, to put bounds on the complexity of human intelligence and so assess the feasibility of artificial intelligence emerging. Since 2000, Process Psychology has progressed as an independent academic and therapeutic discipline: In 2000, Michel Weber created the Whitehead Psychology Nexus: an open forum dedicated to the cross-examination of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and the various facets of the contemporary psychological field.[37]

Philosophy of movement

The philosophy of movement is a sub-area within process philosophy that treats processes as movements. It studies processes as flows, folds, and fields in historical patterns of centripetal, centrifugal, tensional, and elastic motion.[38] See Thomas Nail's philosophy of movement and process materialism.

See also

Concepts
People

References

  1. ^ Nicholas RescherProcess Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy, SUNY Press, 1996, p. 42.
  2. ^ Ilya Prigogine, From being to becomingDavid Bohm, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1980.
  3. Jump up to:
  4. ^ Cf. Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2004.
  5. ^ William Blattner, "Some Thoughts About "Continental" and "Analytic" Philosophy"
  6. ^ Seibt, Johanna. "Process Philosophy". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  7. ^ Nicholas Gaskill, A. J. Nocek, The Lure of Whitehead, University of Minnesota Press, 2014, p. 4: "it is no wonder that Whitehead fell by the wayside. He was too scientific for the "continentals," not scientific enough for the "analytics," and too metaphysical—which is to say uncritical—for them both" and p. 231: "the analytics and Continentals are both inclined toward Kantian presuppositions in a manner that Latour and Whitehead brazenly renounce."
  8. ^ Cratylus Paragraph Crat. 401 section d line 5.
  9. ^ Cratylus Paragraph 402 section a line 8.
  10. ^ This sentence has been translated by Seneca in Epistulae, VI, 58, 23.
  11. ^ Harris, William. "Heraclitus: The Complete Philosophical Fragments"Middlebury College. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  12. ^ Rescher, Nicholas (2000). Process philosophy a survey of basic issues. [Pittsburgh]: University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 5ISBN 0822961288.
  13. ^ Wheelwright, P. (1959). Heraclitus, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, ISBN 0-19-924022-1, p.35.
  14. Jump up to:
    a b c d Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality, Macmillan, New York.
  15. ^ "Alfred North Whitehead".
  16. ^ Whitehead, A. N. (1929), pp. 13, 19.
  17. ^ Palter, R.M. (1960). Whitehead's Philosophy of Science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL, p. 23.
  18. Jump up to:
    a b c d e f g Robert Audi. 1995, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. 851–853.
  19. Jump up to:
    a b c d e f g h John B. Cobb and David Ray Griffin. 1976, Process Theology, An Introduction. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.
  20. ^ Siegel, R. E. (1973). Galen: On Psychology, Psychopathology, and Function and Diseases of the Nervous System. An Analysis of his Doctrines, Observations, and Experiments, Karger, Basel, ISBN 978-3-8055-1479-8.
  21. ^ Naber, G. L. (1992). The Geometry of Minkowski Spacetime. An Introduction to the Mathematics of the Special Theory of Relativity, Springer, New York, ISBN 978-0-387-97848-2
  22. ^ Whitehead, A. N. (1919). An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
  23. ^ Cf. Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2004 (ISBN 3-937202-49-8).
  24. ^ Seager, William. "Whitehead and the Revival (?) of Panpsychism"University of Toronto Scarborough. University of Toronto at Scarborough. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  25. ^ Cooper, John W. (2006). Panentheism--The Other God of the Philosophers: From Plato to the Present. Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic. p. 176. ISBN 978-0801049316.
  26. ^ Dombrowski, Daniel A. (2017). Whitehead's Religious Thought: From Mechanism to Organism, From Force to Persuasion. Albany: State Univ of New York Pr. pp. 33–35. ISBN 978-1438464299.
  27. ^ Hustwit, J. R. "Process Philosophy"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP). Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  28. ^ Viney, Donald. "Process Theism"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosoph. Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  29. ^ Sattler, R (1990). "Towards a more dynamic plant morphology". Acta Biotheoretica38 (3–4): 303–315. doi:10.1007/BF00047245S2CID 84421634.
  30. ^ Sattler, R (1992). "Process morphology: structural dynamics in development and evolution". Canadian Journal of Botany70 (4): 708–714. doi:10.1139/b92-091.
  31. ^ Montévil, Maël; Mossio, Matteo; Pocheville, Arnaud; Longo, Giuseppe (1 October 2016). "Theoretical principles for biology: Variation"Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. From the Century of the Genome to the Century of the Organism: New Theoretical Approaches. 122 (1): 36–50. doi:10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2016.08.005PMID 27530930.
  32. ^ Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël; Kauffman, Stuart (1 January 2012). "No Entailing Laws, but Enablement in the Evolution of the Biosphere"Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference Companion on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation. GECCO '12. New York, NY, USA: ACM: 1379–1392. arXiv:1201.2069Bibcode:2012arXiv1201.2069Ldoi:10.1145/2330784.2330946ISBN 9781450311786S2CID 15609415.
  33. ^ Cobb, Jr., John B. (1971). Is It Too Late?: A Theology of Ecology. Macmillan Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0028012803.
  34. ^ Cobb, Jr., John B.; Scwhartz, Wm. Andrew (2018). Putting Philosophy to Work: Toward an Ecological Civilization. Minnesota: Process Century Press. ISBN 978-1940447339.
  35. ^ Herman Greene, "Re-Imagining Civilization as Ecological: Report on the 'Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization' Conference", last modified 24 August 2015, Center for Ecozoic Societies, accessed 1 November 2016. Archived 4 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  36. ^ Wang, Zhihe; Huili, He; Meijun, Fan. "The Ecological Civilization Debate in China: The Role of Ecological Marxism and Constructive Postmodernism—Beyond the Predicament of Legislation"Monthly Review. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  37. ^ Cobb, John B., Jr. "Process Psychotherapy: Introduction". Process Studies vol. 29, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2000): 97–102; cf. Michel Weber and Will Desmond (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Though, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008.
  38. ^ Nail, Thomas (10 December 2018). Being and motion. New York, NY. ISBN 978-0-19-090890-4OCLC 1040086073

Works cited

  • Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality, Macmillan, New York.
  • Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality corrected edition, Griffin, David Ray and Sherburne, Donald W., The Free Press, New York (Kindle Edition).

External links