Replies

Kaeti, Enjoyed your two spectacular animations! -George

Christie, As you may know, the mythologist Joseph Campbell said (in The Masks of God) that awe (aka wonder) is the primary religious emotion. I’m guessing that Whitehead would say it’s also the primary philosophical and science emotion, too. -George

Thanks for your replies, Andrew and Dennis. I’m glad to have some “fellow followers” of system theory. Forrester made contributions in the 50-60s (btw, I just wrote an article about him), Bertalanffy got it started in the 30-40s, and (imho) it started taking off in the late 1900s and early 2000s. My current favorite overview is Capra’s The Systems View of Life (2016). Holistic science is slowly being added to reductionism, which means more opportunity for dialog with philosophy and theology. -George

Daryl, Thanks for the tip about the Hennings book. I’ve downloaded it and begun reading. -George

Thanks: very interesting article on characters and propositions. So-called imaginary characters are of special interest to me since I was a college and community theatre actor for 25 years and am a life-long theatre goer (including today). Perhaps all characters who impact me, real of fictional, start out as part of my view of the objective world, but then they become part of my private, subjective world. That’s where they do their alchemical work.

Montgomery, You say, “Jesus is a bridge, not a wall to other peoples, cultures, and religions. I can simultaneously affirm Jesus is ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ and recognize that love and truth operating in friends and teachers who exemplify the way of Jesus.” I’m far from an expert on the world’s religion, but I suspect there are traditions that don’t “exemplify the way of Jesus.” How do we bridge to them?

Jay, I’ll seek your indulgence once again by asking you to comment on my initial musings towards my creative component, which you’ll see are of the empirical bent.

The core of modern process philosophy for middle earth (first tentative formulation)

Whitehead begins by focusing on human experience but then generalizes to include the very small and very large. My focus stays on middle earth—the domain of life. I’ll leave the very small (quantum mechanics and below) and the very large (relativity theory and above) out of these speculations.

When focusing on life, the first thing to notice is that all live entities are in the process of change. So it is reasonable to think of a live entity as a sequence of changing occurrences (or a continuous flow of changing). The second thing to notice is to ask is what causes the changes? We will identify a number of internal and external relational causes. The third thing to notice is that human experience consists of both a public dimension, objective experience, and a private dimension, subjective experience. Paraphrasing Descartes, we subjectively know that we are subjectively knowing.

Continuing the focus to human life, we notice that hierarchy is another fundamental dimension. That is, human societies are composed of humans and humans are composed of cells. We will subsequently consider the similarities and differences between these hierarchies. The understanding such hierarchies and systems has advanced since Whitehead wrote and the new metascience of systems theory is a sufficiently valuable addition to process philosophy to justify (imho) calling this approach modern process philosophy.

So within the realm of middle earth, I observe that all life is in the process of change, that change is caused by relational interactions with the inner and outer world, and that the inner world (of humans and perhaps other life forms) includes both objective and subjective experience. Paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence, “I hold these phenomena to be self evident” and to be the core of process philosophy.

Wow. This thread has been a seventh session in this six session course. You say, “The speculative and rationalist traditions lean toward the metaphysical, while the empirical tradition leans toward the phenomenological.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that as a born-and-raised scientist I lean toward the empirical and phenomenological. I will read the article you kindly point me to, and I’m glad to know that there is a place for people like me in the process family.

Jay, Thanks again. I’m not sure why you call us phenomenological as opposed to metaphysical. Kant distinguished between the phenomenological and the noumenal but that’s probably not what you meant.

Thank you, Jay. It makes good sense to reserve the word and the concept of God for a moral force. As you say, creativity can produce the good, the bad, and the ugly. I would love to hear your response to my other question about humans as examples of ordered societies of concrescing actual entities.

Jay, Thanks for another excellent post. When I read your description of actual entities concrescing, I think that description also describes us as societies of actual entities. Is that reasonable?

Also when I read whitehead’s definitions of creativity and god, I think of “creativity” as god the creator (except creating would be better than creator) and “god” as god the sustainer. Is that reasonable?

Good post, Dennis. The one thing I might add is a reference to the book “The illusion of conscious will” by Daniel Wegner. He makes the case that some our decisions are made by our subconscious and the role of our “conscious self” is to justify the decision. As long as we don’t identify ourselves with only our conscious selves it’s still freedom.

A verified example concerns the conscious thought, “My nose itches so I’m going to scratch it.” In fact, the muscles to move the arm are tensing a fraction of a second before the conscious thought.

I think “concrescing subjects“ is a helpful phrase. As one of our (human) concresceing moments concludes, that moment becomes part of the next moments objective reality to help its concrescence, right? Is it fair/correct to think that our memory is at least one of the capabilities that enables that dimension of concrescence?

Bill, You say, “I am reminded of Iain McGilchrist’s contrasting how our two brain hemispheres have two distinct styles of experiencing the world, or distinct perspectives on the world.”

For a very personal account of this important difference, see My Stroke of Inspiration by Jill Taylor, a PhD brain scientist who had a stroke that shut down her left hemisphere for some time. -George

In the two excellent “mood” articles that Jay has brought to our attention, the enlightenment mood, the romanticism mood, the modern age of anxiety mood, and an incipient Whitehead mood are identified and contrasted. The Whitehead mood would clearly be a wonderful advance for humanity and the world. But that’s not the immediate theme of this post.

As the articles observe, 18th century enlightenment and 19th century romanticism are, for better and worse, still part of our world moods. This post will attempt to highlight some of the dangers of our enduring enlightenment and romanticism thinking. As a life-long enlightenment scientist, I’ll admit to having to look harder for enlightenment flaws than romanticism ones.

From the article: “To describe the Enlightenment as a mood is to suggest that it carries with it a distinct sensibility—a disposition toward reason, clarity, and the pursuit of knowledge as a means of progress. It is the mood of optimism in the power of human rationality, of confidence in universal principles, of faith in the unfolding of history as a movement toward enlightenment.”

Well, that description also describes me. That mood led to (among other things) globalization and the three libs of the modern era (black lib, women’s lib, gay lib). I continue to think those are all good things, but we have entered an age of backlash. In the case of globalization there is a case to be made for that backlash because we abandoned people who were abandoned by it. But regarding the libs, black lib is backlashed undoing DEI, woman’s lib is backlashed by “family values”, and gay lib is backlashed because “the Bible told us so.”

From the article: “Romanticism as a mood is to capture its deep emotional currents—a longing for the sublime, a sensitivity to the tragic and the ineffable, a rebellion against the cold rationalism of its predecessors. It is the mood of yearning, of immersion in nature and the depths of the self, of feeling the weight of history not as progress but as drama.”

And there was/is much to affirm as the balance between reason and emotion was rebalanced. But sadly, there was/is a dark side to romantism that I fear we are in the process of relearning. As chatGPT (with my comments) relates:

“Nazi Germany was fueled in part by Romanticism, though in a distorted and selective way. Romanticism, as a cultural and intellectual movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, emphasized emotion, nationalism, mythology, nature, and a glorified past. The Nazis appropriated certain Romantic ideas to construct their ideology, particularly:

​1.​Nationalism and Volkisch Thought – Romanticism idealized the unique spirit (“Volksgeist”) of a people, which the Nazis transformed into an exclusionary, racialized nationalism.
*Make (white) America great again

​2.​Myth and Mysticism – Romantic fascination with medieval legends, Norse mythology, and heroic figures influenced Nazi propaganda, such as the glorification of the Aryan race and the SS’s use of Teutonic symbolism.
*The highjacking of conservative Christianity

​3.​Anti-Enlightenment Tendencies – Romanticism often rejected rationalism and industrialization in favor of emotion and nature. The Nazis echoed this by prioritizing willpower, destiny, and myth over logic and science (except where science served their ends).
*Climate change is a myth and vaccines are health hazards

​4.​Pastoral and Rural Ideals – Romantic nostalgia for a pre-modern, agrarian society fit the Nazi vision of “Blood and Soil” (Blut und Boden), which emphasized peasant life as racially and morally pure.
*Cities are dens of inequity and evil minorities

[Of course], Romanticism as a whole was not inherently fascist. It was a broad movement with democratic, socialist, and even pacifist elements. The Nazis selectively borrowed aspects that suited their ideology while rejecting others, such as Romanticism’s individualism and revolutionary potential.”

Could a Whiteheadian mood help correct these errors of the past and present? That is a possibility greatly to be longed for and worked for.