Replies

Thanks for your comments, Mike and Lawrence. Lawrence, I was also very very influenced by Thomas Merton. Still am. And Mike, the idea of syncretism, while decried, resonates deeply with Whitehead’s idea that the ultimate reality of each actual entity (moment of experience) is an activity by which many diverse entities in the past become one in the immediacy of the present, thus adding something new that transcends but includes the past. “The many become one and are increased by one.” Sure sounds like an act of syncretism to me. Moreover, adds Whitehead, the many achieve their power and beauty, not by having things collapse into oneness, but by being held (felt) together through contrasts. Again, sounds like syncretism.

Thanks for your comments, Mike and Lawrence. Lawrence, I was also very very influenced by Thomas Merton. Still am. And Mike, the idea of syncretism, while decried, resonates deeply with Whitehead’s idea that the ultimate reality of each actual entity (moment of experience) is an activity by which many diverse entities in the past become one in the immediacy of the present, thus adding something new that transcends but includes the past. “The many become one and are increased by one.” Sure sounds like an act of syncretism to me. Moreover, adds Whitehead, the many achieve their power and beauty, not by having things collapse into oneness, but by being held (felt) together through contrasts. Again, sounds like syncretism.

So much good thought here. It would be so nice for ways of thinking to emerge, in the general public, that avoid unhealthy roots in the past, while simultaneously embracing healthy roots: that is, sources of wisdom in the past that might truly nourish whole persons, whole communities, and a whole planet. And, at the same time, these ways need to provide people with a sense of adventure, of new possibilities, of ways of living and feeling that are promising and life-enhancing. In short, these ways need to give roots and wings. I know that the holistic thinking of process thought offers one possibility, but I wonder if, and how, it might be available to the general public: schoolchildren, taxi drivers, grandmothers, teachers, artists, etc. How do big ideas come down to earth? By what means? Any thoughts?

Dear friends, thank you for the seriousness and depths of your reflections on the self. And yes, Michael, it would be great to do an essay on the self.

I share with you a link to some of my own reflections on the self, influenced both by Whitehead and by Zen. Perhaps it can be a springboard in some way.

Many years ago, as I was studying Whitehead with John Cobb, I was also the English teacher for a soon-to-become Zen master from Kyoto. I was reading Whitehead through Zen eyes, and Zen through Whitehead eyes. I wrote an essay on Zen and the Self, a Whiteheadian perspective, which is now on Open Horizons. The page has three essays; it’s the third. Take a look if interested: https://www.openhorizons.org/whitehead-and-zen-buddhism.html

Dear friends, thank you for the seriousness and depths of your reflections on the self. And yes, Michael, it would be great to do an essay on the self.

I share with you a link to some of my own reflections on the self, influenced both by Whitehead and by Zen. Perhaps it can be a springboard in some way.

Many years ago, as I was studying Whitehead with John Cobb, I was also the English teacher for a soon-to-become Zen master from Kyoto. I was reading Whitehead through Zen eyes, and Zen through Whitehead eyes. I wrote an essay on Zen and the Self, a Whiteheadian perspective, which is now on Open Horizons. The page has three essays; it’s the third. Take a look if interested: https://www.openhorizons.org/whitehead-and-zen-buddhism.html

Dear Eric, thanks for your sharp critique. I cannot speak for Bob Mesle on his beliefs; all I know is that he is shaped by Whitehead but doesn’t accept Whitehead’s idea of God. He is a process non-theist. I do know him personally, and he strikes me as very open-minded and generous in spirit. Face to face, he certainly doesn’t come across as dogmatic. But that’s beside the point; I want to speak to two issues you raise:process and science and the ontological status of the future. First, science.

One of the most important books of late on process and science is written by a plasma physicist, Tim Eastman. It’s called Untying the Gordian Know: Process, Science, and Context. If you are able, you might take a look. It’s leading edge.

More generally, process thinkers have been engaged with many forms of science: physics (especially quantum physics and relativity theories), biology (especially evolutionary biology), chemistry (especially the work of the physical chemist and Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine), physical psychology (especially the work of Roger Sperry), astrobiology (see the work of Andrew Davis and others) parapsychology (see the work of David Griffin) and consciousness studies (see the work of Matt Segall and others on psychedlic therapies). As it happens, my own first published essay was on Whitehead and quantum theory; I spend a summer at the University of Maryland working on it. So quantum theory (including the Schrodinger equation and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory) is something I know a little about. But I still have a lot to learn.

In any case, your post prompts me to want to make sure we have a usable bibliography to share with all our classmates and others. It also leads me to think it might be good to start a Process and Science learning circle that meets regularly to discuss essays.

A word about “the future.” I’ve been thinking about this for some time. My question is “What is the ontological status of what we call ‘the future’?” I’ve wanted to think about this at two levels: that of science and that of lived human experience. In the latter regard, it seems to me that ‘the future’ is our name for the objects of what Whitehead would call anticipatory prehensions. It is our name for a realm of (what seems to be) unactualized possibilities which may become actual but which are not-yet actual or not-yet-decided. We may anticipate this realm through various subjective forms (Whitehead’s expression): fear, hope, anxiety, anger, confusion, delight. These emotions clothe (Whitehehead’s word) our prehensions of whatever the future is. At this level, the future is not non-existent, but it’s existence is not that of already-actualized entities. It is that of possible states of affairs. Whitehead that the same. In simple language, it is real but not actual: it is real as possibility.

It might seem that science refutes this human (and other animal) way of feeling the future. Some physicists seem to believe that time’s arrow goes both ways, and that differences between “the future” and “the past” are irrelevant. But some physicists today (Lee Smolin, for example) argue jus the opposite. They say that thermodynamics and evolution do indeed reveal the fundamental reality of time’s arrow: time flows one way, from the past into a not yet actualized future. Process thinkers think this second view is much closer to the truth and note that it makes space for “novelty,” which if very much part of our cosmos.

In my view, when Bob Mesle says that the future is non-existent, he really means that it is real as possibility but not as actuality. Here is uses the word “exist” as synonymous with actuality. As do so many! At it happens, Whitehead did not equate “reality” with actuality. It included “possibility” and “potentiality.” When he developed his categories of “existence” in Process and Reality, they (the categories) included pure potentialities.

Is the future, then, what Whitehead means by the realm of pure potentialities? I think not, and don’t think he believed this. It is a different kind of potentiality: real potentiality that will come into actuality, albeit in an as yet unactualized and non-predetermined way. But that’s a longer discussion, best left for another post. Whitehead is not entirely clear on this matter.

Enough for now. Thanks for your post. At some stage, I’d like to hear more about your work in music, as its a very strong interest of mine, too.

This is a great conversation, Charles and Kent, and you are raising questions important to many of us who are concerned with “living with respect for life and environment,” which is the language used by the Earth Charter. With Kent, I seek some way of affirming the value of mountains, in way that don’t seem reductionist. The bursting forth of a mountain somehow seems more than a mere collection of microscopic “actual entities” at the molecular level. For my part, I have spoken of them as “aggregate expressions” of liveliness, emphasizing that such expressions are experienced as “wholes” that are more than the sum of their parts, but leaving open the question of whether they are living wholes in their own right, with subjectivity of their own. I am trying to avoid the critiques of those inclined to see the latter claim as “wacky.” Even as I recognize and appreciate the fact that indigenous traditions around the world have seemed to believe as much. If we are inclined to speak of them as living wholes (with something like an individual subjectivity I think we can speak of “degrees of such subjectivity.” A similar question occurs with regard to plants. Or they mechanical wholes reducible to their cellular subjective parts, or living wholes with some kind of regnant subjectivity. And it also applies to computers these days. Can we imagine aggregate expressions of actual entities, non carbon-based, that nevertheless have something like feeling and agency? AI takes us further and further into that question. (And Ian Barbour did some good thinking on it, early on.) For me, I’m left with speaking of aggregate expressions and leaving it at that, hoping such language might speak to the vibrancy of ostensibly lifeless, inorganic realities. As for whether the value of such objects is enriched or shaped by our own perception of it, I suspect the answer is “yes,” but not significantly. We may add to the value of a mountain by seeing it and appreciating it, but it has much value quite apart from our act of seeing and appreciating. And as for what actualization hierarchies we might develop and/or recognized to discriminate degrees and kinds of intrinsic value, understood as richness of experience, I am unsure. I think we need them for practical purposes, but I’m a bit skeptical about their adequacy. A human being may have more intrinsic value than a malarial mosquito, which itself has more intrinsic value than a single cell — but I doubt that the mosquito or living cell sees things that way. There’s something in me that wants to speak of a democracy of intrinsic value, at least from God’s perspective, without relying so much on hierarchies. Still, I know they are necessary heuristically. As Whitehead put it, life is robbery, and the robber requires justification.

This is a great conversation, Charles and Kent, and you are raising questions important to many of us who are concerned with “living with respect for life and environment,” which is the language used by the Earth Charter. With Kent, I seek some way of affirming the value of mountains, in way that don’t seem reductionist. The bursting forth of a mountain somehow seems more than a mere collection of microscopic “actual entities” at the molecular level. For my part, I have spoken of them as “aggregate expressions” of liveliness, emphasizing that such expressions are experienced as “wholes” that are more than the sum of their parts, but leaving open the question of whether they are living wholes in their own right, with subjectivity of their own. I am trying to avoid the critiques of those inclined to see the latter claim as “wacky.” Even as I recognize and appreciate the fact that indigenous traditions around the world have seemed to believe as much. If we are inclined to speak of them as living wholes (with something like an individual subjectivity I think we can speak of “degrees of such subjectivity.” A similar question occurs with regard to plants. Or they mechanical wholes reducible to their cellular subjective parts, or living wholes with some kind of regnant subjectivity. And it also applies to computers these days. Can we imagine aggregate expressions of actual entities, non carbon-based, that nevertheless have something like feeling and agency? AI takes us further and further into that question. (And Ian Barbour did some good thinking on it, early on.) For me, I’m left with speaking of aggregate expressions and leaving it at that, hoping such language might speak to the vibrancy of ostensibly lifeless, inorganic realities. As for whether the value of such objects is enriched or shaped by our own perception of it, I suspect the answer is “yes,” but not significantly. We may add to the value of a mountain by seeing it and appreciating it, but it has much value quite apart from our act of seeing and appreciating. And as for what actualization hierarchies we might develop and/or recognized to discriminate degrees and kinds of intrinsic value, understood as richness of experience, I am unsure. I think we need them for practical purposes, but I’m a bit skeptical about their adequacy. A human being may have more intrinsic value than a malarial mosquito, which itself has more intrinsic value than a single cell — but I doubt that the mosquito or living cell sees things that way. There’s something in me that wants to speak of a democracy of intrinsic value, at least from God’s perspective, without relying so much on hierarchies. Still, I know they are necessary heuristically. As Whitehead put it, life is robbery, and the robber requires justification.

[Jay McDaniel]

“I therefore like the image of “islands of possibilities.” Using this image I can see our varied traditions as a sort of ground on which we live, and which provides the home and food that sustains us. At the same time, if these traditions are not creatively transformed — if, to use the island metaphor, we do not thoughtfully and appreciatively cultivate this ground — then we will starve and wither away.”

Thank you, Jason, for extending my point in such a rich way. Would that we could find ways of moving beyond the culture wars…on both sides! Perhaps…but just perhaps…the process tradition might help.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Jay McDaniel.

Jennifer, I don’t know if Campbell was influenced by Whitehead. However, Campbell influenced by Jung, and there are resonances between Whitehead and Jung, given that Whitehead, like Jung, believed that much of our experience is beneath the surface of conscious awareness. For a nice slideshow on Whitehead and Jung, see Sheri Kling’s slideshow here: https://cobb.institute/educators-toolbox/a-process-spirituality-whitehead-jung/. When it comes to archetypes, Jung is the master, but Whitehead’s philosophy is receptive to there being energies and intelligences that are part of a collective unconscious. Whitehead didn’t say this, but it’s easy to appreciate the possibility, given Whitehead’s understanding of experience.

Thanks, Leslie. I’m glad you got something out of both books. We’ll be talking about “process” on Saturday. Noting two kinds: the process of subjective experience (concrescence) in the here and now, and the transition from one experience to others (transition), which we usually think of as the passage of time. For Whitehead, everything in the actual world is in process in one or both of these senses. However, he also speaks of pure potentialities, residing in the mind of God (the primordial nature) which are non-temporal or ‘eternal.’ Thus, for him, it’s not quite true that everything is in process, but rather that everything ‘actual’ is in process. In Whitehead there are two fundamental types of reality: actuality and potentiality. In our actual experience, we experience or prehend both.

You are watching the right one, Jennifer. The four sources of wisdom, identified in the Preface, are science, aesthetics, ethics, and religion. Whitehead doesn’t call them sources of wisdom, he simply says that we wants to develop a cosmology that draws insights from, and integrates, these four domains of human experience.

Thanks very much to Charles and to Michael for your comments. It is interesting to me that you, Michael, recognize “substance” dimensions of your own way of thinking, as do we all. The key for all of us will be to try thinking about individual entities (human, divine, atomic, whatever) in ways that recognize their uniqueness and individuality, while at the same time recognizing ways in which they emerge out of relationships (prehensions, feelings) of other, and how the “others” are themselves part of the entity at issue, albeit not exhaustive of that entity. Much to reflect upon.

Thanks so much for sharing this, Lee. I really appreciate your sensitivity on many subjects, including your recognition that, when we are lucky enough to accomplish a good job well done, whatever the job, we have a sense of rightness that is itself a window into…you know what.

Miriam, one last comment. I think all of this is easily understood if you think of your own immediate experience in the here and now. Let me imagine myself inside your skin at this moment. You are sitting or standing somewhere, feeling the presence of your body in a semi-conscious way; you are staring at a computer screen, feeling its presence including these words; you are aware of your background, whether inside or outside or in a car; you carry within your mind many ideas experiences from your past that influence you in the present; you are thinking in the margins of your mind about things you need to be doing today or tomorrow; you are thinking in the margins about relationships with friends and family; you are thinking about the larger cultural context of life today, the forthcoming election and all that goes with it; you are aware of a poem or lecture or work of art you’ve been creating; you are partly conscious of a dream you had last night. All of these ‘things’ are being gathered into the emerging unity of your experience right how. They are “concrescing in you” or, to say the same things, you are a process in which the many of these things are becoming one. Your awareness and your bodily perception and your feelings of them including your emotional responses to them, are your prehensions of them, some conscious and some semi-conscious. And as soon as they are gathered, the immediacy of this moment perishes, and you become the next moment, with this moment a new part of the “many” that become one in the next moment. Within you there is also a beckoning, an aim, to gather these many into unity in a way that is harmonious and intense, satisfying for you and for others. That aim in its initial phase, is how God is present in you. Maybe this helps a bit?