Replies

Michael, thanks for your post. Your experience with the scientists is interesting to me. I do think that, in many instances, the PHD’s have never been exposed to the idea that a metaphysic, a worldview, a cosmology might underlie their interpretations of data and, for that matter, guide their research projects, and that a consideration of this might enrich their practice of science. But sometimes, as in physics, the data themselves can require that kind of analysis, because otherwise they cannot be interpreted at all, as was the case with early quantum theory. You and others might really like what’s going on with the new science advisory board of the Cobb Institute, brought together by Matthew Segall. He (Segall) was featured in last week’s Tuesday Talks. And as for Owen Barfield…you make me want go get that book! Thanks.

Leslie,

I believe that Richard will be sending you (and all) that information today.

Jay

Thanks very much. I’m so glad to have you with us.

Thanks for your comment, Michael. In the case of Whitehead, He thinks verbal language is fine as long as we realize that the ideas it seeks to communicate are always more than the language itself. But he also believes that no act of knowing, including verbal knowing, occurs in isolation from intuitions and feelings, emotions or purposes. Even the most abstract kinds of knowing — mathematical, for example — involve purposes and emotions (subjective forms). And many forms of knowing are non-linguistic.

Dear Leslie,

When we consider an actual occasion of experience (actual entity), we rightly recognize that it emerges as something new and that something of it then perishes once its process of concrescence is over. What perishes is not the entity per s, but rather its “subjective immediacy.” It then becomes, in his words, “objectively immortal” as an influence in all that succeeds it.

Your dog is an example of what Whitehead calls a “society” of actual occasions. All societies are nexus (but not all nexus are societies, as we will see.) That is, your dog is an aggregate or grouping of many different actual entities, some of them at the atomic and molecular level, some at the cellular level. However, your dog is also, in addition to these bodily aggregates, also a subject of his or her own life, as are you. Thus there is more to your dog than the body and brain, there is also what Whitehead calls a linear ordered society of occasions, occurring one after another, each of which inherits from predecessors and adds to successors, thus giving your dog a kind of personal identity over time. Whitehead speaks of these momentary experiences, forming your dog’s personhood, as the dominant occasions of his or her body. Each occasion receives influences from all over her body and initiates responses, You do the same, of course. In short, you and your dog (and I, too) are linear ordered societies are deeply connected to your bodies but also more than your bodies. At one point in our discussions we’ll talk about these many different kinds of societies.

Take care,

Jay

Dear Alex,

Such a good question. As we will see in the next session, Whitehead affirms empiricism, but does not limit it to sense-bound empiricism. He believes that many kinds of experiences need to be taken into account when we develop our philosophies. There’s a passage in Adventures of Ideas which names some of them. We’ll read it together,

Jay