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Charles, You have been speaking about Jesus after he appeared. Did Jesus exist before his life on earth? I once shocked some people by saying no, which is the wrong answer. I figure, if Jesus is God and man in one, the man nature of Jesus requires earthly evolution and then birth. So the whole Jesus could not have existed before his appearance on earth. If what is meant is that some other ‘second person principle’ exists eternally, then call it that, not Jesus. Jesus is gone and God’s presence on earth is now said to be the third person. But W is making us question our conventional gradations of the reality of “presence.” I like the Centurion who said Jesus didn’t have to move anywhere to do the miracle, that as the boss he could delegate and it would surely be done.

Aesthetic Perishing is my title. I have all my ‘concretes’ lined up. I’m wrestling with the issue of how, as implied in theory, experience can be disturbing while also beautiful.

Leslie, I found a good definition of Frozen Chosen: “Reformed Christians who are reserved in their faith. Moreover, they are generally reticent in worship and their conduct.”
I support your corrective: “moving with God in ritual and dance.” But as a Presbyterian I have a very hard time doing that! I am bored by repetitive ritual (e.g., “smells and bells”). I’m instead attracted to what we do well, which is novelty. How are we going to confess differently today, what’s fresh in this crafty sermon? I’ve been experimenting with ways to start with what we have, add what we must, and move toward the empty quarter which I take to be Whitehead’s World Loyalty. A group walk outside, with talk and practice, was marvelously effective. Our leading theologian on ecology surprised us by pausing his lecture for 10 minutes and showing a music video (with no words) of oddball deep-sea creatures in motion. Effective also, at least for where we are.

Sometimes I despair that society is locked into institutions that are impossible to budge, especially the economic system. But today I was collecting some discussion about why some people are opposed to ESG investing, some of them to the point of hysteria. (Dilbert had a screed this week about how it is a scam.) ESG seems more momentous that I first thought. We suddenly expect corporations to soften up, and many of them are really trying in ways never seen before. And then there’s Patagonia. A lot of people are shocked at how fast the funds have sloshed away from legal, profitable companies that happen to have their hand in killing us. It’s all still big business, I know, but what would happen if everybody bet their retirement savings on ‘transitional’ businesses?

[Kent Myers]

I don’t think you are a drip! It’s an interesting question. The drop of experience for atom is very fast, but it still takes time, I think. And a drop for a human will always take longer and is bigger and richer, I suppose. But is there such a thing as a big drop composed of smaller drops that I am potentially aware of individually? I have a sense that there are a bunch of simultaneous and succeeding drops that are related but not fully unified. I can experience a whole baseball game along with innings, at bats, and pitches. Each of those are independent yet related drops. I don’t feel that I need to “look inside” (or as the academics say, “unpack”) the memory of a baseball game in order to get at component pitches.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Kent Myers.

I had moved my follow-up comment on entropy to the Science topic, but since the discussion continued here, I thought I would copy it back to this space. All I did was supply a couple quotations that reinforce what Jay already said. But now I’m wondering about the connection between entropy and potential. The more that gets committed creates ‘order’ that perhaps constrains options (lowers potential), but also staves off entropy. The structure (the complexity?) protects itself for a very long time before it collapses.
There was an interesting article in Sci Am — also in book form I believe — that traced what would happen to everything if humans suddenly didn’t exist. The subways would fill with water within hours, and most things fall apart very quickly. Yet bronze statues would stand up for eons, even in salt water.
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I read that Whitehead found it tiresome when people asked him about his books. He though he would just be repeating himself. I picked up his “Essays in Science and Philosophy” (1947), and was pleased to see that he did have a little more to say in a short address titled “Process and Reality.” Here are two selections, somewhat out of context:
“Philosophers have taken too easily the notion of perishing. There is a trinity of three notions: being, becoming, and perishing….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 fee 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…”
“I certainly think that the universe is running down. It means that our epoch illustrates one special physical type of order. For example, this absurdly limited number of three dimensions for space is a sign that you have got something characteristic of a special order. We can see the universe passing on to a triviality….That does not mean that there are not some other types of order of which you and I have not the faintest notion…..The universe is laying the foundation of a new type, where our present theories of order will appear as trivial….This is the only possible doctrine of a universe always driving on to novelty.”
This answers my question about entropy and how it squares with creativity. He affirms that our epoch is perishing and that creativity is only a rearguard action constrained by our order. What shocks me is that he finds it obvious that another order will succeed ours. The absurd limitations that we live under — only three dimensions — are not necessary! I guess this is a multiverse argument. The multiple orders are serial and are propelled by creativity, not all popped out simultaneously.

Thomas, One of my ideas for a course project is to create a script and map for a World-Loyalty (i.e., Whitehead) walk in the woods (in semi-suburban Virginia). Just today I finished a Shinto version set in California, but I want to get back to prior set of notes that includes shinrin-yoku. I would really like to hear about how you are doing your walks and what works. This would be for a small group with talking segments, not a silent individual walk. (If you want to go private, please use myersk1@gmail.com).

I will argue that you can achieve a net increase in potential with the right kind of shaping. I had a professor who worked out a scheme by which you could “potentiate” a system. (He was Russian and worked in complete abstraction. He had almost no American students, and I was shocked to learn later that he remained a superstar in Russia.) He played chess and figured there were about 20 ways you could play the game while also retaining capability that you might need, depending on how things go. A few masters used “positional play” that tended to retain potential, but most players use “combinatorial play” that drives toward a solution. (He said that chess was to social science as the fruit fly was to biology — an excellent experimental model.)
You could say that a potentiated system is poised but not committed. So I think your lump of clay has to get in the game first. (Your lump is a process, right?) It is going to be actualizing, no matter what, so I think it needs to at least get itself wetted and softened up. That sacrifices some potential, I’ll admit, but increases net potential because the lump is ready for a very wide range of what clay is expected to do.
How can a child gain the most net potential through education? Yeats told his son’s school that they must teach languages only. Yeats reasoned that when the child began to think he would be well equipped to explore. He would also not have been poisoned by everything else in the curriculum. (I don’t know how that worked out.) Whitehead emphasized romance and adventure in education. That might gain more net potential compared to the conventional “mastery of fundamentals”, although that approach is also pitched as having high potential. We would have to examine outcomes, and that would be a big measurement problem.

THere were a lot of people along the way who trusted in language. I would assume that Whitehead disliked the logical positivists who were active in his day. I remember trying to read some of it and was repelled. It is described as “empiricism pushed to the extreme, absolutely as far as it can go. It is antimetaphysical, anti-idealist, and convinced that science alone can provide knowledge. Knowledge exists only in the form of empirically confirmed propositions.” That’s one way to center on language. Then there is “the linguistic turn”, and accorind to wiki “These various movements often lead to the notion that language ‘constitutes’ reality, a position contrary to intuition and to most of the Western tradition of philosophy.” We don’t want to be loose with our language, but I think Whitehead is telling us not to trust it, or even to trust ideas, but to get to the ground, which is experience, and even below that to feeling. Yet we have to talk about it!

Entropy Solved
I read that Whitehead found it tiresome when people asked him about his books. He though he would just be repeating himself. I picked up his “Essays in Science and Philosophy” (1947), and was pleased to see that he did have a little more to say in a short address titled “Process and Reality.” Here are two selections, somewhat out of context:
“Philosophers have taken too easily the notion of perishing. There is a trinity of three notions: being, becoming, and perishing….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 fee 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…”
“I certainly think that the universe is running down. It means that our epoch illustrates one special physical type of order. For example, this absurdly limited number of three dimensions for space is a sign that you have got something characteristic of a special order. We can see the universe passing on to a triviality….That does not mean that there are not some other types of order of which you and I have not the faintest notion…..The universe is laying the foundation of a new type, where our present theories of order will appear as trivial….This is the only possible doctrine of a universe always driving on to novelty.”
This answers my question about entropy and how it squares with creativity. He affirms that our epoch is perishing and that creativity is only a rearguard action constrained by our order. What shocks me is that he finds it obvious that another order will succeed ours. The absurd limitations that we live under — only three dimensions — are not necessary! I guess this is a multiverse argument. The multiple orders are serial and are propelled by creativity, not all popped out simultaneously.

I found it odd that there was so little literature on aesthetics. The American academy seemed to have bypassed the subject for decades. THe book that seemed most available was George Santayana, THe Sense of Beauty. I believe I read it a long time ago but it didn’t answer what I was looking for. Only very recently did I learn that Santayana hated that book and he felt forced to write it in order to satisfy Harvard expecdtations that he publish. Dewey’s Art as Experience is much more interesting, but I haven’t read it with attention. I was shocked when my daughter brought back from school an original 1934 edition. SHe read it, and I felt smoked by the little one, who is no philospher. But she appreciates art, so I have something to learn from her. If I choose to write on the topic I’ll get the new book. Unfortunately I only read a library copy of Odin and might need to get a copy of my own. I guess I want to learn the full range of the aesthetic response or appreciation. It is wider than many suppose, and incorporates the faith response, as some people argue, but is it everything, and if so, why do few say so?

While the good, true, and beautiful are classic ideals, Whitehead says that beauty is in some sense ultimate. (Surprisingly, Jonathan Edwards agrees.) I recall Odin making the point that W’s last books were focused more on aesthetics. He says that this work tends to be overlooked, or dismissed as mere elaboration, by those who prefer ‘the system’. Odin himself thinks they are more than elaboration. I didn’t know enough to be able to grasp his point. I was hoping to learn more about it from his segment in our course.
Right now I am leaving to attend a team building event where we are painting. With no skill in either painting or process, I will attempt a process painting! This morning, for the first time, I stopped at the scenic overlook over the Potomac River and took pictures. It was very foggy. There are separated, silouetted trees and a path downward, and the lower parts were increasingly whited out. You don’t actually see the water, but see only a faint outline of the reflection of the opposite shore. I will attempt some Japanese-style fog and possibly place a pilgrim on this lonely path. If this painting were executed, there would be a feeling toward ideals, but nothing explicit about goodness or truth. Not everything needs to come forth at once, I suppose.

I was wondering about how our “wisdom tradition” stands in relation to other traditions. Religions and American philosophy departments don’t appear to be denouncing us as heretics, but they do keep us at arm’s length. We avoid confrontation by syncretizing what we like and skirting around bits of orthodoxy that we don’t like. It’s an intersting stand-off with materialist science. We say there is more than material, and they say, “It doesn’t show up on our instruments so it doesn’t matter, even if it were true.” But we can’t be everybody’s friend. I guess I’m just wondering who seriously disagrees with us and why. It must be more than Descartes, who everybody wants to disagree with these days.
I was trained up in the “systems movement.” C.W. Churchman was honest enough to point out that systems thinking, which aspires to “sweep in” everything, nevertheless had indigestible enemies, namely religion, art, and politics. (That failure is why I’m here.) So maybe systems thinking, a species of scientism, is one of our enemies.

Actualization hierarchy sorts out things according to how they are organized. (I’ll assume that it weighs multiple characteristics, to include liveliness, which puts a human higher than an atom or diamond, even though atoms and diamons have a purer unity, no biome, no clothes, no dandruff, etc.) I guess I’m asking about any interaction of the mountain’s place on an actualization hierarchy with it’s place on a value hierarchy and a beauty hierarchy, and also whether I, as the mountain’s admirer, have any influence on where it gets placed on any of those scales. There’s actually a point here. I think in our Whitehead system we are saying that there is a lot of spirit distributed in the world, any you can “really” commune with it. But if little of it resides in rocks, communing with the “spirit of the mountain” is just imaginary. The mountain is nearly as dead as Descartes would have it.
And why should I care about nearly dead things? Yet we do care about mountain top removal, and not just because of the pollution. We also care about Taliban blowing up ancient rock sculptures. If everything perishes, why should I care if we move up the schedule, especially for rocks? Isn’t the indestructible memory good enough?

I would like an instruction sheet. I don’t think anybody is recommending that we eliminate the self, even if we could. One can, however, raise the shades, peek outside, and put the shades down again with a new awareness of what is outside, along with a new awareness of the shades. Transcendent experience is fleeting. (I recently asked a chanter/meditator how long you should do it. If a Tibetan does it all day long, is he getting somewhere farther a short-termer? She thought it was a terrible question and wouldn’t answer. Several in the group told me that they recognized that it may have been a silly way to ask it, but how long do you really need to live outside yourself in order to get it?)