The Animacy of Stone

This article undertakes a critical analysis of the adoption of process metaphysics in the field of archaeology and anthropology for the explanation of animism. The field of "new animism" has adopted process metaphysics in order to counter the nineteenth-century definition of animism as epistemological projection toward animism as ontological condition. This shift from epistemology to ontology has the danger of equating animism with process metaphysics as such. By examining the category ofpropositional judgment within Whitehead's metaphysics, I argue that the condition of animism emerges through a judgment of truth, which is aesthetic. It is through Whitehead's integration of propositional judgment within his metaphysical system that one can understand that an ontological approach toward animism is not necessarily opposed to a refiective type of experience.

Strategy-in-Practices: A process philosophical approach to understanding strategy emergence and organizational outcomes

Emergence of a firm’s strategy is of central concern to both Strategy Process (SP) and Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) scholars. While SP scholars view strategy emergence as a long-term macro conditioning process, SAP advocates concentrate on the episodic micro ‘doing’ of strategy actors in formal strategy planning settings. Neither perspective explains satisfactorily how process and practice relate in strategy emergence to produce tangible organizational outcomes. The conundrum of reconciling the macro/ micro distinction implied in process and practice stems from a shared Substantialist metaphysical commitment that attributes strategy emergence to substantive entities. In this article, we draw on Process metaphysics and the practice-turn in social philosophy and theory to propose a Strategy- in-Practices (SIP) perspective. SIP emphasizes how the multitude of coping actions taken at the ‘coal-face’ of an organization congeal inadvertently over time into an organizational modus operandi that provides the basis for strategizing. Strategy, therefore, inheres within socio-culturally propagated predispositions that provide the patterned consistency that makes the inadvertent emergence of a coherent strategy possible. By demonstrating how strategy is immanent in socio-culturally propagated practices, the SIP perspective overcomes the troublesome micro/ macro distinction implied in SP and SAP research. It also advances our understanding of how strategy emergence impacts organizational outcomes.

Susanne Langer

Logician and philosopher of art Susanne K. Langer (b. 1895–d. 1985, née Knauth) has been a rather elusive protagonist in 20th-century philosophy. Mentioned alongside key thinkers such as Charles W. Morris or Abraham Kaplan in establishing the field of formal symbolic logic, she dedicated her early research to the study of symbols and contributed essential introductory literature. The young scholar—she was a student of Henry M. Sheffer and later completed her doctoral studies with Alfred N. Whitehead—continuously challenged analytic philosophy with audacious propositions and controversial semantic hypothesis. As philosophical hybrid, not only advancing elements from Whiteheadian process thought but sharing essential roots in Ernst Cassirer’s theory of symbolic form, the disputability in Langer’s theory, spans the continental divide. Langer introduced a “new key” to philosophy by emphasizing musical form in the making of meaning. Her 1942 book Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art was a best-seller yet had little impact on major academic discourses. Herein she establishes the generative idea for a musical matrix from which symbolic articulation takes place in relational structure. Her aim was to address the problem of conceptualizing unlogicized areas of life, respectively myth, ritual, and arts. Growing emphasis placed on logical analysis rigidly divided the natural sciences and the humanities into “two cultures.” Whatever was excluded, following Langer, could nevertheless be reintroduced to the domain of genuinely intelligible symbols by expanding the spectrum of symbolic forms. Her semiology conceptualizes language, science, and logic hitherto as discursive form but adds artistic expression as presentational symbol to the semantic toolkit. She aimed to lever culture, religion, and artistic expression as equal mental resources for higher cognition. This emerges from her notion of logical symbolization as form, rather than determined by a concept of truth, which distinguishes her from her contemporaries in logical positivism. Langer’s core hypothesis suggests an art symbol analogue to feeling. Her theory, highly informed by process metaphysics, critiques and further supplements its ontology by advancing to scientific validation through empirical research. This culminates in a philosophy of mind enriched by anthropological, biological, and neuro-physiological studies in her magnum opus Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling I–II written between 1967–1982. Langer’s philosophy accounts for art’s epistemological import, hereby continuing a pluralistic approach with regard to the evaluation of its plentiful forms of expression.

Commentary on Jean Wahl

This commentary considers Wahl’s 1942 “Poetry as Spiritual Exercise” in the context of his interests in radical empiricism and process metaphysics. In doing so, it raises appreciation for the complexity of his thought, identifies specific notes of influence on Gilles Deleuze, and responds to worries that Wahl’s notion of spiritual exercise is predominantly a form of withdrawal, quietism, or retreat from the horrors of World War Two. For Wahl, rather than passive contemplation of a determinate artifact, poetry is a mode of experience that, to speak with Whitehead and James, is a making. This experience of poetry develops affordances of thought that strengthen existential capacity for remaining open to uncertainty, fragility, and vulnerability.

Poetry as Spiritual Exercise

“La Poésie Comme Exercice Spirituel” first appeared in a 1942 issue of Revue Fontaine edited by Jacques and Raissa Maritain and was subsequently republished in Wah’s 1948 text Poésie, Pensée, Perception, published by Calmann-Lévy. The following is a translation of the Fontaine version. I have noted all of the variations from the latter version in the notes. As I emphasize in my commentary, the piece is a notable display of Wahl’s eclectic range of influences. Most importantly, it shows the extent to which his interest in radical empiricism and process metaphysics informs his creative approach to the intersection of poetics and metaphysics. These interests are not explicitly named in the essay, and yet their influence is pervasive. The essay also includes several moments of substantial resonance with the work of Gilles Deleuze, as noted in the commentary.

Abordagem dimensional em psiquiatria e filosofia do processo: notas preliminares

Dimensional psychopathology and process philosophy form together a potentially fruitful research field in psychiatry and philosophy. The continuum of mental disorders and the tradition of unitary psychosis might profit from process metaphysics, which emphasizes flowing processes in a creative nature that comprises consciousness. Seeing dimensions through the lens of process philosophy means that there are internal relations among psychopathological manifestations, that is, they are not detachable, isolated things and do not simply present themselves randomly side by side. Electromagnetism and quantum physics show a dematerialized nature in which vibrations, forces or energies act flowingly at the basis of reality: matter would be derivative or moments in a process. Psychiatric syndromes can be considered moments in a process as well. Nature is more vivid, loaded with a panexperientialism or pansubjectivism, making it less problematic, or rather a misplaced question, the riddle of how the mind arises from objects.

When does the owl of Minerva spread its wings? Shadow organizing and modes of inquiry

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to critique the metaphor of “shadow organizing” in relation to researchers’ allegedly ontological commitment to processual metaphysics. Design/methodology/approach The paper focuses on the association of “shadow organizing” with post-epistemologies that are grounded in process ontology. The investigation examines aspects of relational thinking and is guided by John Dewey and Arthur Bentley’s genealogical reconstruction of modes of inquiry. Findings Inquiry is construed in either substantialist or relational ways by researchers. By using the metaphor of “shadow organizing,” the relational aspects of organizational phenomena are prioritized for explorative purposes. Other research objectives are aided by substantialist modes of inquiry. It is the argument of the paper, however, that relational research approaches need not make commitment to process ontology, and that the relational ambitions imbued in the metaphor of shadow organizing are in fact better honored for their methodological virtues. Originality/value The paper’s original contribution consists in critiquing post-epistemological attempts to ground organization studies in ontological first principles of process metaphysics. The paper argues that the metaphor of “shadow organizing” is a promising concept that is better appreciated as a methodological move than an ontological commitment.