Discussions and Applications

This chapter analyzes Part II of Process and Reality. It begins with a discussion of fact and form, and states that for Alfred North Whitehead, to be an actual entity is to be fully formed, fully definite, with no indeterminations left unresolved. From the welter of what it could be, an actual entity decides what it will be: realizing certain potentials and positively excluding others; taking a definite stance with respect to everything in the ideal and actual worlds. Its real essence, structured by its associative hierarchy, comprises the full particularity of its status in the universe and of the universe in it: its unique way of housing and pervading this world populated by these actual entities. The remainder of the chapter explains the extensive continuum; order, society, organisms, and environment; the modal theory of perception; and a theory of judgment.

Process Philosophy and Its Problems

This chapter presents the nature, basic insight, and linguistic difficulties of process philosophy. Process philosophy is an answer to the being vs. becoming, permanence vs. change problematic which has been central to metaphysical speculation since the time of the Greeks. Two inseparable notions constitute the foundational insight of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy: the permanence of value achieved and the ongoingness of value achievement. His purpose in writing Process and Reality is to construct a metaphysical scheme capable of elucidating the implications of these notions. The remainder of the chapter discusses the Whitehead's construction of a novel philosophical language and his use of language of consciousness in interpretations of non-conscious processes.

The Theory of Extension

This chapter analyzes Part IV of Process and Reality. It begins with a discussion of coordinate division, which is the isolation of the separable elements in the inseparate unity of the satisfaction. In genetic analysis, which is likewise an analysis of these separable elements, the emphasis is placed on the feelings themselves: their arising, structure, subjective forms, integration, and comparison. Coordinate division, as an analysis of the concrete superject emergent from the process of feeling, concentrates on the fully determinate, unified space–time region actualized in the concrescence and distinguishes in it the sub-regions, extensive quanta, and standpoints which might be. Therefore, it is primarily the data from the physical pole of an entity which are susceptible to coordinate analysis. The remainder of the chapter explains extensive connection, flat loci, strains, and measurement.

The Speculative Scheme

This chapter discusses Alfred North Whitehead's speculative scheme. The elaboration of a speculative scheme does not proceed in an ad hoc manner, but is controlled each step of the way by the norms which govern the ideal product. The most fundamental criterion of any metaphysics is that it be self-referential, interpreting not only the world of experience but itself, its process of formulation, and its relation to other theories as well. Any philosophical theory should be the prime exemplification of itself if it is not to be useless speculation. For Whitehead's scheme, this entails that the theory manifest the same organic interconnections as it ascribes to the world.

Science and the Modern World as a Romantic Version of Process and Reality

This chapter argues that Science and the Modern World (SMW) represents Alfred North Whitehead in his moment of romancing the metaphysical implications of his earlier epistemological theories, the full schematization of Process and Reality (PR) having yet to be constructed. The work has the “vividness of novelty,” the “unexplored connexions,” the “possibilities half-disclosed ... and halfconcealed,” and hence the vital immediacy which makes it an admirable introduction to the complexities of PR. Furthermore, it provides an experiential grounding for the later, more abstract superstructure, showing as it does that the metaphysics springs not from a vacuum, but from a solid basis of human experience given form, universality, and stability in science, mathematics, philosophy, literature, religion, language, and social structures.

The Structure of a Concrescence

This chapter analyzes Part III of Process and Reality. It begins with a discussion of the nature of genetic analysis and states that in genetic analysis, the self-creative process of the subject is traced as it grows from phase to phase. Coordinate analysis, focusing on the fully determinate satisfaction achieved in concrescence, takes as its object the spatio-temporal standpoint in the extensive continuum which the entity has actualized. The former mode divides an occasion into prehensions, underscoring its final causality; the latter mode yields space–time regions through which chains of efficient causality are propagated. The reminder of the chapter explains the nature of feelings in general, primary feelings, propositions and feelings, and comparative feelings.

God and the World

This chapter analyzes Part V of Process and Reality (PR). Here, Alfred North Whitehead returns in a moment of generalization to what has been the underlying theme of PR: the reconciliation of the primordial oppositions given in and for experience—the one and the many, order and creativity, permanence and change, now as subsumed in the foundational dialectic of God and the world. It is no longer necessary to plumb the obscurities of the text, for Whitehead speaks lyrically and directly, pulling aside the curtain for a moment to enable the reader to catch a glimpse of the massive simplicity of his cosmological vision. It is indeed only a glimpse, the preface to the theological counterpart of process cosmology, a beginning not an end.