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I borrow my title from Harvey Cox’s well known The Secular City, the aim of which was to map out and defend the relevance of religion for "the post-literate man of the electronic image" (TSC 11) whose urban, technological culture seemed to many so inhospitable for such an endeavor. Whether or not one agrees with Cox’s arguments about the positive religious opportunities in such a "technopolitan" environment, not many will dispute the necessity -- indeed, the inevitability -- of evaluating the significance of social changes on institutions in terms of the intelligibility of their operative concepts and their cultural relevance.

But if this need for revaluation is true of religion, it is even more so of education, and few have understood it as well, or illustrated it with such a commanding historical sweep, as did Alfred North Whitehead. This is perhaps the dominant impression that even the reader with the most cursory knowledge of his writings receives from The Aims of Education. And scholars familiar with the whole corpus know that, as Victor Lowe pointed out, "we can see how great a part of Whitehead’s activities, all through his life, has been expended on education. He wrote essays on it before he began to write as a philosopher, even a philosopher of physics . . . Principia Mathematica . . . is probably the only book bearing his name in which an interest in the activities of the mind does not often show itself" (DWP 21).

More than a half-century after The Aims of Education appeared in print, it is still true that, as Henry Wyman Holmes once observed, "The wit, the common sense, the penetration of the essays . . . commend them so decisively to teachers" (WVE 633). It is also probably true that, as Holmes goes on to assert, "What Whitehead does not see (or does not emphasize) is the enormous difficulty of making education for the duller minds and slower-moving bodies what it can be (and clearly should be) for the rest -- an active process leading to broad understandings and to special competence without the slightest rending ‘of the seamless cloth of learning"’ (WVE 637). But this fault aside, there are several enduring values in The Aims of Education, even for a culture drastically unlike that to which it was addressed, and thus relevant for reasons which its author could not have suspected. In the following pages, therefore, I first shall list summarily four of these values which, as a professional educator, I find particularly illuminating. Then I shall detail three crucial and dramatic ways in which society has changed since The Aims of Education. And finally, I shall sketch the new relevance of that text together with certain parts of Whitehead’s later philosophy which probably, but unhappily, are unknown by most educators.

I

The first of these insights is that education is not simply a mastery of "scraps of information." Echoing Faust’s mournful lament, Whitehead asserts that "A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth" (AE).¹ Rather, since "Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling," it follows that "What we should aim at producing is men who possess both culture and expert knowledge in some special direction. Their expert knowledge will give them the ground to start from, and their culture will lead them as deep as philosophy and as high as art" (AE I). In this scheme, education becomes "the acquisition of the art of the utilization of knowledge" (AE 6), and Whitehead is well remembered for having detailed two related pitfalls on the road to acquiring this art. Both represent ways that education degenerates into "scraps of information."

The first trap is "inert ideas," that is, "ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations" (AE 1-2). And the second pitfall, which institutionalizes the first, is the "fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of the modem curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations" (AE 10). But:

The second, third, and fourth themes from The Aims of Education flow directly from the first. The second is that "The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical; that is, no education which does not impart both technique and intellectual vision" (AE 74). The Function of Reason will later parallel this claim with its distinction between the practical and speculative functions of Reason, but with the caveat that "the antithesis between the two functions of Reason is not quite so sharp as it seems at first sight" (FR 39).

The third insight is rather different. Returning to the connection between life and the curriculum, Whitehead considers that "So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century . . . The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and old in the imaginative consideration of learning. The university imparts information, but it imparts it imaginatively" (AB 138-139). Or, as the disguised Mephistopheles more succinctly counseled the eagerly inquiring student, "Gray, my dear friend, is every theory/And green alone life’s golden tree" (F 207).

Along with this, fourth, the connection between education and the zest for life means avoiding the danger of "a faculty entirely unfit -- a faculty of very efficient pedants and dullards. The general public will only detect the difference after the university has stunted the promise of youth for scores of years" (AE 150). The faculty should be "a band of imaginative scholars" (AE 150) -- neither fools nor pedants. "Fools act on imagination without knowledge; pedants act on knowledge without imagination. The task of a university is to weld together imagination and experience" (AE 140). Whitehead continually and consistently argued that education had to be revitalized by redeveloping the excitement of learning in addition to routine, and this could be done by the reintroduction, through imagination, of novelty and creativity.

Insisting on creativity as well as on routine may be seen as a specific case of a later, more general claim that Whitehead’s process metaphysics makes about our own cosmic epoch. Namely, the well-being, and the very survival, of higher-order organisms require the successful interplay of several contrary factors. For example, we need stability, but also creativity; order as well as novelty, permanence balanced by change, endurance as well as life. We require the structure of institutions, but also flexibility; habit as well as adaptability, and tradition, history, and custom need the balance of freedom.

In Whitehead’s view, these are contraries, not contradictories. It is true that, in practice, the pendulum appears to swing much more to one extreme than to the other, as for instance, in the way that the 1950’s might be contrasted to the 1960’s, or the 1960’s to the 1970’s. And even in theory it is often difficult to avoid either/or thinking about the shape of social life. As Lon Fuller once observed, "Men have never been very ready to acknowledge that their thinking contains anything like an unresolved state of tension. They have never been very happy with what Morris Cohen calls ‘the principle of polarity,’ according to which notions apparently contradictory form indispensable complements for one another" (RFCL 381). Likewise, Whitehead’s view is that, for solid theoretical and practical reasons, we must strive for "an understanding of the interweaving of change and permanence, each required by the other. This interweaving is a primary fact of experience. It is at the base of our concepts of personal identity, of social identity, and of all sociological functionings" (MT 73).

It is also, therefore, at the foundation of educational theory. As he pointed out late in Process and Reality,

Now Whitehead was concerned with the educational process not only in terms of ideals, but also from the point of view of a cultural diagnosis of "the state of the art." And as far as the latter goes, in The Aims of Education and elsewhere, we find a consistent attack on educational institutions for their one-sided contributions to the life of the mind. That is, he viewed educational institutions as furnishing mostly those features of experience listed above which have to do with order, permanence, and stability. It was their contraries, rather, which were jeopardized, that is, those elements of life which revolve around the freshness of creativity and imagination. For example, foresight requires a sensitivity to evidence, perhaps itself a developed ability, so as to imaginatively perceive relevant future possibilities, coupled with an adaptability to changing circumstances. Certainly Whitehead appreciated the paradoxicality of educational institutions training people to be foresighted, since their curricula were mostly routinized programs geared to drearily providing a knowledge of the past. Thus, one great presupposition of Whitehead’s approach to education was that the past’s being given was not problematic, and in this context it is easy to understand his admiration for, and excitement about, the University of London and state universities in this country as opposed to Oxford or Cambridge. It is true that he often heaped praise on those stately bastions of academic respectability. But he also records the fact that his teaching career at the University of London changed his mind about the function of Universities in a modern, industrial civilization. And he goes on to claim for that institution and for our state universities that, untrammeled as they were by tradition and habit, "It is not too much to say that this novel adaptation of education is one of the features which may save civilization. The nearest analogy is that of the monasteries a thousand years earlier" (PANW 12).

II

Such are, in brief outline, some of the main enduring values from Whitehead’s reflections on education, chiefly from The Aims of Education, together with his perceptions of the relevance of the educational enterprise to his own culture. Now I want to change the frame of reference to the present and argue that (1) since Whitehead’s time, there have been at least three profound interrelated changes in the shape of social life; (2) these changes do not nullify his insights, but they do make them relevant in ways he never would have suspected; and (3) his emphasis on imagination, creativity, and a zest for life must be tempered to stress what he could take for granted, but which I believe we cannot.

The three social changes I have in mind are as follows. First, the rate of social change has been greatly accelerated because of dramatic technological advances and other factors. In a very fast-paced urban environment, foresight and planning for the future -- as opposed to reaction -- do not become irrelevant. Rather, their importance increases in direct proportion to the ways in which the rapidity of change threatens their very possibility.

This is not to say that Whitehead was unaware of, or paid no attention to social change. Indeed, he remarked that "we live in the first historical period which falsifies the assumption -- which colors our educational philosophy -- that each generation lives amidst traditions established by forefathers and will continue" (AI 117). And this was clearly part of the attraction to less tradition-bound universities. Now today, it may or may not be true that individually and collectively we suffer from a "future shock" syndrome. But it is certain that many, if not most, people are forced to make more choices faster, with less evidence, than in any previous epoch of our society.

The second profound social change is that we are now living in a nuclear age compounded by increasing international tensions, violence, terrorism, and the stockpiling of nuclear weapons. This unsettling situation increases dramatically the stakes that are being gambled. Thus in 1929, Whitehead could confidently assert, as we no longer can, that "the evolutionary use of intelligence is that it enables the individual to profit by error without being slaughtered by it" (PR 168/256). To the extent that "error is the mark of the higher organisms," a nuclear mistake would eliminate this natural gradation. Or, as Whitehead himself put it in another context, "The folly of intelligent people, clear-headed and narrow-visioned, has precipitated many catastrophes" (AI 60).

Now in both The Function of Reason and Process and Reality, Whitehead makes several interesting remarks about the use of reason in evolutionary survival. But before we can appreciate their relevance to the educational process in our culture, we need to consider the third major social change, that is, what Neil Postman has called "the information environment" (TCA 29). While the accelerated pace of social change and the fact that we are living in a nuclear age are clearly phenomena of which no one is unaware, the same cannot be said of the crucial shift in the information environment. Some elaboration will be required, therefore, before illustrating the educational problems it poses and how it is related to the first two social changes.

The easiest way to set out this explanation is to take up Postman’s own order of exposition, albeit greatly compressed and disentangled from its more detailed substructures. The central thesis of Teaching as a Conserving Activity is that education is best thought of as a "thermostatic activity" (TCA 19): "To Norbert Wiener, who invented the science of feedback, the clearest example of cybernetics-in-action -- that is, the principle of oppositional complementarity -- is a thermostat, a mechanism for triggering opposing forces" (TCA 19). In a "dialectical relationship with its environment," "The function of education is always to offer the counter-argument, the other side of the picture. The thermostatic view of education is, then, not ideology-centered. It is balance-centered" (TCA 19-20).

Education should thus serve as a balance to the prevailing biases of a given culture. Just as Whitehead argued, schools should promote change in

Thus, in our society, given the accelerated pace of life, "Our own culture is overdosing on change . . . . [social changes] have come in Toffleresque profusion and have led to such Kafkaesque confusion. It is enough to say that we have reached the point where the problem of conservation, not growth, must now be solved" (TCA 21). Postman considers, therefore, that

Now, then, we come to the "information environment" which is at once the chief danger to conserving what is necessary for a humane survival and consequently that upon which the thermostatic activity of education is to act. The information environment is created by the particular ways in which members of a certain society communicate with each other. These styles and patterns of communication

As a result, the task of educators is to illuminate the biases of the information environment and to balance them with a contrary voice.

The information environment in any given culture has a complex structure. It has form, and in our own society is dominated by the electronic media, with television at the center. A crucial fact here, to which I shall return below, is that the form of information is intimately bound up with the way we conceive -- in our own age, literally picture -- reality. But there is also quantity of information, and today it is indeed staggering. Whole institutions exist merely to collect, process, and distribute it. Thus, while institutions create our information, it is also true that information creates our institutions) And whenever there are significant mutations in the information structure, great social changes cannot be far behind.

Finally, information is conveyed and registered at a certain speed, and the technological advances here are not only wondrous to behold, but also have reshaped history. For example, the Vietnamese War was the first to be a livingroom, TV affair, and it is not too much to believe that the tide of public opinion finally turned against the whole enterprise in large part because of TV viewers sickened by the continuous sequence of gruesome spectacles on the nightly news. Thus Postman is correct that

Now when educators come to examine our electronic information environment for its biases, the first thing to be grasped is that it has a curriculum all its own. More exactly, it is a curriculum, just as school is (rather than "has"), if a curriculum be defined as

In terms of the relative influence of the two curricula, even in the absence of totally reliable figures it is safe to conclude that each year the average child in this country spends more hours in front of the television set than in school. As a result, Postman considers that "television is not only a curriculum but constitutes the major educational enterprise now being undertaken in the United States. That is why I call it the First Curriculum. School is the second" (TCA 50).

Now if school should oppose the biases of the electronic media environment, it cannot be merely because of the latter’s more significant impact on its clientele. The claim is not that school and television are doing the same thing and that one is more successful than the other. It must be, rather, that their conflicts are so significant that the types of education which one receives under their influences differ radically -- and with decisive social consequences. This is, in fact, the case, and some of their more important differences may be summarized as follows.

First, they use different means to compel attention and attendance. School has a traditionally uninteresting subject matter and must force people to attend through legal force. Television, on the other hand, compels attendance indirectly by being attention-centered: "In a certain sense, it has no goal other than keeping the attention of its students. Unlike the school, which selects its subject matter first and then tries to devise methods to attract interest in it, television first selects ways to attract interest, allowing content to be shaped accordingly" (TCA 51). Television watching is its own reward or, to put it another way, it, rather than school, is much more apt to realize the ideal of learning for its own sake.

This fact has important consequences about authority in a reversal of classic student-teacher roles. Namely, "In the school curriculum, if the student repeatedly does not pay attention, the teacher may remove him from class. In the TV curriculum, if the student repeatedly does not pay attention, the teacher is removed from class" (TCA 51-52). Along with this, we should also note that television does not administer penalties for not paying attention or doing lessons. But such is not the case with school, or life itself, for that matter.

The second great difference between the television curriculum and school is the way in which the information they convey is encoded. In the former, information is codified analogically; in the latter, however, it is digitally codified:

One needs a semantic code and a grammatical structure to understand digital forms of information, but this is not the case for analogic forms.

To process digitally encoded information, one needs sophisticated cognitive abilities unnecessary for analogic forms. This stems from the essential contrast between "The image -- concrete, unique, non-paraphrasable -- versus the word -- abstract, conceptual, translatable. This is one of several conflicts between TV and school, and perhaps the most important" (TCA 55). Correspondingly, "This difference between symbols that demand conceptualization and reflection and symbols that evoke feeling has many implications, one of the most important being that the content of the TV curriculum is irrefutable . . . . Images and sentences are neither processed by the brain nor evaluated by the intelligence in the same way. They do different things and require different responses" (TCA 56).

It is true that scripts of television shows and commercials contain propositions that are true or false, but the televised word is phenomenologically distinguishable:

Another great difference between school and television that follows from the way their information is encoded is that the school curriculum is

But in television viewing, no program demands prerequisites and each is complete in itself. This is another reason why TV learning can satisfy the goal of learning for its own sake, for each story provides an immediate gratification of the desire for understanding and enjoyment.

Television, unlike school, provides the immediacy of pleasure via the pleasure of immediacy. Its learning modules are time-compressed, extremely shortened sequences of 10-60 second commercials and 30-60 minute programs subdivided into 8-10 minute segments. With special reference to the significant impact of commercials, young people are conditioned to concentrate intensely for very short temporal durations. Correspondingly, they get unused to exercises of intense concentration throughout a substantial period of time. One is certainly justified in expecting significant conditioning in television commercials not only because of the temporal factor, but also because they are almost always about serious problems. That is, they are not so much about products as about social problems to solve. The problems are serious, especially for young people, but the solutions are almost always trivial. For example:

In television land, all these weighty problems can be solved instantly, by buying the appropriate product or services. In real life, and as traditionally taught in school, the nature of such problems and the ways to solve them are viewed in a sharply different manner. The "stubborn facts," as Whitehead liked to say, are much more indifferent to our wishes.

There is another aspect of this difference which is equally important. Namely, history is almost completely irrelevant in an information environment that restricts one’s attention to a narrow slice of temporal immediacy. This is so because "it is in the nature of TV’s imagistic, present-oriented, time-compressed curriculum to be nonsequential; that is, discontinuous. There is almost nothing on television, however high its quality, that has anything to do with anything else on television" (TCA 62). Whereas one would reasonably expect in a school curriculum, even a very bad one, some principle of coherent organization, the television curriculum is almost totally incoherent: "There is no chronology, or theme, or logical sequence. The world to which television is the window is presented as fragmented, unorganizable, without structure of any kind" (TCA 63).

The information environment of the television curriculum reveals one additional bias which is worth pointing out, namely, that it is largely authoritarian. Messages are conveyed in one direction only, so that the viewer retains the option to change programs or even to turn off the set, but never to provide any feedback by questioning, complaining, altering the form and/or content of the programs, and so forth. Of course, as Postman admits, school

Postman also points out how television is paradoxically non-authoritarian because it breaks up "the monopoly of the printed word" as analogously "The printing press broke the knowledge monopoly of those few writers and readers who controlled the manuscript culture" (TCA 68). But in an epoch in which more and more power, wealth, and influence accrue to the electronic media generally, and to television in particular, rather than to the written word, one has more reason to be concerned about its authoritarian, monopolistic qualities. Thus it is legitimate to wonder whether "Living, as we do, in an electronic world of pictures and sounds, can the written word have the same power with which we once invested it?" (TCA 42). Perhaps not. If Milton was correct that "a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit," television might be its Dracula.

In any case, Milton probably would have worried about the possibility of having master spirits in post-literate humanity, or whether most people would incline toward slavery to electronic media controllers, perhaps as in Fahrenheit 451. What is more, some protection against authoritarian control of the information environment has always been provided by a strong oral tradition which nourished articulate social criticism. But it is important to see clearly that our choice is no longer between a written and an oral culture. We are not returning to the Socratic alternative to the Platonic emphasis on the written word, or to the life of the mind as Montaigne treasured it. On the contrary, we have, and we are actively shaping the future of, an image culture, that of the "post-literate man of the electronic image" (TSC 11).

Postman’s thermostatic view means that (school) education should correctively balance the biases of the electronic information environment rather than eliminate the media entirely. It is true that his criticisms sometimes border on the simplistic by, for example, not distinguishing between the effects of being conditioned by Masterpiece Theatre as opposed to The New Newlywed Game or Wheel of Fortune. But it is also the case that he does not pretend, predict, or even desire that television in particular will vanish. His criticisms are not directed toward content, but rather toward form. Thus they are not the standard fare of either moral conservatism or more liberal attacks on the inanity of most of TV’s mind-wasting exercises (Newton Minnow’s "vast wasteland"). Rather, he is concerned with the form and style of the presentation of the television curriculum because it is that which is most significant in the shaping of people’s minds.

As a result of this concern, Postman is also led to reflect on the consequences of not correcting the several biases detailed above. First, he speculates, but only that, on the physiological effects on brain development. Since the left hemisphere is mostly geared to handling linguistic information and is decisively influential in our powers of reasoning, speaking, writing, computing, categorizing, and so forth as opposed to the right hemisphere’s control of pattern recognition and much of our visual aesthetic appreciation, the speculation is that people would eventually be "right-brained." But throughout several millenia of evolution, it appears that it is the other hemisphere which has been increasingly dominant.

It is difficult to say what the final results of this shift would mean over the course of, say, two or three centuries of electronic image conditioning, but this is only speculation about the future. Returning to the present and something that is already known, Postman observes that there are serious psychological changes even now attributable to television, at least in part:

Not only does this make it extremely difficult for teachers to be interesting in the classroom, or in dealing with digitally encoded information, "But even more important, writing, which is the clearest demonstration of the power of analytical and sequential thinking, seems increasingly to be an alien form to many of our young, even to those who may be regarded as extremely intelligent" (TCA 73). Certainly this fact threatens many skills, abilities, and even the perception of general culture -- from logic and doing science on the one hand to good literature and decent journalism on the other. But more generally, Postman is worried about why young people "turn away from civilized speech," and in his view, the right answer is that "the electronic information environment, with television at its center, is fundamentally hostile to conceptual, segmented, linear modes of expression, so that both writing and speech must lose some of their power" (TCA 74).

The use of language can also be a craft, and part of the skill of being a linguistic craftsperson -- a wordsmith, if you like -- is the ability to be sensitive to the nuances and ambiguities of words and expressions and thus the effects that they will have on the reader or listener. But there is little place for this in the electronic information environment, especially in television, because "its imagery is fast moving, concrete, discontinuous, alogical, requiring emotional response, not conceptual processing. Not being propositional in form, its imagery does not provide grounds for argument and contains little ambiguity. There is nothing to debate about. Nothing to refute. Nothing to negate" (TCA 75).

There is a tight link between being successfully conditioned by such an information environment, being blind to ambiguities in evidence, and, with the accelerating pace of social change, both demanding and expecting instant solutions to life’s problems. "The fragmented, impatient speech of the young" and "their illogical, unsyntactical writing" are only two effects or concomitant developments of "the rapid emergence of an all-instant society: instant therapy, instant religion, instant food, instant friends, even instant reading. Instancy is one of the main teachings of our present information environment. Constancy is one of the main teachings of civilization" (TCA 76). Speed reading, which no doubt developed in response to the enormously increased volume of information, not to say the worthlessness of much of it, is contemptuous of ambiguities of meanings, the notion that language can be a craft, and thus of much of artistic creation. Therefore, "A person trained to read a page in three seconds is being taught contempt for complexity and ambiguity. A person trained to restructure his or her life in a weekend of therapy is being taught not only contempt for complexity and ambiguity but for the meaning of one’s own past" (TCA 76).

But given the considerably greater power of influence exercised by the electronic media, Postman comes to the regretful conclusion that traditional school education yields to it

The task for the future, therefore, is to provide our youth with a "healthful balance, and therefore a survival-insuring direction" by stressing the qualities of the traditional school curriculum which "is subject-matter-centered, word-centered, reason-centered, future-centered, hierarchical . . . and coherent" (TCA 86).

III

I have gone on at some length in the preceding pages about Postman’s cultural diagnosis and worries about the contemporary function of education, although I have certainly not stated the whole of his case or even touched on his proposed solutions. But such length is justified, I believe, because of the richness of detail with which he explains and illustrates the third major social change since the days of Whitehead’s writings, that of the information environment, which is pervasive enough that its conditioning activities usually remain hidden from most of us.

Such detail is also plainly necessary to frame an adequate Whiteheadian response to these arguments beginning with what they imply for realizing those insights from The Aims of Education briefly summarized in Part I above. I shall take the third and fourth ones first, since they are simpler than the others. The third was that, on its intellectual side, the raison d’être of universities is to impart information imaginatively. Tightly connected with this, the fourth insight was that, in striving for a unity of education, the zest for life, and imagination, education should be interesting. In particular, the faculty should be a "band of imaginative scholars," neither very efficient pedants who are ambulatory storehouses of unimaginative knowledge nor fools who act on an abundance of ignorant imagination.

As far as I know, Whitehead did not give us any examples of the latter, but as regards the former, he left no doubt as to what sort of targets he had in mind. Such, for example, was the celebrated Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the mid-nineteenth century, and immortalized in the following well-known rhyme:

In Whitehead’s view, "This attitude is always prevalent in the learned world. It sterilizes imaginative thought, and thereby blocks progress" (MT 59).

But as Postman has pointed out, in a culture thoroughly conditioned by electronic media, the main problems for imaginatively imparting information in educational institutions are radically different from what Whitehead had in mind or probably could have suspected. Even if some professors today do have pretensions to omniscience, the explosion in the quantity of information to be imparted makes them as well as Dr. Whewell -- and Faust too, for that matter -- amusing anachronisms. However, as elaborated above, that is not for students today the chief obstacle to making education interesting. Rather, it is a question of making school education interesting, that is, of maintaining our integrity. One new aim of education must then be to resist imitating the incomparably more interesting and vivid electronic media to distinguish what goes on in the classroom from time-compressed, disjointed, non-sequential presentations of subject matter. Rather than being entertainers for immediate pleasure, we need now to emphasize stability instead of novelty, order instead of change, and constancy in place of instancy. We need have no fear, as did Whitehead, that novelty is in jeopardy. That the whole society supplies in daily abundance.

Thus, to take advantage of both novelty and stability, instructors ought certainly to refer to the wider world of the electronic information environment and to build in examples in classroom lectures and discussions. But balance will require that they point out to students all that the electronic media do not supply the life of the mind. There is nothing in principle which prevents us from imaginatively pointing out the difference between cognitive and imaginative abilities and of reinforcing the former.

The same line of thought, and new aims of education, apply as well to the first two enduring values from The Aims of Education. These are a bit more complex, but no less relevant to the structure of our information environment. The first of these was that education is not equivalent to "scraps of information." Culture is "activity of thought and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling." As a result, educational institutions should strive to produce individuals who possess both a knowledge of general culture as well as a specialization. Education becomes "the acquisition of the art of the utilization of knowledge," and the pitfalls of inert ideas and the disconnection of subjects in a school curriculum are to be avoided.

Here, I believe, things have become simply much worse rather than different from Whitehead’s day to our own. Certainly he could not have seen much in conditioning by instantial electronic images that is compatible with the above claims. For one thing, there is comparatively little in the content of television programming which encourages receptiveness to beauty or humane feeling. This is so not only of visual phenomena but also, and perhaps especially, the linguistic because the great bulk of language on television -- and radio too, for that matter -- is merely a parody of civilized speech. Particularly in the case of commercial messages, language becomes a surrealistic, frenetic, high-volume self-ridicule with little or no cognitive content, let alone defensible arguments.

Furthermore, the receptiveness to beauty, and probably humane feeling as well, is threatened by the form of the electronic media curriculum. A rapid succession of instantial images which is "fundamentally hostile to conceptual, segmented, linear modes of expression" (TCA 74) is a poor context for cultivating certain minimum abilities required for aesthetic appreciation. That is, one would need the capability to organize a diversity of data in harmonious patterns while building up a richer and richer variety in as coherent a unity as possible. Or as Whitehead indicated in The Function of Reason, ‘The higher forms of intellectual experience only arise when there are complex integrations, and reintegrations of mental and physical experience" (pp. 32-33).

Of course, the protest against inert ideas and a curriculum of disconnected subjects would be even more telling against an electronic image medium than against traditional school curricula, for the reasons Postman gives. If the latter fails to give students a true picture of life as it is lived, how much more is this so of the former? As a matter of fact, Whitehead himself once said something like this in an example that now seems almost quaint by comparison with the electronic media of 1980:

Sensa, for Whitehead -- in his later works, termed "data of presentational immediacy" as opposed to those of "causal efficacy" which link past and present -- are clear, precise, and in themselves are, as Hume showed so well, cut off from both past and future. As such, they are trivial: "The importance of clarity does not arise until we have interpreted it in terms of the vast issues vaguely haunting the fullness of existence" (MT 148). But understanding the latter involves, among other things, recourse to history, the integration of data into coherent patterns of explanation, and the use of sequential reasoning -- all illnourished in a medium of electronic images or "scraps of information."

The final enduring value from The Aims of Education described above is that we should avoid the fallacious antithesis between a technical and a liberal education. In this case, I do not believe that it is so much the form of the electronic media curriculum which inhibits producing people who possess both a knowledge of general culture as well as a technical specialization. It is, rather, the volume of information together with the accelerated pace of social change which requires us to make decisions -- Some crucial and most relatively unimportant -- in such a hurried, unreflective way. Dr. Whewell is an amusing, if illuminating, anachronism precisely because having to quickly process a huge amount of information makes mastering general culture seem more and more an impossible dream.

In an age dominated by economic bad times, professionalism, and specialists of all types, Whitehead would not disagree that students should be able to use "expert knowledge in some special direction" in coping with our sort of information environment and a society of fast-paced change. But on the other hand, he would surely argue that a prime aim of education today would be the thermostatic one of providing a knowledge of general culture -- intellectual vision in addition to technique. One could then have some hope of avoiding the production of a society composed merely of what Germans call Technikidioten -- blind, mindless technicians. To again repair to Adventures of Ideas, "The folly of intelligent people, clear-headed and narrow-visioned, has precipitated many catastrophes" (60). This is perhaps especially applicable to the recombinant DNA technologies of biological engineers who are actively shaping a new Genetic Age here and now.

The above quotation appeared first in this paper in the context of nuclear power, the second major social change from Whitehead’s era to our own. This fact coupled with the accelerated rate of social change and the mutations of form and quantity in the information environment, give us real reason to be concerned for survival itself. Whitehead explains why this is so in an illuminating section of Process and Reality with which more educators and government bureaucrats should be familiar.

The subject is how Nature solves the problem of survival, and what is asserted of the natural world certainly applies, mutatis mutondis, to the social. A society has adapted to its environment when it is "specialized" in relation to certain features of it: "A complex society which is stable provided that the environment exhibits certain features is said to be ‘specialized’ in respect to those features" (PR 100/153). Unspecialized societies are better at adapting to their environments because they are more flexible, but they are "apt to be deficient in structural pattern, when viewed as a whole" (PR 100/153). "Thus," says Whitehead, "The problem for Nature is the production of societies which are ‘structured’ with a high ‘complexity,’ and which are at the same tune ‘unspecialized.’ In this way, intensity [of experience] is mated with survival" (PR 101/154).

Now there are two ways in which (successful) structured societies can solve this problem. The first is by perceiving the environment vaguely enough (in his technical language, transmutation) to block out unwelcome details: "The environment may then change indefinitely so far as concerns the ignored details -- so long as they can be ignored" (PR 101/154). But, although most of us behave this way at some times of our lives -- and perhaps some of us most of the time -- it is a highly risky survival strategy. For instead of foresight and planning, there is only reaction, and the great problem is that it is never possible to know in advance when it will be too late to react to a calamitous environmental change -- especially in a nuclear age!

Thus it is not surprising that Whitehead considers this first survival strategy more appropriate for lower-order organisms. For those of a higher order, the second solution is much better suited. It consists of the enhancement of mentality to envisage novel possibilities relevant to a given situation (in his technical language, conceptually reverted and propositional feelings). Therefore,

Since part of the practical function of reason is to effect our survival, and since in employing the second survival strategy reason becomes "the emphasis upon novelty" (FR 20), it is easy to understand how someone in a basically conserving society would value up novelty and future-oriented behavior to the seeming exclusion of order and the preservation of the past via efficient causation (feelings of "causal efficacy"). But Whitehead would be the first to remind our vastly changed society that we need both -- as noted in the beginning of this essay. Thus, for example, as also pointed out above, foresight requires an adequate sensitivity to nuances and ambiguities of meanings. But this in turn demands a knowledge of relevant history. And to make foresight effective, we need disciplined logical thought. Or, to put the matter in a different way, there are novelties and novelties, and foresight makes use of those that are relevant. But the perception of relevance -- and thus the efficacious use of practical reason -- require a firm grounding in the past and the secure possession of the capacities and skills just referred to which are nurtured by the traditional school curriculum.

In our new aims of education for the 1980’s and beyond, therefore, we shall have to dedicate ourselves to bringing back, among other things, the civilized use of language (both written and oral), a sensitivity to beauty, powers of analytical reasoning, the intellectual vision of ourselves as historical creatures, the ability to cognitively articulate ideas rather than let communication skills courses degenerate into merely "touchie-feelie" experiences of "affirming the other," and finally, a sensitivity to the nuances, complexities, and ambiguities of meanings.⁷ In this way, and only in this way, our educational system will equip its students for the future with an intellectual vision comprised of both knowledge and foresightful adaptability to environmental changes.

A final note: I do not believe that Whitehead would have much sympathy for what is known as the "back-to-the-basics" movement in education today. It is true that none of the capacities and abilities noted above is much encouraged by a fast-changing society which displays little toleration or appreciation for careful thinking and reflection, not to mention decent art and music. And this is not likely to change in an epoch, the universities of which threaten to become merely pre-med or pre-engineering factories, and which is dominated by narrow-minded specialists and Technikidioten. Nonetheless, I think that the latter is just the reason why Whitehead would distance himself from the back-to-the-basics movement, for its proponents usually argue for the development of narrowly defined techniques or skills -- but not for any intellectual vision. As Postman phrases it,

In the face of "this emptiness of moral, social, and even intellectual motivation and meaning, not only in our schools but in our culture," (TCA 133), we should not be surprised at the persistence of what is surely one of the most depressing sentences in the English language, "I only work here."

References

DWP -- Victor Lowe. "The Development of Whitehead’s Philosophy." PANW 15-124.

F -- Johann Wolfgang van Goerte. Faust. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1963.

PANW -- Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed. The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. The Library of Living Philosophers. 2nd ed. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1971.

RFCL -- Lon Fuller. "Reason and Fiat in Case Law" Harvard Law Review 59 (1946): 376-95.

TCA -- Neil Postman. Teaching as a Conserving Activity. New York: Delacorte Press, 1979.

TSC -- Harvey Cox, The Secular City. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan, 1966.

WVE -- Henry Wyman Holmes. "Whitehead’s Views on Education." PANW 619-40.

Notes

1Compare Faust’s famous ennui: "And here I am, for all my lore,/The wretched fool I was before" (F 371).

2 Postman refers to Whitehead only once, repeating the usual misquote: "All philosophy, Whitehead remarked, is only a footnote to Plato" (TCA 32).

3 The number of "information workers" in our society is increasing so dramatically that Douglas Cater, senior fellow of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, said as long as eight years ago that "Approximately half the American payroll now goes for the manipulation of symbols rather than the production of things." ("The Social Repercussions of an ‘Information Society."’ Chronicle of Higher Education 20/18 (June 30, 1980): I).

4 Postman also claims at this point, at the ellipsis of the passage quoted, that "That is why, incidentally. the truth-in-advertising laws are mostly pointless" (TCA 57). I do not agree completely for reasons that are too lengthy to develop here, but revolve around the fact that there is a way of manipulating a sequence of words and pictures to make or imply claims that are true or false. To that extent, however limited, the television curriculum is refutable.

5Areopagitica Paradise Lost and Selected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Northrop Frye, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965: 464. Areopagitica should be required reading for not only journalism students, but also for anyone who cares seriously about the preservation of education in a free society.

6One regrettable example of selling out to the electronic media curriculum at which Postman probably would not be surprised comes from a certain junior college near my university. Misguided technocrats succeeded in getting a course in film editing accepted as satisfying the freshman English composition requirement.

7 "The true philosopher," said Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is he who has inseparably the taste for evidence and the sense of ambiguity." Eloge de la philosophie. Paris: Gallimard, 1953, 10-11.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) was one of the most gifted and original 20th-century French philosophers. His phenomenology of perception and the body led him to explore widely, and deeply, history, political life, art, language, and the social sciences. Before his untimely death, he began to work out an ontology of Nature which he left behind in the form of an unfinished manuscript and working notes which were to be published posthumously as Le Visible et l’.

Some years ago, those of us who first wrote about deep similarities in the writings of Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty were limited to three scanty types of evidence. First, there was one thin reference to Whitehead’s view that nature is "process" ("passage") in the last paragraph of his 1956-1957 lecture course at the College de France, titled "The Concept of Nature" (TL 87), and Merleau-Ponty promised to pursue that theme in his next course. Second, both thinkers framed their philosophies as reactions against the intellectual heritage of classical modern science and philosophy, Galilean-Cartesian physics, and Cartesian mind-body dualisms. This heritage, passing through Newton and Laplace, Comte and 19th-century positivism generally, had a reach long and powerful enough to be a viable option even in the 20th-century contexts in which Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty found themselves writing. Indeed, it was in just such a circumstance that Merleau-Ponty cited Whitehead’s view of nature as "process."

Third, the texts also showed common positive, though not uncriticized, influences through Bergson and the American pragmatists -- chiefly, in Whitehead’s case, John Dewey.¹ As a result of these positive influences, the texts displayed identical concerns for recovering the concreteness of experience, reinterpreting the body achieving a new understanding of space and time, and elucidating the immediacy of experience as a justification for philosophy itself.

With hardly any direct textual attribution, therefore, the task we faced many years ago of trying to bring Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty into a single, stereoscopic vision remained largely speculative. Happily, this is no longer the case. The 1995 publication of expanded and annotated notes from Merleau-Ponty’s courses at the College de France, 1956-1960, contains a 13-page essay titled "The Idea of Nature for Whitehead." The latter’s texts on which Merleau-Ponty relies for this part of his lecture course were Science and the Modern World, The Function of Reason, and The Concept of Nature. He also based his lecture on Jean Wahl’s Vers le concret, the long middle chapter, part of which deals with Whitehead.

Within the narrow limits of this short paper, I will briefly summarize the main themes of the Whitehead essay to show what Merleau-Ponty found valuable in the Whiteheadian texts that he knew. I will then discuss the direction Merleau-Ponty’s thought took after the 1956-1957 lectures, especially in terms of his unfinished manuscript, The Visible and the Invisible. Finally, I will argue that much, if not all, of what Merleau-Ponty struggled to clarify, and even sometimes to express, can be explained within Whitehead’s mature process metaphysics with which Merleau-Ponty apparently remained unfamiliar.

What Merleau-Ponty found valuable in Whitehead’s view of nature runs as follows. First, he agreed with Whitehead’s rejection of a Laplacian concept of space and time. Whitehead was right, he thought, to reject the "simple location" of allegedly discrete quanta of matter existing only in external relations with each other (N 154) in favor of overlapping, encroaching, non-serial relations between instances of process (N 157). Correlatively, Whitehead was also right to hold that all temporal minima are instances of process and have temporal thickness, duration, instead of comprising a series of "flash points" (CN 173, cited at N 154), or atomistic instants.

Whitehead was likewise correct, on Merleau-Ponty’s view, to find in nature an "internal activity" (CN 54). Though this activity remained obscure for Merleau-Ponty he at least found it valuable that Whitehead had not conceived it in terms of an idealistic passage from Nature to Spirit (N 155). For both thinkers, nature is not a machine and the spiritual its resident "ghost:’ as Gilbert Ryle once characterized it.

Accordingly, for Merleau-Ponty "‘process’ is what is given. . . . There is no Nature at an instant all reality implies ‘an advance of nature’ (moving on)" (N 155, citing CN 54). In this creative advance, an object is "only an abbreviated way to note that there has been an ensemble of relationships" (N 158), in which, as he thinks Whitehead correctly argued, there is no bifurcation of primary and secondary qualities (N 158). This means that "we can only understand the nature of Being through our ‘self-awareness"’ (citing CN 16), "in perception in its aborning state" (N 158).

Three important consequences follow, Merleau-Ponty tells us. First, "The unity of events, their inherence in each other, appears here as the correlative of their insertion in the unity of the thinking being" (N 159). Second, as against Laplace, the mind is not a neutral observer outside nature. Rather, as Whitehead said, "Its awareness shares in the passage of Nature" (N 159. citing CN 67).² Furthermore, nature is an "operative presence’ (N 163, citing CN 73), precisely because of the inseparability of creator and creature. By the same token, the course of nature cannot be "‘the history of matter’. . . the fortunes of matter in the adventure of nature"’(N 157, citing CN 16).³ Third, the passage of nature and our "inherence in the Whole" (N 159) create a unity of the body and nature, and bind observers together by creating a groundwork of intersubjectivity. What is true for me in this regard is true for everyone: "There is a sort of reciprocity between Nature and me insofar as I am a sensing being. I am a part of Nature and function as any given event of Nature: I am, through my body, part of Nature, and the parts of nature admit between them relations of the same type as those that my body has with Nature" (N 159).

Furthermore, knowledge and causality appear as twin aspects of this same relationship. For Merleau-Ponty Whitehead’s texts show that Hume’s weakness in this regard consisted of his having stuck to immediacy and as "not having grasped this kind of infrastructure, behind the immediate, of which our body gives us the feeling" (N 159). The "push of duration" -- the creative advance of all of nature, ourselves included -- is not a mere attribute of nature, but rather is essential to it and thus present in all its manifestations. It is, therefore, "as much generality as individuality" (N 159); its being has, like a wave, a global rather than a fragmented character (N 163).

Merleau-Ponty also thinks that Whitehead’s criticisms of simple location lead him to appreciate the ontological value of perception in terms of the "immanence" and "transcendence" of nature (N 159). By "immanence" he means the fact that nothing mediates our contact with it, that representational thinking is therefore not primary and that we perceive and understand nature from within its process as events of that process. By "transcendence" Merleau-Ponty means that nature always exceeds our grasp and is in fact indifferent to it. Nature "is complete in any of its appearances, but is not exhausted by any of them" (N 160), and nature not perceived serves as "a sort of source-existence" (N 164). Moreover, the immanence and transcendence of nature are, for Whitehead, closely linked: "‘There is no way to stop Nature in order to look at it’ [citing CN 14-15]. . . . Nature is always new in each perception, but it is never without a past. Nature is something which goes on, which is never grasped at its beginning, although to us appearing always new" (N 160).

Merleau-Ponty also benefits from Whitehead’s descriptions of nature as a process to criticize (again) Jean-Paul Sartre’s view of the plenitude of the en sui. As against Sartre, there is no full and complete matter existing in a present state, such that time, memory, and potentiality are imported from a separate and distinct consciousness. All these things are inherent in the nature which embraces us. Merleau-Ponty rejects the tradition from Augustine to Bergson which makes time the essence of subjectivity as against matter, and as measured by instants (N 160). Rather, for Merleau-Ponty, Whitehead shows us that nature is individuated as a temporal Gestalt -- a concrete unity of past, present, and future -- and the "natural passage of time, the pulsation of time which is not a pulsation of the subject, but of Nature. . . . is inscribed in our body as sensorality" (N 162).⁴ The present is a mélange of past and future, and if we could speak of the passage of nature in itself, it would be a "memory of the world" (N 163, referring to CN 73). Our knowledge of this past would not constitute it as an origin of its sense, but rather would only re-constitute it (N 163) by cooperating in the emergence of its inherent, but latent, sense. This is a natural time in which we participate because "Whitehead always maintained the idea of a ‘concrescence’ [VC 154] of Nature in itself which is taken up by life. Time brings about the ‘self-enjoyment’ of the organism. The movement through which a bit of matter coils up on itself prolongs the ‘passage of Nature"’ (N 162) and establishes its unity: "The unity of Nature, according to Whitehead, is founded on this, that all nature is ‘concrescence"’ (N 165).

Finally, for Merleau-Ponty, Whitehead does not provide any positive "definitive clarification" of what nature is. It is neither merely an object of thought nor subject, and for the same reasons "its opacity and envelopment it is an obscure principle" (N 162). Nevertheless, Merleau-Ponty does believe that Whitehead has taken a decisive step in providing that positive content. "The task of a philosophy of Nature," Merleau-Ponty’s last paragraph tells us, "would be to describe all the modes of process, without grouping them under certain tides borrowed from substance thinking. Man is a mode as well as animal cells. There is no limit to the proliferation of categories, but there are types of ‘concrescence’ which pass by shading off from one to another" (N 165). And Merleau-Ponty concludes by observing that Whitehead has avoided the twin dangers of mechanism and vitalism while maintaining that "life is not substance" (N 165).

It is clear that Merleau-Ponty’s writings after his 1956-1951 course on the concept of nature bear the imprint of his reflections on Whitehead. In those last four years of his life, he abandoned his earlier phenomenological method -- many of the results of which were already consistent with Whitehead’s mature process metaphysics (WMP, WPP) -- in favor of an ontology of nature which incorporates much of what he valued in Whitehead’s earlier texts, such as The Concept of Nature and The Function of Reason.

The earlier phenomenology stressed the lived-body (le corps propre) as against the objective body studied in the sciences, and a body-consciousness as opposed to a non-corporeal Cartesian cogito. By contrast, Merleau-Ponty’s later works -- particularly Eye and Mind, certain essays in Signs, and especially The Visible and the Invisible -- abandon these distinctions as primary "The problems posed in Ph.P. [Phénoménologie de la perception]," he writes, "are insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’-‘object’ distinction" (VIV 200).

What was insoluble was explaining the relationship between the objective and lived bodies, how "a given fact of the ‘objective’ order (a given cerebral lesion)" could wreak havoc in one’s life-world (VIV 200). The earlier phenomenology was also unable to explain (he believed) the relation between consciousness and body, even the lived body; and the origin of the idea and its connection with perception. That is, phenomenology in his view was an attempt to describe the phenomena as they appear to us in order to understand their essential meanings. It began with the immediacy of experience, but it did not end there because philosophy (phenomenology) consisted of reflections on that immediacy This implies, then, a level of ideality distinct from its perceptual origins. But Merleau-Ponty considered that his earlier work never did succeed in explaining the origin of the idea and the connection between perception and idea -- between what the later work titled Eye and Mind and The Visible and the Invisible. Thus his last writings began to sketch an ontology of nature which would reintegrate all these dualities in something more primary.

That primary something Merleau-Ponty called, with evident allusion to Levi-Strauss, "wild" or "brute" (uncultivated, uncivilized Being (VIV 13). He also described it as "flesh" (la chair), or simply as "Nature." Flesh is not a fact or collection of facts, a mental representation, or the locus of an intersection of body and mind. It is, rather, "the formative medium of the object and the subject" (VIV 147). It is an "element" which echoes Whitehead’s view of the global, rather than fragmented, character of nature -- the unity of the general push of the creative advance of the universe -- and the unity of causality and knowledge. Flesh is "the concrete emblem of a general manner of being" (VIV 147). As such,

The fundamental il y a, the "there is," for Merleau-Ponty, is flesh: that of my body and that of the world. The main difference between these two elemental modes of being is that

Furthermore, the notion of pregnancy here, together with descriptions of Nature as events (VI 200, 208), converges on Merleau-Ponty’s preference in La Nature for a Whiteheadian potentiality in nature as against Sartre’s full and complete en sui, and also reinforces Merleau-Ponty’s appreciation of Whitehead’s term "concrescence."

Likewise, Whitehead’s rejection of simple location is inscribed in the way that Merleau-Ponty comes to describe the relationship between the body and the world’s flesh, between body and soul, and between my body and those of others. Since my body and the world are made of the same flesh, "this flesh of my body is shared by the world, the world ,reflects it, encroaches upon it and it encroaches upon the world . . . . [T]hey are in a relation of transgression or of overlapping" (VIV 248). "Encroachment" (empiètement) and "overlapping" (enjambement) are the same words used in La Nature to describe Whitehead’s alternative to the Laplacian concept of nature. Likewise, "envelopment" is prominent in both the essay on Whitehead and in all of Merleau-Ponty’s last writings. "Pregnancy" the original and archetype of envelopment, denotes latency and possibility. Also, perception "envelops, palpates, espouses the visible things" (VIV 133). Perception does not stand in relation to the visible, nor touch to the tangible, nor hearing to the heard, as the pure negativity of a pour sui in contact (and continual conflict) with the pure positivity of an en sui. Rather, "A relation to Being is needed that would form itself within Being -- This at bottom is what Sartre was looking for" (VIV 215). And Merleau-Ponty finds it in envelopment: "We speak of ‘inspiration,’ and the word should be taken literally. There really is inspiration and expiration of Being, action and passion so slightly discernible that it becomes impossible to distinguish between what sees and what is seen; what paints and what is painted" (EM 167; see also VIV 138). Similarly. Whitehead asks: "Where does my body end and the external world begin?. . . . [T]he breath as it passes in and out of my lungs from my mouth and throat fluctuates in its bodily relationship. Undoubtedly the body is very vaguely distinguishable from external nature. It is in fact merely one among other natural objects" (MT 155, 156).

The denial of simple location also applies, therefore, to the relationships between mind and body. Or, to re-center the language of Merleau-Ponty’s early phenomenology, both the objective body and the lived-body become expressions of flesh. Their relationship is but one example of how "the visible is pregnant with the invisible. . . [which] is the solution of the problem of the ‘relations between the soul and the body"’ (VlV 216,233). Hence, Merleau-Ponty writes: "I take my starting point where Sartre ends, in the Being taken up by the for Itself. . . . For me it is structure or transcendence that explains, and being and nothingness (in Sartre’s sense) are its two abstract properties" (VIV 237).

Envelopment and the denial of simple location also underwrite Merleau-Ponty’s view that flesh is the groundwork of intersubjectivity, or intercorporeity. Seeing and being seen, speaking and being spoken to, touching and being touched, are all possible "only because we belong to the same system of being for itself and being for another; we are moments of the same syntax, we count in the same world, we belong to the same Being" (VIV 83). My experience of my own body and my experience of the other are only two sides of the same fleshly reality. The other’s sensorality is implied in one’s own because "to feel one’s body is also to feel its aspect for the other" (VIV 245). In this unitary syntax, the author tells us, there is a "surface of separation between me and the other which is also the place of our union . . . . (lit is the invisible hinge upon which my life and the life of others turn to rock into one another, the inner framework of intersubjectivity" (VIV 234).

Sartre considered that the "cardinal principle" of Merleau-Ponty’s last writings was the notion of envelopment (MPV 132), and the imagery of hinges typifies his articulation of envelopment as "intertwining" and "chiasm." Both terms evidence the trace of Whitehead’s views that nature is "an internal activity" (CN 54), that an object is an abbreviated way of stating an ensemble of relationships, that nature is an operative presence, that creator and creature are inseparable, and that, as Merleau-Ponty understands it, concrescence is a movement through which "a bit of matter coils up on itself [and] prolongs the ‘passage of Nature"’ (N 162) and establishes its unity The same imagery of coiling is used to describe the flesh in its chiasmatic nature – "the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body, which is attested in particular when the body sees itself touches itself seeing and touching the things" (VIV 146).

The chiasm, reversibility, intertwining, all designate our relationships with Being "The chiasm, reversibility is the idea that every perception doubled with a counter-perception . . . is an act with two faces, one no longer knows who speaks and who listens. Speaking-listening, seeing-being seen, perceiving-being perceived. . . . Active = passive" (VIV 264-65). There is also a "double and crossed situating of the visible in the tangible and of the tangible in the visible" (VIV 134). Likewise, self and other cross over into each other’s existence. "The experience of my own body and the experience of the other," he writes, "are themselves the two sides of one same Being" (VIV 225). Soul and body also intertwine because "There is a body of the mind, and a mind of the body and a chiasm between them" (VIV 259). There is also a chiasm between thought and its object: "Being is the ‘place’ where the ‘modes of consciousness’ are inscribed as structurations of Being (a way of thinking oneself within a society is implied in its social structure), and where the structurations of Being are modes of consciousness" (VIV 253). There is equally an intertwining between the objective body and the lived-body-now, called "the two ‘sides’ of our body, the body as sensible and the body as sentient" (VIV 136) -- just as there is between the thing perceived and the perceiving, the flesh of the world and the body’s flesh (VIV 134, 136,215). We exist, in short, at the intersection of these various reversibilities, in the "between."

These intertwinings are not merely spatial, but are also temporal. Merleau-Ponty’s appreciation of Whitehead’s views of the immanence and transcendence of nature, temporal duration, the insertion of time in nature as opposed to reserving it for a disconnected realm of subjectivity and the Gestalt structure of present and past, all find a home in The Visible and the Invisible (see especially VIV 184-185,190-191,194-195). Time should be understood as chiasm, he writes (VIV 267), and this would allow us to see that "past and present are Ineinander, each enveloping-enveloped -- and that itself is the flesh" (VIV 268).

Perhaps the most philosophically important intertwining of the visible and the invisible, and what Merleau-Ponty terms the "most difficult" to understand, is that which surpasses the limits of his lecture on Whitehead. It is not relationships between the perceived and perceiving or between body and mind, as described above, but "the bond between the flesh and the idea, between the visible and the interior armature which it manifests and which it conceals" (VIV 149). At the level of the idea, the invisible is the interior meaning or sense of the visible, its "essence," which phenomenology had sought to describe. And some of those earlier phenomenological themes remain in Merleau-Ponty’s last writings. For example, as noted in his essay on White-head, the meanings of things are not the products of representational thinking. Nor are they of a constituting consciousness: "[T]he relation between a thought and its object, between the cogito and the cogitatum, contains neither the whole nor even the essential of our commerce with the world" (VIV 35). Or, as Whitehead put the same point more simply in Adventures of Ideas, "I contend that the notion of mere knowledge is a high abstraction" (AI 225-226).

Rather, as Merleau-Ponty noted in La Nature, the constitution of the sense of the world is a re-constitution of what presents itself to us as "already there," a co-operation with its appearing to let its meaning emerge through our bodily, perceptual complicity. Ideas are not the contrary of the visible, as Proust shows us well, but "its lining and its depth" (VlV 149). Every act of speaking is an incarnation, a word(s) made flesh. Or, as Religion in the Making tells us, "Expression is the one fundamental sacrament. It is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace" (RM 127).⁶

The same relationship between ideas and the visible obtains in non-human nature as well: "As the nervure bears the leaf from within, from the depths of its flesh, the ideas are the texture of experience, its style, first mute, then uttered. Like every style, they are elaborated within the thickness of being" (VIV 119). Meaning is thus carnal and organic. It is invisible in the sense of being in-visible: "the visible is pregnant with the invisible" (V1V 216), the style of the thing displayed as its latency and possibility. This style, a Hegelian 1nhalt, or content, is a concrete universal which expresses "the unique manner of existing which gets expressed in the properties of the pebble, the glass or the bit of wax, in all the facts of a revolution, in all the thoughts of a philosopher" (PhP xviii).

Ideas are primordially known, thus, through the body’s sensibility and cannot be detached either from it or from the flesh of the world. Far from being intellectual acquisitions, such ideas possess us rather than the other way around because they impress themselves on our receptive flesh. Musical ideas, for example, are such that "The performer is no longer producing or reproducing the sonata: he feels himself; and the others feel him to be at the service of the sonata the sonata sings through him or cries out so suddenly that he must ‘dash on his bow’ to follow it" (VIV 151).

These fleshly ideas which articulate the style of a thing, its "unique manner of existing," comprise its verbal essence, its active way of being. Style is an ideality of the flesh that provides a thing with a non-conceptual, pre-predicative cohesion. The thing is not a collection of sensations, a la classical empiricisms, nor an intellectual construction, as in idealisms. Rather, its "unique manner of existing" holds sway over its field of presence by giving flesh "its axes, its depth, its dimensions" (VIV 152). Style provides "a system of equivalences, a Logos of lines, of lighting, of colors, of reliefs, of masses -- a conceptless presentation of universal Being" (EM 182). It is another way of saying what we saw him appreciate about Whitehead’s concept of nature, namely; its generality, and that nature "is complete in any of its appearances, but is not exhausted by any of them" (N 160).

The cohesion provided by the ideality of the flesh is the same type as exists between parts of my body and between my body and the world (VIV 152): it is a Gestalt, a figure-ground (horizons, field) structure. This Gestalt structure of the ideality of the flesh means that it is not detachable from its field of origin. As a result, perceptual experience reaches this ideality, as do "[l]iterature, music, [and] the passions" (VIV 149). But there is also, for Merleau-Ponty, pure ideality; such as science, which can be detached from its fleshly origins and be "erected into a second positivity" (VIV 149). What kind of relationship exists between pure ideality and the generalized, dimensional nature of the visible is not clear, even to the author. But however it is finally to be understood, pure ideality still has its origins in flesh. It "already streams forth along the articulations of the aesthesiological body, along the contours of the sensible things. . . . [P]ure ideality is not without flesh nor freed from horizon structures" (VIV 152, 153). For example, "We are in humanity as a horizon of Being, because the horizon is what surrounds us, no less than the things. . . . Like humanity (Menschheit) every concept is first a horizonal generality, a generality of style" (VIV 237).⁸

Philosophy itself reflects the same structures. On Merleau-Ponty’s view, it consists of interrogation in an unfinished world, in the middle of things. The interrogation takes place as part of the flux of nature, as noted above, not as "high-altitude thinking" (VIV 13) beyond the flux. It demands "a sort of hyper-reflection (sur-réflexcion) that would also take itself and the changes it introduces into the spectacle into account" (VIV 38).

For Merleau-Ponty; philosophical interrogation is open, humble, and inclusive of all relevant evidence. And although it would remain non-dogmatic in its claims, those claims would be consistent with those Whiteheadian insights which he defended in La Nature namely, the global, unfragmented character and unity of nature; the reinsertion of potentiality in nature, breaking down Cartesian (and, for Merleau-Ponty, Sartrian) dualisms, the rejection of simple location, both spatially and temporally; insisting on the internal activity of nature and the inseparability of creator and creature, rejecting the bifurcation of primary and secondary qualities, and explaining all the modes of natural process without appealing to substance language.

Beyond the Whiteheadian essay, however, it is tempting to wonder how Merleau-Ponty might have shaped his last work if he had known Whitehead’s mature process metaphysics. My view is that that metaphysics can explain all, or, at any rate, almost all, of Merleau-Ponty’s subsequent reflections on the flesh. It is not possible to prove that the philosophy of organism is the only metaphysics capable of explaining what Merleau-Ponty was struggling to express. I would argue, therefore, that the philosophy of organism is sufficient, even if nor necessary, to fulfill Merleau-Ponty’s desiderata of a philosophy of nature. At the same time, though, given the latter’s rejection of substance language, it is difficult to see how any non-process philosophy could suffice.

It is, of course, beyond the scope of this short paper to demonstrate the claims I have just made. I hope to do so, rather, in a future work which Whitehead announced, and which would satisfy both his and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical expectations. The title of that work will be A Critique of Pure Feeling. In closing here, something of the directions which that essay will take can be glimpsed in the following sketch of how Whitehead might explain the chiasm, and especially that of flesh and idea -- the visible and the invisible.

Whitehead’s analysis of the phases of concrescence shows clearly that and how every occasion of experience enacts the chiasm. In the first phase, positive physical prehensions --"feelings"--literally incorporate the past actual world in the becoming of the new act of concrescence: "Feelings are ‘vectors’; for they feel what is there and transform it into what is here" (PR 87). Feelings at this rudimentary, non-conscious level of causal efficacy actively receive past actual entities into the new concrescence. Their power and foundational role in experience account for Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of fleshly ideas such as those of music and literature possessing us, rather than the other way around. In addition, negative prehensions, those that exclude data, are equally vectors and display an active selectivity even in the origination of the new occasion of experience. The upshot for Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the chiasm is that through the receptivity of feelings of causal efficacy, the new concrescence originates as the seen, touched, etc., and because those feelings and negative prehensions are active, the new occasion is likewise seeing, touching, and the like.

However, the data of experience must always lie in the past, if only in the immediate past, of the present occasion of experience. As Whitehead pointed out, perception of exact contemporaries is impossible because there is always a temporal divergence -- an instance of what Merleau-Ponty calls an "ecarf"-- between the perceiving and the perceived. And Merleau-Ponty agrees: the chiasmatic reversibility between seeing and the visible, touching and touched, hearing and being heard, is "always imminent and never realized in fact" (VIV 147). The effort to see my eyes seeing, to touch my hand touching, "always miscarries at the last moment: the moment I feel my left hand with my right hand, I correspondingly cease touching my right hand with my left hand" (VIV 9). This means, then, that the awareness of the chiasm always implies at least two distinguishable occasions of experience, one of which lies in the past of the other.

The internal, rather than external, relations between occasions of experience which feelings of causal efficacy bring into being create the solidarity of nature -- its global, unfragmented nature -- the denial of simple location, and the rejection of Cartesian (and other) dualisms. Moreover, these chiasmatic internal relations create a temporal as well as spatial unity of nature because, as noted in the previous paragraph, a present act of concresence originates as a response to its past which it takes up and aims at its future to which it bequeaths itself.

The chiasm enacted through physical feelings not only remains beneath the level of conscious experience, but also below that of clear, sharp sensory perception in feelings of presentational immediacy. The latter, of course, grow out of feelings of causal efficacy in the second phase of concresence. Feelings of causal efficacy give us, as Merleau-Ponty appreciated in Whitehead, the infrastructure behind the presentation of sense data. Thus, the chiasm which they enact is one of being rather than of conscious discrimination.

There is also for Whitehead a chiasm of what Merleau-Ponty meant by idea and the flesh. First, in terms of their origin in the second phase of concrescence, ideas emerge as data of conceptual feelings -- pried out of immanence in feelings of causal efficacy as the objects of feelings of conceptual reproduction and reversion. A low-level example of the latter is thirst, which is "an immediate physical feeling integrated with the conceptual prehension of its quenching" (PR 25). In subsequent phases of concrescence, ideas are objects of more complex comparative feelings which may or may not reach conscious apprehension. But at whatever phase, ideas are invisible -- grounded in and expressive of physical, organic processes.

Moreover, the perception of possibility in these kinds of feelings speaks to what Merleau-Ponty meant by the latency and possibility of the flesh -- indeed, why he referred to the world as flesh at all. For example, consider the awareness of conceptually reverted feelings -- simple comparative, or "propositional" feelings (PR 214). A proposition is a "contrast" (comparison) of a reverted conceptual feeling with physical feelings in the first phase of concrescence. The comparison links together the novel eternal object and past actual occasions which serve as the source of those physical feelings. The latter becomes the "logical subject" of the proposition, and the novel form the "predicative pattern" (PR 257). Propositions reveal latency and potentiality because they are felt as "might be’s." The predicative patterns are "tales that perhaps might be told about particular actualities" (PR 256), and their principal role in the creative process is to serve as "a lure for feeling" (PR 25).⁹

Since Merleau-Ponty uses the term "idea" to refer to any pattern of definiteness, ideas are also in-visible for Whitehead in all the ways in which form qualifies occasions of experience. This includes the objective form according to which feelings of causal efficacy prehend past actual occasions, the subjective form -- how the occasion prehends -- and the subjective aim of the present concrescence -- how it wants to be a datum for future becomings. All these instances of form fall under the "objective" species of eternal objects -- the mathematical "Platonic forms" -- or the "subjective" species: "an element in the definiteness of the subjective form of a feeling. It is a determinate way in which a feeling can feel. It is an emotion, or an intensity, or an adversion, or an aversion, or a pleasure, or a pain" (PR 291).

It is clear that this multiform in-visibility of ideality within the act of concrescence also satisfies Merleau-Ponty’s desiderata of the inseparability of creator and creature, potentiality and internal activity at the heart of nature, and avoiding the bifurcation of primary and secondary qualities. In the future, I will attempt to deepen the analysis of this in-visible ideality, for which this paper has only been a sketch, to reach another of Merleau-Ponty’s objectives. In the last paragraph of his "An Unpublished Text," written when he was a candidate for the Collège de France, he stated that

That is what I want A Critique of Pure Feeling to achieve.

Notes

1. Despite all the noted affinities between Merleau-Ponty’s writings and those of Dewey, the former told Herbert Spiegelberg in a 1953 interview that he had never read Dewey (personal communication).

2. "Nature" is capitalized in Merleau-Ponty’s citation, though Whitehead did not.

3. As the editor points out, Merleau-Ponty paraphrases here CN 20, "The course of nature is conceived as being merely the fortunes of matter in its adventure through space."

4.Merleau-Ponty also makes the following intriguing, but unexplained, observation: "A duration is duration because it retains something of the passage of Nature, because it is execution of this process. In the same way, the generality of time, of a family of times, is derived from the fact that all these times are enveloped in a passage of Nature."

5.Compare Eye and Mind: "Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself. Things are an annex or prolongation of itself, they are incrusted into its flesh, they are part of its full definition; the world is made of the same stuff as the body" (EM 163).

6.1 am indebted to Jan van der Veken for this reference.

7. All of the themes of this paragraph, taken together with Whitehead’s concept of concrescence, converge dramatically in experiences such as hiking through tropical rain forests, as I recently had the enormous pleasure of doing. The stupefying variety of life created a vivid example of the fact that explication is literally an unfolding.

8. This Is the ontological completion of Merleau-Ponty’s earlier "thesis" of the "primacy of perception." according to ‘which, among other things, all higher levels of consciousness are rooted in perception and evidence perceptual structures. Furthermore, the problem of the relationship between the intellectual and the perceptual, reflection and the reflected-on, is transmuted here, but equally not solved.

9. There are two passages in The Visible and the Invisible which come very close to expressing what Whitehead means by propositions. In the first, he says "What is indefinable in the quale, in the color, is nothing else than a brief, peremptory manner of giving in one sole something, in one sole tone of being, visions past, visions to come, by whole clusters" (135). The second passage runs as follows: "[A] positive thought is what it is, but, precisely, is only what it is and accordingly cannot hold us. Already the mind’s volubility takes it elsewhere" (151).

References

EM Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind Translated by Carleton Dallery. In The Primary of Perception, edited by James M. Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Originally published as LŒil et l’Espirit. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.

MPV Jean-Paul Sartre. "Merleau-Ponty [I]." Translated by ‘William S. Hamrick, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 15(1984), 123-154. This was a previously unpublished manuscript, the initial version of the well known memorial article for Merleau-Ponty which appeared in the October1961 issue of Les Temps modernes and was reprinted in Situations IV.

N Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La Nature, Notes, Cours du College of France, Ètabli et annoté par Dominique Séglard. Paris: Èditions du Scuil, 1995.

PhP Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1962. Originally published as Phrnomenologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1945.

PrP Maurice Merleau-Ponty The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays. Edited by James M. Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. "An Unpublished Essay" is translated by Arleen B. Dallery. Originally published as "Un Inedit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty." Review de Metaphysique et de Morak 67 (1962),401—409.

TL Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Themes from the Lectures at the college de France 1952- 1960. Translated by John O’Neill Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Originally published as Resumes de cours, College de France 1952-1960. Paris: Gallimard, 1968.

VC Jean Wahl, Vers le concret Paris:J.Vrin,1932.

VIV Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Visible and the Invisible. Edited by Claude Lefort. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. Originally published as Le Visible et l’invisible Paris: Gallimard, 1964.

WMP William S. Hamrick "Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty: Some Moral Implications," Process Studies4 (1974), 235-251.

WPP William Gallagher, "Whitehead’s Psychological Physiology A Third View," Process Studies 4 (1974), 263-274.

Some years ago, Paul Weiss posed a well-known objection against Whitehead’s thesis "that actual occasions perish when and as they become." "Held to too tenaciously," Weiss writes, "the view would prevent Whitehead from affirming that there were any beings, other than God, which actually persist. As a consequence he would not be able to explain how a man could ever be guilty for something done by him years ago, how there could be an ethics of obligation, political action, artistic production, or an historical process" (RW 331). In the present essay, I shall try to defend Whitehead on this charge by showing both that he has a viable concept of personal identity and that it can sustain a meaningful sense of obligation and guilt.

To do this, given Whitehead’s anti-Cartesian perspective, we obviously need to know something about his view of the life and organization of the human body -- the study of which he labels "Psychological Physiology" (PR 157). But neither Whitehead nor, until recently, his commentators, have ever squarely addressed the relationship of the Psychological Physiology and personal identity. Thus, among other things, the moral implications of this relationship have largely gone unnoticed, and Weiss’s objection has not been satisfactorily answered.

As a result, I shall attempt to speak to Whitehead’s concepts of personal identity and ethical obligation in and through the Psychological Physiology. But this must remain a highly speculative task, since this part of Whitehead’s work consists merely of "conjectures" and "is still in the process of incubation" (PR 158). Confidence of a sure footing in such matters demands more than speculative generalization; one also needs concrete descriptive evidence. Accordingly, to tell what concrete descriptions of personal identity and ethical obligation are possible within the matrix of the Psychological Physiology, I shall supplement its "conjectures" with certain features of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body and perception. I shall show that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological evidences" -- the results of his descriptions of the body and its perceptual life -- are consistent with, and may be deduced from, Whitehead’s work and that this phenomenologically elucidated Psychological Physiology will satisfactorily answer Weiss’s objections. (This will also involve an affirmative answer to a question posed by Donald W. Sherburne, namely, whether these Whiteheadian "conjectures" could "provide a systematic, rational framework capable of grounding the many insights into the relation of ‘mind’ and ‘body’ which have emerged from the reflections of such phenomenologists as Merleau-Ponty" [WPP 406].)

In terms of procedure, part I will detail the appropriate phenomenological evidences central to the questions of personal identity and ethical obligation. Part II will then develop Whiteheadian explanations for these data -- utilizing the Psychological Physiology coupled with its general metaphysical presuppositions -- and indicate how they provide Whitehead with a theory of personal identity sufficient to support a meaningful ethics of obligation.

I

For Merleau-Ponty, the self is conceptualized in terms of the "cogito." But this Cartesian language must not mislead. For, although he sometimes follows a great many European contemporaries in offering incense at the altar of Descartes, Merleau-Ponty’s cogito differs radically from that of his predecessor. Consciousness is neither a Cartesian mental substance juxtaposed to, or "contained" in, one that is physical, nor a Kantian transcendental ego. Rather, Merleau-Ponty conceptualizes human existence in terms of the "lived-body" (le corps propre) -- a term which is meant to denote my body as I live it, my own body -- and, unlike a Cartesian material object, the lived-body is a "pre-objective," concrete unity of interdependent psychical and physical aspects. The lived-body is the unity of thought-in-act, his own version of the Hegelian "concrete universal." It is a system of motor powers for exploring and making sense of the world, and as such, the cogito becomes more an "I can" than an "I think."

We can briefly reconstruct as follows one prominent argument which brings Merleau-Ponty to this new notion of the cogito and which will thus bring us to the question of personal identity. (1) For Descartes, the relations between an object perceived and the perceiving body are no different than those between all natural events, processes, and objects. Namely, in this mechanistic view of nature -- a matrix of external relations between independent, isolable relata -- the object perceived consists of an active, unconditioned cause, while the event of perceiving exists as a passive, determined effect of this and other causes, as the last link "at the end of a chain of physical and physiological events which alone can be ascribed to the ‘real body"’ (PP 75f). Thus, the perceptual response ought always to correspond to what the stimuli prescribe. Further, (2) perceptual, bodily processes are basically unintelligible because, according to the classic "form/matter" analysis, experience consists of a synthesis of intrinsically meaningless physical sensations passively received via the sense-organs -- the "matter" -- together with an active, reflective, mental judgment -- the "form" -- which interprets them.

But (3) Gestalt psychologists have generated a wealth of experiential and experimental evidence which undermines the plausibility of (1) and (2). Perception is revealed as an active process of spontaneously organizing or structuring a given perceptual field and is, therefore, neither passive nor rigidly distinct from certain stimuli which supposedly determine it. Rather, in the organization of the form and arrangement of "stimuli," perception "bends back on" those stimuli, so to speak, and helps constitute them as such. For Merleau-Ponty, then, "The properties of the object and the intentions of the subject . . . are not only intermingled; they also constitute a new whole" (SB 13).

This means that the lived-body’s organizational relationship with its world blurs the sharp distinction between "stimulus" and "response" and demands for its adequate conceptualization a matrix of internal relationships between interdependent relata (here, the perceiving and the perceived). These internal relationships, these new subject-object wholes -- which blur the distinction between subject and object -- are for Merleau-Ponty Gestalt-structured, since one feature of a Gestalt is that each part bears to others as well as to the whole interdependent rather than independent relations.

But further, as a result of (3), we can now see that (4) perception is basically meaningful in advance of the elaboration of theoretical, reflective consciousness. Over against the form/matter analysis of experience, there is intelligible perceptual organization of stimuli, and it comes about because perception is typically influenced by the presence of anticipation. That is, through our retention -- or, as Merleau-Ponty puts it, "sedimentation" -- of past experiences, we are, as Gestalt psychologists put it, "set" to perceive in given situations, and this "set" shapes, to a large extent, what we do perceive. Thus, perception is basically attuned to the form of stimuli; it pre-reflectively organizes a world for certain purposes which will be spelled out below. But, as a material object, the body could expectantly take the form of stimuli "into account" "only if we introduce the phenomenal body beside the objective one, if we make a knowing-body of it, and if, in short, we substitute for consciousness [as Descartes conceived it], as the subject of perception, existence or being in the world through a body" (PP 309). Consequently, what we need is a perceptual account of causality instead of a causal explanation of perception (SB 140f).

The upshot of (3) and (4) is the failure of both the mental and physical sides of Descartes’ dualism. The psychical and the physical become interdependent features of the motor-intentional body. That is, intentionality of consciousness means, in part, that it is consciousness of something, such that to perceive is to perceive something, to will is to will something, and so on. Since, for Merleau-Ponty, consciousness is a body-consciousness and the lived-body is an active, mobile body, intentionality becomes a motor-intentionality. My body is then for me a "‘postural,’ or ‘corporeal schema’" (PPOE 117),¹ a system of motor powers in which the knowing-body’s spontaneity presents itself as an "I can," as an "I am able to." This power to exist, the "project towards the world that we are" (PP 405), constitutes my most immediate awareness of myself as a "tacit cogito" which is brought to expression and explicit awareness through language.

For Merleau-Ponty, the self’s spontaneous interpretative abilities are not capricious or arbitrary; rather, they are teleologically governed by the goal of achieving a certain equilibrium with the world. In and through motor-intentionality, the knowing-body seeks to deal with the world intelligibly and successfully. And it is this practical "know how" which in "intentionality will be [for Merleau-Ponty] the concept that would bring intelligibility both to bodily behavior observed physiologically and psychologically, and perception explored transcendentally" (IC 83).

Now to say that we seek to exist in the world "successfully" reveals the goal of equilibrium because success here implies a certain balance with the world -- an ability to cope with it. But the desideratum of equilibrium usually manifests itself in bodily motility when we lose the ability to orient ourselves. That is, when our anticipations are fulfilled, the equilibrium is maintained. It is the foundation of what we call "normal," because the "norms" are the conditions which constitute the lived-body’s equilibrated balance with its milieu. But when the norms are not fulfilled, we become disoriented, and in disorientation the balance is disturbed.

To use an ethical example of what Merleau-Ponty is getting at, a parent may develop certain habits of caring for his child: of being attuned to its cries, of feeding it at certain times, and so forth. He ethically incorporates the child into the way he habitually inhabits space, and the equilibrium attained constitutes a valued existence. This suggests then that, to use Gilbert Ryle’s phrase, "knowing how" to live in a world is habitual. Knowing how to ride a bicycle, use a typewriter, and play musical instruments all involve the habitual appropriation of the respective instruments. Likewise, being an ethical person means, as Aristotle perceived, developing moral habits.²

On the one hand, then, the potentiality of spontaneity is the general power to exist, to put ourselves into situations via motor-intentionality. In so anticipating the immediate future, my body manifests itself as an "I am able to." On the other hand, habit offers spontaneity practical, patterned contexts in which it can continually operate. Here the lived-body presents itself as an "I am able to remain involved" in, and committed to, particular situations. Our "knowing how" to deal with the world is deepened with this stability and, in many cases, it comes into being with this permanence.

So, to be really effective, spontaneity must be anchored in habitual patterns of behavior, and these are instances of what Merleau-Ponty terms "sedimented meanings" (Ss 89). The latter consists of past layers of experience constituted by both myself and others and which are taken for granted -- as "established" and "acquired" in our present acts. But although our projects take place in the context of past conditioning influences, the past does not shackle the present experience of the concrete subject into conformity with it. Or, to put it another way, habits, as sedimented patterns of behavior, offer spontaneity the permanence it needs for a continued and sustained existence, in the sense that this permanence establishes the perspective on the world which is my bodily motility and gives it a temporal continuity. But the sedimentation does not determine the ultimate character of the motility.

The retention of the sedimented past in the present by habits is a necessary condition of the continued spontaneity of the lived-body, but it is not a sufficient condition. For, the creative acts of sedimenting new meanings also concern present-future relationships (the anticipative spontaneity of consciousness). Thus, both the spontaneous structuring activity of consciousness and motor-habits are necessary to our worldly existence. To paraphrase Kant, spontaneity without habit is empty (of enduring commitment), while habit without spontaneity is blind (without orientation to new situations).

From this point of view, we can see how personal identity consists primarily of habitual patterns of behavior and, tightly related to this, self-knowledge is concerned with both perceptual, behavioral spontaneity as well as bodily habits. Again, to use Ryle’s analyses (which in this matter happen fundamentally to agree with Merleau-Ponty), there are two basic senses of self-knowledge. On the one hand, there is that sense "in which a person is commonly said to know what he is at this moment doing, thinking, feeling, etc." (CM 174). This is what Merleau-Ponty expresses in terms of the anticipative spontaneity of consciousness because, as Ryle indicates, when I know myself in this sense I expect and am prepared for certain events, steps of projects in which I am engaged, and so on (CM 176).

Beyond this immediate sense of self-knowledge, I may also know myself in terms of an "assessment of long term propensities and capacities," of "certain ways in which some of the incidents" of my life are "ordered" (CM 174, 167). And this is what Merleau-Ponty expresses in terms of behavioral patterns which form a continuity of past and present in an identical cogito, and pace Professor Weiss, this notion of identity is independent of a commitment to a philosophy of substance.

Patterns of habitual behavior do allow us to talk meaningfully of a continued sameness (identity) through time while not referring to a substance ontology. But one can say more about the philosophical advantages of this concept of identity. For example, there are certain times that we much more readily trust habitual behavior as a reliable index to self-knowledge than, say, the Cartesian model of private, incorrigible access to one’s own ego. If, for instance, I claim to be a generous person and someone points out that I never make any contributions to charities, never leave tips on restaurant tables, and so forth, these habits should lead me to see that I am not, after all my protestations, a generous individual. If, on the other hand, I admit all these facts and, on the basis of private, "privileged" intuition, still maintain my generosity, one would surely be justified in concluding either I am ignoring the truth about myself or else that I do not understand the concept of generosity.

Now anyone who seeks to understand personal identity in terms of behavioral habits quickly encounters two well-known objections. The first concerns the apparent lack of permanence about the self. Namely, if I drop or add a given habit or habits, is my personal identity thereby changed? How much change can be tolerated while rightly maintaining a persisting sameness about the self? Can I be the same person if I once, but no longer, smoked, knew German, and was philanthropic?

I do not think that there is an insuperable difficulty here. It is true that I am not exactly the same after such changes, any more than a house would remain strictly identical with its roof replaced. However, just as we say that it is the same house because its other structural features remain intact, what stays the same about me (better: what constitutes the "me" that is continued sameness) is the background, contextual structure of other behavioral patterns against the stable presence of which a given habitual change is noticed and contrasted. In other words, certain patterns might change, but other patterns must remain for changes such as the above to make sense.

But how much of a change of behavior patterns is required for a fundamental shift in personal identity? It is clear that a change of a few will not suffice, and it is equally clear that a radical change of all or at least a great many will be sufficient. For example, a man may go mad and his subsequent behavior may be the very reverse of previous patterns of action. But I think it is also evident that no hope exists of pinpointing the precise number of changes of habit that are necessary and sufficient for a significant shift in personal identity, just as it is impossible to say how few hairs on a man’s head constitutes baldness. But this. does not mean that baldness does not differ from non-baldness, and such "boundary disputes" are equally unprofitable in, trying to fix an exact number or percentage of habit changes necessary for a substantial change of personal identity.

The second objection to conceptualizating personal identity in terms of behavioral habits is but an ethical application of the first. It concerns the justification of punishment, an ethics of obligation, and the existence of guilt -- all important points in Professor Weiss’s criticisms of Whitehead. The force of this objection may be seen in the following sort of case. Suppose a person commits a serious crime, but escapes subsequent detection and punishment. Suppose further that he is caught ten years later, but it turns out that he has reformed his previous behavior patterns which had manifested themselves in his criminal act. Since it is right to punish only the same person who commits the crime, can this person be rightly punished if the above facts are true? Do responsibility and guilt make sense in such a case?

Before showing how one might answer these questions affirmatively, it must be noted that the continuity of personal identity is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the justification of punishment. What is sufficient depends on what view of punishment is endorsed, and it is not my purpose here to argue for one view as against another. (However, as an obiter dictum, I think it can be shown that Merleau-Ponty, and indeed, Whitehead, are much more inclined toward a utilitarian rather than a retributive model of punishment.) I only wish to show that punishment, guilt, and responsibility are possible as far as the continuity of personal identity is concerned.

There can be no obligation and guilt if there is no responsibility, since the latter means literally the ability to respond, or "answerability." The usual meanings of responsibility and guilt indicate the persistence of an identical agent who both did the act (s) in question and can subsequently be made to answer for it (them). As a rule, this is the case.. Uncertainties do arise, however, in connection with both the alleged guilt of present generations for crimes of their elders -- as in the case of Nazi atrocities -- and with the guilt and responsibility of corporations (institutions with changing memberships) for, say, past acts of environmental pollution. I shall later point to an extended sense of guilt and responsibility which fits these cases and is also applicable to puzzles about substantial shifts of behavior affecting personal identity.

Now with these general presuppositions in mind, the following conclusions seem clear. First, an individual’s change of only one or two behavioral habits, including that or those responsible for the commission of a crime, does not suffice -- for reasons stated above -- for a change of personal identity. There is still a core of sameness about the individual such that there is a "he" to be answerable (responsible), despite subsequent reformation and the unlikelihood of repeating the crime. Thus, as far as personal identity is concerned, he can still be punished. But again, this does not entail that he should be. While a retributive theorist such as Kant might hold that there is not only "a prima facie obligation on society to punish one who has infringed the rights of others; it is an absolute over-all obligation -- punishment must absolutely be meted out or society itself is guilty of wrong" (ET 498), a utilitarian theorist would see things quite differently. Moritz Schlick, for example, tells us that "a natural retaliation for past wrong, ought no longer be defended in cultivated society; for the opinion that an increase in sorrow can be ‘made good again’ by further sorrow is altogether barbarous" (PE 152). On Schlick’s model of reformation and deterrence, the individual in question would probably not be punished.

But when a massive change of behavioral habit has taken place, and this is sufficient to constitute a change of personal identity -- as, for example, in the case of insanity -- then on the view here proposed, there is no responsibility and guilt in the usual senses of those words. There might have been at the time of the commission of the crime, but not after the dramatic personality shift in question.

Earlier I spoke of an extended sense of responsibility and guilt which might be applicable to changes in personal identity. This is a "weaker" kind than the normal sort described above in the sense that the obligatory prescriptive sanctions are less directly attributable to an agent. Unlike the case in which one and the same agent commits a crime and is punished for it, bodies with changed personhoods -- as institutions with changed memberships -- may rightly be said to be responsible for acts before those changes only in the sense of being unavoidably involved in the causal implications of the past. This is but a general fact that present projects must take into account the legacy of the sedimented past, although the latter does not determine the shape of the former. To be responsible and guilty in this sense is, then, to be involved in the context of past decisions -- having somehow to reckon with them -- but not to have one’s conduct prescribed by them.

II

My aim in this section is to show that Whitehead’s Psychological Physiology can generate the concept of personal identity sketched above -- and which allows for the real connection of present to past that is, as Professor Weiss has pointed out, a necessary condition of responsibility and guilt.

We have seen that, for Merleau-Ponty, my body is for me not a natural object, but an orientational center of a field of intelligible behavior. But, on Whitehead’s view, the body is "just as much part of nature as anything else there -- a river, or a mountain, or a cloud" (MT 30). There is, however, no real contradiction here because Whiteheads concept of nature has nothing in common with that attacked by Merleau-Ponty -- the mechanist view expressed by Descartes -- and, consequently, Whitehead’s notions of "object" and "causality" are altogether different from their counterparts in the mechanist scheme. On Whitehead’s view, the human body is a macrocosmic nexus of microcosmic actual identities, but -- and this is the crucial point over against the mechanist view -- these actual entities are interdependent rather than independent. For, the physical feelings making up the first phase of each actual occasion -- those of "causal efficacy -- reach out "intentionally," as Merleau-Ponty would say, to incorporate its past actual world into its own act of organic becoming. Thus, nature turns out to be a matrix of internal relations between interdependent relata rather than the scheme of external relations germane to the mechanist view. And it is this interconnectedness of occasions -- the "solidarity" of nature, as Whitehead puts it (PR 65) -- which makes possible both the unified thrust of motor-intentionality in bodily projects and, as I shall show, the spontaneous organizational abilities of body-consciousness as well. A coherent project is possible because the body is a balanced and equilibrated whole of interdependent parts and "processes, each of which is sensitive in its make-up and activities to the rest of the bodily pattern.

The human body is intricately complex, and therefore we find in it specialized forms of order such as societies and structured societies. Among the special features of a society "there is a common element of form illustrated in the definiteness of each of its included actual entities, and . . . the common form is the ‘defining characteristic’ of the society" (PR 50f). And the interdependence of bodily occasions of experience is such that "there is no society in isolation. Every society must be considered with its background of a wider environment of actual entities, which also contribute their objectifications to which the members of the society must conform.... Thus we arrive at the principle that every society requires a social background, of which it is itself a part" (PR 138).

Now, Merleau-Ponty has shown that the lived-body habitually inhabits space by structuring perceptual fields in unified motor-intentional projects, and this imposes upon Whitehead a dual task: to account for the anticipative structuring of perceptual fields in which the freedom of the lived-body originates, and to show why, in this process, there is one body -- why, that is, bodily societies can be harmoniously unified in such a way that personal identity is possible.

For Whitehead, the answers to both questions, which I shall consider in turn, are framed in terms of the Psychological Physiology, the main "elements" of which consist of a nonsocial nexus of occasions in the brain (which functions as the body’s principal source of creative novelty), the regnant society it supports, and their interactions with other bodily societies and nexuses (WPP 404-06). To explain the anticipative spontaneity of body consciousness, we should expect Whitehead to show that (1) the nonsocial nexus in the brain is pre-reflectively attuned to certain possibilities; (2) the awareness of these possibilities can be passed along to the remaining bodily nexuses and societies; such that (3) the sense-organs and other corporeal societies would operate in a unified way under the influence of this anticipation -- thus simultaneously creating the bodily unity necessary for personal identity.

In order to speak to (1), let us consider that the nonsocial nexus is one that is "entirely living," and this means that, since life indicates originality rather than merely the continuity of physical inheritance, all its member actual occasions display creative originality (PR 157). And this means that novelty requires something more than the data which the nonsocial nexus inherits, via causal efficacy, "indirectly" from all other regions of the body (WPP 404). What is necessary, and what the occasions of the nonsocial nexus manifest, is a certain kind of conceptual, as opposed to merely physical, feeling: that of "conceptual reversion" (PR 381). For Whitehead, conceptual reversion is the "positive conceptual prehension of relevant alternatives" (PR 381) -- as in Hume’s famous example of imagining the missing shade of blue -- because there is a novel conceptual feeling whose data are different from, but relevant to, those extrapolated from feelings of causal efficacy by the operation of "conceptual reproduction" (PR 380f).

For example, when a parent structures his perceptual field by being attuned to a possible cry from a new-born child, the infant is the source of the physical, causally efficacious feelings of the parent’s experience. The "normal" noises constitute the pattern of definiteness (eternal object) which, in the second phase of the occasion, are "pried out" of the physical feelings. Reversion comes into play because the possible cry of distress is first a novel conceptual datum not present in the physical feelings, and it is felt as possible. It is felt as relevant to these physical feelings and to the eternal object(s) they manifest. It is prehended as a "proximate novelty," and -- through the parent’s anticipatory structuring of his perceptual field -- a "relevant alternative" (PR 381). (Of course, there is not in this simplified analysis a complete description of what might be felt in such cases. For example, as these expectations become habitual, the resulting sedimentation of bodily habits comes to condition the perception of both "normal" noises as well as the anticipation of "relevant alternatives.")

The awareness of the reverted feeling requires a third phase of concrescence, that of simple comparative feelings. The datum of this feeling is a "proposition," and the feeling itself a "propositional feeling" (PR 326). A proposition is a contrast (comparison) of a reverted conceptual feeling together with the physical feelings of its past actual world. This comparison holds in a unity the relevant novel eternal object and the possible source of the novelty -- say, a crying sound and the baby, respectively. The baby here becomes the logical subject" of the proposition and the cry of distress the "predicative pattern" (PR 393). Propositions, Whitehead tells us, are felt as "might be’s." They are "tales that perhaps might be told about particular actualities" (PR 392), and their chief function is to be "relevant as a lure for feeling" (PR 37). Thus, in the above case, the nonsocial nexus entertains the proposition "baby as crying" as a "tale" that might be told about the child, and this is for the parent a "lure" for feeling."

Now to say that the awareness of possibilities is a "conceptual" activity does not imply that Whitehead here reverts to a form/matter analysis of experience. For, (a) neither conceptual feelings nor those of causal efficacy are per se reflectively conscious judgments, and (b) perception in its most basic level of causal efficacy is both "form" (meaning) and "matter" (experiential data), and the "main characteristic" of these feelings is their "enormous emotional significance" (Al 276). Both kinds of feelings are pre-reflectively meaningful because, for Whitehead, reflective, judgmental consciousness is only one "subjective form" of feelings, which is possibly present in the final phase of some concrescences. It is never present at the level of causal efficacy or per se inherent in feelings of conceptual reproduction, reversion, and those of simple comparison. (As Merleau-Ponty expresses it, "If I wanted to render precisely the perceptual experience, I ought to say that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive" (PP 215). And finally, complex comparative feelings, which are located in the final phase of concrescence (which is also the locus of explicit reflection) can be, but need not be, reflectively conscious. Thus we may say that the complex comparative bodily feelings entertained by the dominant occasion (that which is presently concrescing) of the nonsocial nexus need not be reflective. As Whitehead puts it, "consciousness is the crown of experience, only occasionally attained, not its necessary base" (PR 408). Thus, on his view, the phrase "conceptual prehension" is "entirely neutral, devoid of all suggestiveness" (PR 49), and clearly part of the suggestiveness that he wants to avoid is the identification of his notion of conceptual feelings with either, say, a Cartesian or Kantian model of judgmental, representational thinking.

Novelty, then, in and though which we are anticipatively attuned to certain possibilities, can be effected by conceptual reversion and propositional feelings. We must now ask how (2) this awareness of possibilities can be passed along to other bodily societies such that, under their influence, (3) they operate in a unified way. The first part of a possible Whiteheadian explanation for these phenomena consists in the fact that actual occasions making up, say, the eyes, are basically selective in "receiving" their data from the external world due both to (i) the presence of negative as well as positive prehension in the first phase of concrescence (those that exclude and include data in the concrescence, respectively), and (ii) the activity of "transmutation" in a subsequent phase.’

The second part of the explanation lies in the nature and function of the regnant society supported by the nonsocial nexus. Whitehead tells us that the "defining characteristic" of this society is "that complex character in virtue of which a man is considered to be the same enduring person from birth to death" (PR 137). And this "complex character" is a "continuance of mentality" (WPP 405) such that, by means of the regnant society, "the mental originality of the living occasions [of the nonsocial nexus] receives a character and a depth. In this way originality is both ‘canalized’ -- to use Bergson’s word -- and intensified. . . . Thus life turns back into society: it binds originality within bounds, and gains the massiveness due to reiterated character" (PR 163).

Now it is by this canalization of originality that other bodily societies incorporate into themselves the prehension of relevant possibilities generated by the nonsocial nexus. That is, the key to the effectiveness of the attunement to certain possibilities consists in their being channeled in a regnant society and that regnant society’s influencing the remaining bodily occasions such that they likewise become anticipatively "set" to experience certain data rather than others. Thus, in the interactions of the nonsocial nexus and the rest of the body, the former inherits the massive and enriched feelings of the latter. And through the regnant society’s channeling influence, "Owing to the delicate organization of the body, there is a returned influence, an inheritance of character derived from the presiding occasion [whichever occasion of the regnant society has just concresced] and modifying the subsequent occasions through the rest of the body" (PR 166). Or again, "It is by reason of the body, with its miracle of order, that the treasures of the past environment are poured into the living occasion [of the nonsocial nexus]. . . . In its turn this culmination of bodily life transmits itself as an element of novelty throughout the avenues of the body. Its sole use to the body is its vivid originality: it is the organ of novelty" (PR 516).

The final part of the explanation of the effectiveness of anticipation and bodily unity in motor-intentionality demands that I qualify, though not totally repudiate, the last two paragraphs. Although the above remarks are consistent with the explanation I am developing, they tend to oversimplify the role of the regnant society by making it completely responsible for bodily order and attunement to preconscious and conscious anticipation. This has two unfortunate results: it makes the regnant society, or as we would perhaps more loosely say, "the mind," into an "ego" -- in which case the self becomes less a "lived-body" than a Cartesian cogito -- and it gives the presiding occasion of the regnant society the impossible, or at least, improbable, job of coordinating all bodily data all the time, pre-reflectively and reflectively, into an organizational unity. The first of these results is clearly unacceptable for my purposes, and the latter has become one of John Cobb’s chief objections against Donald Sherburne’s interpretation of the relation of the regnant society and the nonsocial nexus (PS 3/1 [Spring, 1973], 27-40), upon which this paper is also based.

Fortunately, both these results may be avoided by understanding the nonsocial nexus as more social than Whitehead explicitly describes it. (Hence I shall denote it from now on as the "supportive nexus.") These modifications do go beyond most of Whitehead’s explicit statements about Psychological Physiology, but they neither constitute a substantial revision of his main operative concepts, nor are they inconsistent with some of his other remarks. This view, which keeps the Sherburne model instead of Cobb’s, has been worked out in an intriguing way by William Gallagher in another article in this issue.

Whitehead states that "in an animal body the presiding occasion if there be one, is the final node, or intersection, of a complex structure of many enduring objects" (PR 166f) and that an enduring object is "formed by the inheritance from presiding occasion to presiding occasion" (PR 167). Since the presiding occasion of the regnant society "wanders from part to part of the brain, dissociated from the physical material atoms" (PR 167), the other enduring objects which constitute it as an "inter-section" must be historic routes of occasions within the "nonsocial" nexus which supports the regnant society. These subordinate, nondominant, and nonconscious (not explicitly reflective) enduring objects ease the job of the presiding occasion of the regnant society in integrating bodily experience and are called by Gallagher subordinate "living persons.

These subordinate "living persons," he goes on to tell us, are "threads of inheritance of lesser intensity of experience than the dominant one, threads more closely bound to the reiterative aims of the body" -- as in bodily habits. The originality of the occasions of the supportive nexus is "canalized . . . by way of threads of inheritance, so that personal identity may combine originality of response with an adequate order upon which it depends." Thus, the final part of the explanation of how the anticipative spontaneity of the supportive nexus influences the rest of the body is that order is imposed by means of the dominant regnant society working against a background of more elemental order provided by the subordinate "living persons." Bodily experiences are constituted by multisensory perceptions structured by anticipations provided by the supportive nexus (that are, in turn, conditioned by previous experiences) via the channeling activities of subordinate "living persons" and the regnant society. Most of the pre-reflective bodily order and habitual behavior is handled by the subordinate "living persons," but sometimes a feeling of personal dominance and reflective control occurs which requires the regnant society. In these cases, as noted above, reflective consciousness occurs in the anticipative set because of certain prehensions of the presently concrescing occasion of the supportive nexus which has reacted to previously received data from the rest of its bodily -- and through that, extra-bodily -- environment. Not all presiding occasions of the regnant society include conscious reflection and decision in their final phase, but when they are required, it is the task of the dominant or regnant society.

It is in this way, then, that the body manifests a "central direction" (PR 165), a central control which enables us to have not only "unified behavior, which can be observed by others, but also consciousness of a unified experience" (PR 165). This is the centrality of control embodied in the "I can" of the corporeal schema in and through which my body is mine: "My brain, my heart, my bowels, my lungs, are mine, with an intimacy of mutual adjustment" (MT 99). It is not that this unity of motor-intentionality is the product of a reflective act: there are various degrees of dominance by the regnant society and correspondingly various degrees of conscious awareness. As we have seen Merleau-Ponty puts it, "if I wanted to render precisely the perceptual experience, I ought to say that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive" (PP 215). Or, as Gallagher echoes Merleau-Ponty, "At times, I act ‘in the first person,’ while at other times, in fact most of the time, a more habitual or pre-personal thread of occasions [subordinate "living persons"] unifies my behavior."

Now beyond this aspect of the Psychological Physiology, it is also important to show that the creative novelty of the supportive nexus and the central control of the body can be teleologically oriented toward an equilibrated balance with a perceptual and cultural milieu. Whitehead elucidates this teleological activity in terms of the notion of protectiveness. As Professor Sherburne has pointed out (WPP 402), the supportive nexus is not self-sufficient in terms of survival. Rather, it exists in a protective, stable environment provided by subordinate bodily societies. But -- and this is the point to be emphasized here -- there also exists in the body a kind of mutual protectiveness: "A complex inorganic system of interaction is built up for the protection of the ‘entirely living’ nexuses [the supportive nexus in the brain being the most important], and the originative actions of the living elements are protective of the whole system" (PR 157).

Now Whitehead tells us that the data of conceptually reverted feelings consist of proposed alternative patterns of definiteness which are relevant to those already contained in feelings of causal efficacy. But in its bodily protective role, which eternal objects the presently concrescing occasion of the supportive nexus feels as more relevant "lures for feeling" than others "is left unanswered by the category of reversion" (PR 381f). I suggest that, on the basis of the preceding data concerning Psychological Physiology, Whitehead could consistently say that the determination of relevance is tightly linked to the equilibrium-supplying ability of the alternatives concerned. And for Whitehead, the feeling of responsibility arises in a concern for the subsequent welfare of the bodily organism: "The effect of the present on the future is the business of morals" (AI 346). And again, "the actual entity, in a state of process during which it is not fully definite, determines its own ultimate definiteness. This is the whole point of moral responsibility" (PR 390).

The phrase, "subsequent welfare of the bodily organism," must not mislead one to think that, on Whitehead’s view, morality is necessarily a matter of self-interest. Rather, as with Merleau-Ponty, the search for an equilibrated stability -- at both perceptual and cultural, including, therefore, ethical levels -- takes place in an inter-subjective context. In these situations of "I-in-the-world-with others," the true welfare of the bodily organism can include altruistic motives and actions. In other words, an ethics of obligation is possible because, among other things, moral alternatives can appear as more powerful "lures for feeling" -- that is, more promising of stability -- that those of mere self-interest.

I mentioned above that, on Whitehead’s view, which alternatives were more relevant for a given conceptually reverted feeling is a question not decided by the category of reversion, and I suggested the provision of equilibrium to decide such matters. Whitehead does answer this question, with an appeal to God, and his view is expressed succinctly by Sherburne as follows: "An actual entity is responsible to God as a result of entertaining in its initial phase a conceptual aim derived from God, which points toward the manner of becoming on the part of that actual entity which would result in maximizing intensity and harmony of feeling in the evolving universe (WEP 184).⁴ However, our study of the Psychological Physiology and its ethical implications has suggested an alternate way of determining relevance and hence points to a theory of bodily values for which this divine function is not needed.

These remarks about equilibrium, protectiveness and stability may seem irrelevant to the concept of personal identity interpreted in terms of the habitual body, but in fact, they are not. For, the bodily structured society is "stabilized" when the body can survive through changes in the environment (PR 153). Bodily habits, to which one Merleau-Ponty has pointed as a reflection of equilibrium with one’s milieu, mirror the behavior of a stabilized society. That is, stabilized behavior has become a pattern or habitual -- "canalized" influences of the regnant society and supportive nexus -- because it has been found to be successful in coping with the environment.

But, as Merleau-Ponty has also noted, habit with its equilibrium-supplying ability is necessary, but not sufficient, for survival. Just because there are changes in the environment with which the body must cope, habit, therefore, is ambiguous: a reflection of stability and a danger to it. Stability is the capacity to persist through changes, and habit may lead to the inability to cope with these changes. Thus, as Merleau-Ponty puts it, although we are situated in a context of sedimented meanings, particular meanings are tenuous and subject to change.

Whitehead approaches this dangerous non-creativeness of habit in terms of "specialization" (PR 153). That is, "A complex society which is stable provided that the environment exhibits certain features, is said to be ‘specialized’ in respect to those features" (PR 153). For example, scientists have theorized that one reason the dinosaur became extinct was that it failed to adjust itself to the nonexistence of its habitual food supply. If so, its existence was "specialized" in respect to that food. What the dinosaur needed was the creative originality to develop new eating habits.

Old habits therefore may require replacement by new ones. Creative novelty exists in a certain tension with habit: habit needs supplementation by creativity, and yet, to be effective, this creativity is structured into habits. So the protective role of the supportive nexus is (1) to use its creative originality to develop new habits to successfully cope with the environment, and (2) also to use this creativity to avoid the dangers in specialization. An equilibrium with the environment is maintained by seeking a balance between settled patterns of behavior and the origination of new ones. As Merleau-Ponty might put it, the lived-body is always balanced between the sedimented past and the present sedimentation in making sense out of our world.

This, then, brings us to the point of recognizing that, and how, for Whitehead, habits may be constitutive of personal identity. First, remember that the defining characteristic of the regnant society is "that complex character in virtue of which a man is considered to be the same enduring person from birth to death" (PR 137). Second, the "canalized" activity of the regnant society and subordinate "living persons" is the coordinated direction of millions of bodily cells -- a central control which, as we have seen, makes possible unified motor-intentional projects, including ethical acts -- and this is not done randomly or arbitrarily. Rather, patterns of direction are worked out for the body’s protection, and these patterns are behavioral habits. This, I submit, the "complex character" on the basis of which we identify a person consists precisely of these behavioral habits.

Thus, after telling us that the "ego" is different each time Descartes pronounces "I am, I exist," Whitehead continues: "the ‘he’ which is common to the two egos is an eternal object, or alternatively, the nexus of successive occasions" (PR 116). It is not only a reasonable hypothesis to say that "eternal object" and "nexus of successive occasions" refer to the pattern of behavioral definiteness sustained by subordinate "living persons" and the regnant society: it is also one of the few hypotheses available for avoiding the "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" by not making the entire nexus the locus of subjectively immediate feelings (WEP 183).

From this angle, in speaking again directly to Weiss’s objections, it is perfectly true, for Whitehead, that decision-making, subjectively immediate actual occasions differ from moment to moment. But the fact of organic growth does not cancel out the presence of personal identity, for the latter is a temporally continuous pattern of habitual, behavioral definiteness sustained by the regnant society and its supportive nexus.

Now the reiteration of the character of past occasions must not mislead one to think that the claim of personal identity rests merely on the fact that one occasion of experience is like those in its past (and future). In this event, Weiss’s arguments would not be met. Rather, the doctrine of internal relations asserts that despite the fact that each occasion perishes as it becomes, the occasion (in the state of objective immortality) becomes part of new actual occasions. Thus, there is a real continuity of experience and a real continuity of personal identity. Or, as Lewis S. Ford has put it in a personal communication,

The final task of this essay is to apply these thoughts on personal identity and "Psychological Physiology" to the questions of responsibility and guilt, and the first point to notice is that Whitehead’s metaphysics excludes one sense of responsibility and guilt. Namely, since actual entities are asserted to be distinct individuals, a second entity, AE₂, cannot rightly be said to be responsible/guilty qua decision maker for the activities of a prior occasion, AE₁. High-grade occasions, such as those which constitute the supportive nexus in the brain, are autonomous decision-makers. This means, of course, that there cannot be a Cartesian mental substance which is the same decision-maker as in the past. And one gathers that it is for this reason that Weiss holds that Whitehead’s theory cannot show that a person may be "guilty for something done by him years ago."

But this does not mean that there is no "him" at all and that no senses of guilt and responsibility are possible for Whitehead. These concepts have real meaning when an actual entity is implicated in the consequences of one or more of its predecessors’ decisions. That is, suppose that AE₁’s decision involved committing a crime. Although AE₂, did not make this decision, no crime is committed in a vacuum, and hence AE₂, via feelings of causal efficacy, is not free of the results of the crime. We should say that AE₂ is involved in the guilt of AE₁. Feelings of causal efficacy which create the involvement do not shackle the present occasion into conforming to past experiences, but they do create a basic historical continuity. As Merleau-Ponty puts the matter in terms of birth, "it committed a whole future, not as a cause determines its effect, but as a situation, once created, inevitably leads on to some outcome" (PP 407). It is in this sense that, to use Weiss’s words, a person may be "guilty for something done by him years ago." Further, I suggest that the guilt might sometimes be felt by AE₂ when it forms a contrast which includes the crime-committing decision of AE₁ as well as the publicly observable consequences, if any, and finally, the goal of continuing to achieve a moral equilibrium in an ordered society. Thus, feelings of guilt and responsibility for the past show us that present-past relationships are not independent of those between present and future.

Responsibility is integral to the phenomenon of guilt, as a necessary condition for its possibility, because "responsibility" literally means "the ability to respond," an "answerability." And one actual occasion can answer for a decision from its past because it unavoidably exists in the context of that prior decision -- what AE₂ is is not totally independent of the prior choice -- and because, when AE₂ is the presently concrescing occasion of the supportive nexus, it can be concerned for the future moral welfare of the bodily structured society. Thus, as Whitehead puts it, "The greater part of morality hinges on the determination of relevance in the future" (PR 41). What an actual entity is forms part of the becoming of its successors and conversely, the concrescences of present actual occasions are already linked in their predecessors.

In summary, then, I have tried to show how Whitehead might explain, within the context of his Psychological Physiology, certain of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological evidences which are central for understanding personal identity. I have then used these explicated evidences to show that, as against Weiss, Whitehead’s work can yield a fruitful concept of personal identity based on behavioral habits, a sense of moral responsibility, and a legitimate notion of guilt. To do this, I have interpreted Whitehead’s nonsocial nexus as more social than he himself explicitly describes it, but I have also argued that this move is consistent with his general scheme and with other Whiteheadian language about the body.

Of course, I have not had space to develop completely all these themes. My goal has rather been simply to show that they are possible within a Whiteheadian context and to sketch their general structures for, hopefully, future studies.

References

CM -- Gilbert Ryle. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1949.

ET -- Richard B. Brandt. Ethical Theory. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959.

IC -- Alphonso Lingis. "Intentionality and Corporeity" in Analecta Husserliana. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1970, pp. 75-90.

PE -- Moritz Schlick. Problems of Ethics. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1939.

PP -- Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Calm Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan-Paul, 1962.

PPOE -- Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Primacy of Perception and other Essays. Ed. James M. Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

RW -- Paul Weiss. "History and Objective Immortality" in The Relevance of Whitehead. Ed. Ivor Leclerc. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1961.

Ss -- Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Signs. Trans. Richard C. McCleary. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

SB -- Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Structure of Behavior. Trans. Alden L. Fisher. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1963.

WEP -- Donald W. Sherburne. "Responsibility, Punishment, and Whitehead’s Theory of the Self" in Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy. Ed. George L. Kline. Englewood Cliffs:Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963, pp. 179-88.

WPP -- Donald W. Sherburne. "Whitehead’s Psychological Physiology," The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 7/4 (Winter, 1969-70), 401-07.

Notes

1. Merleau-Ponty borrowed this term from Sir Henry Head (PPOE 117) who was, incidentally, a friend of Whitehead and enjoyed close conversational contact with him. See Victor Lowe’s Understanding Whitehead (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), p. 223n.

2 "Moral virtue, on the other hand, is formed by habit, ethos, and its name, ethike, is therefore derived, by a slight variation, from ethos." Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a, 15-18, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: The Hobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1962), p. 33.

3 The most important point here about transmutation, from the perspective of Gestalt psychology and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, is that perception, although receptive of data, is not a passive synthesis of "givens,’ but an organizational form-giving in which there is a prehension of a nexus "vaguely." It consists, that is, in overwhelming the nexus by means of some congenial uniformity which pervades it" (PR 154), with no discrimination among the individual members.

4 Although Professor Sherburne is content in this article to leave intact Whitehead’s account of responsibility including, therefore, the role of God in suggesting relevance, this must not be taken as his considered view. See his "Whitehead Without God," The Christian Scholar. 50/3 (Fall, 1907), 251-72, and "The ‘Whitehead Without God’ Debate": PS 1:101-13 2:277-95, 3:27-40.

In a programmatic essay entitled "Whitehead Without God" (PPCT 305-28), Donald W. Sherburne sets out to demonstrate that a viable, coherent metaphysical system can be maintained by shifting the role assigned to God in Whitehead’s cosmology to other factors within that scheme. John Cobb, on the other hand, denies that "Whitehead without God" has coherency, at least as presented by Sherburne, and the two Whiteheadians carry out their debate in issues of this journal (PS 1:91-113, 2:277-95, 3:27-40). Another aspect of Sherburne’s original thesis, on which he touches only briefly, also calls for serious discussion: namely, that the removal of God from Whitehead’s thought might make possible a rapprochement with the existentialists, especially Camus and Sartre.

Sherburne, in contrast to other Whiteheadians and in agreement with the "existentialists," denies that the value of life depends upon a God who either provides men with a general confidence about the final worth of life (Ogden) or with a sense of the worthwhileness of the present moment whatever its final outcome (Cobb). He insists that God could be removed from Whitehead’s system and there would still remain the value of "experience as immediately felt by temporal subjects" (PPCT 325). His thesis is that Whitehead’s Christian environment, not any necessary sytematic development, may be responsible for Whitehead’s "God-talk." Since "God-talk" has lost its lure for many men, Sherburne proposes a merger between Whitehead sans God and existentialists sans ennui.

It is inaccurate, however, to link Camus to Sartre or to a position of "bleak despair." The two men held disparate points of view and Camus’ "invincible summer" warms even the bleakest winter of discontent. But the focal point of this essay is not to chide Sherburne for lumping Camus and Sartre together. Rather I wish to test the assumption that Camus’ thought does not permit a notion of God. To the contrary, I think that a "Camus with God" is not only possible within his stated views, but that it is compatible with a process notion of God.

When one reads the many critics who discuss Camus’ "atheism," or his "new humanism," or his Lack of "eternal values," or even Camus’ own attacks upon the Christian God, it is astonishing to read what he states to be his "rebel’s" true intention: "He is seeking, without knowing it, morality or the sacred. Rebellion, though it is blind, is a form of asceticism. Therefore, if the rebel blasphemes, it is in the hope of finding a new god" (Rb 101). The rebel, continues Camus, "staggers under the shock of the first and most profound of all religious experiences, but it is a disenchanted religious experience." The religious experience is disappointing because no "new god" is forthcoming. To understand why, it is crucial to distinguish the reasons for the rebel’s blasphemy against the "old god" from the clues he offers concerning the "new god’s" arrival. To concentrate upon the "old," as Camus and his interpreters do, is to witness the dismantlement of any supernaturalistic God. However, to focus upon the "new" is to participate in Camus’ nascent "naming of the god," a god who in gestation promises to belong to the "family" of process thought.

Camus’ objections to a God are based upon two contentions, one negative and one positive. First, Camus cannot reconcile the fact of evil and suffering with the claim of God’s goodness and omnipotence. He sums up what appear to him to be the only alternatives for God: either God is "all-powerful and malevolent" or else "benevolent and sterile" (Rb 287). If God is omnipotent, then Camus holds God criminally responsible for the injustice perpetrated against men by fate and death. On the other hand, if God is just and good, the amount of evil in the world testifies to God’s inability to establish justice in his creation. In neither case is God worthy of human devotion. Secondly, Camus wishes to affirm without equivocation the value of the temporal moment. His concern is that the existence of an eternal God would have the effect of diminishing the value of existence. Camus’ objection to any future goal to judge the present, whether a Christian’s hope for immortality or a Marxist’s dream of a future classless society, is that it leads to an "ideal of the spirit" that fails to appreciate the temporal enjoyment of bodily existence. To believe in an eternal God, for Camus, is to commit oneself to a static, absolute value that men are expected to imitate. In the name of self-creation and temporal value Camus curses God.

Camus’ objections to God did not lead him to atheism, as he states continually throughout his writings, but rather to blasphemy. As we have indicated, this blasphemy was uttered in the hope of finding a "new god." Discovering none, Camus affirms the one value of which he felt certain -- man. In his July, 1944, "Letter to a German Friend," which many critics take to be definitive of Camus’ final position, he states, "I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man" (RRD 28). There appears to be little room for a "new god" in the face of such an unequivocal statement, and Camus’ own position appears to be that of Kaliayev in The Just Assassins. Whereas Kaliayev crosses himself when he passes an icon, he is no churchgoer; he believes that "God can’t do anything to help; justice is our concern" (C 278). Likewise Camus is sensitive to the "sacred," but faced with God’s silence, he concerns himself with human love and justice. The tale he relates about Saint Dimitri could serve as the paradigm for Camus’ own humanism:

If such parables and pronouncements were the extent of Camus’ "godtalk," then any God in Camus’ literature would be merely a deus absconditus. The burden of this essay is to show that Camus consciously affirmed something more, but nothing less, than the value of men and that this "something more" is compatible with a "process God."

There have been several attempts to compare Camus’ thoughts with a conception of God, and these discussions may be classified into three groups. First, there are those who believe that the Tendenz of Camus’ works moved steadily toward Christian conversion, or at least toward a genuine appreciation of a life of grace in a broken world. Bernard Murchland, for example, presents a sensitive depiction of Camus’ thought in the light of Catholicism and concludes that perhaps Camus’ stress upon the necessity for a temporal revolution is like that which some believers claim is a "guarantee of eternal salvation." ¹ Camus, however, never shows any interest in "eternal salvation," and it is highly unlikely that Camus was on his way down the trail blazed by Eliot and Auden.

A second type of response to Camus is to den)’ that his attack upon God really hits the mark. The most notorious assertion to this effect is that of B. XV. B. Lewis, who claims that Camus actually objected to

While Lewis’s remarks do not indicate any careful reading of Luther, it is true that Camus rejects a notion of "salvation by faith alone" on the grounds that it eliminates human freedom and, to that extent, would not accept the God of Luther, Calvin, or the later Augustine. But Lewis’s contention that Camus’ remarks do not touch the "greater and more ancient" tradition represented by Thomism, either in St. Thomas or in Maritain, misses the mark (TPS 302n24). Camus could never accept any God "who is totally separated from history" (Rb 288), and since Thomas believed God to be immutable and unaffected by history, Camus’ objections to "god-talk" include Thomism.

A third group of interpreters has sought to establish a point of contact between Camus’ insights and those of contemporary theology. Schubert Ogden, for example, argues that the most fundamental use of the word "God" is to refer to "the objective ground in reality itself of our ineradicable confidence in the final worth of our existence (RG 37). Since Camus’ mature writings stress the necessity of resisting anything in nature or history that oppresses men, Ogden relates this basic confidence in the worthwhileness of human existence to a tacit belief in God.

A similar but more ambitious attempt to argue for a "god concept" in Camus’ works, upon which Ogden builds and which is fruitful for an extended discussion, is the effort of Nathan Scott to bring Camus into dialogue with Paul Tillich. Scott’s contention is that what Tillich describes as "absolute faith" is contained implicitly within Camus’ affirmation of life. Drawing upon The Courage To Be, Scott is aware of three characteristics of "absolute faith": (1) To live in the power of being that enables a person to withstand the onslaughts of guilt, death, and meaninglessness; (2) To experience the dependence of all manifestations of nonbeing upon being, such as the dependence of meaninglessness upon meaning, thereby testifying to the ultimacy of being-itself; and (3) To accept being accepted in spite of one’s separation from the power of being (AC 95f). Scott’s claim that perhaps Camus knew "something that approximates the Christian experience of justification" and the "God above the God of theism" rests upon the demonstration that the characteristics of absolute faith are manifest in Camus’ works. The cautious conclusion arrived at by Scott is that Tillich’s depiction "seems very nearly to describe Camus’ affirming vision of life (AC 96). We could estimate the force of Scott’s "very nearly" better if he offered a systematic presentation of Camus’ statements to indicate how conscious he was of "the power of being" in the face of nonbeing. Instead Scott relies largely upon inference to arrive at some insightful parallels.

Scott is very persuasive when demonstrating that Camus is aware of the first characteristic of absolute faith. It seems clear that Camus faced the full consequences of death, meaninglessness, and guilt. The last he accepted as a result of his involvement in the terrors of the second world war (described in The Plague and The Rebel) and the other two when he had to face the possibility of death from tuberculosis (discussed in his earliest writings). Camus steadfastly affirms the value of life in spite of personal and historical tragedy. This affirmation is the basic confidence that Ogden associates with a belief in God.

The existence in Camus’ literature of Tillich’s second and third characteristics of absolute faith, however, is less clear in Scott’s analysis. Indeed, there is little discussion that indicates that Camus is aware of the dependence of nonbeing on being. Yet Camus does affirm in The Rebel that an absolute negation leads to at least one affirmation: namely, that the assertion of absolute negation must itself be thought valid by the one asserting it. For Camus, then, absolute negation is self-contradictory, which means that some meaning must exist necessarily under any condition. Such a conclusion might lead to the priority of being over non-being as Tillich’s second characteristic demands, but Camus never makes such an inference.

With respect to the third characteristic, it is doubtful whether Camus ever felt the experience of "accepting being accepted." Camus says that even though the world crushes men in death, it does so with a ‘tender indifference."’ "Being" does not accept men; it lacks any positive or negative relationship to human aspirations. However, in fairness to Scott’s presentation, Camus does come "close" to "accepting acceptance" at Tipasa, where the overwhelming beauty of the setting lures Camus into an experience where he feels his self is given to him by the natural beauty. But he confesses that even in such beauty, he "shall never come close enough to the world" (L 68). For whatever reasons, Camus never affirms "being accepted"; he remains a "stranger" to the "ground of the whole." Scott’s attempt to link Camus with Tillich’s "absolute faith," so as to demonstrate that "perhaps" Camus did not live completely outside of what Christians mean by grace, is unconvincing. Scott leads us, instead, to accept Camus as a humanist who is wary of transcendence, for Scott says that Camus "remained unconvinced that human life is steadied and protected by anything transcendent to itself" (AC 90). But Camus’ "humanism" undergoes major revisions in his writings after 1945, and he ends up, as we will demonstrate, advocating a "transcendence" to steady human existence.

World War II and its aftermath had profound effects on the development of Camus’ thought and art. He became preoccupied with finding some basis apart from man to counter the terrible brutality of Nazism and Stalinism. If values are merely the results of action through time, he asks, and have no validity independent of history, how does one judge the direction of current events? If the will determines value and the will wills murder, what speaks against it? Camus is confronted with a dilemma: he does not wish to baptize history because history has resulted in the reign of terror; he does want to advocate absolute values independent of time, for that would reconstitute the "old god" that negates human creativity. To deify history is to enslave man to historical events; to deify any absolute value appears to enslave man to a superior power. For Camus either solution is nihilistic and, above all, he wishes to move beyond nihilism. To understand how Camus resolves his conflict is, at the same time, to see the emergence of the "something more" that transcends man.

In his notebook, toward the end of 1946, Camus writes: "If everything can be reduced to man and to history, I wonder where is the place: of nature -- of love -- of music -- of art" (N 148). His own rich aesthetic sensitivity led Camus to perceive in beauty the soil to grow a just civilization. In "Helen’s Exile," written in 1948, he presents the notion of beauty as a solution to European nihilism, and in The Rebel, published in 1951, he develops the insights of his earlier essay. The invocation of Helen as the positive archetype to counter the ugliness of war-torn Europe reveals Camus’ preference for those ancient Greeks who would rather die for "beauty" than for a display of a will-to-power.³ In contrast to a Europe bent upon "absolute justice" enforced by tanks, Camus presents the Hellenes as conceiving of a justice that sets limits "even upon the physical universe itself" (L 149). He supports Heracitus’ supposition: "The sun will not go beyond its bounds, for otherwise the Furies who watch over justice will find it out" (L 149; Rb 296). Nature reveals that limits exist even if men temporarily ignore them. To return to the contemplation of nature is, therefore, to rediscover a balance to oppose the immoderateness of history and to appreciate anew a beauty that provides men with a sense of permanence. Camus believes that the source for sane behavior is not found in unruly cities, but in the sea, the hills and in evening meditations upon natural beauty. Such claims indicate that Camus sought a ground for value that transcends human existence. That value somehow resides in the natural order of things and testifies to the a priori existence of limits that Camus hopes will inspire men to behave justly. The problem with this claim is that it contradicts Camus’ statements on what comprises "nature" apart from man.

The physical universe, as Camus describes it, is a res extensa -- body, matter and external vastness -- that is without reason or purpose. "The very forces of matter in their blind advance, impose their own limits," is typical of Camus’ express statements (Rb 295). Limit, order, and beauty in nature, therefore, are attributed to pure chance. To this extent, he accepts a godless, Cartesian dualism along with Sartre, with whom he otherwise does not wish to be identified. Camus uses the distinction between men, who are "thinking" creatures, and matter, which is "nonreasonable," to develop his notion of the absurd. Since he retains his dualistic position throughout his works, his statements in The Myth of Sisyphus, which reveal the mind-matter dichotomy at the heart of his position, may be taken as definitive.

The mind’s deepest desire, according to Camus, is to seek unity, clarity and familiarity in the world. Its function as mind is not satisfied until it reduces the world to terms of thought--something human. But man’s nostalgia to be at home in the universe is futile; the gap between man and the indifference of nature cannot be closed. "If man recognized that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled" (MS 13). But it does not, so man will forever be exiled in a nonhuman world. Thrown into an unintelligible existence, man is fated to live in the face of the absurd, which is the "confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world" (MS 21). Even the beauty of nature is alien and dense in The Myth of Sisyphus. Since we are not like stones, or trees, or brilliant landscapes, we use images in an attempt to overcome nature’s strangeness. But our images lack the power to make the world clear. With that failure, the "world evades us because it becomes itself again" (MS 11). ‘What the world is in itself cannot be known-phenomena lack any quality or principles. Consequently, Camus admits that "at the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them" (MS 11). The world never belongs to man. Scientists buoy our longing for clarity by enumerating laws and speaking of atoms and electrons, but, laments Camus even they are reduced to using the "poetry" of planetary systems, i.e., they Cannot rationally seize the reality they study. Since phenomena cannot be grasped by the mind, all man can accomplish is phenomenological description that, asserts Camus, teaches nothing (MS 15). Without external justification for his existence, man is de trop. Camus’ adherence to this mind-matter dualism, however, leaves his rebel’s discovery of a "living transcendence" that guarantees limits in nature and human behavior in perilous intellectual limbo.

If nature is indifferent and moves blindly through time, its purposelessness could hardly provide an "example" for human purpose. This "crisis" in Camus’ position is characterized by Hans Jonas who, comparing the nihilism of existentialist thought to that of Gnosticism, states:

After World War II, Camus sought to escape from this reduction of all value to something conferred by men in history. To avoid purely "subjectivistic" values, Camus, via the Greeks, posited the limits and beauty of "objective" nature as man’s sure guide. Yet, he never abandoned the dualism of his earlier writings; he continued to hold to a "blind" universe. The inconsistency of his position results from his maintaining two mutually incompatible philosophical positions: a godless Cartesianism that portrays the physical universe without quality and the Greek notion that value is grounded in physis. Camus’ sympathy with the former stance leads to the denial of any value in nature; the latter explains his claim that beauty and limit are rooted in physis. To maintain both, as Camus does, leaves ambiguous what value rooted in nature is.

If we wish to remove the inconsistency in Camus’ thought and to remain within the options he provides, we may take one of two courses of action. First, we could systematically "correct" all of Camus’ claims that there is a value transcending man by demonstrating that all statements about beauty and limit are "subjective" and have no foundation apart from human consciousness. The result might bring Camus into agreement with Sartre and remain consistent to the position enunciated in The Myth of Sisyphus. But such an accomplishment would run counter to the tendency of Camus to argue for the existence of a priori values. Camus, probably with Sartre in mind, rejects the notion that existence always precedes essence (Rb 296) and states that there is a creative source for rebellion against injustice in a "moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history" (Rb 251). The artist, who dedicates himself to beauty, "teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature. For him, the great god Pan is not dead" (Rb 276). To ignore nature and beauty is to turn history into a desert, void of all that which quenches a man’s thirst for grandeur and of that which makes possible a judgment upon human violence. Previously, I stated that Camus, following Nietzsche, rejected God on the grounds that any transcendent value might diminish temporal significance. However, when Camus advocates beauty to oppose the arrogance of contemporary history, he arrives at this surprising conclusion:

Rather than seeing any form of transcendence as a threat to the value of temporal existence, Camus advocates a transcendence so as to guarantee the value of this life! Such statements indicate that a "Sartrean" dualism of "Being-in-itself" opposed to "Being-for-itself" is not a solution to Camus’ search for quality in nature.

The second way to bring consistency to Camus’ theories, therefore, is to find a "transcendence" that provides a comprehensive unity to overcome the dualism of mind-matter. Such a systematization might result in what Sherburne calls a "neo-Whiteheadian naturalism," or it might require some notion of God -- perhaps Tillich’s "God beyond God" or a Whiteheadian theism. The issue is whether there is any evidence to suggest which of these "transcendents" is more compatible with Camus’ expressed views. Since he raises the claim of a "living transcendence" in the context of a discussion on nature and ethics, an analysis of Camus’ statements on the existence of value in nature may provide us with an understanding of how he conceives this transcendence.

While Camus advances the theory of a living value rooted in nature, he denies that this value is "static,"⁴ that is, he denies that it has fixed, concrete content (Rb 252; N 159). If this living value is not static, then what is it? Unfortunately, Camus is not altogether clear on what he means. We can grasp, however, what he seeks to deny. In the summer of 1947, Camus records his distrust of "static virtue" and of his desire to find a middle course between total negation, on the one hand, and an affirmation that would explain away the enigma of existence, on the other. May one, he muses, legitimately have his "being in history while referring to values that go beyond history" (N 159)? A partial answer to this question is given in The Rebel. There Camus states that he cannot accept history barren of all transcendence, yet he will not give credence to a God removed from the adventure of history (Rb 288). The rebel, who discovers the source of rebellion in nature, advocates a morality which

Camus rejects "static," eternally existing values, for they would remain fixed and unaffected by history; he prefers a "situation ethics" where free men can exercise novel solutions to problems. By denying that the value in nature is static, Camus wishes to insure man against the possibility that a theocracy, for example, could assert rules based upon "eternal principles" to suppress freedom. For Camus the absence of fixed laws means that men must constantly struggle to create justice relative to existing historical conditions.

Camus’ "middle position," while not carefully developed, suggests the following stance: neither natural beauty nor the human decisions that constitute history are unaffected by change. The sun one day will burn out and men will fluctuate in their moral choices. As the beauty found in nature is subject to some process, so the values affirmed by men are relative to the sway of historical events. But if there is only change, and nothing is stable, one could not appeal to an enduring natural beauty to melt the icy despair of Europe. Consequently, Camus believes that there must be stability along with change: "Being can only prove itself in becoming, and becoming is nothing without being. The world is not purely fixed; nor is it only movement. It is both movement and stability" (Rb 296). But whatever is stable cannot be so constituted that it determines in advance how men must act. For Camus, natural beauty provides the "form" for justice to which men add the "content."

Camus’ notion of "dynamic" value is derived from his denial, on the one hand, of absolutes that stultify novelty and from his denial, on the other, that value exists only in human actions. But what changes and what endures is left in doubt. He wishes to associate novelty with men in history and stability with natural beauty, yet he never indicates how the latter can be without content and still serve as a model for society. Instead, Camus only asserts what he feels is necessary: that man should inculcate into society the example set by beauty in nature, so that the wasteland of Europe will flourish into an oasis.

It is this inability to "define" or clarify what he means that leaves Camus’ search confused. He is certain that human greatness lies in transforming the beauty contemplated in nature into whatever relative justice a civilization requires. But the unanswered question remains: how does Camus account for the existence of the dynamic "living virtue" that exhibits itself in the limits, order, and beauty of nature? Regrettably, his idea of dynamic value grounded in physis is not a coherent explanation of his vision of transcendence, even though it does remind us of Camus unwavering objection to any notion of an immutable transcendence that deprecates temporality or lessens human freedom and responsibility. However, there is another concept that undergoes a development throughout Camus’ works similar to that of value and that promises to shed light on what kind of transcendence is acceptable to him -- namely, art. Let us, then, trace his conception of art from his position in The Myth of Sisyphus to that in The Rebel.

Phenomenological description, not rational explanation, is all man can accomplish in The Myth of Sisyphus, so in that work art is only a matter of "miming" and "repeating." Art’s function is not to explain anything, or to give quality to a world that has none, but to multiply the quantity of experiences. "Absurd heros," such as Don Juan, know that there is neither meaning nor enduring excellence in life, so they seek to increase the number of their adventures to compensate for the absence of any quality. Art is defined, therefore, as "a sort of monotonous and passionate repetition of the schemes already orchestrated by the world" (MS 70). The intelligence of the artist is employed in the, effort to produce beauty, but lucid thought adds no deeper meaning to what is described; it helps only to select what is to be "mimed." "The work of art is born of the refusal of the intelligence to reason the concrete. It marks the triumph of the flesh" (MS 72). Art contains no lessons; it creates no new worlds. The absurd work of art reveals the limits of the mind and the powerlessness of reason to do more than cover experiences with images. Since thought is incapable of refining reality, it must be content in both art and philosophy to imitate phenomena.

In The Rebel, however, Camus no longer holds to a "mimic" or descriptive theory of art; art now is comparable in purpose to rebellion.

Art is motivated by a passion to give unity to the world, to find formulas or attitudes to give experience meaning. The rebel’s denial of what the world is or was in order to create a vision of what the world might be is similar to his blasphemy against the "old god" in the hope of finding a "new" one. In his new vision, the rebel captures beauty; for this beauty to exist in an art work, Camus claims that it must have style.

Style, as it is defined in The Rebel, is the "correction which the artist imposes by his language and by a redistribution of elements of reality" and gives the "re-created universe its unity and boundaries" (Rb 269). Style transforms and reconstructs the world, not by totally denying the world, but by exhalting certain of its aspects. Camus objects to two types of art: total realism and pure formalism. Realistic art would be nothing but a sterile repetition of creation (the type of art advocated in The Myth of Sisyphus!). Since the description of one moment would be endless, realistic art is considered totalitarian, i.e., it seeks to conquer the world (One of the absurd heros in The Myth of Sisyphus is the conqueror!). However, the rebel seeks the unity, not the totality, of the world. Realistic art fails because it does not deny enough of reality. Formal art, to the contrary, denies too much. It seeks to banish all reality to arrive at a "subjective" abstraction. If realism renounces the creative aspect of the mind, then formalism loses sight of the value of temporal existence. Both are nihilistic for Camus. It art, he says, "comes to the point of rejecting or affirming nothing but reality, it denies itself each time either by absolute negation or by absolute affirmation" (Rb 268). His refusal to accept either an "objective" or a "subjective" art is equivalent to the rebel’s search for a value that transcends history but which does not diminish human freedom and creativity. The definition of art as the effort to exalt some beauty in nature, but not to enslave man to mere imitation, is Camus’ aesthetic equivalent to the notion of a dynamic value in nature. He prefers a position that allows "external reality" and human freedom to interact in both the creation of art and ethics, even though he fails to justify such a dialogue philosophically.

While his understanding of dynamic value remains ill-defined, he gives specific requirements for style:

Style, which is necessary for beauty, and rebellion, which is necessary for value, require reality and mind. If either reality or mind is excluded, then both art and rebellion become nihilistic. If beauty is to be grounded in nature, as Camus states throughout his later writings, then nature must include "mind" and not be merely blind matter in motion. At one point Camus allows for just such a possibility. In "Helen’s Exile," while criticizing "modern philosophers" and "Messianic forces" that ignore the a priori existence of value in nature, Camus declares: "Nature is still there, nevertheless. Her calm skies and her reason oppose the folly of men" (L 151f). Although this reference to "reason" in nature does not counterbalance all of Camus’ statements to the contrary, it does reveal the ingredient that is needed if Camus’ search for the sanction of human action in nature’s limits is to be coherent.

If style can be attributed to some aspects of reality independent of man -- Camus need not attribute beauty to all aspects of nature -- without reference to an "artist-God," then a naturalistic or pantheistic interpretation of Camus is possible. But the thrust of Camus’ remarks is to support the notion that beauty requires an artist who imposes style on the world to give it a meaning it otherwise would lack. In this context Camus support Shelley’s claim that, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" (Rb 269). On the basis of such remarks, it seems reasonable to conclude that an "artist-rebel" God could resolve Camus’ ambiguity and give birth to the "new god" his rebel seeks.

The compatibility of an "artist-rebel" God with the process theism of Whitehead may now be demonstrated. First, Whitehead’s system provides a comprehensive unity to overcome the subject-object dualism that prohibits Camus from "defining" a value that is grounded in nature. Using human experience as a model to depict the nature of reality, Whitehead argues that every actuality (i.e., every actual event) has both a present subjective immediacy and a past objectivity. Those actual events, or groupings of events, dominated by repetition of the past, such as rocks, would have the appearance of permanence and stability. Those events, or grouping of events, dominated by subjective origination, such as men, would demonstrate greater novelty or change. Even though Camus’ notion of the absurd would be mitigated by Whitehead’s position (nature would not be without "reason"), the absurd experience would not cease to be relevant. Nature would still feel alien to a man struggling with his self-identity and the "permanence" of the stars would still be a reminder of a man’s fragile mortality. Nature, however, would no longer be "dead" as it is in Camus’ thought, but rather "alive" as it is in Camus’ story, "The Growing Stone."

Secondly, Whitehead’s insistence that only actualities exist, matched by Camus’ commitment to temporal life, helps to clarify the problem of dynamic value in Camus’ statements. Since abstract principles or rules (eternal objects) have no causal efficacy in themselves for Whitehead, they would require some actual entity to envision and to incarnate them. Accordingly, if beauty exists in nature, as Camus states, then something actual would be the cause. Otherwise his notion of "dynamic beauty" would be lacking totally in concreteness; it would be what he calls "pure formalism" and, therefore, nihilistic. Furthermore, if this natural beauty is to serve as the example for civilization, it must have "positive" content. Otherwise what is to prevent a man from taking Camus’ advice to contemplate nature and arriving at the conclusion that the survival of the fittest is most natural? If the strongest creatures survive in nature, then is it not natural for the state to claim that might makes right? It seems self-evident that Camus’ notion of beauty presupposes style and requires a hierarchy of values in which the "beauty" that aids man has to exhibit unity, freedom, justice, and love! But in what agency or agencies is such an ordering located if it is to transcend man? Apparently, this kind of question led Whitehead to "god-talk." A "Whitehead without God" would not serve Camus’ purpose unless it demonstrates how the individual actualities are able to cooperate with each other throughout the universe so as to establish in nature a model for human unity and justice. Camus’ hesitance to have a God responsible for beauty is his objection to the "old god" that led to the devaluation of human creativity. However, there is nothing in Camus’ writings that speaks against a conception of God that could account for the hierarchy of value in nature and also insure the freedom and value of human existence.

Finally, then, ‘Whitehead’s delineation of God provides a link between natural beauty and human dignity, and also untangles the problem of theodicy. Since reality for Whitehead is composed of countless actualities each with its own power, there can be no single entity that is omnipotent. God, as an actual entity, or a society of actual entities, would be limited by the power in all occasions. Evil would be caused by the failure of innumerable centers of power to reach full self-actualization or to harmonize fully with one another. For example, cancer cells do not "cooperate" with normal cells and the lack of harmony may bring death. God, Whitehead states, may seek to persuade creatures to actualize themselves or to work toward harmonious solidarity with others, but God cannot coerce them to do so. A man, for instance, would always retain some freedom and responsibility for his self-creation and for the civilization he helps to build. Both Camus and Whitehead, therefore, oppose the notion of God’s omnipotence. Since Camus states that only an all-powerful God could be held accountable for nature’s crimes against man, his bitter denunciation of natural injustice is not an objection against Whitehead’s limited God. For Camus, the one matter that is at stake in Whitehead’s position is whether such a limited God is "sterile. "To answer this query, it is helpful to develop the notion of God as rebel-artist.

According to Camus, one function of the artist is to envision a world that has unity and to create a work that embodies that ideal. Likewise Whitehead’s God perceives all possible worlds in his primordial nature and attempts to lure all entities into a self-actualization that would bring greater unity to the universe. God, as conceived by Whitehead, would encourage the rebel’s quest for human solidarity, but there is a significant difference between Camus’ artist and Whitehead’s God. While a novelist’s artistry is limited "only" by his own imagination and abilities, God as artist is limited by the lack of sensitivity or concern on the part of the creatures God seeks to persuade. That God never accomplishes all that is envisioned does not mean that God is sterile, for to have power means to share in the development of one’s "sell" and to effect the becoming of subsequent actualities. A process God is involved with the world in an adventure to satisfy himself and all others by effecting the realization of maximum beauty and truth. We must conceive the Divine Eros as the active entertainment of all ideals, with the urge to their finite realization, each in its due season. Thus a process must be inherent in God’s nature, whereby his infinity is acquiring realization" (AI 357). A process God who is associated with the total self-actualization of all individuals would be limited, benevolent and powerful. But such a God cannot be apathos as classical theologians maintained.

For Whitehead, God is not a detached artist who is unaffected by the course of events. He participates in the success or failure of each entity to realize its own maximum beauty and truth. This means that Gods own life is at stake in the process of reality. When the rebel blasphemes against the "old god" who sanctions the established order ruled over by death, it is to make God share "in the same humiliating adventure as mankind’s" (Rb 24). There would be no need to "make" God share in man’s adventure or be affected by human actions according to Whitehead, for such is the nature of God: "Decay, Transition, Loss, Displacement belong to the essence of Creative Advance" (Al 368-69). White-head’s deity continually challenges the status quo to increase beauty and suffers from the lack of harmony among actualities. God’s own suffering and his patient activity provide a model for the rebel upon which to build a just civilization. Camus speaks favorably of Dionysus, the god torn apart by the Titans, as one who represents "the agonized beauty that coincides with suffering" (Rb 74). Such statements indicate that both Camus and Whitehead agree that God is not separable from the consequences of reality. For this reason it is doubtful that Tillich’s "God beyond God" would be acceptable to Camus. While Tillich provides a system to overcome the subject-object dilemma of Cartesianism, he denies that Being-itself is actually increased or decreased by events, i.e., it is not in process, and, therefore, does not share in human adventures.⁵ Camus’ position implies that if there is a God, such a God would be tolerable only if God is involved in the struggle of man’s existence.

I have not attempted to judge the validity or the coherency of Whitehead’s conception of God. I have been concerned to demonstrate that Camus’ writings leave open the possibility of God as understood by Whitehead, and that Camus’ thoughts on rebellion and its source in the beauty of nature are compatible with and made consistent by a process notion of God. That such a God is attractive to Camus is evident by a quotation he cites in his notebook (which Whitehead himself could have stated): "Coming to God because you are detached from the earth and because pain has separated you from the world is useless. God needs souls attached to the world. It is your joy that gratifies him (N 82). Camus’ search for a transcendence that validates a rebel’s struggle for beauty and justice fell short of its goal -- to name the god. "If we could name it, what silence would follow," says Camus about the illusive transcendence that remained for him an agnostos theos (L 170). With the aid of process thought, however, this "new god" may leave the nourishing but dark womb of Camus’ aesthetic intuition and enter into the debate of collective consciousness.

REFERENCES

AC -- Nathan A. Scott. Albert Camus. Folcroft: The Folcroft Press, 1969.

C -- Albert Camus. Caligula and Three Other Plays. Tr. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage Books, 1958.

L -- Albert Camus. Lyrical and Critical Essays. Ed. Philip Thody and tr. Ellen Conroy Kennedy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.

MS -- Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus. Tr. Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1960.

N -- Albert Camus. Notebooks 1942-1951. Tr. Justin O’Brien, New York: The Modern Library, 1965.

PL -- Hans Jonas. The Phenomenon of Life. New York: Harper and Row, 1966.

PPCT -- Process Philosophy and Christian Thought. Ed. Delwin Brown, Ralph James, and Gene Reeves. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.

Rb -- Albert Camus. The Rebel. Tr. Anthony Bowar. New York: Vintage Books, 1960.

RG -- Schubert M. Ogden. The Reality of God and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row, 1966.

RRD -- Albert Camus. Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. Tr. Justin O’Brien. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.

TPS -- R.W.B. Lewis, The Picaresque Saint. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1961.

While I have followed the standard English translations in citing references to Camus’ works, any deviations from the English text are based upon my own translation from the French.

Notes:

1 Bernard C. Murchland, C.S.C., "Albert Camus: The Dark Night before the Coming of Grace?" Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays. ed. Germaine Bree (Englewood Cliffs Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), p. 64. In fairness to Murchland it should be noted that he wrote his article prior to Camus’ death.

2 The word "tender" (tendresse) is used throughout Camus’ works to indicate that the world’s unjust murder of man is not done out of anger or vengeance. It leaves the world neutral in regard to an individual’s fate.

3 Such a remark indicates Camus had a naive understanding of Greek life and politics.

4 I have chosen to translate formel as "static" when it modifies value and as "formal" when it qualifies art, because Camus’ usage is confusing. He opposes formel value because it binds reality to changeless concrete content, whereas he opposes formel art because it lacks any concrete content. Camus prefers both value to be "dynamic, i.e., to be expressions of the changing relationship between nature and history.

5 Paul Tillich, " Reply to Interpretation and Criticism," The Theology of Paul Tillich. ed. Charles W. Kegley and Robert XV. Bretall (New York: Macmillan, 1964). pp. 339-42. For a critique of Tillich’s position from a process point of view, see Charles Hartshorne, "Tillich’s Doctrine of God," ibid., pp. 164-97.

Whitehead’s doctrine of the atomicity of occasions of experience raises many problems when it is applied to human mental life. In a recent issue of Process Studies (3/1 [Spring, 1973], 27-40), John Cobb and Donald Sherburne debate whether the unity of human mental experience is better understood if the relationship between the dominant society of personally ordered occasions which Whitehead calls the "soul," and other occasions in the brain which support it, is reconceived in terms of regional inclusion. Sherburne maintains that this position violates essential Whiteheadian principles and that human mental life can be understood without such an innovation. Nevertheless, Cobb presents strong objections to Sherburne’s model, based on the argument that the dominant occasion as Sherburne wants to conceive it would have to perform some amazing feats as it races around its supportive environment.

I will argue that the Sherburne model, with certain modifications, is closer to Whitehead’s intentions than Cobb’s model, fits the spirit of Whitehead’s philosophy better, and also is closer to the facts of empirical psychology. Thus it is not necessary to reconceive the relation of "soul" to body in terms of regional inclusion.

Whitehead writes that the human body is pervaded by a complex structure of many enduring objects. If we recall his definition of an enduring object as "a genetic character inherited through a historic route of actual occasions" (FR 166), we realize the extreme generality of this expression. There are types of objects which form material bodies, for example, and others which do not. The human mind, in Whitehead’s view, is an example of the latter: "There is also an enduring object formed by the inheritance from presiding occasion to presiding occasion" (PR 167).

The notion of an enduring object becomes especially interesting when we raise the question of whether nonmaterial enduring objects other than the presiding route of occasions exists in the human subject. We find the connection between the dominant thread and the physical structure of the body described in Process and Reality as follows: "Thus in an animal body the presiding occasion, if there be one, is the final node, or intersection, of a complex structure of many enduring objects" (PR 166f). A question might be raised here as to what might be the character of this complex structure of enduring objects, upon which the presiding object, the dominant thread, stages its private satisfactions. If, as White-head puts it, the dominant thread "wanders from part to part of the brain, dissociated from the physical material atoms" (PR 167), then those enduring objects cannot possibly be material. The only alternative is that they are historic routes of occasions within the supportive nexus. I am thus persuaded to view the "nonsocial" nexus supportive of unified dominant mentality, which receives so much attention in Sherburne’s model, as being more social than other passages might lead us to expect.

In fact, what I am urging is a broadened understanding of the word "soul" as it is employed in Whitehead’s treatment of human mentality, so that historic routes of occasions are admitted which are neither physical objects nor dominant routes. Such a view, I feel, makes more sense of Whitehead’s belief that the inheritance of bodily experience is always organized: "The harmonized relations of the parts of the body constitute the wealth of inheritance into a harmony of contrasts, issuing into intensity of experience" (PR 167). The dominant occasion would have too burdensome a job if it alone were responsible for the integration of bodily experience. Furthermore, such a view would be incompatible with the description of the final percipient route of occasions in part V of Process and Reality "It toils not, neither does it spin. It receives from the past; it lives in the present. . . . Its sole use to the body is its vivid originality: it is the organ of novelty" (PR 516).

Various passages indicate that a high degree of transmutational activity has already taken place every time the dominant occasion is shaken by its private intensities. I conclude that human mentality is not correctly identified solely with the one nonmaterial enduring object generated by the dominant series of occasions. I propose that we entertain the notion that the soul contains subordinate nonconscious "living persons."

Such a suggestion is not so far from Whitehead’s intentions as might at first appear. If we view the soul as an effective social system for the procurement of intense experience, we can legitimately apply to it Whitehead’s statement in "Immortality" that "the more effective social systems involve a large infusion of various soils of personalities as subordinate elements in their make-up -- for example, an animal body, or a society of animals, such as human beings" (IMM 690).

Whitehead stresses that the mind is not to be loaded down by its own acquisitions. An over-busy dominant occasion, one of Cobb’s objections to the Sherburne model, is hard to reconcile with this intention, whereas a kind of division of labor within mental life, which I am proposing here, fits better. Whitehead himself characterizes human mentality in three ways, rather than one. He writes that it is "partly the outcome of the human body, partly the single directive agency of the body, partly a system of cogitations which have a certain irrelevance to the physical relationships of the body" (PR 164f). The first description points to a level of mental functioning in which bodily experience is merely registered without much enhancement of the mental pole in the occasions other than perhaps a general feeling tone; the second points to an habitual form of bodily unity; and only the third suggests a flight from environmental obligations in the interest of greater depth of experience. This threefold description allows for the possibility of threads of inheritance of lesser intensity of experience than the dominant one, threads more closely bound to the reiterative aims of the body. The ultimate percipient draws upon these unconscious cogitations which have their own partial independence from the occasions of the brain and body.

This notion of nondominant living strands may also throw light on Whitehead’s view of how mental originality is "canalized": "By this transmission the mental originality of the living occasions receives a character and a depth. In this way originality is both ‘canalized’ -- to use Bergson’s term -- and intensified. Its range is widened within limits. Apart from canalization, depth of originality would spell disaster for the animal body" (PR 163). If we recall Whitehead’s position that the living cell canalizes the initiatives of its entirely living members in the interest of preserving the entire cellular society, it can be seen that our position here applies that strategy to the human soul. Our interpretation of the statement that "Life is a passage from physical order to pure mental originality" (PR 164) is that the initiatives within the dominant nexus of occasions are canalized in the supportive nexus by way of threads of inheritance, so that personal mentality may combine originality of response with an adequate order upon which it depends.

Does our emphasis on sociality in human mental behavior violate Whitehead’s insistence that inheritance explains why a mentality should be swayed by its past, whereas what ought to be emphasized is the element of originality? I think not, for such statements about immediacy must be balanced with ones which show that life’s survival power depends on adaptation and regeneration. On pages 160-67 of Process and Reality, stability and intensity are presented as potentially conflicting demands. Sheer conceptual appetition must be integrated with its substructures or else it is deficient in survival power. Threads of personal order would satisfy this requirement. The notion of canalization suggests that social order, far from decreasing the intensity of experience, may actually increase it: "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. . . . The old dominance should be transformed into the firm foundations, upon which new feelings arise, drawing their intensities from delicacies of contrast between system and freshness" (PR 515).

Furthermore, Whitehead’s statements about life in Adventures of Ideas support the idea that social order is not opposed to the notion of the living occasion. In fact, they suggest that the theory of nonsocial occasions alone is insufficient to explain life. For example, he writes:

And in the same discussion, he denies that any single occasion can be called living, for "Life is the coordination of the mental spontaneities throughout the occasions of a society" (AI 266). In the case of human mentality, we maintain that the requisite order is supplied by a vast reservoir of unconscious temporal societies, which sustain its higher initiatives. Thus the complex structure of enduring objects, of which the presiding occasion is described as being the final node or intersection, is this reservoir, organized into many historic routes of inherited character. Such subordinate nexuses possess a diminished degree of mental spontaneity as compared to the dominant living person.

Whitehead nowhere in Process and Reality argues explicitly for such intermediate entities, but it is interesting that he maintains a gradation of enduring objects, from the one extreme of the atomic material body to the opposite extreme of the presiding thread: "But just as the difference between living and non-living occasions is not sharp, but more or less, so the distinction between an enduring object which is an atomic material body and one which is not, is again more or less." (PR 166).

The types of enduring object for which we have argued are intermediates: they share to some extent in the character of materiality as Whitehead uses the term, in that they are more affected by their contiguous bodily occasions, hence more reiterative, than the dominant thread. In spite of this relatively diminished freedom, they nonetheless reduce the wealth of bodily inheritance to an adequate level of order upon which the ultimate percipient can stage its own contrasts. Below, we demonstrate the applicability of this view to the more habitual forms of human behavior, such as inattentive speech, motor habits, etc. Further down the scale toward materiality, other groupings of occasions can be assumed, which are still more tied to biorhythms, as for example the reticular system, balance and appetite centers, and so on.

Because such enduring objects are more tied to the body, they are more dominated by particular forms of definiteness in their successive satisfactions than the final percipient route, whose sole value to the body, as we pointed out above, is its vivid originality. They might be described as the feudal underlords of the personality, of which Whitehead speaks in Modes of Thought: "Finally, the overlord tends to relapse into the conventionality of routine imposed upon the subordinate governors, such as the heart. Animal life can face conventional novelties with conventional devices" (MT 35).

There is much empirical evidence for mental operations of high complexity below the level of conscious attention. For example, the pioneering work of Moruzzi and Magoun established that the reticular activating system, a small network of nerves in the brain stem, "awakens" the brain and prepares it to receive and respond to incoming information. Conscious awareness, memory, and learning depend on a minimal level of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex. When this activity decreases below the thresh-hold level, as evidenced by EEC recordings, consciousness ceases. The organism loses both awareness of, and ability to respond to, its environment (2:457). Tibbetts points out that the reticular network is not connected to any particular brain region; its fibers appear to spray the entire cortex. Hence its contribution to awareness is a general one, covering all high-grade mental activities. In an anesthetized animal, signals continue to reach the cortex but the animal is unable to respond to them. Damage to the reticular formation in human beings makes all consciousness impossible, and permanent injury results in an irreversible coma. The organism lapses into a level of low intensity of experience (3:27).

What interests us here is that this system operates at a high level of conceptual discrimination, in Whitehead’s technical use of the term. I. D. French describes it as follows: "It is as if the Reticular Activating System becomes endowed by experience with the ability to discriminate among stimuli, disregarding those it has found unimportant and responding to those that are helpful" (1:56). It should be recalled that, according to Whitehead, selectivity of response to data is what characterizes any advance in mentality.

Wooldridge characterizes the reticular system as the establisher of an optimal signal-to-noise ratio, so to speak, upon which higher levels of experience are staged: "‘Volume-control’ signals are generated in the reticular system to reduce our sensitivity to uninteresting or irrelevant stimuli and thereby permit us to achieve the peculiar but highly useful phenomenon of mental concentration" (4:143).

Further, Tibbetts points out that the reticular formation is sensitive, in different people, to different stimuli, and can discriminate, "as in the case of the mother awakening when her child is crying, though the husband remains unaffected" (3:27).

Apparently, then, this specialized group of nerves is the material locus for a "critical node," as Whitehead puts it, at which point bodily feelings are transmuted so that "there is an increasing development of special emphasis" (PR 477). Not all high-level conceptual feelings need be localizable within the dominant thread of inheritance. Physiology here persuades us to the belief that an occasion within the dominant nexus lives off a massive bodily experience already highly "mentalized," since "emphasis is valuation, and can only be changed by renewed valuation. But valuation arises in conceptual feelings" (PR 477). Both Cobb and Sherburne try to unify human experience within the dominant thread of occasions, but our supposition is that the unity of many bodily experiences occurs within threads of nondominant occasions within the supposedly nonsocial nexus.

Cobb’s objection to Sherburne’s model of the mind would be valid if the ultimate percipient were affected by a multiplicity of discrete sensations. If it were the case that there were a single terminal occasion in the nonsocial nexus which is directly connected to each separate part of the body, the unity of experience would indeed be difficult to explain. But on my interpretation, occasions in the supportive nexus do not inherit a bare neural impulse, but a structured experience. Whitehead writes that the isolated impression is an artificial construct: "In fact we can never isolate such ultimate irrationalities" (PR 479).

The passage from a stimulated point on the body, for example, up to the ultimate percipient, is more than mere transmission of nerve impulse in Whitehead’s schema. Even the passage from without to within the animal body is the enhancement of the mental pole in the occasions. Further, the transmission within the body is one which introduces increased emphasis from occasion to occasion as the experience rises to the level of the final percipient, which we maintain need not be a member of the dominant nexus. This is the meaning of Whitehead’s statement that emotion is never bare entertainment but is always accompanied by subjective enhancement (PR 248). Depth of experience is achieved when freshness can be contrasted with systematic structure: "The variety sought is the variety of structures, and never the variety of individuals" (PR 485).

Nondominant threads of occasions in the soul have their own preferred forms of definiteness, which they reiterate. The description of the reticular system suggests that there are levels or organization of experience of high intensity below the level of the dominant thread of inheritance. Such a structuration of mental life warns us against locating the organization of experience in the dominant thread. The data which Cobb cites in opposition to Sherburne’s model -- discrete impressions from the big toe, the ear drum, and so on -- are not found in inattentive experience, but are rather the products of intellectual analysis. Whitehead writes that the body as a whole is the organ of sensation: "There may be some further specialization into a particular organ of sensation, but in any case the ‘withness of the body’ is an ever-present, though elusive, element in our perceptions of presentational immediacy" (PR 474f). Focussing of attention is possible because the dominant occasion is able to stage its own contrasts among other threads of inheritance.

When Whitehead describes the approach to intellectuality as a gain in the power of abstraction, so that "the irrelevant multiplicity is eliminated, and emphasis is laid on the elements of systematic order in the actual world" (PR 388), we take this to mean that mentality becomes habitually effective when its potentially anarchic initiatives are both nourished and preserved at lower, more reiterative levels of conceptual functioning. And when he describes the body as achieving "a type of social organization, which with every gradation of efficiency constitutes the orderliness whereby a cosmic epoch shelters in itself intensity of satisfaction" (PR 182), we argue that our view of the supportive structures for the soul’s highest achievements satisfies this demand for orderliness. Whitehead’s revision of his view of life in Adventures of Ideas adjusted ‘the balance toward social order; my socializing of mental life does the same.

Introspectively, my position is verified by the shifting nature of conscious attention, with its structure of a central focal awareness surrounded by an horizon of indeterminate yet always accessible oblique experience, upon which the searchlight of attention may at any moment be turned. A decline of conscious attention, as in exhaustion, in which the figure-ground structure dissolves into a homogeneous field, illustrates that consciousness is derivative from a more complex experience, which I have located in the overwhelmingly nonconscious occasions in the "nonsocial" nexus.

The dominant occasion is not necessarily conscious. Consciousness depends on the variety and intensity of its feelings. Even within consciousness, the amount of our experiences which are entertained at one moment is limited; hence the penumbral quality of attention. Much is dismissed into the background so that focal experience may be heightened. Yet there are patterns in our non-focal experience. For example, Whitehead writes: "We enter the room already equipped with an active aesthetic experience, and we are charmed with the forms and coloring of the furniture. The sensory experience of the room adds vividness and point to an activity of feeling already possessed" (MT 149). Such patterns we have located within nondominant groupings of occasions.

Here it is useful to explain how the dominant occasions at successive moments are related to the vast nexus of conceptually less intense occasions. The dominant living person is a particular temporal thread of inheritance for selected members of the "nonsocial" nexus. Over the course of time, this thread rises and falls between extremes of focal attention and a more diffused, conformal experience of its bodily inheritance as transmuted within the various threads of the supportive nexus. Domination is limited, as Whitehead points out, and may vanish in the pathological case (PR 167).

The question of whether the dominant thread of occasions controls the body cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. Whitehead writes that I am always partly the outcome of my bodily experiences and partly the director of them: "I shape the activities of the environment into a new creation, which is myself at this moment; and yet, as being myself, it is a continuation of the antecedent world" (MT 228). We are interpreting "environment" here as the "nonsocial" nexus of occasions, since this is the dominant occasion’s most immediate environment. Dominance then rises and falls, and this explains the vast range of awareness. At times I act "in the first person," while at other times, in fact most of the time, a more habitual or pre-personal thread of occasions unifies my behavior.

Occasions in the dominant temporal nexus hold a dual membership: they are entirely living occasions and so do not differ in the qualities of life from other members of the "nonsocial" nexus. At the same time, as members of a living person, they experience their predecessors with particular intensity and also are capable of high anticipatory feeling. As the living person draws upon a wider bodily experience, so the conscious ego, if there should be one at a particular moment, draws upon a vast ocean of unconscious feeling which sustains it. Social order within these feelings explains, as one example, a string of associations following on the conscious perception of some important object in the environment.

My revised version of Sherburne’s theory here is more applicable to the workings of the unconscious mind than Cobb’s inclusive occasion. It avoids placing an impossible integrative task on the dominant occasion. Also it explains better the fact that coordinated mental activity varies from person to person and within the same person from occasion to occasion. In Cobb’s model, it would seem that the schizophrenic would have to work much harder than the normal subject to disunify his experience.

While I have admitted the notion of the unconscious into my discussion, I am not using it in any esoteric sense. I am assuming that most of the oblique inheritances prolonged within nondominant historic routes are accessible to the dominant occasion. We might think of the consciousness of visceral functioning in illness and of the retrieval of elements dismissed into unimportance in previous perceptual acts. Other experiences unconsciously inherited may be recovered with more difficulty. A traumatic experience prolonged in unconscious memories may be brought up to conscious awareness and thus re-entertained without the shackle of the past.

A more mundane example of the applicability of the idea of non-dominant strands can be found in habit. The body is not an inert substance which is put into action by explicit acts of intending. There are levels of subjective experience which intervene between the togetherness of organic structures and the togetherness of unified focal attention. Let us suppose that I am concentrating on reading a passage in literature, and at the same time am experiencing a physical craving for food. Let us also place a sandwich within reach. I do not have to locate my hand in objective space and direct it toward the desired object, nor do I have to identify the hand as my own. The natural direction of my hand toward the object is accomplished "impersonally"; my body remembers its pre-ferred series of moves based on previous experience, and launches itself forthwith. Should the object be just out of reach, my book recedes from. foreground to background as the complex of hand-intervening space-sandwich becomes thematized.

In both situations, we are supposing that the dominant thread of occasions has become a thread of the "nonsocial" nexus which is experiencing heightened intensity of feeling. When the sandwich is not a "problem," the thread of nondominant occasions may be presumed to be directing the relevant parts of the body in a way those parts often follow; the reservoir of canalized previous initiative suffices and conscious awareness does not intervene. In the second case, feelings of straining, communicated from muscles along neural paths up to the brain and there transmuted into a general conceptual entertainment of the momentary project, are first entertained inattentively, then attentively. High-grade decision is only necessary when the multiplicity of data cannot find a compatible integration into one satisfaction on a lower level; i.e., in an unexpected gap between hand and food. Only in the second case does higher mentality intervene to resolve the potential contradiction between visceral craving and temporary inaccessibility of food. If the hunger were slight, we might find the hand returning to its previous rest position, the conflict having been dismissed rather than raised to awareness.

The entertainment of a stimulus within a grouping of occasions furnishes a dim background which may in its turn be vivified by a dominant occasion. The "movement" of the dominant occasion is its fixing of attention upon particular threads of occasions which are enjoying some satisfactions successively. This answers Cobb’s objection to the Hermes-quality of the dominant occasion, as it supposedly races around the brain. At the same time, the figure-ground quality of conscious attention is explained as a focal enjoyment of data inherited from occasions of particular intensity together with a lesser inheritance from adjacent occasions of slighter but analogous satisfactions.

Attention is a fluid experience, in which background and foreground can reverse suddenly, as in the case of ambiguous figures such as the twin human profiles which "turn into" the outline of a chalice. In such cases, I assume that the dominant occasion actively reorganizes satisfactions given to the "nonsocial" occasions enjoying analogous experiences. Normal figure-ground experience contrasts with such cases, because of the conservatism of inattentive perception. Habitual groupings of sensory messages are transmuted within the nonsocial nexus, based on learned and reiterated satisfactions, prolonged as perceptual habits. A high-level mental act is founded on a base of adequate order at a lower level, a level Whitehead refers to as "unconscious habit" and "acquired instinct controlling action" (PR 514).

Further support for this interplay of novelty and habit can be found in speech. There is a wide range of attentiveness involved in my verbal behavior. In my everyday use of language, neither I nor my hearer posit the meaning of what I say in a very explicit way. Such verbal utterances might be said to take advantage of a common world of meanings already established by former acts of speaking. Each word can be viewed as a kind of invitation to the hearer to rearrange his stock of canalized, previously traced meanings by participating in a slightly revised structure of meanings. This invitation-character might not be so obvious in ordinary speech and may only rise to explicitness in forms of speech which demand great novelty in the grasping acts, such as poetry or highly technical language. But in any case, I can only be responsive to a language whose general stock of meanings I have already traced, whose shapes I am presently retaining below the level of conscious awareness. I must have my language "at hand" for any novel undertaking, to use Merleau-Ponty’s phrase.

In Process and Reality, Whitehead describes a knowledge of Greek in terms of an historic route of occasions which inherit from each other to a marked degree: "That set of occasions, dating from his first acquirement of the Greek language and including all those occasions up to his loss of any adequate knowledge of that language, constitutes a society in reference to knowledge of the Greek language" (PR 137). Such knowledge is transmitted along a route, presumably nondominant in the absence of any speaking act. I argue that the availability of the Greek language as a whole during acts of speaking or writing it would have to involve a high degree of conceptual entertainment; otherwise, speech would be an impossible foraging operation among physical memory traces.

At the same time, it is also implausible that the entire language should be entertained in dominant occasions at a single moment. The remaining alternative is that the language is present along a thread of nondominant occasions within the so-called "nonsocial" nexus. My possession of language is neither purely physical nor purely conceptual. I do not posit my understanding of my language thematically as I listen or speak, nor is it the case that inert memory traces in my brain cells carry my act of understanding along, for each spoken word modifies that stock into a novel experience for me. What I in fact do is to take in the speaker’s words and integrate them with my own "hold" on the language he uses. The speaker makes sense to me because my dominant thread of experience reenacts previous meaning-experiences.

Hence the act of understanding language is partially a case of high-level conceptual occasions, and partially one of reiterative expectations. What carries over from word to word is in part continuity of a lower-level set of occasions in the "nonsocial" nexus. Whitehead himself describes the utterance of the phrase "United Fruit Company"; "The final occasion of his experience which drove his body to the utterance of the word ‘Company’ is only explicable by his concern with the earlier occasions with their subjective forms of intention to procure the utterance of the complete phrase" (AI 234f). He points out that if the expression had been uttered on many previous occasions, then the present experience would be an energizing of subjective forms of a reiterative type. This is also indicated by the phrase "drove his body to the utterance of the sound." Ordinary speech is not a hunting operation, because inheritances are organized into habitual low-level conceptual inheritances which fulfill themselves. If the final word of the phrase were not spoken for some reason, the lacuna would probably be filled in by the hearers, or else the anonymous train of expectations would be broken, giving rise to more conscious acts of surprise, puzzlement, etc.

Merleau-Ponty’s use of the expression "gestural ensemble" in The Phenomenology of Perception similarly describes this habitual availability of language. He writes: "What remains to me of the word once learnt is its style as constituted by its formation and sound. . . . It is enough that I possess its articulatory and acoustic style as one of the modifications, one of the possible uses of my body. I reach back for the word as my hand reaches toward the part of my body which is being pricked" (PP 180).

Whitehead maintains that in cases of psychopathology central domination decreases or vanishes. Empirically, we find that behavior does not become random in the absence of a dominant occasion, but merely loses its novel character and becomes ritualized. In the case of aphasic speech, for example, the body remains that "instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul" (AI 349), but the final artist merely lives off his previous acquisitions. Speech retains its quality of being organized for novel expressions, but the novel expressions themselves cease. Merleau-Ponty describes the case of a patient who loses, not a stock of words but the ability to use them for novel purposes:

In this perplexing availability of speech for certain concrete purposes and unavailability of it for conceptual initiative, we are reminded of Whitehead’s belief that the final percipient inherits normally from a rightly organized environment, yet lives intensely in the present: "life novel and immediate, but deriving its richness by its full inheritance" (PR 515) The description above illustrates by contrast that normal mental life is an interplay between social order and free acts. In the case above, we see a loss of conceptual initiative resulting in a decline to a lower level of organization of the supportive nexus, in this case to one which allows for no novel speech-acts. Note that the weakening of initiative does not result in a chaos of behaviors but rather in a more primitive level of organization of mental life. The normal interplay of habit and novelty, which we have explained in terms of the relation between the dominant occasion and the supportive occasions, is disturbed. But the fact that the patient retains his use of language at all illustrates that a certain organizational level persists within the "nonsocial" nexus.

Cobb’s use of regional inclusion is understandable, since it is motivated by desire to explain the plain fact that human experience is organized. But both Cobb and Sherburne overlook the fact that mental life is a social system which persists in the absence of high-level conceptual initiative. This is clear when Cobb argues against Sherburne that even the visual field would have to be organized by the dominant occasion: "Probably we must be held to see different parts of the visual field successively, perhaps one color at a time" (PS 3:28). Again, we see the assumption that the basis for experience is simple transmission of a given message. In fact, the pathology of sight teaches us that what we experience in attentive vision is founded on an order which exists habitually within the mind. In cases of gradual destruction of sight, there is a regressive reorganization of the perceptual field at more and more primitive levels. Colors are first affected, losing their saturation; the spectrum is gradually simplified, first to four, then to two colors, and finally a gray monochrome stage is reached (PP 9).

I have tried to show in various ways that the notion of subordinate persons introduces a necessary flexibility into our view of mental operations, without requiring any major revision of Whitehead’s conceptual scheme. On my view, it is possible to hold that unified selfhood is an achievement rather than a given, and that experience fluctuates widely in its integrative success. The individuality of enjoyment in the momentarily dominant occasion is a shaping of the various activities of a mental environment into an esthetic pattern. It is this complex artistry which allows us to say that the healthy human person is a unity of aim. Aristotle speaks, in the Nichomachean Ethics (III, 1119b2f; VII, 1149a32f), of the necessity for submitting the appetites to the rule of reason, because otherwise they grow into a separate selfhood of their own, deficient in wider goals than the immediacy of enjoyment. Now in Whitehead’s schema, the complex transformations of bodily experience into higher levels of integration with mental initiatives of wider scope is a similar requirement for sustained realization of value, rather than momentary purposes (IMM 690).

Differences of tempo of the various levels of organization of the soul can reduce the intensity of experience for the entire organism unless emotional and conceptual experiences are reconciled (PR 23). Otherwise the "unity of style" which characterizes successful mental activity is absent: "A unity of style amid a flux of detail adds to the importance of the various details and illustrates the intrinsic value of that style which elicits such emphasis from the details. The confusion of variety is transformed into the coordinated unity of a dominant character" (IMM 690). Without a fusing of the various tempi of organic existence, the personality is a multiplicity of conflicting aims, dominated by various shorter range initiatives, such as bodily drives and their reductions.

This view is not at odds with our everyday experience of human character. Some persons are more directed by immediate satisfaction, others live in terms of a more sustained life-purpose, a wider future. Some are more the product of their past than others. The coordination of initiatives is not a given but a task if unrealized ideals are to play an important part in a human life.

The soul then exemplifies the interplay of potentially conflicting demands for safety and adventure. Whitehead writes: "The world is thus faced by the paradox that, at least in its higher actualities, it craves for novelty and yet is haunted by terror at the loss of the past, with its familiarities and its loved ones" (PR 516). Routine is the god of every social system, as Whitehead puts it in Adventures of Ideas, and this includes the human soul. Yet the highest reaches of mentality are nerved by the impulse to strive beyond the safety of habit. One of the most noticeable characteristics of schizophrenia is the immersion in the familiar round of early satisfactions.

We can summarize the relation between the dominant occasion and the supportive nexus by saying that, only because lower levels of mentality are more routinized, more closely bound to the rhythms of the body, can the ultimate percipient occasion be free. In this sense, the human mind exhibits a resolution to a problem which first emerges with life itself; namely, the reconciliation of security and adventure: "The universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites, of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity" (PR 531).

References

IMM -- Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed. The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1951, for Whitehead’s essay, "Immortality," pp. 682-700.

PP -- Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.

1. J. D. French. "The Reticular Formation," Scientific American 1965 (1957), 54-60.

2. G. Moruzzi and H. Magoun. "Brain Stem Reticular Formation and Activation of the EEC," Journal of Electroencephalography awl Clinical Neurophysiology 1 (1949), 455-73.

3. Paul Tibbetts. "Some Recent Empirical Contributions to Problems of Consciousness," Philosophy Today 14 (1970), 23-31.

4. D. Wooldridge. The Machinery of the Brain. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963.

I

During a time of conflict, crisis, and revolution in the scientific community, when the world witnesses the emergence of a new scientific theory, the philosophical community is placed in a period of uneasy ambiguity, which is heightened when the "truth" or "falsity" of the new theory has not been established. In such a period the response of the philosophical community usually follows three patterns. (1) The philosophical community can ignore the impact of the new theory by arguing that the world of science and the world of philosophy are distinct. Such a response was manifested in Kant’s distinction of the phenomenal realm and the noumenal realm, science being confined to the former realm. The Kantian attitude toward the relation of science and philosophy characterizes the response of most contemporary philosophers. (2) Philosophy can respond by showing that the new theory is false for philosophical reasons. In this spirit the Catholic church, dominated by Aristotelian philosophy, condemned Galileo in his defense of Copernicus.¹ (3) Philosophy can accept the theory as true and rework its own principles to conform to the demands of the new scientific theory. This response has characterized the attitude of much current cosmological philosophy in the wake of the advances of science in the modern era.

The differences among the three responses can best be understood by distinguishing two aspects of any scientific theory, which I term the predictive content and the explanatory content.² The predictive content of a scientific theory dominates the concern of science in most periods and in most aspects of the scientific life, guiding the normal activity of scientists as they use the theories and equations of the scientific system for research or practical application. The explanatory content of a scientific theory represents the philosophical foundation upon which the predictive content is constructed. It describes the vision of the world, especially the natural world, which the scientific theory propounds. Although always present, the explanatory content goes virtually unnoticed except in periods of crisis and conflict. It is the explanatory content of a theory which revolutionizes an epoch, for it functions to lead science to the establishment of new principles and procedures. The explanatory content, representing the philosophical basis of the theory, opens our vision to a new world.

Each of the three responses represents a different attitude toward the mutual relation between the predictive content and explanatory content of a scientific theory. The first response, in claiming that science and philosophy are incommensurate, fails to recognize the philosophical foundation of a new scientific theory. The second response recognizes the philosophical aspects of a new theory, but views the explanatory content of the theory as incompatible with the established philosophical system. In rejecting the explanatory content of a theory, this response also rejects its powerful predictive content. In the third response the philosophical community is so overwhelmed by the predictive content of a new theory that it fails to examine critically the explanatory content of the theory.

Recognition of the importance of the explanatory content of a new scientific theory leads to a fourth response. The fourth response critically examines the philosophical foundations of the new theory and asks if the explanation of the world which the new theory propounds is adequate. Often in the philosophy of science emphasis is placed only on the predictive content of science, since it is this aspect of the theory which is most easily tested empirically. For example, both the verificationist and falsificationist doctrines base the adequacy of a new theory on its predictive power.³ However, a scientific theory must also be judged on the adequacy of its explanatory power. Examination of the explanatory content of scientific theory is discouraged by the fact that conflicting theories usually predict different empirical results. In this situation, selection of the best theory can be made by examination of the predictive content alone. For example, Newtonian mechanics predicts that particles can be accelerated to infinite velocities, whereas relativistic mechanics predicts that there is an upper limit to velocities. However, it is possible for two conflicting theories to make the same empirical predictions, but to base these predictions on fundamentally different explanations of the world. In such cases, the adequacy of the conflicting theories cannot be based on verification or falsification alone. This situation highlights the alternative philosophical foundations upon which the opposing theories are constructed. Such is the situation in the conflict of Einstein’s and Whitehead’s theories for the four classical tests of relativity.

The Principle of Relativity ⁴ is a vivid example of the fourth response. Whitehead accepts the impact of the new predictive content of Einstein’s theory, but offers an alternative explanation of the foundations of special relativity and the law of gravitation. He writes an alternative metric law of gravitation, which predicts the same results as does Einstein, but which is modeled more closely to Newton’s law of gravitation (see 5:239 ff.) and electromagnetic phenomena. The differences between Whitehead’s theory and Einstein’s theory have been examined by Robert Palter (6:188 ff.) and Robert Llewellyn (4:225f). Both authors approach Whitehead’s theory from its mathematical nature, focusing particularly on its uniform metric structure.

While there has been some interest in the philosophical differences between Einstein and Whitehead, most of the discussion of the impact of relativity theory on process thought has been characterized by the third response. Process philosophers, accordingly, have been concerned with explicating aspects of process thought so as to make them conform to the demands of Einstein’s theory. Consequently, Einstein has dominated the discussion at the expense of Whitehead’s philosophical objections. Since process philosophers are working within a Whiteheadian framework, it seems important to revitalize Whitehead’s theory of relativity as an alternative to Einstein.⁵ In section two I discuss the explanatory content of Whitehead’s theory as an alternative to Einstein in order to redirect the discussion of the impact of relativity on process thought from an uncritical acceptance of Einstein’s interpretation to an appreciation of Whitehead’s theory as a philosophical alternative. Section three focuses on the consequences this study can have for process thought.

II

A. SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

Whitehead’s approach to the theory of relativity is guided by the question: Is relativity theory consonant with our direct, immediate experience of nature? A fundamental feature of our immediate experience is the recognition of the contemporary world which is felt as simultaneous with us. Whitehead’s appeal to immediate experience of the contemporary world explains the nature of his objections to Einstein’s definition of simultaneity. Each of Whitehead’s arguments demonstrates a desire on his part to answer demands of our common experience.⁶ For Einstein, simultaneity is an operationally defined concept dependent on the transmission of light signals in a vacuum. Since this transmission depends upon causality, there can be knowledge only about the world as past, not about the contemporary world. Hence the contemporary world lacks all objective reality, since the contemporary region is only known in terms of the projection of the past world.

Following his demand to give an elucidation of our experience, Whitehead begins his investigation of relativity theory by examining our fundamental notions of time, rest, and motion. In dealing with the notion of time, Whitehead points to the fact that nature is given to us in sense awareness as now present. He writes:

In Process and Reality he speaks of this mode of awareness as "presentational immediacy," which "is our perception of the contemporary world by means of the senses" (PR 474). Presentational immediacy gives "no information as to the past or the future. It merely presents an illustrated portion of the presented duration" (PR 255).⁷ It is a physical feeling which displays the real extensiveness of the contemporary world. "It involves the contemporary actualities but only objectifies them as conditioned by extensive relations" (PR 494).⁸ Presentational immediacy has an eternal object in the contemporary world as its datum. This complex eternal object "is analyzable into a sense-datum and a geometrical pattern" (PR 475) which illustrates the presented duration. Since the presented duration defines the world as simultaneous, presentational immediacy functions to define a preferred meaning of simultaneity within one time system.

Using the concept of durations, Whitehead examines our notions of rest and motion. We have a feeling of the event which is the focus of our act of awareness as being both "here" and "now." Durations define the "now." "Cogredience" defines the "here" and explains the relation of an event of awareness (percipient event) to its associated duration. The sense of rest and motion helps us to differentiate durations. Whitehead writes:

In terms of durations which are differentiated through cogredience, Whitehead propounds a doctrine of alternate time-systems, a doctrine which he recognizes is unacceptable to Einstein.⁹ A time-system, such as that of a personally ordered society, is defined in terms of its presented duration. Thus "a moment of time is said to be identified with an instantaneous spread of the apparent world. . . . A time system is a sequence of non-intersecting moments including all nature forwards and backwards" (R 69). Cogredience determines which duration is selected to be the presented duration;

Similarly, in Process and Reality he writes:

Each time-system defines a Euclidean space, a series of presented durations being parallel. Each time-system is thus the analogy of Newtonian absolute space and time (see 5:239 ff). Alternative time-systems yield different definitions of absolute position and absolute time. The theory of relative motion is a result of the recognition of different definitions of absolute time and space "where motion is essentially a relation between some object of nature and the one timeless space of a time system" (CN 117).

Having established the concept of alternate time-systems, which may be defined as a family of parallel durations and moments, Whitehead proceeds to derive the Lorentz transformation equations through an analysis of the transformation of measurement between alternate time-systems. The Lorentz equations form the basis of the theory of relativity for both Einstein and Whitehead. In Einstein’s original publication of the Special Theory of Relativity (1905) these equations were given an algebraic interpretation involving the inertial motion of particles. Following the interpretation of Minkowski (1908), Einstein shifted to a geometrical interpretation of the Special Theory of Relativity which was later essential in his construction of the General Theory of Relativity. In the geometrical interpretation, the transformation equations describe rotations in spacetime, and are therefore directly related to a theory of measurement instead of a theory of uniform particle motion.¹⁰ Whitehead, writing in 1922, follows Minkowski’s interpretation. However, within this geometrical interpretation, Whitehead develops an alternative theory of measurement which is critical of Einstein’s operational theory.

For Whitehead, all measurement takes place in the mode of presentational immediacy, which defines the world as simultaneously now. Whitehead argues that our immediate experience of the world discloses a basis of uniformity. However, this uniformity applies only to geometric relations and not to the contingencies of the past actual world. That is, uniformity of nature applies only to cognizance by relatedness (or, in the vocabulary of Process and Reality, presentational immediacy). Cognizance by adjective (i.e., causal efficacy) refers to the contingent physical world which is not necessarily uniform.¹¹ Whitehead believes that the uniformity of nature is necessary if we are to know anything. Accordingly, he believes that Einstein’s theory, as well as theoretical physics in general, is doomed to failure if it demands, at least in principle, that in order to know anything we must know the state of the entire contingent universe.

In order to explain Whitehead’s criticism, I must contrast his theory of measurement with Einstein’s, whose theory of measurement is based on operational procedures involving the transmission of light signals. For Einstein, measurements are made along the past facing light cone. Accordingly, measurement is made in the past world. Distances are calculated by multiplying the velocity of light by the interval of proper time. However, in the real world of particles (the General Theory of Relativity) the velocity of light is not a constant, but is affected by the presence of the gravitational field (matter). Thus the measurements, which involve the transmission of light, depend on the contingencies of the physical field. Thus Whitehead can write:

For Whitehead, on the other hand, all measurement is made in the contemporary world in the mode of presentational immediacy. Hence, measurement in Whitehead’s theory is not affected by the contingencies of the physical world, as it is in Einstein’s theory.

The difference between their theories of measurement clarifies the difference in the meaning of simultaneity in Einstein and Whitehead. For Whitehead, simultaneity is defined precisely in terms of presentational immediacy which is given directly in immediate awareness of the contemporary world. For Einstein, simultaneity has only a calculative meaning; measurements of time and space are calculated in the past world along the past-facing light cone and are then projected into the contemporary world. Milic Capek cogently explains why this calculative definition of simultaneity leads to semantic obscurity:

Whitehead’s definition of simultaneity, based on his inductive approach, which gives importance to our immediate sense awareness, avoids the obscurity and ambiguity of Einstein’s definition.

With his theory of measurement Whitehead seeks to make a comparison of measurements in alternate time-systems. In order to make such a comparison, it is necessary to describe the relations between the two alternate time-systems, which demands the notion of congruence. Congruence is presupposed in any procedure involving measurement. "Congruence is founded on the notion of repetition, namely in some sense congruent geometrical elements repeat each other. Repetition embodies the principle of uniformity" (PNK 141). Whitehead must find a way to express the measurements of time and space in one system in terms of the measurements of time and space in another system, while preserving the principle of uniformity. He accomplishes this by appealing to our immediate awareness of motion. He examines the measurement of velocity (uniform motion) of one time-system in the space of another time-system. There are four arbitrary (undefined) constants which depend on the two systems and which are related to the measure of space in the two systems (two constants) and the measure of time in the two systems (two constants).

In order to find the values of these arbitrary constants so that a comparison of time congruence between alternate time-systems can be made, Whitehead appeals to our experience of kinematic symmetry.¹² The Principle of Kinematic Symmetry has two parts: (1) The measures of relative velocities are equal and opposite; (2) Measurements perpendicular to the direction of motion are symmetric.¹³ Using this principle together with the "Transitivity of Congruence" (which states that if a time unit in time system a is congruent with a time unit in b, and b is congruent with c, then a is congruent with c), Whitehead is able to show mathematically that the four arbitrary constants are all interrelated (so that if one is known, the others can be calculated). Therefore, one only needs to find the value of one of the arbitrary constants, which is equal to the expression:

(1-v² /k³)^1/2 (PNK 157)

Whitehead then proceeds to examine this equation for possible values of k which will permit a comparison of measurement between two time-systems, preserving congruence. If k = 0 there is the nonsensical condition that the space units of time-system b would depend on the time-units of system a but not on the space units of a. If k is negative, "elliptic kinematics" results, which does not make a fundamental distinction between time and space and also in which the electromagnetic transformation equations are not invariant (see PNK 162 ff. or CN 140 f.). If k is positive, "hyperbolic kinematics" results, which Whitehead conveniently writes as k = c², yielding the Lorentz equations. Whitehead defines c as a constant which preserves congruence relations between two time-systems. It so happens that in our cosmic epoch, c is most clearly realized in nature as the velocity of light.

Hyperbolic kinematics can be written in metric form:

dG²=c³dt² - dx² - dy³ - dz²

where dG² is Whitehead’s definition of the metric structure of uniform background spacetime in terms of which measurements may be made which are invariant under transformation between alternate time-systems.

A mathematically equivalent expression is used by Einstein, but the metric dG² is defined as ds². Although mathematically equivalent, the metrics dG² and ds² embody different explanatory content. For Einstein, ds² is associated with the "proper time" of a particle, describing geodesics, and consequently reflecting his theory of measurement based on the contingent facts of nature. For Whitehead, dG² represents the uniform structure of a background Minkowski spacetime which describes the congruence properties between alternate time-systems.¹⁴ Thus, for Einstein, the metric embodies a physical content, while, for Whitehead, it embodies a geometrical content which is independent of the contingent physical world.

We are now in a position to review how Whitehead’s appeal to immediate experience and his corresponding definition of simultaneity function in the derivation of the Lorentz formulae and hence in the formulation of dG², the first metric of his theory of relativity, and how this differs from Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity.

Whitehead’s starting point in the derivation of the Lorentz equations was an awareness of a simultaneous present in the act of our direct experience of the world. From the definitions of durations and cogredience, which were dependent upon this felt simultaneity, Whitehead developed the concept of alternate time-systems. Each time-system defined a preferred meaning of simultaneity. The Lorentz transformations represented the congruence relationships between alternate time-systems, which depended upon our immediate awareness of relative motion. Consequently, the possibility of uniform translation between time-systems was constructed ultimately upon the notion of simultaneity. In summary fashion, we can state the foundational principles of Whitehead’s theory of relativity as:

Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is based on two different foundational principles which are:

For Einstein, the Lorentz transformations and the definition of simultaneity depend on the postulate of the constancy of the velocity of light as an ultimate feature of physical reality. Einstein, accepting this counter-intuitive postulate, rejects the primacy of our felt experience of simultaneity. In contrast, Whitehead defends the immediate experience of simultaneity and uses this as the foundation of relativity.¹⁵

B. Law of Gravitation

The significance of Whitehead’s definition of simultaneity and his appeal to immediate experience is not confined to the first metric of his theory, but is equally important for his law of gravitation. In opposition to Einstein, Whitehead constructs his law upon the principle of uniformity embodied in the metric dG² which defines Minkowski spacetime. For Einstein, uniform spacetime (Minkowski spacetime) is warped or curved in the presence of matter. For Whitehead, the uniformity of spacetime is not contingently warped. Physical contingencies do not affect geometrical relationships of extension in the contemporary world.¹⁶

Whitehead’s theory of gravitation is similar in many respects to the Newtonian model of gravitation (see 5:239 ff.). However, the Newtonian law of gravitation makes no mention of time (gravitational forces are propagated instantaneously) and makes no indication of who measures the spatial separation between the two bodies in question. These inadequacies of Newton’s theory motivated both Einstein and Whitehead to find a new law of gravitation. Following the demands of relativity theory, Whitehead searched for an expression of the spatio-temporal separation between the two bodies which is invariant. Since measurements must be made in the mode of presentational immediacy, the spatio-temporal separation must be measured when the two bodies are mutually simultaneous.

These principles of Whitehead’s law of gravitation may be shown diagramatically.¹⁷

In Figure 1, m propagates a gravitational force at P, which is felt by M at X. The line PN represents the path which m would follow if it continued with uniform velocity from point P. N represents where m

GRAPHIC HERE, P. 167

would be at the time that M is affected by the gravitational force propagated by m. The line NX represents the invariant separation of M and m when they are simultaneous. It can be shown mathematically that it is possible to find such a measurement which is invariant. It is important to notice in this diagram that NX represents a measurement made in the mode of presentational immediacy. In the case of uniform motion m will actually be at N in the future, in which case the strain locus" and presented duration will be equivalent. However, in the case of non-uniform motion, which is characteristic of the physically contingent world, m will not actually be at N in the future, in which case the strain locus defined by NX would not be equivalent to the presented duration which depends on the actual state of the world. With this argument I think it is proper to say that in Relativity Whitehead has made an implicit distinction between the presented duration and the strain locus. This distinction is not made in Concept of Nature, but it is made explicitly in Process and Reality (PR 491).

Perhaps more important than Whitehead’s theory of measurement with its demand for the principle of uniformity is Whitehead’s alternative explanation of the nature of gravitational forces. In Einstein’s theory gravity is not a "real force." Rather, it is an expression for spacetime curvature. Objects which are "falling in a gravitational field" are not being pulled by a force. Instead, they are following "grooves" in spacetime called geodesics. In contrast, Whitehead maintains a physical rather than a geometrical interpretation of gravity. Gravity is a real force which is propagated with a finite velocity. The difference between Einstein’s and Whitehead’s interpretations may be clarified by comparing their respective theories of motion. In Einstein’s "pseudo-force" explanation objects move along geodesics (i.e., straight lines in spacetime). Since they follow straight lines (not curved lines), no forces are required. However, this does not explain why the objects move rather than remain at rest. Whitehead, on the other hand, develops a causal theory of motion. Kinematic elements (elements making up a world-line) do not move. Rather, motion is derived from the transference of common ‘adjectives" along the path of motion (an historical route or world line). The character of this transference depends on the propagation of gravitational forces. In Figure 1, PX graphically represents the propagation of gravitational forces. The line PX is called the "causal future" in Whitehead’s theory.¹⁹ In Whitehead’s theory of motion the past has a retarded effect in the present. The similarity between this explanation and the theory of prehensions developed in Process and Reality should be obvious to readers of this journal.

Whitehead’s explanation of gravitational forces as real forces maintains the distinction between geometry and physics. Gravity is not an effect of geometry, but rather it is an expression of real causal relationships in the physically contingent world. The metric dG² which represents the uniform structure of space-time has a geometrical content. In order to find a mathematical expression for the law of gravitation, Whitehead introduces a second metric, which embodies physical content. This metric, dJ², represents the gravitational field of a particle and describes the way a particle pervades its future:

Similarly, in Process and Reality, the physical field is defined as the "interweaving of the individual peculiarities of actual occasions on the background of systematic geometry" (PR 507). This quotation is particularly important in characterizing the two-metric structure of Whitehead’s theory of relativity and pointing out that Whitehead’s work in Process and Reality reflects the same basic position of a two-metric theory propounded in The Principle of Relativity. The "individual peculiarities of actual occasions" represent the properties of the physical contingent world (dJ²) while the "background of systematic geometry" represents the metric of uniform background spacetime (dG²).

III

In section two I have examined the explanatory content of Whitehead’s theory of relativity, emphasizing the fundamental role of simultaneity and the notion of gravity as a real force. Having outlined the explanatory content of Whitehead’s theory as an alternative to Einstein’s theory, I now pose a question: What consequences does this analysis have for the discussion of the impact of relativity theory on process thought?

One illustration of the impact of relativity theory on process thought concerns the impact of relativity on temporalistic doctrines of God, which include both the view defended by William Christian and Lewis S. Ford that God is an actual entity and the view defended by Charles Hartshorne and John B. Cobb. Jr., that God is a society of occasions with personal order. Doctrines of God in which the temporalistic categories do not apply are not affected by the paradoxes of relativity. The discussion about God and relativity has centered on the viability of a divine definition of simultaneity and the problems involved in such a definition for process theism.

The main contributors to the discussion have been John T. Wilcox, Ford, and Paul Fitzgerald. However, each of these authors responds to implications derived from the explanatory content of Einstein’s relativity theory. There is no mention of Whitehead’s alternative explanation. The common concern underlying each author’s response is characterized in a statement by Fitzgerald: "If we assume that Einstein’s relativity theory is giving us something close to the truth about spacetime . . . then we must be sure that any form of process theology which we care to accept is tuned to harmonize with it" (2:254). Recalling the four patterns of response outlined in section one, we may identify the third pattern as that followed by each author. Accordingly, they have sought to make process theology conform to the demands of the explanatory content of Einstein’s theory. In so doing, they have grafted Einstein’s philosophy of nature onto their Whiteheadian roots. One might ask whether such a graft has any chance of survival.

Before dealing with this question, let us look at the Einsteinian context of their approach, which is apparent in the way each author poses his problem. Wilcox introduces the issue by reference to the problem which grows out of "Einstein’s theory of relativity . . . that under certain conditions there is no unique physical meaning of ‘simultaneous’" (8:293). Ford develops the problem in Einsteinian terms much more forcefully and clearly than Wilcox. "The whole thrust of relativistic physics renders the notion of an absolute inertial system no more meaningful than the notion of an absolute center to space-time" (3:130). Similarly, Fitzgerald states that "special relativity modifies our concepts of space and time it implies the relativity of simultaneity" (2:252).

Temporalistic doctrines of God seem to deny the findings of Einstein’s relativity theory by asserting that God’s experience of the world establishes some preferred inertial system or absolute meaning of simultaneity. As Wilcox asks, "With whom does God’s knowledge agree? Does God utilize some unique space-time system, and are the other systems wrong?" (8:296). Ford expands the discussion initiated by Wilcox and utilizes the demands of Einsteinian relativity to support interpretations of God as a single everlasting concrescence as opposed to the view developed by Cobb in A Christian Natural Theology that God is an enduring society of actual occasions with personal order. Whether Ford or Cobb is right is not at issue in this paper, but it should be recognized that insofar as the actual entity view is temporalistic, it does not escape the problems raised by Einstein’s theory. Fitzgerald seeks a closer examination of "how the world’s temporality is reflected in God’s consequent nature" (2:251). He offers a series of very interesting alternatives, some concerning the view that God is an actual entity and others that he a living person.

It is clear that Wilcox, Ford, and Fitzgerald are operating in the context of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Yet all three claim to be concerned with Whitehead’s vision of reality. But are Einstein and Whitehead compatible? Can one graft Einstein’s philosophy of nature as embodied in the explanatory content of his theory onto Whitehead’s cosmology? Rather than making process thought conform to the demands of Einstein, would it not be more appropriate to accept Whitehead’s theory as a philosophical alternative.

In concluding this essay I shall describe three areas of conflict between Einstein and Whitehead in order to clarify the hitherto hidden dangers implicit in demanding that process thought conform to the explanatory content of Einstein’s theory. My argument is the following: since the explanatory content of Whitehead’s theory (i.e., his philosophy of nature) is congenial with his mature cosmology, process philosophers and theologians will avoid many problems by working within the context of the philosophy of nature of Whitehead’s theory of relativity.

(1) The Role of Experience -- Induction versus Deduction. As shown in section two, "experience" is the watchword of Whitehead’s approach to relativity theory. His description of simultaneity, his doctrine of the uniformity of nature, his doctrine of alternate time-systems, and his principle of kinematic symmetry all exemplify his appeal to our direct, immediate experience of nature. Experience is also the central method of his approach to problems in metaphysics. As he has written in Process and Reality,

In contrast, the key foundational principles of Einstein’s theory -- the constancy of the velocity of light and the equivalence principle -- are postulates which are the free creations of the mind and not open to immediate experience. This minimizing of the role of our actual experience is captured in Einstein’s epistemology. Notice the Kantian flavor in the following statement and compare it with the passage quoted above. "‘Being’, is always something which is mentally constructed by us, that is, something which we freely posit (in the logical sense). The justification of such constructs does not lie in their derivation from what is given by the senses" (7:669).

(2) The Theory of Perception, Whitehead defends a two-mode theory of perception, involving the interrelation of causal efficacy and presentational immediacy as described in terms of symbolic reference. This two-mode theory of perception represents Whitehead’s solution to the inadequacy of other theories of perception, especially Hume’s. It must be remembered that presentational immediacy is not simply the projection of properties derived from causal efficacy onto regions in the contemporary world. Rather, presentational immediacy describes the vivid experience of the extensive relations of the contemporary region. Whitehead gives us a concrete example of his meaning when he writes, "If we are gazing at a nebula a thousand light-years away, we are not looking backward through a thousand years" (PR 495). Instead Whitehead would argue that we are experiencing an immediate region of external space. I think this aspect of presentational immediacy has been de-emphasized by many Whiteheadian commentators.

In Whiteheadian terms, the weakness of Einstein’s theory of measurement is that it limits perception to one mode -- causal efficacy. For Einstein, the only knowledge we have is confined to our awareness of the world as causally past. This point is overlooked in most discussions of the so-called paradoxes of the relativity of simultaneity. For Einstein, the problems of simultaneity in the contemporary world can only be analyzed after the fact -- after the events of the contemporary world have entered the causal past. If process philosophers accept Einstein’s interpretation of relativity and his corresponding operationalist definition of measurement, they will have to develop an adequate theory of perception to replace or modify Whitehead’s two-mode analysis.

(3) The Doctrine of Causality. The difference between Whitehead’s and Einstein’s respective explanations of the nature of causality is exemplified in the difference between their description of the nature of gravitational forces. According to Whitehead’s theory (see Figure 1), an event in the past (P) pervades its future. It may be described as having "a foot in two camps, for it represents the property of the future as embodied in the past" (R 75). This physical interpretation of gravity allows Whitehead to speak concretely about the causal influence of the past on the future. It is legitimate to see in this description of gravity the foreshadowing of Whitehead’s theory of prehensions (especially simple physical feelings) as developed in his mature thought. In describing the experience of the simplest grade of actual entity, Whitehead writes:

In contrast to Whitehead’s physical interpretation of gravity, Einstein defends a geometrical interpretation involving the warped curvature of space-time. In the Special Theory of Relativity Einstein, as is well known, denied the ontological status of the "ether." But we must remember that in the General Theory Einstein shifted his position and reintroduced spacetime as having physical qualities and the ontological capacity to act. That is, the properties of the spacetime curvature cause objects to follow certain geodesic paths of motion. According to Whitehead’s "ontological principle" only actual entities can act -- actual entities are the only reasons. It seems dubious for a process philosopher to accept Einstein’s contention that spacetime (geometrical elements) can act, unless he is willing to give up the relational theory of spacetime and reinstate spacetime as an entity.

These three areas of conflict between the explanatory content (and hence the metaphysical positions) of Einstein and Whitehead warn us against too quickly accepting the principles of Einstein’s interpretation of relativity without first evaluating their impact on the basic structure of Whitehead’s cosmological scheme. This point may be generalized to include the relation between any scientific theory and philosophical system. We must not absolutize any particular scientific theory as being "true." Rather, we should evaluate the explanatory content of the theory and ask if it embodies an adequate and coherent philosophy of nature.

With this warning in mind, I now ask again, "Can we graft Einstein’s philosophy of nature onto our Whiteheadian roots?" I respond, "No, unless we are willing to rework Whitehead’s system at very critical points -- his use of experience, his theory of perception, and his doctrine of causality."

Instead, we should strive for a critical appreciation and understanding of Whitehead’s theory as a philosophical alternative to Einstein’s theory. Process philosophers should then reexamine the issue of the impact of relativity theory on process thought in light of Whitehead’s own theory of relativity.

References

1. Milic Capek. The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1961.

2. Paul Fitzgerald. "Relativity Physics and the God of Process Philosophy" PS 2/4 (Winter, 1972), 251-76.

3. Lewis S. Ford. "Is Process Theism Compatible with Relativity Theory?" Journal of Religion, 47/2 (April, 1968), 124-35.

4. Robert R. Llewellyn. Alfred North Whitehead’s Analysis of Metric Structure in Process and Reality. Unpublished dissertation, Vanderbilt, 1971.

5. Robert R. Lewellyn. "Whitehead and Newton on Space and Time Structure." PS 3/4 (Winter, 1973), 249-58.

6. Robert Palter. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.

7. Paul Arthur Schillp. Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1949.

8. John T. Wilcox. "A Question from Physics for Certain Theists." Journal of Religion. 40/4 (October, 1961), 293-300.

Notes

1 For a good discussion of Galileo’s defense of the Copernican System see James Brophy and Henry Paolucci (eds.), The Achievement of Galileo (New Haven: College and University Press, 1962).

2 A similar distinction is made by Paul Feyerabend in his response to Thomas Kuhn. Feyerabend speaks of the "normal component" and the "philosophical component" in opposition to Kuhn’s discussion of normal science and periods of revolution. The important point is that the two components exist simultaneously and are in constant interaction. See Paul Feyerabend, "Consolations for the Specialist," in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 197-230.

3 The falsificationist principle of Karl Popper exemplifies this point of view. See his discussion of the criterion of demarcation in Conjectures and Refutations (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 253f.

4 Although my emphasis is on The Principle of Relativity, The Concept of Nature and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge are equally important in forming the basis of Whitehead’s theory of relativity. The latter two are concerned primarily with the first metric of his theory.

5 This task is important since Whitehead’s theory is empirically and mathematically equivalent to Einstein’s theory insofar as both yield the Schwarzchild metric, as demonstrated by Sir A. S. Eddington, "A Comparison of Whitehead’s and Einstein’s Formulae," Nature, 113 (1924), 192. A group of physicists has argued that Whitehead’s theory is inadequate regarding its prediction of geotidal effects. For a popular presentation of their work see Clifford M. Will, "Einstein on the Firing Line," Physics Today, 25 (October, 1972), 23-29 and the two essays in PS 4/4 (Winter, 1974),285-90.

6 See PNK 53f. The arguments are (1) Einstein gives light signals too prominent a place in our lives; (2) there are other means of sending messages; (3) Einstein does not take account of the agreement within one time-system of the meaning of simultaneity.

7 Perhaps Whitehead should also have mentioned "strain loci" in his definition in order to emphasize the geometrical significance of presentational immediacy. Strain loci provide the systematic geometry, while durations share in the "deficiency of homology characteristic of the physical field which arises from the peculiarities of the actual events" (PR 196).

8 In my discussion of presentational immediacy I have emphasized "extensiveness. Too many discussions of presentational immediacy overlook this aspect and focus only on the role of presentational immediacy as the projection of the causal past onto the contemporary world. Limiting it to this role undercuts Whitehead’s two-mode theory of perception.

9 Within the framework of the special theory the doctrine of alternate time-systems would be acceptable to Einstein. The significance of Whitehead’s statement (that his doctrine would be unacceptable to Einstein) is apparent only in terms of the divergence of their theories of gravity. For Whitehead the alternate time-systems form the basis of the uniform structure of spacetime. For Einstein there is only one spacetime structure which varies depending on the presence of matter.

10 Einstein’s equations for the general theory reduce to the special theory when the mass is zero. Thus it is appropriate to think of the special theory as describing the structure of spacetime in the absence of matter. Matter warps this uniform spacetime structure, producing curved spacetime. For this reason, the geometrical interpretation seems better suited to both the special and general theories.

11 The fact that uniformity applies only to cognizance by relatedness has been overlooked by many interpreters of Whitehead’s theory of relativity -- in particular, Synge and Will. The gravitational field and the propagation of light are both aspects of the physically contingent world and consequently are not necessarily uniform. Furthermore, the differentiation between uniformity (geometry) and contingency (physics) parallels the shift of emphasis between PNK/CN and R. In the first two works Whitehead was primarily concerned with the nature of uniformity as expressed in the first metric, dG²’. In R Whitehead moves from considerations of geometry to physics. Consequently R is an analysis of the physically contingent relations in nature which are expressed in terms of the second metric, dJ². Notice that the movement from uniformity to contingency corresponds with a movement from the analysis of the contemporary region to an analysis of the relationship between the past and future.

12 Einstein has a similar principle. If velocities were not reciprocal, the velocity of light in different frames of reference could be different.

13 In fact measurement in the transverse direction is unaffected by motion.

14 Many authors argue that the first metric, dG², defines a prior geometry. If "prior" merely means that geometry and physics are separate in Whitehead’s theory of relativity, then their interpretation is accurate. However, "prior" usually implies much more. Misner, et al., for example, state that the prior geometry of Whitehead’s theory leads to its disconfirmation, since the flat background metric (dG²) influences the propagation of gravitational forces. See Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, Gravitation (San Francisco: Freeman and Co., 1973) p. 430. While it is true that Whitehead’s mathematical formula requires this restriction in the propagation of gravitational forces (and hence the formula is falsified), the restriction is not demanded by his philosophy of nature, which is built on the separation of geometry and physics. The conflict between the formula and the explanatory content of the theory can be reconciled if we clarify Whitehead’s intentions. The first metric defines geometrical relations. The second metric defines physical relations. Whitehead admits that if "space" means physical space, then physical space is contingently warped. Whitehead expresses this view when he states that "if space-time be a relatedness between objects, it shares in the contingency of objects, and may be expected to acquire a heterogeneity from the contingent character of objects" (H 58). Notice that the physical relations between events create physical objects which endure through time. A second point may further clarify the issue of prior geometry in Whitehead’s theory. In R Whitehead correlates the metric dG² with kinematic elements rather than a background geometry (see R 78, 81, and 87). I believe that the distinction between geometrical and physical relations and the correlation of the first metric with the "abstract measures of spatio-temporal process" (R 87) indicate that in R Whitehead already has made the distinction between physical space and the extensive continuum which characterizes his treatment of these issues in PR.

15 The difference between Einstein’s and Whitehead’s approaches may be characterized as a difference in a basically deductivist approach to science by Einstein and an inductivist approach by Whitehead. For a discussion of induction in Whitehead see Ann Plamondon, "Metaphysics and ‘Valid Inductions,"’ PS 3/2 (Summer, 1973), 91-99.

16 In R, Whitehead deals with the propagation of gravitational forces along straight lines. However, there is no requirement in his philosophy of nature that gravitation be propagated in this fashion. In fact, as a physical contingency, the route of propagation could be contingently warped.

17 This diagram represents the approach to Whitehead’s theory taken by J. L. Synge, The Relativity Theory of A. N. Whitehead (Lecture Series 5, Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Applied Mathematics, University of Maryland, 1951) p. 6.

18 Whitehead defines the strain locus as that which provides ‘the systematic geometry with its homology of relations throughout all its regions" (PR 196).

¹⁹ For Einstein, the causal future means the entire hyper-volume inside the future light cone. This same region is termed the "kinematic future" by Whitehead (11 30).

Robert Andrew Ariel has presented a concise and simplified account of Clifford Will’s work "disproving" Whitehead’s theory of relativity. It is an accurate presentation of that work as well as of Will’s interpretation of Whitehead’s theory. However, Ariel’s article lacks both a critical evaluation of Will’s "empirical test" and a critical understanding of Whitehead’s theory. The purpose of this short reply is to correct these two weaknesses in Ariel’s article and to caution against too hasty a rejection of Whitehead’s theory of relativity (and with it his philosophy of nature) as a viable and living alternative to Einstein’s proposal. Accordingly, I will discuss (1) the physics of Will’s test and (2) the philosophical aspects of the controversy.¹

Ariel’s article leaves the impression that an actual physical experiment was performed. This is not the case. To find the experimental limit on the variations of the gravitational constant (anisotropy in G), Will interpreted existing gravimeter data, ignoring all accelerations too small to be related to the galactic center mass. Regarding this data, he states that "we have not attempted a detailed analysis of the tidal data or of models of the Earth’s interior, and we have been somewhat cavalier in our treatment of uncertainties" (2:145). Although "cavalier," his interpretation of the existing data is reasonable.

The weakness of Will’s approach lies in the simplified model of the universe which he uses in calculating Whitehead’s "prediction." The prediction depends on the model of the universe used. To calculate the local gravitational constant according to Whitehead’s theory, Will assumes that all the mass of our galaxy (10¹¹ solar masses) is concentrated at a point 20,000 light-years from the earth -- the distance of the earth from the center of the galaxy. However, with a more realistic model in which the mass is smeared throughout the galaxy, Whitehead’s prediction is altered by a factor of 100, greatly diminishing the divergence between his prediction and Will’s experimental limit. Also, if one takes account of the mass of the universe outside our own galaxy (such as Andromeda), Whitehead’s theory predicts a different result. This demonstrates that Whitehead’s theory, like Einstein’s, is sensitive to the cosmological model employed in making calculations. To settle the issue between the two formulae would require far more detailed work than has yet been done.

More important than the physics of Will’s article is the philosophical interpretation of Whitehead’s theory. It was Whitehead’s purpose in The Principle of Relativity to offer an alternative interpretation of relativity equivalent to Einstein’s predictions; consequently, the real issue between Whitehead and Einstein is philosophical not physical. Whitehead anticipated that in the future, as in the past, given scientific theories would be superseded by more comprehensive theories:

The crucial issue is Whitehead’s theory of nature. This theory may be applied equally well to other laws of gravitation. Whitehead offers, in fact, four such laws.

Will is not sensitive to the philosophical aspects of Whitehead’s theory. Will’s interpretation of Whitehead’s law of gravitation is based on the work of Synge. While Synge presents a mathematically accurate translation of Whitehead’s theory, he misinterprets Whitehead’s philosophy of nature. Synge’s attitude is captured in the introduction to one of his lectures:

The interpretation of Whitehead’s theory is crucial in the context of Will’s work, since the heart of his criticism against Whitehead is based on the supposed prior geometry embodied in Whitehead’s theory.

Whitehead, while maintaining a uniform geometry, did not claim that the geometrical structure is prior. Whitehead, in fact, emphasizes that geometry is an outgrowth of the relationships among actual events. That is, actual occasions are ontologically prior to geometry. According to the Will-Synge interpretation of Whitehead’s theory, gravitational forces are propagated along straight lines determined by the prior geometry, while electromagnetic waves are deflected by the contingencies of the universe. This restriction in the propagation of gravity produces the variations in the gravitational constant. While this is an acceptable interpretation of the mathematical formula of Whitehead’s law of gravitation, it does not express the demands of Whitehead’s philosophy of nature.² For Whitehead, gravitational effects share in the contingency of nature. The uniformity of nature expressed in the geometry of Minkowski space-time applies only to "cognizance by relatedness" (presentational immediacy in PR). "Cognizance by adjective" (causal efficacy in PR) does not demand uniformity. Consequently, Whitehead’s philosophy of nature does not demand that gravity is propagated along the straight lines of a prior geometry, and hence the value of the gravitational constant is not a function of the prior geometry as Will and Ariel claim. This fact should be obvious from Whitehead’s separation of geometry and physics.

Since Whitehead’s formulae as they stand have not been disconfirmed and since Whitehead was quite prepared to adjust them to take account of new data, the real issues between Einstein and Whitehead are not physical but philosophical. No empirical test can decide the issue of the adequacy of Whitehead’s basic theory of relativity. This issue must be settled on other grounds. Currently there is considerable interest in correlating relativity theory with quantum mechanics. The efforts made in this direction tend to support Whitehead rather than Einstein.³

References

1. John L. Synge. The Eielativity Theory of A. N. Whitehead, Lecture Series 5. Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Applied Mathematics, University of Maryland, 1951.

2. Clifford M. Will. "Relativistic gravity in the solar system, II: Anisotropy in the Newtonian gravitational constant." As-trophysical Journal, 169 (1971), 141-56.

Notes

1. I will be very brief concerning the philosophy. In a~,,~aper to, be published in a forthcoming issue of Proce.ss Studies I work through tehead s theory as a philosophical alternative to Einstein’s thought.

2. Perhaps Whitehead’s formula should be wntten to make this point clearer. However, ~vith the exception of Will’s work, Whitehead’s theory is identical to Einstein’s in its predictions of the four tests of relativity.

3. See Suraj N. Gupta, "Einstein’s and Other Theories of Gravitation," &views of Modem Physics, 29/3 (July, 1957), 334-36. In this work, Gupta perforzns the quantization of Einstein’s gravitational field. The equations he derives are almost %entical to Whitehead’s formula. However, Gupta’s method involves a more complex procedure for the summation of the effects of the gravitating particles.

4. It seems that Whitehead’s equation for gravitation has been disconflimed by Will’s experiment. However, the disconfinnation is rooted in the assumption that implicit in Whitehead’s equation is the demand that gravity is propagated along the geodesics of the uniform structure of space-time. Since this demand is not a feature of Whitehead’s philosophy of nature, disconfirmation of the equation does not entail rejection of the theory as a whole.

The thought of Susanne K. Langer is becoming increasingly important in the field of aesthetics. More and more departments of art and philosophy are turning to her work as a basis for understanding the arts. She recently published the second part of a projected three volume work entitled Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling,¹ indicating that we have yet a great deal to hear from her.

A cornerstone of Langerian thought is the view that the true import of art is illusory in nature. That is, the aesthetic quality of an art work consists neither in the relationship of the creator’s intent to the result, nor in the physical character of that result, but in the perceptible "appearance" effected by the art object.

Because of the visual flavor of words such as "appearance" and "image," Langer goes on to suggest another term, "semblance," to describe that which is created in a work of art. Thus, not only visual, but also auditory, tactile, and kinaesthetic perception are suggested.

Following Langer, then, the "meaning" of an art symbol lies in its semblance, created expressly to be perceived. All entities have aspects of substance and appearance, both of which convey meaning. But art, though the conscious agency of the artist, lifts up for perception the aspects of semblance from practical, ethical, and cognitive concerns. Thus

Because art has been freed of practical considerations and from necessity of belief, the forms of feeling embodied in the art symbol are presented directly to the understanding for their own sake. The capacities of conception and understanding have no obligation other than to the presented semblance. Whatever meaning that symbol possesses is there insofar as it is embodied in its appearance. "Its [perceptible] character is its entire being" (FF 48).

The Status of the Art Symbol

It is my present purpose to show how Langer’s view of art may be understood within the philosophy of organism, wherein all things must satisfy the Ontological Principle. Can artistic illusion find its "reason" in actual entities? It is the thesis of this paper that artistic illusion arises in the final steps of concrescence, where the proposition is set in contrast with the datum of the raw physical feeling. Thus it may be viewed as a product of the originative function of concrescence.

Whether it be cathedral, engraving, dance, or song, the "art object" or "art symbol" is a society of objectively immortal occasions. This means that, despite the illusion it creates, the symbol itself is fully actual.² In illustration, let us consider any one of Franz Schubert’s songs. A set of impure possibilities has been made available by Schubert as a pattern for the creation of a work of art. This proposition is a set of tendencies, tension and release. He has hinted at its form in his manuscript, thus providing a blueprint for the art symbol. The song comes into being only in the temporal span, occupied by the singing and playing, which we call "musical performance." For only in an audible event are these possibilities of semblance available for prehension. The symbol is the event of performance, an occurrence in time. "Music’s audible character is its entire being," as Langer would remind us. In sculpture, the art object is the plastic shape which our eyes perceive; in music, it is the audible symbol.

The music may or may not be perceived aesthetically. The performing musician has an immense responsibility to create an art symbol that is consistent with the proposition which the composer has helped him to understand, but for the large part aesthetic perception is contingent on the way in which novel configurations are prehended by the listener. The paragraphs that follow are presented in support of these observations.

Illusion and the Supplemental Phases

As the becoming occasion prehends its actual world and through transmutation feels it as including a certain society -- the art symbol, eternal objects held in common by the occasions of that society are drawn into contrast with the datum of the original physical feeling. The resulting feeling is a propositional one -- the contrast of "what is" with "what might have been." In certain instances, the proposition is prized in its character as possibility. It is the "lure for feeling," functioning as the source of novelty for the subject’s concrescence. Something has appeared that was not, in fact, previously immanent.

Depending upon the type of proposition, one of two things may happen in the prehension of it. A "conformal" proposition introduces patterns of possibility into concrescence which conforms to the real world. They are "true." "The reaction to the datum has simply resulted in the conformation of feeling to fact; . . . The prehension of the proposition has abruptly emphasized one form of definition illustrated in fact" (PR 284).

Here we are reminded of Whitehead’s famous remark, "In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is, that it adds to interest" (PR 395f) His example is that of an art symbol: the recitation of Hamlet’s soliloquy. The true nature of a proposition is revealed here in that even a logician will appreciate the speech without first judging whether the initial "To be, or not to be: That is the question" is true or false. "The speech, for the theatre audience, is purely theoretical, a mere lure for feeling" (PR 281).

In the nonconformal proposition we have a new configuration of fact and fancy, dominated by fancy. The proposition has maintained its status as possibility through the early conceptual stages by virtue of its novelty. As a result, it remains a lure for feeling at the point of consciousness. The enhanced status of the eternal object as a lure for feeling is the locus of artistic illusion. The "what might have been" gains more influence upon the shape of eventual satisfaction than the "what is."

These new forms are then contributions of the perceiving occasion, arising from its feelings of possibilities for future contrast by virtue of congruent feelings within its physical inheritance. The novelty, induced by the physical feeling of the art object, has "merged into creation." The nonconformal proposition is largely the contribution of the percipient -- always relevant to, but decidedly different from, the originative feeling. The degree to which the perceiving dominant occasion entertains these new realities as lures for still other feelings is the degree to which that person may be said to be "perceiving aesthetically."

This, then, is the basis of artistic illusion -- the "reason" for import. The art object, prehended by the physical pole, is felt in terms of certain embodied eternal objects, which lead through reversion to the prehension of "alternative potentialities" for the becoming occasion. These possibilities survive several contrasts with pure physical data, and are drawn finally into the last stages of concrescence, still retaining their virtual nature. They are felt as efficacious because of their interesting character, their formal congruence with significant contrasts in its physical inheritance, and their capacity as lures for new feeling.

The Prehension of Import

In order that the virtual lures for feeling derived from the art object be finally efficacious for satisfaction, they must be positively prehended in the final integrative contrast, where "pure theory" meets "pure fad." This is the point at which the experience becomes an aesthetic one, or not, and here the degree of influence exercised by novelty is determined. This is the genesis of artistic import. Here the virtual creation is contrasted not only with the artistic symbol physically felt, but also with other significant feelings of nexuses from the past. Here, at the affirmation-negation contrast, which is the seat of consciousness, virtual data encounter their actual counterparts. Here, too, perceptions of the art object in the mode of causal efficacy are drawn into contrast with immediate perceptions of the becoming occasion’s extensive locus.

In the experience we term "aesthetic," the occasion holds the derived conceptual feelings as more efficacious for its final satisfaction than its physical ones. It has done so on the basis of the formal congruence of those virtual feelings with nexuses from its serial past felt by hybrid physical feelings as having led to intensity in that past, and because the issue of the earlier contrasts of these physical and conceptual data has been the retention of possibility in its pure form and thus the emergence of a "new creation."

So, for example, the illusion of music -- virtual passage -- is more important for the perceiving occasion than are the physical attributes of the tonal symbol. At times, it can capture one’s subjective aim. "Sometimes," says Langer, "in the presence of great art, attention to the actual environment is hard to sustain." (FF 84) When music is perceived aesthetically, the new creation, virtual time, is more efficacious for intensity than is the pure physical fact of sounds in time. In the nonaesthetic experience of music, on the other hand, the virtual possibilities are valued down, so that the sounds are felt simply as sounds (e.g., background music), or at most as tones corresponding with moods and emotions. They are felt as efficacious by virtue of physical qualities alone. Propositions, if they arise, are conformal.

A performance of a Schubertian Lied, then, could be prehended as nothing more than a pleasant sound, or, perhaps, poor singing. When it is perceived aesthetically, however, new possibilities for feeling-experience are introduced. For the shape of time as it is felt is "the pattern of life as it is felt and directly known" (FF 31).³ The novel potentialities are those of experiencing a realm of feeling normally beyond everyday individual experience. By holding up for prehension the shape of experienced passage in its most general form, music presents for our contemplation the temporal shape of human experience: "the pattern of life itself." This stretching of our feeling conceptuality deepens our humanity and our understanding of who we are. Musical performance contributes, event by event, to an enlargement of insight and an enrichment of feeling-life, thereby helping us to better understand what it means to be human.

Especially notable within the aesthetic experience is the check on the originative functions of the entity in the final contrast with the datum of the physical feeling. This prevents the stampede of novelty leading to chaos (which may occur, for instance, when bodily fatigue or drugs allow perception in the mode of presentational immediacy to be felt with little significant relationship with corresponding causal perceptions) and preserves the integrated feeling of the virtual qualities as being related to the nexuses physically felt. Any explanation of the aesthetic experience must account for the phenomenon in which whatever is felt -- beauty, illusion, and so forth -- is felt as an attribute of the art symbol. This is accomplished in organic philosophy by the description of the final integrative contrast.

References

FF -- Susanne K. Langer. Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953.

Notes

1. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1973.

2. This view contradicts that of Donald W. Sherburne in his A Whiteheadian Aesthetic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961) and "Meaning and Music," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24/4 (1966), 579-83. Sherburne holds that the aesthetic object has the ontological status of a proposition, and, in the case of music, that the performance of a composition is an ‘objectified" proposition, the logical subject of which is "you" understood. In A Whiteheadian Aesthetic, see p. 107f.

3. Cf. Sherburne’s description of music as "sheer predicative pattern" in "Meaning and Music."

Editor’s Introduction

A large set of class notes, papers, clippings, etc., compiled by the late George Bosworth Burch, for many years Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, has been donated to the Harvard University Archives by his widow, Betty Brand Burch. The set consists of twenty-nine bound books, organized into forty-eight volumes. Each volume contains notes and materials relating to one-half an academic year. Volumes 10 and 12 are not included, and their omission is noted by Professor Burch in volume 11.

These PERMANENT NOTES, as Professor Burch has entitled them, cover a period extending from 1919 to 1943 and consist, mostly, of class notes, reading notes, and papers composed by Burch while he was an undergraduate student, graduate student, and teaching assistant at Harvard University. Volumes 15 and 16 contain notes of courses Burch took when he was in his fourth year of graduate studies, during the academic year of 1926-27. These include lecture notes for Whitehead’s "Philosophy of Science: General Metaphysical Problems," (Philosophy 3b), which met Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 12:00 noon (1:332).

Except for the last item, none of the notes given below have specific dates attached to them. The "Lectures by Professor Whitehead" (the only item from volume 16) is noted by Professor Burch as pertaining to lectures given February 26 and March 1.

The section in volume 15 given over to Whitehead’s course also include lectures by William Ernest Hocking, Charles Hartshorne, and Raphael Demos. Hocking’s lectures on Whitehead probably derive from his course "Metaphysics" (Philosophy 9), which Burch also took that year. At the end of the section, in volume 15, devoted to Hocking’s course is found an original copy of the final examination, bearing the date, "Mid-year, 1927." One of the questions on that examination reads:

The notes of his lectures bear directly upon this question. One passage is particularly insightful, linking Whitehead’s theory of eternal objects with the problem of evolutionary emergences:

The lecture by R. Demos on "Contingency" has in it nothing bearing on process thought. Hartshorne’s lectures present an introductory expository sketch of Peirce’s thought, concluding with this comparison:

I wish to thank Mr. Harley P. Holden, Curator of the Harvard University Archives, Mr. Clark A. Elliott, Assistant Curator, and Mrs. Betty B. Burch for their assistance and for granting permission to edit this portion of Professor Burch’s PERMANENT NOTES for publication.

Lectures By Professor Whitehead: Introduction

There is no philosophy of science; we are concerned with those parts of philosophy which are suggested by science. In three epochs science has suggested philosophical ideas: the Greek period, the seventeenth century, and the twentieth century.

Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and Kant assume that the underlying reality of the world is a permanent substance which has adventures.

Our scientific habits are set by ignoring the inexplicable. In every intellectual epoch the adequacy of the evidence for the prevailing beliefs seems overwhelming. We must not ignore the inexplicable; we should imitate our ancestors who beat gongs when the moon was eclipsed. But mere notice of unusual phenomena is not sufficient; we must give them rational attention. Science and philosophy are united in a common goal, explanation. (Dewey says the goal is action.) Action and use are a test of explanation, and explanation is the basis of action, but explanation is an end in itself and is the chief end of science and philosophy. Scientists who are clear in their concepts are at least thirty years behind their times.

Progress in philosophy involves the explicit statement of assumptions implicit in previous philosophers. Rationalism never deserts standards of criticism. We philosophize because we believe; we do not believe because we philosophize. Philosophy is a criticism of belief -- preserving, deepening, and modifying it. Standards of criticism are: (1) intensity of belief, (2) concurrence in belief, (3) clear expression of belief, (4) analysis of belief, (5) logical coherence of belief, (6) exemplification of belief, and (7) adequacy of belief.

The old notion of self-evidence obviously refers to an ideal, not a fact. The old rationalism was founded on thc ideal of the clear intellect. -- but there is no such intellect. Some facts are luminously obvious, but the rest of our experience is obscured in a deep, penumbral shadow with reference to which our intellectual faculty varies from that of a savage to that of a jellyfish. A most colossal example of exploded self-evidence is the long-held belief that euclidean geometry applies to real space.

Lectures by Professor Whitehead on Descartes

Descartes emphasizes the permanent and enduring, as opposed to the flux. He sees the world as definite substances. He is a mathematical intellect and always states definitely and clearly what he means.

Descartes was a mathematician; his philosophy was a philosophy calculated to include mathematical physics, and it is pervaded by the mathematical intellect. We must compare Descartes with Plato, also a mathematician. Aristotle revolted against the rationalism of Plato; Dewey against that of Descartes. Whitehead’s type of rationalism takes a middle course which corrects the false method of Descartes and which is easily reconciled with the pragmatic point of view.

The Greeks thought that their logic and mathematics exhausted the possibilities of rationalism, and they also thought that the Greek language was adequate for philosophical discussion.

Rationalism is an ultimate faith. Descartes’ metaphysical method is the method of Euclid. This is a false method. Pure thinking cannot produce knowledge about the real world.

Cartesian rationalism proceeds by discarding complexity in order to arrive at simple notions immediately obvious. Modern rationalism uses the Cartesian method of discard as a preliminary guide to imaginative construction; but its essential point is that it starts with an imaginative system of ideas, the logical connections of which have been thoroughly explored. The logical exploration shows that there is no one set of premises from which the remainder of the system is a deduction. Nor is there any one set of simple notions from which the remainder are simple constructions. Modern rationalism must have recourse to the obviousness of experience.

The ultimate real actual entity is to be considered an actual occasion -- something that happens, and its time-fulness is of the essence of it -- which is an individuation or concretion of the entire universe into the one real actual unity which is self-presentation, i.e., a presentation of itself to itself in its character of being that representation of the universe. This self-presentation is also to be looked on as a self-valuation, and in being an end for itself it thereby constitutes the character of the concrescence which succeeds it.

Eternal objects (universals) have ingression into actual occasions. These modes of ingression of the eternal objects constitute the relations among the actual occasions.

The most concrete occasion is dipolar. The two poles, mental and physical, cannot be separated, but the two may not be of the same strength or importance. One pole is the primary and synthetic side of the actual occasion; we call that the physical occasion. It is to be described in synthetical terms. The other pole is the secondary and analytic side of the actual occasion; this we call the mental occasion. It is the self-knowledge which supersedes on the synthesizing of the actual occasion. It is an endowing of the physical occasion and a putting together of it afresh.

Knowledge is the concrescence of two modes of functioning (ingression) of the eternal object. Both have a common past and a common future, but they are mutually independent in respect of their originality. The first mode of ingression is perceptual (physical); the second is conceptual (mental). Conceptual functioning is a mode of analysis of the physical occasion.

Whitehead does not believe that there are different kinds of actual things. The same principle explains everything. Different things fall into different categories, but the fact of being actual is a common fact explainable in a single way. "Being actual" cannot be equivocal.

Meanings of immediate experience: (1) the physical occasion, the primary self-presentation arising out of the representation in itself of the entire universe. It is pure perceptivity, whereby an actual object emerges from the limitations imposed on it by the universe; (2) the mental occasion, originating from the imagination; (3) the ultimate concrete occasion, both physical and mental, the ultimate concrete fact. The actual fact is the immediate experience, but by this we sometimes mean some abstraction from it.

Predication has not an unequivocal meaning. The confusions of metaphysics are due to failure to distinguish the various meanings of predication. The assumption that there is a definite metaphysical fact underlying the is, is false. Every proposition must be considered with reference to the whole universe. (This is Bradley’s doctrine.) Reality is the final subject of every proposition. An offshoot of the subject-predicate theory of knowledge is the subject-object theory of knowledge; after the subject modified by its object comes the subject qualified by its ideas. The subject with its private complex of predicates is a trap into which the philosophers fall; there is no such privacy, because of the relevancy of the whole universe. The subject-predicate theory holds that the vulgar form of language enshrines metaphysical reality; this is the easiest metaphysics to grasp, but not true. We must start with some more general notion than that of predication. This general notion we shall call relevance. There are stages of relevance and intensity of relevance; Irrelevance is the lowest stage of relevance. Descartes’ philosophy corrects some of the major excesses resulting from the subject-predicate complex which dominated medieval philosophy. Locke corrected it further. But neither grasped the fact that the notion of substance is a result of the subject predicate logic and has no metaphysical status. Whenever they are not thinking of what they are criticizing, they fall into the trap.

Inadequacies of Cartesianism: (1) Descartes’ view of substantial independence is the subtle psychological origin of many of the shortcomings of our modern civilization. Moreover, it is a view fatal to the essential doctrine of the solidarity of the universe. The view of substantial independence has haunted all modern philosophy, including the anti-Cartesian; it is responsible for Hegel’s absolute, Spencer’s unknowable, Bradley’s absolute. It is also destructive of ethics; social ethics is the conciliation of two doctrines: thou shalt not steal (individualistic, substantial independence), and property is robbery (socialistic solidarity). Law and social ethics are concerned with conciliating these two attitudes, individualism and solidarity. This is also, more generally, the business of metaphysics; how can there be individuals with separate ends and yet combined in a solid community? (2) Cartesianism makes any reference to a general end irrelevant to existence.

Criticism of Descartes: (1) Whitehead agrees with Descartes in identifying substance with the actual entity. (2) Whitehead disagrees with Descartes in rejecting the subject-predicate form of expression as representing any metaphysical truth. (3) Whitehead disagrees with Descartes in maintaining the notion of the universal relevance of all entities actual and nonactual. There are three types of entities: eternal objects, actual entities, objective occasions; the third is derivable from the other two. All are universally mutually relevant. (4) In Descartes, God is the only self-creative substance, the process of creation being also the creator. In Whitehead, this is the general characteristic of all actual entities.

Lectures By Professor Whitehead On Metaphysics

Six principles of metaphysics: [cf. 1:332f]

1. The principle of solidarity. Every actual entity requires all other entities, actual or ideal, in order to exist.

2. The principle of creative individuality. Every actual entity is a process which is its own result, depending on its own limitations.

3. The principle of efficient causation. Every actual entity by the fact of its own individuality contributes to the character of processes which are actual entities superseding itself.

4. The ontological principle. The character of creativity is derived from its own creatures and expressed by its own creatures.

5. The principle of esthetic individuality. Every actual entity is an end in itself for itself, involving its measure of self-satisfaction individual to itself and constituting the result of itself-as-process.

6. The principle of ideal comparison. Every creature involves in its own constitution an ideal reference to ideal creatures: (1) in ideal relationship to each other, and (2) in comparison with its own self-satisfaction [cf. RM 155].

These principles are essential to actuality, and so apply equally well to God (pure act). It follows that God is a creature; the supreme actuality is the supreme creature. The only alternatives are to say that God is not actual or that God lies beyond anything of which we can have any conception.

The doctrine of concrescence is derived from the first two principles. The actual entity is not an individual apart from its solidarity with the whole universe; it is an individual by means of that solidarity. The specific value of the individual occasion arises from the end obtained individually, but it includes in its concrescence the relevance of ends beyond itself. This is the doctrine of social solidarity.

By the ontological principle there is a creature by virtue of which creativity bears its character; there is a creature by virtue of which there is a science of metaphysics. Thus, there is a creature with a general relation to all creatures including itself. This creature requires all other creatures in order to exist and, yet, is in a sense ontologically prior to them since its character determines the metaphysical laws and is determined by them. This creature is a process which is its own result, like all other creatures; it is in a sense self-creative. It depends for its actuality upon its own limitations. God is limited by his goodness. This creature contributes to the character of all the creatures superseding it. This creature is an end in itself. It involves in its own constitution an ideal reference to ideal creatures in ideal relationships to each other.

There are only two metaphysical principles in virtue of which the existence of an actual entity can be inferred; to wit, the principle of efficient causation, and the ontological principle, in virtue of which any generality of character shared among entities presupposes a character of generality. The ontological principle denies that whatever is to be known is derivative from actual fact. Knowledge is the synthesis of the two poles of the actual occasion (mental and physical) described from the point of view of what the mental activity contributes. There is an actual entity which is more than its objectification.

Demonstration is how the relativity of objectification is transcended.

Given an actual entity, B, consider how an eternal object A may have ingression into B. (1) A may have ingression into B as constituting a physical relationship between B and some other actual entity, B’. (2) A does enter into B as constituting a conceptual relationship between B and each particular occasion X, whereby the patience of X for its physical relationship to B is objectified for B. This mode of ingression involves the yes-form and the no-form of comparison. (3) A does enter into B as constituting a conceptual relationship between B and the universe as systematically patient of A. (4) A does enter into B as constituting a conceptual relationship between B and the environmental universe as systematically patient or impatient of A by reason of its environmental character.

There is an actual universe which is a multiplicity of actual entities. An actual entity is an act of percipience. Every actual entity has its peculiar mode of percipience. The universals are the specific character of specific perceptions. There are no dead (non-dynamic) entities. Every entity expresses some way in which the creativity is objectified. Creativity is the most general form. It acquires its specific character in each individual actual entity A historic creature is a succession of actual entities peculiarly congruent to each other. One’s view of his own past is the same in principle as his view of the past of another person or thing, but so tremendously different quantitatively in intensity as to amount practically to a qualitative difference.

The potentiality of a creature is the range of alternative characters for that creature which are compatible with the efficient causation whereby the concrescence of that creature is derived from other creatures. Potentiality is definite with respect to the generic sort but ambiguous with respect to the specific mode. The creature realizes not only the specific mode that it is but also the genus of modes which it might have been. The notion of probability is derived from that of potentiality.

Curiously mixed with the notion of potentiality is the notion of endurance. Descartes distinguishes between endurance and measured time. The fact of self-existence has duration. The epochal occasion which we apprehend as the present is one occasion, but it might have been twenty epochal occasions. Endurance is an instance of unrealized potentiality.

Lectures by Professor Whitehead

We can define what we mean by things going on without reference to the idea of stuff, but we do require the notion of an actuality which emerges from a potentiality. We can define an ether of events as opposed to an ether of stuff. The condition of the immediate can only be formed in terms of a continuum, but the group of actual entities which arise are definite quanta determined by the conditions of the past and by what (if anything) is added by the act of self-creation. The process of self-formation is not in time, but is determined by the way the organism feels in the nontemporal process of being itself.

Ether, the one genus of physical fact. Whitehead agrees with the principle upheld by nineteenth-century materialists, that there is only one genus of physical facts. This is where Descartes started: all physical facts are facts about corporeal substance. The substance emerges from the activity which synthesizes the attributes. It is wrong to think of the attributes as emerging from the substance.

The seventeenth-century metaphysical foundation of science was good for 300 years -- proof of its great merit. They attempted to start from something which is in our immediate knowledge. But now we look on a physical object, not as a continuous corporeal reality only relatively at rest, but as a violent activity of infinitesimal organisms. The fundamental idea we have in experience is that of an actual entity. We experience ourselves as actual entities in a community of actual entities. In seeking to know what we mean by an actual entity, we should have recourse to ourselves. This is what Descartes did, but he only found a mind, at least at first. What we know of ourselves is not, as usually put, a mysterious substratum with an enormous and very doubtfully remembered life history, decorated with transient qualities but getting its character from some simple attribute which it always carries around with it. What we find is an active experience, very vaguely delimited from its antecedents and successors. It is a peculiarly linked succession of acts of experience with a singular unity, so that each act integrates the antecedent acts. The actual entity is a succession of acts of experience. An act of experience is primarily a taking account of other actual entities. This taking account of other actual entities is analyzable, but it is a certain real togetherness issuing in a certain vivid intensity which we call self-value. The entity rises out of a constitutive activity analyzable into elements which are not actual entities. This view opposes the materialistic view of nature introduced by Descartes.

The actual entity is dipolar. It is perceptivity which turns of itself into conceptual analysis. But the intensity of being does not necessarily lie equally between the two poles. One or the other may be negligible.

Each actual entity arises from its taking account of the whole past. It cannot have any intensity of being unless the important part of the past is favorable to its existence at a particular intensity.

The primary aspect of the physical world is to be conceived in terms of extension. The notion of extension is the primary description of how an actual entity is an organism and how it takes account of all other entities. Extension is extremely abstract, because extension only partly represents my relation to the physical object. It is an abstract statement of certain aspects of the relationship. Descartes looked on extension as an attribute of the extended things. Whitehead looks on extension as one very abstract side in the relationship of things. Descartes thought of extension in terms of geometry. He also had another principal attribute: endurance. But time is also an extensive quantity. There is something common to space and time; this is extension. Nowadays we do not consider space and time as so sharply distinguished. The first element in the connection between time and space is the primary abstract organic relation of being extended. This is compatible with a static universe. The incompleteness supervenes upon the morphological extensiveness.

Reference

1. Victor Lowe. "Whitehead’s Gifford Lectures." Southern Journal of Philosophy, 7/4 (Winter, 1969-70), 329-38.