Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Foundational Beliefs and Transformational Thinking

 

What we consider to be at the base of the world, the foundation of the world is the ground from which we perceive all that can be known and all that we can have any real relationship. If we see the world as made up of the inanimate, where can we find life?

Monday, June 28, 2010

Figure and Ground (Cosmology and Method

What do you see as you think of the words: woman, jazz and saxophone?
 


















What do you see as you think of the words: man, liar and glasses? 









See the frog?















See the horse?

Process Theology

Whitehead's worked on creating an inclusive system of thought. It is called Process Philosophy. The reality of God was part of this comprehensive system. Others, such as Charles Hartshorne and John B. Cobb, built on the base Whitehead had formulated to enlarge and extend the theology into a complete field of its own.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

The feeling for what happens

We are lead by the feeling of possibility. Work of Antonio Damaris (TBA)


Review of philosophy

Whitehead reviewed the philosophy of the earliest known thinkers and then proceeded through the history of philosophy to find a line of understanding that would be consistent our current knowledge of reality. Heraclitus' idea that "everything flows" is seen as a key starting point of this process. Whitehead also recast the established foundations of philosophy (the works of Aristotle and Plato), to reinterpret these writings in terms of the cosmos (the world as we understand it) they reveal. In doing so, Whitehead takes a new path to the present yet builds on the wisdom and insight of these great thinkers.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Friday, June 25, 2010

Adventure

“Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing” — Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

Lead by feeling into the larger experience of adventure, we are drawn by possibility and novelty. 
 

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Peace

Peace is not static. Peace is dynamic. It is being in harmony with the current action. It is finding a way to go with the flow by being a constructive part of it. It is being in the right place at the right time by intent or accident. Peace is lack of conflict but not lack of involvement. It is more profound with the extent that it involves greater societies and to that end it evolves.


Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Form is never more than an extension of content


Derivatives of Aristotle's Categories

Whitehead was a mathematician. When he saw that reality was composed of dynamic processes and not static objects, he looked to mathematics for tools to describe this transformation. Derivatives look at the change that occurs between two states (a before and after snapshot). Look at a moving car and the two sequential snapshots show a instantaneous speed of 50 km/hand 60km/h. A derivative would indicate the change, in this case, acceleration.



This change is an abstraction, a different way of thinking, but one that is more true because it more closely resembles reality where everything is constantly changing.

So this transformation helps to re-frame reality and give us dynamic terms for what we have considered static.

The conventional way of understanding the world of objects is based on Aristotle's categories. These categories are:
  1. Substance (ousia, essence or substance).[4] Substance is that which cannot be predicated of anything or be said to be in anything. Hence, this particular man or that particular tree are substances. Later in the text, Aristotle calls these particulars “primary substances”, to distinguish them from secondary substances, which are universals and can be predicated. Hence, Socrates is a primary substance, while man is a secondary substance. Man is predicated of Socrates, and therefore all that is predicated of man is predicated of Socrates.
  2. Quantity (poson, how much). This is the extension of an object, and may be either discrete or continuous. Further, its parts may or may not have relative positions to each other. All medieval discussions about the nature of the continuum, of the infinite and the infinitely divisible, are a long footnote to this text. It is of great importance in the development of mathematical ideas in the medieval and late Scholastic period. Examples: two cubits long, number, space, (length of) time.
  3. Quality (poion, of what kind or quality). This determination characterizes the nature of an object. Examples: white, black, grammatical, hot, sweet, curved, straight.
  4. Relation (pros ti, toward something). This is the way one object may be related to another. Examples: double, half, large, master, knowledge.
  5. Place (pou, where). Position in relation to the surrounding environment. Examples: in a marketplace, in the Lyceum.
  6. Time (pote, when). Position in relation to the course of events. Examples: yesterday, last year.
  7. Position, posture, attitude (keisthai, to lie). The examples Aristotle gives indicate that he meant a condition of rest resulting from an action: ‘Lying’, ‘sitting’, ‘standing’. Thus position may be taken as the end point for the corresponding action. The term is, however, frequently taken to mean the relative position of the parts of an object (usually a living object), given that the position of the parts is inseparable from the state of rest implied.
  8. State, condition (echein, to have or be). The examples Aristotle gives indicate that he meant a condition of rest resulting from an affection (i.e. being acted on): ‘shod’, ‘armed’. The term is, however, frequently taken to mean the determination arising from the physical accoutrements of an object: one's shoes, one's arms, etc. Traditionally, this category is also called a habitus (from Latin habere, to have).
  9. Action (poiein, to make or do). The production of change in some other object (or in the agent itself qua other).
  10. Affection (paschein, to suffer or undergo). The reception of change from some other object (or from the affected object itself qua other). It is also translated as passion and passivity It is clear from the examples Aristotle gave for action and for affection that action is to affection as the active voice is to the passive. Thus for action he gave the example, ‘to lance’, ‘to cauterize’; for affection, ‘to be lanced’, ‘to be cauterized.’ Aristotle's term in its English translations is frequently misinterpreted to refer only or mainly to some kind of emotion or passion.
In Whitehead's transformations these become dynamic:
  1. Substance becomes Actuality
  2. Quantity becomes Society
  3. Quality becomes Truth
  4. Relation becomes Peace
  5. Place becomes Nexus
  6. Time becomes Duration
  7. Position becomes Relation
  8. State becomes Process
  9. Action becomes Adventure
  10. Affection becomes Feeling
 Each one of these terms will be explored...

George Hermanson Speaks About Process Theology

Whitehead's work has spawned a school of theology called Process Theology. Rev. Dr. George Hermanson writes from this perspective -
Believe or not, most mainline Christians have had a mystical or religious experience. In order to make sense of these transcendent experiences, we need a new way to understand God - one that makes sense in our world. In our quest for religious authenticity, a process/relational view of God, “God with us”, gives us an understanding of divine power and compassion. This view is called `panentheism’.
We experience God as both subject and a mystery- the eternal and the personal. God is in the world and the world is in God and God is more than the world.  God is the necessary and eternal source for the world; it is God’s creative act that makes ‘no thing’ into some thing- God brings order out of chaos.  God depends on the world because the nature of God’s actual experience depends on the interaction with all living reality.  “God is the supremely related one.”  
God is at home in this unfinished creation.  There is independence in the created order that God loves to work with, blessing it.  God is a source of novelty with which our freedom works. The world is at play, able to mess up and to go forward into a new future.  The future becomes through God offering possibilities or aims of beauty to each moment and we in turn responding and adding to the offering. 
God’s power is relational and persuasive, not coercive.  What we say and do has an effect on how God will respond.    God gives, but also receives; acts but also responds; has a vision, but is open to change and transformation.  There is a call and response built into our relational world and the world becomes through it. 
Imagine a jazz group.  God setting down the melody.  It is passed on to the others in the group, and they get the feel for it.  Each, in their turn, add  their own originality,  colour and difference,  ( tweaking) the piece to offer it back to God. God now has to work with what was created by the subjective experiences of the players.  God has to feel the offering to give it more feeling.  The piece is transformed, to arrive at some satisfaction, which then becomes the ground for the next moments of improvisation.
God with us. Alive. Creating. Transforming. Visioning . Maturing. It is within our experience of the world that we vividly experience the presence of God.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Metaphysics meets Cosmology

Metaphysics is defined as the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value. It is how we see the world and how we are reflected in that vision. The world (reality as we understand it)  is cosmology and the way we know the world (reality as we live it) is metaphysics. They are two sides of the same process.




As we are part of the world we seek to understand, we are subject, object and process.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Cosmology meets Metaphysics

There is one reality. One order. We seek to understand this one order and this one order influences how we see and explain (make sense) the world we live in. If there are different coexisting orders we must have different (often contrary) ways of explaining the world we live in and also ways of explaining the need for multiple visions. Having a single version of reality requires a way of understanding all experience but, finding an approach such as Whitehead's, leads to a comprehensive and cohesive unity of comprehension. Having a cohesive vision allows us to use hypothesis to look at and test the new and make sense of the infinite complexity of the world. So we step out of one way of understanding that conflicts with many of our current perceptions to another that is more in line with what we really experience.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Truth

Truth is our take on the real. A statement is more true when it has a stronger resemblance to the real. We can only approach the real in our understanding because we must use symbols as an intermediate to communicate meaning. These symbols (language, gesture, sign) only point to the real. The better the reference, the more truth.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness

The process of regarding something abstract as a material entity, Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness," e.g., the mistake of confusing a system, which is a construct, with the physical entity described in its terms. Here is a model of an atom that we are familiar with. It is an abstraction.What is a real atom? It is not a object at all but a society of various energies in motion.


Friday, June 18, 2010

Merge Ahead : Societies of Occasions of Experience

Whitehead calls all entities (the real in reality), actual occasions of experience. They normally act in groups with a common purpose. This is called a society. This merging of occasions can form a rock, a plant, an animal or any other "thing". Think of an atom of iron -- it could be part of a rock or a blood cell in a human body. Depending on how the society is formed the experience can be quite different. In a rock the society is fairly stable for millions of years while in the blood there is change over tenths of seconds. In a rock there is little organization and so each entity's power is mostly lost. In a more organized society, such as a human being, sub-societies (such as of blood or bone) bring their substance and experience together in a coordinated way that creates a higher form of society. In the way that a culture (a society)  is made up of people, people are made up of biological and social societies with each contributing societies made up of other coordinated societies... and so on.  It is societies that endure over longer periods of time and what we see as objects. Of course, the  occasions of experience that constitute societies are alone real. As each actual occasion is both a member of a society and part of a society, all entities are interconnected. Whitehead calls this interdependence Internal Relations.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Symbols

Symbols are ways that we see the entities in the world. There are two ways that we perceive these symbols. We perceive them as they appear, this mode called immediate presentation by Whitehead,  in this case a multicolored brown adult sized chair shape with four legs and a multi-piece back, made from something that looks like wood.

The other way is as having experience or a history. This chair has a chair-ness, the result of history of experiments that lead to this present form. It also contains the history of all furniture, manufacture, material (in this case wood, glue, screws and finish [which each has its own history]), and all other contributions to its present appearance and function. Whitehead calls this the mode of causal efficacy. We see it for the experience it brings, the history it exemplifies.

The obvious way we perceive, and what seems to have the most value, is by means of immediate presentation.  We see a pen and say it is a pen. It is this shape, made of this material, is this color, weighs this much, feels this way and so on. We sense it and use our senses to define it. It's history seems to be of less value.

Whitehead suggests that we have it backwards. The greatest value that it brings into the present moment is its history or experience. Its current form is superficial. Why do we believe the opposite? It is easy to define an object by its characteristics as we sense them. We can see it here and now but cannot see its experience. Its function comes from its history and that is most important to us if we are to interact with it. Its value comes from the investment of experience.

Symbols, therefore, carry the power of their experience (which includes all the experience of the constituent elements) into the present iteration as a form of immediate presentation. This appearance is perceived in both modes, immediate presentation and causal efficacy with causal efficacy having the far greater value.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Alfred North Whitehead Bio from Wikipedia

Alfred North Whitehead, OM (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education. He co-authored the epochal Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell.
Life

Whitehead was born in Ramsgate, Kent, England. Although his grandfather, Thomas Whitehead, was known for having founded Chatham House Academy, a fairly successful school for boys, Alfred North was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, then considered one of the best public schools in the country. His childhood was described as over-protected, but when at school he excelled in sports, mathematics and was head prefect of his class.

In 1880, Whitehead matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was fourth wrangler and gained his BA in 1884.[1] Elected a fellow of Trinity in 1884, Whitehead would teach and write mathematics at the college until 1910, spending the 1890s writing his Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898) and the 1900s collaborating with his former pupil, Russell, on the first edition of Principia Mathematica.[2]

In 1910, he resigned his position at Trinity College to protest the dismissal of a colleague because of an adulterous affair. He also ran afoul of a Cambridge by-law limiting the term of a Senior Lecturer to 25 years.

In 1890, Whitehead married Evelyn Wade, an Irish woman reared in France; they had a daughter and two sons. One son died in action while serving in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. Meanwhile, Russell spent much of 1918 in prison because of his pacifist activities. Although Whitehead visited his co-author in prison, he did not take his pacifism seriously, while Russell sneered at Whitehead's later speculative Platonism and panpsychism. After the war, Russell and Whitehead seldom interacted, and Whitehead contributed nothing to the 1925 second edition of Principia Mathematica.

Whitehead was always interested in theology, especially in the 1890s. His family was firmly anchored in the Church of England: his father and uncles were vicars, while his brother would become bishop of Madras. Perhaps influenced by his wife and the writings of Cardinal Newman, Whitehead leaned towards Roman Catholicism. Prior to World War I, he considered himself an agnostic. Later he returned to religion, without formally joining any church.

Concomitantly, Whitehead developed a keen interest in physics: his fellowship dissertation examined James Clerk Maxwell's views on electricity and magnetism. His outlook on mathematics and physics was more philosophical than purely scientific; he was more concerned about their scope and nature, rather than about particular tenets and paradigms.

He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1922 to 1923.

The period between 1910 and 1926 was mostly spent at University College London and Imperial College London, where he taught and wrote on physics, the philosophy of science, and the theory and practice of education. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1903 and was elected to the British Academy in 1931. In physics, Whitehead articulated a rival doctrine to Einstein's general relativity. His theory of gravitation is now discredited because its predicted variability of the gravitational constant G disagrees with experimental findings.[3] A more lasting work was his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919), a pioneering attempt to synthetize the philosophical underpinnings of physics. It has little influenced the course of modern physics, however.

Whitehead's Presidential address in 1916 to the Mathematical Association of England The Aims of Education in the book of the same title (1929a) pointedly criticized the formalistic approach of modern British teachers who do not care about culture and self-education of their disciples: "Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it."

In 1924, Henry Osborn Taylor invited Whitehead, who was then 63, to implement his ideas and teach philosophy at Harvard University. This was a subject that fascinated Whitehead but that he had also not previously studied or taught. The Whiteheads spent the rest of their lives in the United States. He retired from teaching in 1937. When he died in 1947 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., there was no funeral, and his body was cremated.

Whitehead had wise and witty opinions about a vast range of human endeavour. These opinions pepper the many essays and speeches he gave on various topics between 1915 and his death (1917, 1925a, 1927, 1929a, 1929b, 1933, 1938). His Harvard lectures (1924–37) are studded with quotations from his favourite poets, Wordsworth and Shelley. Most Sunday afternoons when they were in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Whiteheads hosted an open house to which all Harvard students were welcome, and during which talk flowed freely. Some of the obiter dicta Whitehead spoke on these occasions were recorded by Lucien Price, a Boston journalist, who published them in 1954. That book also includes a remarkable picture of Whitehead as the aged sage holding court. It was at one of these open houses that the young Harvard student B.F. Skinner credits a discussion with Whitehead as providing the inspiration for his work Verbal Behavior in which language is analyzed from a behaviorist perspective.[4]

A two volume biography was written by Victor Lowe (1985) and Lowe and Schneewind (1990); Lowe studied under Whitehead at Harvard. A comprehensive appraisal of Whitehead's work is difficult because Whitehead left no Nachlass; his family carried out his instructions that all of his papers be destroyed after his death. There is also no critical edition of Whitehead's writings.
Process philosophy

The genesis of Whitehead's process philosophy may be attributed to his having witnessed the shocking collapse of Newtonian physics, due mainly to Albert Einstein's work. His metaphysical views emerged in his 1920 The Concept of Nature and expanded in his 1925 '''Science and the Modern World''', also an important study in the history of ideas, and the role of science and mathematics in the rise of Western civilization. Indebted as he was to Henri Bergson's philosophy of change, Whitehead was also a Platonist who "saw the definite character of events as due to the "ingression" of timeless entities."[5]

In 1927, Whitehead was asked to give the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. These were published in 1929 as Process and Reality, the book that founded process philosophy, a major contribution to Western metaphysics. Proponents of process philosophy include Charles Hartshorne and Nicholas Rescher, and his ideas have been taken up by French philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze. In poetry, the work and thought of American Charles Olson was strongly influenced by Whitehead's concepts. Olson referred to him variously as "the cosmologist"[6] and as the "constant companion of my poem."[7]

Process and Reality is famous for its defense of theism, although Whitehead's God differs essentially from the revealed God of Abrahamic religions. Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism gave rise to process theology, thanks to Charles Hartshorne, John B. Cobb, Jr, and David Ray Griffin. Some Christians and Jews find process theology a fruitful way of understanding God and the universe. Just as the entire universe is in constant flow and change, God, as source of the universe, is viewed as growing and changing. Whitehead's rejection of mind-body dualism is similar to elements in traditions such as Buddhism.

The main tenets of Whitehead's metaphysics were summarized in his last and most accessible work, Adventures of Ideas (1933), where he also defines his conceptions of beauty, truth, art, adventure, and peace. He believed that "there are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil."[8] Whitehead's political views sometimes appear to be libertarian without the label. He wrote:
Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of two forms, force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force.[9]
On the other hand, many Whitehead scholars read his work as providing a philosophical foundation for the social liberalism of the New Liberal movement that was prominent throughout Whitehead's adult life. Morris wrote that "...there is good reason for claiming that Whitehead shared the social and political ideals of the new liberals."[10]
Whitehead and Heraclitus

Funded by the Gifford endowment, Alfred North Whitehead wrote voluminously using concise abstract nouns and phrases given special and innovated meanings that cannot be understood as ordinary English. He believed the starting point of his philosophy was the flux of Heraclitus modified and supplemented by the thought of Aristotle but he does have an undefined: the referent of the English word process. Although he expands at great length on the concept he nowhere attempts to define what it is.

Whitehead did not see himself as a process philosopher but believed he was updating Heraclitus in the light of the mathematics and mathematical philosophers of his time. The key lecture is reproduced in Process and Reality.[11]

Using "all things flow" as the starting point for a "metaphysics of 'flux'", which he sees as implicit to various degrees in the philosophies of John Locke, David Hume and Immanuel Kant (but not Hegel), Whitehead does not present it as a mutually exclusive alternative to the "metaphysics of 'substance'" but as complementary. The latter "spatializes the universe" (according to Henri Bergson) but this is "the shortest route to a clear-cut philosophy" such as the Analytic Geometry of Descartes. The substance metaphysics is of less interest to Whitehead. Proclaiming that Newton "brusquely ordered fluency back into the world" with his Theory of Fluxions (the derivatives of differential calculus) Whitehead launches into an innovative elaboration of Heraclitus' upward-downward way, relying especially on Aristotle's theory of act and potency.

The way becomes the simultaneous occurrence of two processes: "concrescence" (in place of the upward) and transition (in place of the downward). The former is the unification of "particular existents" into new particular existents also termed "actual occasions" or "actual entities." In this process the final cause of the new unity is predominant. Transition is the "perishing of the process" (concrescence) in such a way as to leave the new existent as an "original element" of future new unities. This latter process is the "vehicle of the efficient causes" and expresses the "immortal past."

As in Heraclitus, a concrescence never reaches the unity of its final cause, hence Whitehead uses the term "presupposed actual occasions", which are "falsifications." An object therefore is identified with its concrescence; there is no other. The process of transforming "alien" entities into "data" for a new concrescence is termed a "feeling." Whitehead thus builds up statements that are scarcely less obscure, if at all, than those of Heraclitus: "... an actual occasion is a concrescence effected by a process of feelings."

In contrast to the becoming of Aristotle, a concrescence never results in the static act toward which it tends, but it does reach a "culmination" in which "all indetermination as to the realization of possibilities has been eliminated." This "evaporation of all indetermination" is the "satisfaction" of the feeling.

To explain the passage of the actual moment through time (the upward-downward way) Whitehead thus resorts to a unique blend of Heraclitus' flow and Aristotle's act and potency. The potency of Aristotle is the substrate in which all possibility resides, from which comes the actual, or determinate and specifically empowered beings by a process called "to become." Whitehead refers to the potency under the aegis of the future, or yet to come, as "reality." The reduction of the potential to the actual occurs in two processes: macroscopic, "the transition from attained actuality to actuality in attainment" and microscopic (concrescence), the "conversion of conditions which are merely real into determinate actualities." The past is "a nexus of actuality", which grows into what is currently the future. In summary:

The community of actual things is an organism; but it is not a static organism. It is an incompletion in process of production.

Conceptual Prehension

We are alive. Being alive is dynamic change, not just to move but transform and grow. How we change is from who we are what we could be. We start with the physical and experiential reality and look outside of ourselves for those improvements we would like to add to our current condition, we want to grow. This growth Whitehead calls prehension as well, but it is a mental prehension, we (the current version of ourselves) are taken over by a more mature version. So the two poles of prehension are physical prehension (who we start as -- focus on the past) and mental prehension (who we could be under the circumstances -- focus on the future). All entities function in the same way, we can feel this is true for us as human beings but we can see it in all living things to a greater or lesser degree. All really real entities, those that constitute reality, are alive in this way from seeming inert forms such as rocks and materials to complex conscious animals and beyond.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

God

God, being part of the same reality as we (and all other entities), is at the ultimate end of the spectrum. All entities being related, God is the most related. All entities are sympathetic to other entities, God is the most sympathetic. All entities are creative, God is the most creative. All entities are active, God is the most active. All entities have experience, God has the most experience.

Whitehead talks about the Consequent Nature of God. Because God is part of reality, God is a nexus of the collected experience of reality as well as the recipient of novelty -- God grows and changes as all entities do. Whitehead also talks about the Lure of God. God encourages choices that will lead to a healthier, more mature order. There are, for Whitehead, two main directions for life, one towards destructive and the other towards constructive order. Whitehead sees God as the action that works towards constructive order and the order in reality as an indication of the reality of God. It helps answer the questions: Why is there something instead of nothing? and  If things naturally decay (entropy), why do things form into any higher orders?

Monday, June 14, 2010

Appearance and Reality
















Whitehead includes appearance as part of reality. Appearance is often describes as illusion, masking the reality that lies underneath or beyond it. For Whitehead, there is only one reality and what we experience is part of that reality. Appearance is the presented and interpreted surface of real entities but still a very real part. Other parts of reality include propositions (perceived alternatives) and other thoughts, sympathy and other feelings as well as anything that can be sensed. All actualities, and this is what constitutes the whole of reality, act. Actualities act upon all other subjectively, sympathetically, experientially, propositionally and physically.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Prehension









One of the big questions that Whitehead deals with is change. How can something remain essentially itself yet continually change? The basic idea is that the entity always has a form that limits how it can change. The seed in this image can become a plant but not an animal. How it becomes that plant is determined by the opportunities it is given in the environment. It is wet or dry, sunny or shady, friendly or hostile? The seed changes based on two main properties, its own physical structure (its past or objective form) and the response it has to the future opportunities. Whitehead sees that only changing entities are really real so that the physical form an entity takes after it has changed is taken over (as this seedling is grown over by each new stage) by the actual new entity (called the occasion or event) that incorporates the old and adds what new opportunities are available. Whitehead calls this "prehension."

Saturday, June 12, 2010

William James and John Dewey

 
Whitehead was strongly influenced by the Pragmatics (including William James and John Dewey pictured here) who focused on the usefulness of their ideas. Whitehead, as a scientist, was most interested in producing a system that was practical and useful. He considered that all entities were really real when they were active or effective. This was a big change from the prevalent ideas that some parts of reality were active and some were passive, some are part of one reality and others part of another reality, some are eternal mental objects and others temporary material objects (to list a few). To Whitehead the whole spectrum of reality is the same --  from smallest subatomic particle to God. There was one reality and every entity in this reality is dynamic, not an object but an event. The whole of reality is in dynamic interplay, shaping and responsive to each other yet proposing that each entity has its own formal experience (history that shaped it) and opportunity to change through its particular circumstance and ability to respond to that opportunity. 

Friday, June 11, 2010

The broken foundation and nihilism


















Nihilism is the sense that no system of order can explain the world around us. Therefore, any system (or no system) is as good as any other. Disappointed by the understanding of reality that we have built up as a culture over the last two thousand years we find ourselves in a place where the very foundations of our reason have been undermined. We literally cannot believe that any system of order helps us to understand the reality we perceive. What is important? What choices are available to us? How does who I am fit into the greater scheme of things? Whitehead looked at these foundations and constructed a radical approach that reconciles our current perceptions and understanding, building a framework to bring a sense of unity and confluence to all aspects of our daily existence while maintaining an expansive openness that allows for freedom and choice.