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Dissertation - Chris Esson - COMPLETE
Dissertation - Chris Esson - COMPLETE
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Concrescence?
Contents
Introduction 3
I. Laws of Nature 6
Creativity 13
Process 14
Actual Occasions 17
Concrescence 20
Freedom 24
Diversity 26
Conclusion 30
Bibliography 33
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Concrescence?
Introduction
In the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead the subjective aim describes the
conditioning of this process and its potential for originality is important in the
description of the order and diversity of the complex system of interrelations
entities are both the product of forces and the ingredients in future productive
inherent, the product of the relational structure of entities in the system. The
relations of the system are dynamic, they describe change and Becoming, not
static atemporal entities. Both efficient and final causalities are active in the
system as prior actualities condition, but do not determine, the becoming of
the system. Potentiality has real ontological significance and the development of
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This paper will explore the process described by Whitehead, and the features of
this process in the organisation and creativity of actual entities.
argued that the bifurcation of nature entailed by imposed law presents serious
process whereby stability and order are the product of the creative power
In section III. we will examine the subjective aim, the conditioning of the
in Whitehead’s process and these are active in the subjective aim of individual
quanta of Becoming.
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I. Laws of Nature
persistent order in any system makes possible a coherent study of that system,
but it is also the condition for our own systematising investigation. Were there
no stability of form or organisation the interrogation of objects, environments or
systems would dissolve as quickly as the system itself changed. Equally, our
concerning the laws of nature. Each represents a possible answer to the question
“what is a law?”, and each describes a certain understanding of the entities and
law as imposed has been primary in the history of European science and
philosophy, especially since the 17th century. Whitehead also argues however
that many of the contemporary problems of science and philosophy are the
of the present project however there is not space to adequately consider all four.
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what order there is in nature and the reasons for that order: the doctrines of
The doctrine of the Law as imposed has as its metaphysical base an order of
external relations between independent existents which are the constituents of
abstraction or isolation from any other part of nature, they are sufficient to
themselves, and need no addition for their existence. That these existents are
however found within a world of other existents imposes upon them the
relation to other bodies positions may be measured and from these relations
certain forces imposed. The existence of two or more bodies in any space
reconciliation of the new physics of his time with metaphysical and theist
concerns. The dualism of Descartes metaphysics is another clear example of the
doctrine of imposed law; material extension contains no power of its own and so
motion is imposed upon bodies from elsewhere. Indeed there is here a clear link
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“It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation
of something else, which is not material, operate on and affect other matter”
(Newton, 2004, 102). Descartes enquiries are concerned precisely with the
The problems of such dualism are well known to philosophy. How are two
orders of nature, entirely separate, able to effect or interact with one another?
The problem of a mechanics of nature which are imposed splits the system and
there is a bifurcation of nature into dull extended matter and active immaterial
powers. How are we to know the laws from the particular bodies, and are the
laws able to tell us anything about the particular bodies upon which they act?
How can there be any relation between two absolutely opposed natures?
The success of the doctrine of imposed Law is evident in its ubiquity however.
It has been a consistent feature of philosophy and science that any order in
nature must be imposed. The classical sciences of the 17th century which
of nature’s laws. The entities in nature by their relation to one another compose
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however trifling the cause and however slight and momentary the effect,
has real existence; and that the definition of being is simply power
Any fact or entity must be the product or effect of some actual power and no
fact can exist independently and without reference to any other fact. This
nature. If there are bodies and forces in the cosmos then both must be capable
Beyond the inherent speculative and realist character of the doctrine of the law
always expect exact conformation to the laws of nature because immanent laws
are expressive of a process rather than regulating it. Those things possessive of
a common character will conform to a law, but in some cases the relations of
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things will fail to illustrate any law. This does not mean that we are once again
powerful and ordered by it’s own causal relations, provides us with a reasonable
parts of nature, but that nature is alive to a creative advance that is premised
and stability of the laws of nature are only contingent. Since the organisation of
the internal relations of Nature is itself productive of the laws then any change
in their arrangement may result in a change of the laws. The evolution of the
universe is conceivable only concurrently with the evolution of the laws. Any
reversion to the doctrine of imposed law. This tension however marks the final
the way in which “the characters of the relevant things in nature are the
their characters” (Whitehead, 1933, 113). Any Law that is the product of the
organisation of its constituents, that can in some way explain this organisation
is subject to a reciprocal relationship of constructed/constructing and some
account must be given of the way in which any order prevalent in nature comes
about.
definitely or potentially ordered and that order as following from some reason.
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power, but the extension of this abstraction beyond its limits will result in
materialism, and there are problems with this doctrine which entail serious
bifurcation.
inherent power and thus mechanism entails dualism; the activity and
are not themselves acted on. They are then subject to no change and are
eternal realm, and a changing temporal realm. For the method of science and
philosophy such a division presents serious problems. First, the ontological
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Second, since laws are imposed they will be followed exactly and are then
deterministic. Causality is efficient only and the change through time of any
considered a virtue of imposed law, especially for the physical sciences, since
there can be absolute certainty about cause and effect. However, in science
absolute determinism is at variance with contemporary understandings of
quantum physics, and appears reductive and lacking explanatory power in the
serious. Third and following from the previous, mechanist systems are
essentially atemporal. The Becoming of the temporal world is merely a limited
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Creativity
metaphysics, or need for the imposition of external laws. Bodies made eminent
have no effects, no powers inherent in themselves. We have examined the
problems of imposed law and found need of some alternative. Therefore, taking
recognised that mere power is not a sufficient description for our purposes. The
criteria proposed by Plato is power in the production of difference. Whatever
has power to effect change or be changed has real existence. The process of
difference, the mapping of some cause to its effect. The creativity active in
In Process and Reality (1929) Whitehead sets out his speculative scheme in a
and the activity of actualisation. This ultimate creativity describes the relation
of all potential elements in a system and the activity of change effected from
as the activity of establishing a relation between the structure of a result and its
which might exist apart from other entities, it is the power active in the
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effects of the process of creativity and also then as potential causes for the
further activity of this system. As such then this creative power is ungrounded,
since no beginning to its activity can be posited any element in the system is
Process
reality. The enduring objects of our experience are events, or more accurately,
multiplicities and series of events. Even the most impassive of objects have a
impassive rock was formed some geological time ago in the dynamic processes of
sedimentation, or volcanism. Perhaps this rock was chipped from a larger stone,
which was moved at different times to new locations amid new structures of
The Needle has been on the embankment for all of my life, but it was not
always there, there has not always been an embankment or even an Earth. Day
to day it gets dirty or cleaned, and a physicist could describe the dance of
electrons lost or gained. The permanence of any description depends upon the
abstraction of the definition (1925, 166-7). The most fundamental reality of any
object is its activity in its relations within a system of other objects similarly
constituted by events.
occasions” or “actual entities”. Actual occasions are units of process which are
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world. These occasions are deeply interrelated and the system of their relations
occasions related by some fact. If the elements of a nexus are not simply
contiguous but joined by some characteristic inherited by all its members then
enduring. The objects of common experience are societies, so are the more
identity of these things is to make their extensive nature eminent and thus
of becoming, they themselves do not endure. Once an occasion has become, its
productive power is exhausted and it perishes. This does not mean however that
becoming is a constant foam of ephemeral occasions having no lasting effect.
The past occasions subsist as data for future occasions, at the end of their
process they attain objective immortality. The data of past occasions are then
The process of the becoming of actual entities is called concrescence, and the
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creative advance of the universe; everything that becomes is something new, the
actual occasions are self-creating or causa sui. The creative process does not
begin ex nihilo, the activity of occasions describes the change from the data of
past occasions to novel actuality. In this way the enduring extended objects of
and its dancing atomic constituents perhaps comes closest to describing this
nothing but actual occasions. “‘Actual occasions’ – also termed ‘actual entities’
- are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going
beyond these actual entities to find anything more real. […] God is an actual
entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space”
(Whitehead, 1929, 18). The becoming of actual occasions, and the inheritance of
the data of the past in novel creativity of present actual fact is the process by
higher or more perfect reality, or any external power imposing order from
[and] whatever things there are in any sense of ‘existence’, are derived by
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their nexus and societies are the constituents of the particular entities of
experience. Active in actual occasions however, are entities other than actual. It
must always be remembered that these are “derived by abstraction from actual
formulation of the ontological principle makes clear that whatever can be said
in any sense to exist, can exist only as active in the process of becoming actual
which constitutes all actual entities. “[E]very condition to which the process of
becoming conforms in any particular instance, has its reason either in the
the process of concrescence” (Whitehead, 1929, 24). Thus, any existent other
entity is not an ingredient active in the becoming of some actual entity then it
Actual Occasions
of becoming can be discerned. The distinctions made always refer to the whole
activity of an occasion in concrescence. As a unity and as a process an actual
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fact. This end product Whitehead terms the “satisfaction” of the occasion. The
described by the subjective aim. The meaning of the “subject” of any occasion
the action. For this reason Whitehead uses the term “superject” to mean the
The relation of every actual entity to all other actual entities is described by
grasping. Actual occasions grasp or prehend other entities for the process of
their concrescence. The first phase of the process of an actual occasion is the
prehension of physical data. The data prehended by actual entities are the
definite forms of past actualities. It is from these past data that novel actual
prehensions of actual entities give them access to every other actual entity.
“Each fully realized fact has an infinitude of relations in the historic world and
in the realm of form; namely, its perspective of the universe” (Whitehead, 1938,
89). The data of past actualities have ontological significance as they are
occasions. Put simply, the relational structure of process is such that “every
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actual entity is present in every other actual entity” (Whitehead, 1929, 50). The
question that arises from such a deeply interrelated process is how to explain
the manifest diversity of entities in the universe? Why, if every actual entities is
unison? The answer to this is given in Whitehead’s reference above to form, the
perspective of the occasions and in qualification that “[t]he data for any one
entities inhere in one another through their illimitable prehensions, every actual
inherent in the physical data. Whitehead gives to these relational forms the
for the final concrescence of the occasion. The physical and conceptual
prehension of occasions is the subjective form of concrescence which conditions
the becoming of actuality. Amongst the data of past actual occasions certain
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actual entity.
Concrescence
The process of any actual occasions moves from its physical prehension, its
only as a finally actual fact, the superject or product of its activity. Active in
process is the multiplicity of data in the universe, actual entities and eternal
definiteness then requires the synthesis of the data active in an actual occasions.
Creativity is the process whereby “[t]he many become one, and are increased by
process. The many are the diverse data of the universe which are synthesised in
an act of concrescence. The one is the novel actuality which is the terminus of
this process and a new datum for the serial creativity of becoming.
an occasion. These obligations are not imposed laws, but regularities illustrated
by the process itself. The categories do not serve as universals out of which are
built up particular concrete facts. Whitehead argues that to ask how such a
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to ask: “[h]ow can concrete fact exhibit entities abstract from itself and yet
describe the way in which occasions unify the multiple data (physical and
conceptual) in the concrescence of a final fact. It is not necessary here, nor is
there space, to elucidate the nine categories. Instead we will consider those
its prehended data. An activity which will guide the concrescence of the
other actual entities. The actualisation of an occasion then depends upon the
intensity of the valuation of the antecedent data and the eternal objects. With
this data positively prehended an occasion may repeat some form of definiteness
be the active type of causality active in the process. This is the efficient
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this way the stability and regularity of nature is the product of these limited
enter into new relations in the context of the concrescent occasion and provide
diverse potentiality for the satisfaction of the occasion. In this way causality
diverges from the merely efficient variety. This new kind of causality and the
concrescence creates new conditions for the satisfaction of actual entities. This
The determination of efficient causality and the potential for divergence from
this will be the subject for our final section. The necessary inheritance of
physical effects by some actual entities is the reason for any manifest regularity
and stability of nature. The novel originality of pattern which diverges from
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data in the concrescence of one final superject and the addition of this
physical and conceptual data and the valuation of eternal entities as potential
at its satisfaction. The aim of all occasions toward their concrescence is their
essentially concerns the creature as a final superject. This subjective aim is this
1929, 69). In situations of physical necessity there is little if any deviation form
a direct inheritance of past data. However, under certain conditions actual
definiteness and in this way the subjective aim is the original creativity of
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metaphysics. This will then introduce two concepts of causality which we will
Freedom
of their physical prehensions of antecedent data, but the final superject of any
occasion has in the last analysis a certain freedom in its concrescence. The final
and describes the concrescence of any occasion after all other obligations are
[…] there is always a remainder for the decision of the subject-superject of that
definite form of antecedent data and the patterns of eternal objects drawn from
past data. In the most limited of cases this may be the difference between
network of relations relative to its direct environment and the wider universe.
The stable continuity of certain entities, for instance a helium atom or a rock,
are the manifest serial recreation of direct inheritance from physical data. The
necessity for entities to follow the determining physical prehensions is not
absolute however, and in every occasion there remains a certain freedom from
determination.
The freedom for the final determination of a concrescent occasion comes from
the inherent power that is productive of all entities. Since every occasion is an
instantiation of the general creative power of Becoming, and this power is none
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the ultimate creativity active in all process requires some domain or input;
does not work ex nihilo, but from some actual entity. The process from this
actuality will be partially determined by the set of actual entities active in the
process, but this set is potentially infinite and cannot be finally determined.
Second, creative activity is non-determining, it describes a process of
differentiation but does not require a definite form from any instance of this
process. The creativity of the many antecedent data as they are active in the
concrescence of a final superject requires the synthesis of the many in the one,
but the process of this synthesis is not determined. Third, the concrescence of
from this data subject is its own novel determination. There is no limit to the
concrescence of the occasion is the act of expressing that rule. The concrescence
of actual occasions is free relative to ultimate creativity, its antecedent data and
its rule. A concrescent actual occasion enjoys negative freedom, in that its
that it is then its own reason or cuasa sui (Bradley, 2008, 10). “[T]he future of
the Universe, though conditioned by the immanence of its past, awaits for its
The relations inherent in any set of physical prehensions are illimitable, since
they include a potentially infinite number of datum, the relations of these data,
and potential relations of relations ad infinitum. The concrescence of novel
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of these eternal objects will not always be available for ingression, since the
prevails in any system. But where conditions are right for the actualisation of
is not absolute. The potential for diversity beyond the common character of
any system “constitutes that special element in the flux of forms in history,
which is ‘given’ and incapable of rationalisation beyond the fact that within it
1929, 47).
Diversity
In the conceptual valuation of the subjective form of any actual occasion there
are a potentially infinite number of conceptual prehensions. These variations of
The subjective aim of any occasion conceptualises both the past and the future.
The past comes from the prehensions of antecedent data. The future is the
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novel occasions since the completed fact of an occasion will be a datum for
satisfaction of the subjective aim will be a datum for future occasions. The dual
aspect of concrescent occasions, prehending the past and looking to the future,
prehensions are the quality and form of eternal objects conceptualised by the
contrast of eternal objects in the subjective form of any occasion, and they drive
provide the possibility of the ever increasing complexity of actual entities. The
possible actualisations.
the system of actual entities impute to them certain obligations which are
productive of an ordered system. This order is necessary under the conditions of
individual occasions, but is not an absolute fact of the system. The Category of
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must have the potential to effect or be effected, but the conditions of cause and
effect are not determined. What is entailed in any relation is the mapping of a
diverse set of data to some determinate concrescent fact. The inheritance from
inheritance from antecedent data, and the potential divergences inherent in this
Every entity is then at different epochs both a subject and an object. When
objectified entities give to process the direct line of physical inheritance which
provides to every concrescence its basic ingredients. Physical prehensions and
established without the need for imposed law. Beyond this direct inheritance of
the welter of conceptual data is the function of the subjective aim and the final
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actual entity, constitute the efficient causes out of which that actual entity
arises; the ‘subjective aim’ at ‘satisfaction’ constitutes the final cause, or lure,
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Conclusion
of past fact is the particular activity of the ultimate creativity which is the
creative process of unifying in one subject multiple data, and the transformation
from this data to a novel individual fact is the Becoming of every entity in
nature. By their interrelations, and these relations are so deep as for every
imposed, but a product of the process shared between all actual entities. The
immanent power of activity between all entities imputes to them certain shared
characteristics or forms of relation. By these forms of relation common patterns
can emerge which may be shared in nexus or societies and these entities are
experience.
system of imposed law separates from nature the powers of its activity and
reason other than imposed supernatural law. Such a bifurcation presents serious
problems to philosophy, but the power of imposed law in describing the regular
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are followed exactly. The laws of a system of immanent law do not exist
the order of nature, since the overall character is still one of manifest stability.
But the freedom of entities in a system of immanent laws to diverge from their
inherited situation puts forth the possibility of describing an evolving and active
system of nature.
described by under the title of “physics”. The questions of physics are of the
motion, forces and powers of nature, and its methods of speculative theory and
systematizing law make clear to us its concerns: organisation, order and reason.
If the ontology guiding physics is of a static system ordered by a superadded
time and subject to serious philosophical problems. If, alternatively, the study
(φύσις), meaning the productive power in nature, the power of growth and
new relevant questions, enlightening the diversity of nature, and the need to
learn how to approach this diversity” (Stengers, 2005, 1). This attentiveness to
the method and progressive discovery in the physical sciences then requires a
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which informs and guides our questions. Whitehead’s philosophy describes such
a concept of nature, and the subjective aim is that aspect of it which explores
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Bibliography
http://www.senselab.ca/inflexions/volume˙3/node˙i2/Inflexions˙Bradley.pdf
[Accessed 03/04/10]
Atomic Physics. In: Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. New
metaphysics/papers/DunhamJ-BeyondDogmaticFinality.pdf
[Accessed 08/02/10]
Available at:
http://www.concrescence.org/index.php/concrescence/article/view/87/68
[Accessed 08/02/10]
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Press.
[Accessed 05/11/09]
Whitehead, A.N. (1925) Science and the Modern World Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press (1985)
Whitehead, A.N. (1929) Process and Reality New York: Free Press (1985)
Whitehead, A.N. (1933) Adventures in Ideas New York: Free Press (1967)
Whitehead, A.N. (1938) Modes of Thought New York: Free Press (1968)
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