Text: Whitehead, Alfred North and Donald W. Sherburne. 1981. A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Process and Reality is Whitehead’s attempt at describing reality and
this description contains ‘the becoming, the being and the relatedness of
actual entities’ (p. 7), i.e. what a caterpillar
is (being), what a caterpillar
can be (becoming),
and how a caterpillar can affect a white mulberry leaf (relation).
Immediately,
one is curious as to what ‘actual entities’ are. Actual entities (where actual is used in the sense of
‘existent’) are the generically uniform, but specifically different, vital microcosmic
units that compose reality — the building blocks (if blocks sounds too blocky
to be palatable to Whitehead, let’s say processes) of Whitehead’s ontology.
Given
that actual entities are dynamic rather than static, what gives unity to each
of them is called ‘concrescence’, the internal constitution of actual entities.
What Whitehead calls the diversity of the many, must therefore be temporally diverse and yet successive.
Concrescence is then nothing but the process that is to be understood as a unit
of reality, a process that is striving towards ‘satisfaction’.
Whitehead’s
actual entities seem like Leibniz’s monads, but they differ from them in so far
as they are constantly in the process of becoming. Also, they are not windowless
as in the case of Leibniz; in fact they are all windows, and in that sense
every actual entity is a ‘mode of the process of feeling the world’ (p. 8).
Experience
of the world from the available data (derived from the objectification of other
actual occasion), then constitutes every actual entity. The transition of the
objective data into subjectivity is termed as ‘feeling’. Feeling is the process
of the absorption of the so-called ‘others’ of the universe, of transforming
the external into a form of internality.
An
actual entity is a product of its interaction with various elements of the
universe. Its being is constituted by what the universe is for it. It
appropriates some of these elements, and excludes others. Whitehead’s cosmology
is then absolutely relational, and the concrete and definite bonds of
relatedness are called prehensions. A subject
prehends a data by giving it a subjective form (subject, data and the
subjective form then being three factors of prehension). Prehensions may be
positive or negative, depending on whether the subject excludes or includes the
datum. The case of inclusion is called feeling. An actual entity is the subject
of feelings.
The
initial datum, which we have been discussing, is nothing but another actual
entity and the moment of its objectification occurs when it becomes a feeling
for the subject. The feeling is constituted of five factors (p.12): (a) the subject which feels (b) the initial data which are to be felt
(c) the elimination in virtue of
negative prehensions (d) the objective
datum which is felt (e) the
subjective form, which is how that subject feels the objective datum.
The
politics of actual entities governs how one entity will be objectified for the
other, i.e. how much power it holds over the other. Feelings are the manner in
which elements of nature immortalize themselves.
Every
actual entity has a point of termination which is concomitant with the
attainment of what Whitehead calls satisfaction. When an actual entity has
successfully established a concrete relationship with every other entity in the
universe, either positively or negatively, it is satisfied and complete. This
completing is also a termination of the process. In every phase of the process
of concrescence, something new is added to the process until it is completely
satisfied. This integration is essential to the character of actual entities,
and there is a telos towards which
they move — the final cause being a complete determination, a definiteness. To
attain this definiteness, completeness and satisfaction is to become
objectively immortal. Now, even though its own existence has evaporated, the
actual entity can still affect other entities, and showcase its power.
What
is central to the system of Whitehead, is the relatedness of actualities.
Things that have seemingly perished, are absorbed into the living and that is
how reality continues to become. Mr Caterpillar is immortalized in becoming a butterfly. Each actual entity has a potentiality for
process and must perfect itself. Once perfect, and satisfied, the entity seems
to close-up. And yet, in spite of the dead, there is no real death for the
satisfied entity is objectively immortal — a being beyond itself, for the
future, potentiality.
