Last Tuesday, doing philosophy over rounds of tea and cookies, we considered K's suggestion that Whitehead's elaboration of the nature of an actual entity may primarily be a theory of causation, albeit not in the standard vocabulary of cause and effect. There was however a general discomfort over the use of anthropomorphic language such as 'feeling' to explain an ontology (of things, not all of which are human). I think Whitehead makes it sufficiently clear what he means by 'feeling', and the definition is by no means merely psychological (i.e., restricted to human psychology) even if it seems to carry that baggage. Feeling is the term used for the basic generic operation of passing from the objectivity of the data to the subjectivity of the actual entity in question (PR 83, 65). Whitehead may be a vitalist, but he is also a realist, celebrating the dynamic character of a plurality of things: apples, cinema, genomes, gnomes! For him, therefore, vitalism is not restricted to human beings or even living organisms; everything in the universe is living. Perhaps this is what Thales meant when/if he said 'all things are full of gods' and thought that magnets have soul. Even the seemingly static and lifeless have a life of their own, and are affected by their own histories, their environment and the inherent potentiality to become.
It remains to be seen how this position holds through subsequent readings.
However, to go back to the question of cause—effect, the hypothesis of the faster-than-light flight of Neutrino (ghostly subatomic particles) is both destabilizing and thrilling because: particles that move faster than light are essentially moving backwards in time, which could make the phrase cause and effect obsolete. How will actual entities moving faster than the speed of light affect other actual entities, their slower comrades?
The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931, Oil on canvas, 24 × 33 cm
It remains to be seen how this position holds through subsequent readings.
However, to go back to the question of cause—effect, the hypothesis of the faster-than-light flight of Neutrino (ghostly subatomic particles) is both destabilizing and thrilling because: particles that move faster than light are essentially moving backwards in time, which could make the phrase cause and effect obsolete. How will actual entities moving faster than the speed of light affect other actual entities, their slower comrades?
The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931, Oil on canvas, 24 × 33 cm