Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

It must be remembered that each individual occasion within a special form of society includes features which do not occur in analogous occasions in the external environment. The first stage of systematic investigation must always be the identification of analogies between occasions within the society and occasions without it. The second stage is constituted by the more subtle procedure of noting the differences between behaviour within and without the society, difference of behaviour exhibited by occasions which also have close analogies to each other. The history of science is marked by the vehement, dogmatic denial of such differences, until they are found out.

An obvious instance of such distinction of behaviour is afforded by the notion of the deformation of the shape of an electron according to variations in its physical situation.

A ‘structured society’ may be more or less ‘complex’ in respect to the multiplicity of its associated sub-societies and sub-nexts and to the intricacy of their structural pattern.

A structured society which is highly complex can bep. 153 correspondingly favourable to intensity of satisfaction for certain sets of its component members. This intensity arises by reason of the ordered complexity of the contrasts which the society stages for these components

The structural relations gather intensity from this intensity in the individual experiences. Thus the growth of a complex structured society exemplifies the general purpose pervading nature. The mere complexity of givenness which procures incompatibilities has been superseded by the complexity of order which procures contrasts.

SECTION VI

The doctrine that every society requires a wider social environment leads to the distinction that a society may be more or less ‘stabilized’ in reference to certain sorts of changes in that environment. A society is ‘stabilized’ in reference to a species of change when it can persist through an environment whose relevant parts exhibit that sort of change. If the society would cease to persist through an environment with that sort of heterogeneity, then the society is in that respect ‘unstable.’ A complex society which is stable provided that the environment exhibits certain features, is said to be ‘specialized’ in respect to those features. The notion of ‘specialization’ seems to include both that of ‘complexity’ and that of strictly conditioned ‘stability.’

An unspecialized society can survive through important changes in its environment. This means that it can take on different functions in respect to its relationship to a changing environment. In general the defining characteristic of such a society will not include any particular determination of structural pattern. By reason of this flexibility of structural pattern, the society can adopt that special pattern adapted to the circumstances of the moment. Thus an unspecialized society is apt to be deficient in structural pattern, when viewed as a whole.

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Thus in general an unspecialized society does not secure conditions favourable for intensity of satisfaction among its members. Whereas a structured society with a high grade of complexity will in general be deficient in survival value. In other words, such societies will in general be ‘specialized’ in the sense of requiring a very special sort of environment.

Thus the problems for Nature is the production of societies which are ‘structured’ with a high ‘complexity,’ and which are at the same time ‘unspecialized.’ In this way, intensity is mated with survival.

SECTION VII

There are two ways in which structured societies have solved this problem. Both ways depend on that enhancement of the mental pole, which is a factor in intensity of experience. One way is by eliciting a massive average objectification of a nexus, while eliminating the detailed diversities of the various members of the nexus in question. This method, in fact, employs the device of blocking out unwelcome detail. It depends on the fundamental truth that objectification is abstraction. It utilizes this abstraction inherent in objectification so as to dismiss the thwarting elements of a nexus into negative prehensions. At the same time the complex intensity in the structured society is supported by the massive objectifications of the many environmental nexis, each in its unity as one nexus, and not in its multiplicity as many actual occasions.

This mode of solution requires the intervention of mentality operating in accordance with the Category of Transmutation (ie., Categoreal Obligation VI). It ignores diversity of detail by overwhelming the nexus by means of some congenial uniformity which pervades it. The environment may then change indefinitely so far as concerns the ignored details—so long as they can be ignored.

The close association of all physical bodies, organic and

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inorganic alike, with ‘presented loci’ definable*® by straight lines, suggests that this development of mentality is characteristic of the actual occasions which make up the structured societies which we know as ‘material bodies.’ This close association is evidenced by the importance of ‘acceleration’ in the science of Dynamics. For ‘acceleration’ is nothing else than a mode of estimating the shift from one family of ‘presented loci’ to another such family (cf. Part IV).

Such mentality represents the first grade of ascent beyond the mere reproductive stage which employs nothing more than the Category of Conceptual Reproduction (.e., Categoreal Obligation IV). There is some initiative of conceptual integration, but no originality in conceptual prehension. This initiative belongs to the Category of Transmutation, and the excluded originality belongs to the Category of Reversion.

These material bodies belong to the lowest grade of structured societies which are obvious to our gross apprehensions. They comprise societies of various types of complexity—crystals, rocks, planets, and suns. Such bodies are easily the most long-lived of the structured societies known to us, capable of being traced through their individual life-histories.

The second way of solving the problem is by an initiative in conceptual prehensions, i.e., in appetition. The purpose of this initiative is to recerve the novel elements of the environment into explicit feelings with such subjective forms as conciliate them with the complex experiences proper to members of the structured society. Thus in each concrescent occasion its subjective aim originates novelty to match the novelty of the environment.

In the case of the higher organisms, this conceptual initiative amounts to thinking about the diverse experiences; in the case of lower organisms this conceptual initiative merely amounts to thoughtless adjustment of aesthetic emphasis in obedience to an ideal of harmony.

15 Cf, Ch. IV of this ‘part’ and also Part IV.

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In either case the creative determination which transcends the occasion in question has been deflected by an impulse original to that occasion. This deflection in general originates a self-preservative reaction throughout the whole society. It may be unfortunate or inadequate; and in the case of persistent failure we are in the province of pathology.

This second mode of solution also presupposes the former mode. Thus the categories of Conceptual Reversion and of Transmutation are both called into play.