Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

THis chapter contains an anticipatory sketch of the primary notions which constitute the philosophy of organism. The whole of the subsequent discussion in these lectures has the purpose of rendering this summary intelligible, and of showing that it embodies generic notions inevitably presupposed in our reflective experience—presupposed, but rarely expressed in explicit distinction. Four notions may be singled out from this summary, by reason of the fact that they involve some divergence from antecedent philosophical thought. These notions are, that of an ‘actual entity,’ that of a ‘prehension, that of a ‘nexus,’ and that of the ‘ontological principle.’ Philosophical thought has made for itself difficulties by dealing exclusively in very abstract notions, such as those of mere awareness, mere private sensation, mere emotion, mere purpose, mere appearance, mere causation. These are the ghosts of the old ‘faculties,’ banished from psychology, but still haunting metaphysics. There can be no ‘mere’ togetherness of such abstractions. The result is that philosophical discussion is enmeshed in the fallacy of ‘misplaced concreteness.’ * In the three notions—actual entity, prehension, nexus— an endeavour has been made to base philosophical thought upon the most concrete elements in our experience. ‘Actual entities’-—also termed ‘actual occasions’—are the final real things of which the world i ; ere is no going behind actual entities to find anything Cf. my Sctence and the Modern World, Ch. II. 27p. 28 more real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are gradations of importance, and diversities of function, yet in the principles which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level. The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent. In its recurrence to the notion of a plurality of actual

entities the philosophy of organism is through_and through cartesian. Phe ‘ontological principle’ broadens and extends a general principle laid down by John Locke in his Essay (Bk. II, Ch. XXIII, Sect. 7), when he asserts that ‘power’ is ‘a great part of our complex ideas of substances.’ The notion of ‘substance’ is transformed into that of ‘actual entity’; and the notion of ‘power’ is transformed into the principle that the reasons for things are always to be found in the composite nature of definite actual entities—in the nature of God for reasons of the highest absoluteness, and in the nature of definite temporal actual entities for reasons which refer to a particular environment. The ontological principle can be summarized as: no actual entity, then no reason.

Each actual entity is analysable in an indefinite number of ways. In some modes of analysis the component elements are more abstract than in other modes of analysis. The analysis of an actual entity into ‘prehensions’ is that mode of analysis which exhibits the most concrete elements in the nature of actual entities. This mode of analysis will be termed the ‘division’ of the actual entity in question. Each actual entity is ‘divisible’ in an indefinite number of ways, and each way of ‘division’ yields its definite quota of prehensions. A prehension reproduces in itself the general characteristics of an actual entity: it is referent to an external world, and in this sense will b e said to have a ‘vector character’; it involves emotion, and purpose, and valuation, an ti In fact, any characteristic of an actual entity is reproduced ne ae) LE PLOCUCEDp. 29 in a prehension, It might have been a complete actuality; but, by reason of a certain incomplete partiality, a prehension is only a subordinate element in an actual entity. A reference to the complete actuality is required to give the reason why such a prehension is what it is in respect to its subjective form. This subjective form is determined by the subjective aim at further integration, so as to obtain the ‘satisfaction’ of the completed subject. In other words, final causation and atomism are interconnected philosophical principles.

With th rpose of obtaining a one-substance cosmology, ‘prehensions’ are a generalization from Descartes’ mental ‘cogitations,’ and from Locke’s ‘ideas,’ to express the most concrete mode of analysis applicable to eve grade_of individual actuality. Descartes and Locke maintained a two-substance ontology—Descartes explicitly, Locke by implication. Descartes, the mathematical physicist, emphasized his account of corporeal substance; and Locke, the physician and the sociologist, confined himself to an account of mental substance. The philosophy of organism, in its scheme for one type of actual entities, adopts the view that Locke’s account of mental substance embodies, in a very special form, a more penetrating philosophic description than does Descartes’ account of corporeal substance. Nevertheless, Descartes’ account must find its place in the philosophic scheme. On the whole, this is the moral to be drawn from the Monodology of Leibniz. His monads are best conceived as generalizations of contemporary notions of mentality. The contemporary notions of physical bodies only enter into his philosophy subordinately and derivatively. The philosophy of organism endeavours to hold the balance more evenly. But it does start with a generalization of Locke’s account of mental operations.

Actual entities involve each other b reason of their prehensions of each other, There ar facts of the togetherness of actual entities, which are real, individual, and_particular, in_the same _sense_inp. 30 which actual entities and the prehensions are real, individual, and_particular. Any such particular _fact_of togetherness among actual entities_is called _a ‘nexus’ (plural form is written ‘nexus’). The ultimate facts of immediate actual experience are actual entities, prehensions, and nexus. All else is, for our experience, derivative abstraction,

The explanatory purpose of philosophy is often misunderstood. Its business is to explain the emergence of the more abstract things from the more concrete things. It is a complete mistake to ask how concrete particular fact can be built up out of universals. The answer is, ‘In no way.’ The true philosophic question * is, How can concrete fact exhibit entities abstract from itself and yet participated in by its own nature?