Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

A simple physical feeling enjoys a characteristic which has been variously described as ‘re-enaction,’ ‘reproduction,’ and ‘conformation.’ This characteristic can be more accurately explained in terms of the eternal objects involved. There are eternal objects determinant of the definiteness of the objective datum which is the ‘cause,’ and eternal objects determinant of the definiteness of the subjective form belonging to the ‘effect.’ When there is re-enaction there is one eternal object with two-way functioning, namely, as partial determinant of the objective datum, and as partial determinant of the subjective form. In this two-way role, the eternal object is functioning relationally between the initial data on the one hand and the concrescent subject on the other. It is playing one self-consistent role in obedience to the category of objective identity.

Physical science is the science investigating spatiotemporal and quantitative characteristics of simple physical feelings. The actual entities of the actual world are bound together in a nexus of these feelings. Also in the creative advance, the nexus proper to an antecedent

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actual world is not destroyed. It is reproduced and added to, by the new bonds of feeling with the novel actualities which transcend it and include it. But these bonds have always their vector character. Accordingly the ultimate physical entities for physical science are always vectors indicating transference. In the world there is nothing static. But there is reproduction; and hence the permanence which is the result of order, and the cause of it. And yet there is always change; for time is cumulative as well as reproductive, and the cumulation of the many is not their reproduction as many. This section on simple physical feelings lays the foundation of the treatment of cosmology in the philosophy of organism. It contains the discussion of the ultimate elements from which a more complete philosophical discussion of the physical world—that is to say, of nature—must be derived. In the first place an endeavour has been made to do justice alike to the aspect of the world emphasized by Descartes and to the atomism of the modern quantum-theory. Descartes saw the natural world as an extensive spatial plenum, enduring through time. Modern physicists see energy transferred in definite quanta. This quantum-theory also has analogues in recent neurology. Again fatigue is the expression of cumulation; it is physical memory. Further causation and physical memory spring from the same root: both of them are physical perception. Cosmology must do equal justice to atomism, to continuity, to causation, to memory, to perception, to qualitative and quantitative forms of energy, and to extension. But so far there has been no reference to the ultimate vibratory characters of organisms and to the ‘potential’ element in nature.

SECTION II

Conceptual feelings and simple causal feelings constitute the two main species of ‘primary’ feelings. All other feelings of whatever complexity arise out of a process of integration which starts with a phase of these

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primary feelings. There is, however, a difference between the species. An actual entity in the actual world of a subject must enter into the concrescence of that subject by some simple causal feeling, however vague, trivial, and submerged. Negative prehensions may eliminate its distinctive importance. But in some way, by some trace of causal feeling, the remote actual entity is prehended positively. In the case of an eternal object, there is no such necessity. In any given concrescence, it may be included positively by means of a conceptual feeling; but it may be excluded by a negative prehension. The actualities have to be felt, while the pure potentials can be dismissed. So far as concerns their functionings as objects, this is the great distinction between an actual entity and an eternal object. The one is stubborn matter of fact; and the other never loses its ‘accent’ of potentiality.

In each concrescence there is a twofold aspect of the creative urge. In one aspect there is the origination of simple causal feelings; and in the other aspect there is the origination of conceptual feelings. These contrasted aspects will be called the physical and the mental poles of an actual entity. No actual entity is devoid of either pole; though their relative importance differs in different actual entities. Also conceptual feelings do not necessarily involve consciousness; though there can be no conscious feelings which do not involve conceptual feelings as elements in the synthesis.

Thus an actual entity is essentially dipolar, with its physical and mental poles; and even the physical world cannot be properly understood without reference to its other side, which is the complex of mental operations. The primary mental operations are conceptual feelings.

A conceptual feeling is feeling an eternal object in the primary metaphysical character of being an ‘object,’ that is to say, feeling its capacity for being a realized determinant of process. Immanence and transcendence are the characteristics of an object: as a realized determinant it

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