Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

A high-grade percipient is necessarily an occasion in the historic route of an enduring object. If this route is to propagate itself successfully into the future, it is above all things necessary that its decisions in the immediate occasion should have the closest relevance to the concurrent happenings among contemporary occasions. For these contemporary entities will, in the near future, form the ‘immediate past’ for the future embodiment of the enduring object. This ‘immediate past’ is of overwhelming influence; for all routes of transmission from the more remote past must pass through it. Thus the contemporary occasions tell nothing; and yet are of supreme importance for the survival of the enduring object.

This gap in the experience of the percipient subject is bridged by presentational immediacy. This type of experience is the lesson of the past reflected into the present. The more important contemporary occasions are those in the near neighbourhood. Their actual worldsp. 485 are practically identical with that of the percipient subject. The percipient prehends the nexiis of contemporary occasions by the mediation of eternal objects which it inherits from its own past. Also it selects the contemporary nexus thus prehended by the efficacy of strains whose focal regions are important elements in the past of those nextis. Thus, for successful organisms, presentational immediacy—though it yields no direct experience about the contemporary world, and though in unfortunate instances the experience which it does yield may be irrelevant—does yield experience which expresses how the contemporary world has in fact emerged from its own past.

Presentational immediacy works on the principle that it is better to obtain information about the contemporary world, even if occasionally it be misleading.

SECTION IV

Depth of experience is gained by concentrating emphasis on the systematic structural systems in the environment, and discarding individual variations. Every element of systematic structure is emphasized, every individual aberration is pushed into the background. The variety sought is the variety of structures, and never the variety of individuals. For example we neglect empty space in comparison with the structural systematic nexus which is the historic route of an enduring object. In every possible way, the more advanced organisms simplify their experience so as to emphasize those nextis with some element of. tightness of systematic structure.

In pursuance of this principle, the regions, geometricized by the various strains in such an organism, not only lie in the contemporary world; but they coalesce so as to emphasize one unified locus in the contemporary world. This selected locus is penetrated by the straight lines, the planes, and the three-dimensional flat loci associated with the strains. This is the ‘strain-locus’ belonging to an occasion in the history of an enduring object.

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This occasion is the immediate percipient subject under consideration. Each such occasion has its one strainlocus which serves for all its strains. The focal regions of the various strains all lie within this strain-locus, and are in general distinct. But the strain-locus as a whole is common to all the strains. Each occasion lies in its own strain-locus.

The meaning of the term ‘rest’ is the relation of an occasion to its strain-locus, if there be one. An occasion with no unified strain-locus has no dominating locus with which it can have the relationship of ‘rest.’ An occasion ‘rests’ in its strain-locus. This is why it is nonsense to ask of an occasion in empty space whether it be ‘at rest’ in reference to some locus. For, since such occasions have no strain-loci, the relationship of ‘rest’? does not apply to them. The strain-locus is the locus which is thoroughly geometricized by the strain-feelings of the percipient occasion. It must have the property of being continent of straight lines, and of flat loci of all dimensions. Thus its boundaries will be three-dimensioned flat loci, non-intersecting. A strain-locus approximates to a threedimensional flat locus; but in fact it is four-dimensional, with a time-thickness.

SECTION V

Reviewing the discussion in the preceding sections of this chapter and of Chapter IV of Part II, we note that, in reference to any one actual occasion M, seven (but ef. Section VI) distinct considerations define loci composed of other actual occasions. In the first place there are three loci defined by causal efficacy, namely, the ‘causal past’ of M, the ‘causal future’ of M, and the ‘contemporaries’ of M. An actual occasion P, belonging to M’s causal past, is objectified for M by a perspective representation of its own (i.e. P’s) qualities of feeling and intensities of feeling. There is a quantitative and qualitative vector flow of feeling from P to M; and in this way, what P is subjectively, belongs to M objectively. An

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actual occasion Q, belonging to M’s causal future, is in the converse relation to M, compared to P’s relation. For the causal future is composed of those actual occasions which will have M in their respective causal parts. Actual occasions, & and S which are contemporary with M, are those actual occasions which lie neither in M’s causal past, nor in M’s causal future. The peculiarity of the locus of contemporaries of M is that any two of its members, such as # and S, need not be contemporaries of each other. They may be mutually contemporaries, but not necessarily. It is evident from the form of the definition of ‘contemporary,’ that if R be contemporary with M, then M is contemporary with R. This peculiarity of the locus of M’s contemporaries—that R and S may be both contemporaries of M, but not contemporaries of each other—points to another set of loci. A ‘duration’ is a locus of actual occasions, such that (0) any two members of the locus are contemporaries, and (@) that any actual occasion, not belonging to the duration, is in the causal past or causal future of some members of the duration.

A duration is a complete locus of actual occasions in ‘unison of becoming,’ or in ‘concrescent unison.’ It is the old-fashioned ‘present state of the world.’ In reference to a given duration, D, the actual world is divided into three mutually exclusive loci. One of these loci is the duration D itself. Another of these loci is composed of actual occasions which lie in the past of some members of D: this locus is the ‘past of the duration D.’ The remaining locus is composed of actual occasions which lie in the future of some members of D: this locus is the ‘future of the duration D.’

By its definition, a duration which contains an occasion M, must lie within the locus of the contemporaries of M. According to the classical pre-relativistic notions of time, there would be only one duration including M, and it would contain all M’s contemporaries. According to modern relativistic views we must admit that there are many durations including M—=in fact, an infinitep. 488 number, so that no one of them contains all M’s contemporaries.

Thus the past of a duration D includes the whole past of any actual occasion belonging to D, such as M for example, and it also includes some of M’s contemporaries. Also the future of the duration D includes the whole future of M, andalso includes some of M’s contemporaries.