Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Thus the ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism. The creatures are atomic. In the present cosmic epoch there is a creation of continuity. Perhaps such creation is an ultimate metaphysical truth holding of all cosmic epochs; but this does not seem to be a necessary conclusion. The more likely opinion is that extensive continuity is a special condition arising from the society of creatures which constitute our immediate epoch. But atomism does not exclude complexity, and universal relativity. Each atom is a system of all things.

The proper balance between atomism and continuity is of importance to physical science. For example, the doctrine, here explained, conciliates Newton’s corpuscular theory of light with the wave theory. For both a corpuscle, and an advancing element of wave front, are merely a permanent form propagated from atomic creature to atomic creature. A corpuscle is in fact an ‘enduring object.’ The notion of an ‘enduring object’ is, however, capable of more or less completeness of realization. Thus, in different stages of its career, a wave of light may be more or less corpuscular. A train of such waves at all stages of its career involves social order; but in the earlier stages this social order takes the more special form of loosely related strands of personal order. This dominant personal order gradually vanishes as the time advances. Its defining characteristics become less and

? Cf. Part II, Ch. II, Sect. II; and also my Science and the Modern World, Ch. VII, for a discussion of this argument.

o4 PROCESS AND REALITY

less important, as their various features peter out. The waves then become a nexus with important social order, but with no strands of personal order. Thus the train of waves starts as a corpuscular society, and ends as a society which is not corpuscular.

SECTION IV

Finally, in the cosmological scheme here outlined one implicit assumption of the philosophical tradition is repudiated. The assumption is that the basic elements of experience are to be described in terms of one, or all, of the three ingredients, consciousness, thought, sense-perception. The last term is used in the sense of ‘conscious perception in the mode of presentational immediacy.’ Also in practice sense-perception is narrowed down to visual perception. According to the philosophy of organism these three components are unessential elements in experience, either physical or mental. Any instance of experience is dipolar, whether that instance be God or an actual occasion of the world. The origination of God is from the mental pole, the origination of an actual occasion is from the physical pole; but in either case these elements, consciousness, thought, sense-perception, belong to the derivative ‘impure’ phases of the concrescence, if in any effective sense they enter at all.

This repudiation is the reason why, in relation to the topic under discussion, the status of presentational immediacy is a recurrent theme throughout the subsequent ‘Parts’ of these lectures,

PART IT
DISCUSSIONS AND APPLICATIONS

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ABSTRACT

Cuarter I. Fact anp Form
SECTION

I. Appeal to Facts, European Tradition; Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant; Intrinsic Reasonableness; Footnotes to Plato; This Cosmology Platonic; Participating Forms; Divine Ordering; Ontological Principle; Facts the Only Reasons; Facts are Process; Prehension, Satisfaction.

II. Rationalism a Faith, Adventure of Hope; Limits of Theory,
Giveness, Professor A. E. Taylor on Plato; Decision, the
Ontological Principle; Entities and Process, Actual Entities
and Decision; Stubborn Fact.

III. Platonic Form, Idea, Essence, Eternal Object; Potentiality and Givenness; Exclusiveness of the Given; Subject-Superject, Becoming and Being; Evaporation of Indetermination in Concrescence, Satisfaction Determinate and Exclusive; Concrescence Dipolar; Potentiality, Givenness, Impossibility; Subsistence.

IV. Actual Occasions Internally Determined Externally Free;
Course of History not Necessary, no Perfection; Efficient
Causation and Final Reaction; God’s Primordial Freedom;
Each Concrescence between Definite Free Initiation and
Definite Free Conclusion, the Former Macrocosmic, the
Latter Microcosmic.

V. Universals and Particulars, Unsuitable Terms with False Implication; Illustration from Descartes, also Hume; Descartes’ alternative Doctrine, Realitas Objectiva, Inspectio, Intuitio, Judicium ; World not Describable in Terms of Subject and Predicate, Substance and Quality, Particular and Universal; Universal Relativity.

VI. Locke’s Essay, Agreement of Organic Philosophy with It; Substitute ‘Experience’ for ‘Understanding’; Ideas and Prehensions; Locke’s Two Doctrines of Ideas, Ideas of Particular Things; Representative Theory of Perception; Logical Simplicity and Genetic Priority not to be Identified; Substance, Exterior Things, Societies; Solidarity of the Universe.

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p. 58

SECTION

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Locke’s Doctrine of Power, Power and Substance; Causal Objectification and Presentational Objectification; Change Means Adventures of Eternal Objects; Real Essence, Abstract Essence; Doctrine of Organism and Generation of Actual Entities,

Cuapter II. Tue Extensive ConTINUUM

Continuum and Real Potentiality, Atomized by Actual Occasions; How the Continuum is Experienced, Presentational Immediacy, Sensa; Real Chair and Chair-image; Complex Ingression of Sensa.

General Potentiality and Real Potentiality; Standpoints of Actual Occasions, Determined by Initial Phase of Subjective Aim; Extensive Relationships; The Epochal Theory of Time, Zeno, William James.

. Newton’s Scholium. . Newton’s Scholium, Comparison with Philosophy of Organism and with Descartes; ‘Withness of the Body,’ Status of the Body in the Actual World; Ontological Status of Space for Newton, Descartes and the Organic Philosophy.

Undifferentiated Endurance and the Passivity of Substance,
Source of Errors.

. Summary,

Cuapter III. Tur Orpver or Nature

Order and Givenness Contrasted; The Four Characteristics of Order; Attainment of End, Lure of Feeling; Causa Sut.

. ‘Society’ Defined, Defining Characteristic and Genetic Inheritance; Environment Social and Permissive; Cosmic Epoch, Social Hierarchy.

. Evolution of Societies, Decay, Chaos, the Timaeus, the Scholaum, Milton.

Societies in This Cosmic Epoch; the Extensive Society, the Geometric Society, Electromagnetic Society; Waves, Electrons, Protons.

. Enduring Objects, Corpuscular Societies, Structured Societies. . Stability, Specialization. . Problem of Stabilization, Exclusion of Detail, Conceptual Initiative, Life.

. Inorganic Apparatus for Life. . Life a Reaction against Society, Originality.

SECTION

Xe

Life and Food, Life in Empty Space, Catalytic Agent.

XI. Living Persons, Canalization of Life, Dominant Personality

IX.

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only Partial.