Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

The philosophy of organism is the inversion of Kant’s philosophy. The Critique of Pure Reason describes the process by which subjective data pass into the appearance of an objective world. The philosophy of organism seeks to describe how objective data pass into subjective satisfaction, and how order in the objective data provides intensity in the subjective satisfaction. For Kant, the world emerges from the subject; for the philosophy ofp. 136 organism, the subject emerges from the world—a ‘superject’ rather than a ‘subject.’ The word ‘object’ thus means an entity which is a potentiality for being a component in feeling; and the word ‘subject’ means the entity constituted by the process of feeling, and including this process. The feeler is the unity emergent from its own feelings; and feelings are the details of the process intermediary between this unity and its many data. The data are the potentials for feeling; that is to say, they are objects. The process is the elimination of indeterminateness of feeling from the unity of one subjective experience. The degree of order in the datum is measured by the degree of richness in the objective lure. The ‘intensity’ achieved belongs to the subjective form of the satisfaction.

SECTION II

It has been explained in the previous section that the notion of ‘order’ is primarily applicable to the objectified data for individual actual entities. It has been necessary to give a sketch of some categories applying to an actual entity in order to show how this can be the case. But there is a derivative sense of the term ‘order,’ which is more usually in our minds when we use that word. We speak of the ‘order of nature,’ meaning thereby the order reigning in that limited portion of the universe,’ or even of the surface of the earth, which has come under our observation. We also speak of a man of orderly life, or of disorderly life. In any of these senses, the term ‘order’ evidently applies to the relations among themselves enjoyed by many actual entities which thereby form a society. The term ‘society’ will always be restricted to mean a nexus of actual entities which are ‘ordered’ among themselves in the sense to be explained in this section.*

*Cf., The Fitness of the Environment, New York, Macmillan, 1913, and The Order of Nature, Harvard Univ. Press, 1917, and Blood, Harvard Univ. Press, 1928, Ch. I, both by Professor L. J. Henderson.

These works are fundamental for any discussion of this subject. * Also ck, Part], (Ch. 10k Sectall:

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The point of a ‘society,’ as the term is here used, is that it is self-sustaining; in other words, that it is its own reason. Thus a society is more than a set of entities to which the same class-name applies: that is to say, it involves more than a merely mathematical conception of ‘order.’ To constitute a society, the class-name has got to apply to each member, by reason of genetic derivation from other members of that same society. The members of the society are alike because, by reason of their common character, they impose on other members of the society the conditions which lead to that likeness.

This likeness * consists in the fact that (i) a certain element of ‘form’ is a contributory component to the individual satisfaction of each member of the society; and that (11) the contribution by this element to the objectification of any one member of the society for prehension by other members promotes its analogous reproduction in the satisfactions of those other members. Thus a set of entities is a society (i) in virtue of a ‘defining characteristic’ shared by its members, and (11) in virtue of the presence of the defining characteristic being due to the environment provided by the society itself.

For example, the life of man is an historic route of actual occasions which in a marked degree—to be discussed more fully later—inherit from each other. That set of occasions, dating from his first acquirement of the Greek language and including all those occasions up to his loss of any adequate knowledge of that language, constitutes a society in reference to knowledge of the Greek language. Such knowledge is a common characteristic inherited from occasion to occasion along the historic route. This example has purposely been chosen for its reference to a somewhat trivial element of order, viz. knowledge of the Greek language; a more important character of order would have been that complex character in virtue of which a man is considered to be the same enduring person from birth to death. Also in this in-

# Of Parti 1, Ch, WY, Sect. I.

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stance the members of the society are arranged in a serial order by their genetic relations. Such a society is said © to possess ‘personal order.’

Thus a society is, for each of its members, an environment with some element of order in it, persisting by reason of the genetic relations between its own members. Such an element of order is the order prevalent in the society.

But there is no society in isolation. Every society must be considered with its background of a wider environment of actual entities, which also contribute their objectifications to which the members of the society must conform. Thus the given contributions of the environment must at least be permissive of the self-sustenance of the society. Also, in proportion to its importance, this background must contribute those general characters which the more special character of the society presupposes for its members. But this means that the environment, together with the society in question, must form a larger society in respect to some more general characters than those defining the society from which we started. Thus we arrive at the principle that every society requires a social background, of which it is itself a part. In reference to any given society the world of actual entities is to be conceived as forming a background in layers of social order, the defining characteristics becoming wider and more general as we widen the background. Of course, the remote actualities of the background have their own specific characteristics of various types of social order. But such specific characteristics have become irrelevant for the society in question by reason of the inhibitions and attenuations introduced by discordance, that is to say, by disorder.

The metaphysical characteristics of an actual entity —in the proper general sense of ‘metaphysics’—should be those which apply to all actual entities. It may be doubted whether such metaphysical concepts have ever

"Cf. Part I, Ch. TI) Sect: Il.

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been formulated in their strict purity—even taking into account the most general principles of logic and of mathematics. We have to confine ourselves to societies sufficiently wide, and yet such that their defining characteristics cannot safely be ascribed to all actual entities which have been or may be.

The causal laws which dominate a social environment are the product of the defining characteristic of that society. But the society is only efficient through its individual members. Thus in a society, the members can only exist by reason of the laws which dominate the society, and the laws only come into being by reason of the analogous characters of the members of the society.