Cosmology Study Guide - second part

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Excerpts from Alfred North Whitehead's work Process and Reality with explanatory illustrations consisting of Krazy Kat comic strips by George Herriman. Footnote defining many terms

may be found in my previous post here.

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Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead; text drawn from the

Corrected Edition 1978 The Free Press Ó Respective copyright holder.

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Krazy Kat by George Herriman   ÔKFS Ó Respective copyright holder.

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(8)  That two descriptions are required for an actual entity:  (a)  one which is analytical of its potentiality for ‘objectification’ in the becoming of other actual entities, and  (b)  another which is analytical of the process which constitutes its own becoming.

        The term ‘objectification’ refers to the particular mode in which the potentiality of one actual entity is realized in another actual entity.



 (9)  That how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is; so that the two descriptions of an actual entity are not independent. Its ‘being’ is constituted by its ‘becoming.’ This is the ‘principle of process.’

 (10)  That the first analysis of an actual entity, into the most concrete elements, discloses it to be a concrescence of prehensions, which have originated in its process of becoming. All further analysis is an analysis of prehensions.  Analysis in terms of prehensions is termed ‘division.’



 (11)  That every prehension consists of three factors:  (a)  the ‘subject’ which is prehending, namely, the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element;  (b)  the ‘datum’ which is prehended;  (c)  the ‘subjective form’ which is how  that subject  prehends that datum.

    Prehensions of actual entities—i.e., prehensions whose data involve actual entities—are termed ‘physical prehensions’; and prehensions of eternal objects are termed ‘conceptual prehensions.’ consciousness is not necessarily involved in the subjective forms of either type of prehension.

 (12)  That there are two species of prehensions:  (a) ‘positive prehensions’ which are termed ‘feelings,’ and  (b) ‘negative prehensions’ which are said to ‘eliminate from feeling’ Negative prehensions also have subjective forms. A negative prehension holds its datum as inoperative in the progressive concrescence of prehensions constituting the unity of the subject.

 (13)  That there are many species of subjective forms, such as emotions, valuations, purposes, aversions, consciousness, etc.

 

(14)  That a nexus is a set of actual entities in the unity of the relatedness constituted by their prehensions of each-others, or—what is the same thing conversely expressed—constituted by their objectifications in each other.