Forms of Process

Lecture V in Section II of Modes of Thought

• Point 1: Modes of Unity

  • Collections, perfecting
  • importance for the infinite/finite

• Point 2: Accident → Necessity

  • smaller → larger units of composition
  • infinite (never finite) forms of order
  • order is never complete

• Point 3: Process - Data, Form, Transition, and Issue

  • Process is fundamental to actuality (88)
  • Transition exists in a “spacious present”
  • Fact requires everything antecedent to its actuality
  • To exist is to be distinct, ‘this’ and not ‘that’
  • The universe is not static, complete means free to more onward.

• Point 4: Transition of Individualism

  • “Tautology” - twice-three is process, six is fact

• Point 5: Existence is creative activity

  • Activity containing Data, Process, and Issue (93)
    • Data (realized, matter of fact) of our experience (potentiality for matter of fact)
  • World process = totality of process
    • Fusion with infinitude (94)
      • “Supreme Being”
  • Stars and planets are static by our perception. “law of change” (94)

• Point 6: Self determination, process & Existence

• Point 7: process and individuality require each other (97)

  • “the procedure of rationalism is the discussion of analogy.” (98)

• Point 8: Existence Depends on Potentiality (99)

  • Immediacy (the present) is the realization of the potentialities of the past, and is the storehouse of the potentialities of the future.

• Point 9: “Apart from time there is no meaning for purpose, hope, fear, and energy”

  • Space gives way to consummation
  • Reflective experience has 3 main characteristics: Joint association, Temporal Experiences, and Experience of the Deity of the Universe. (103)
  • Organization averages monoculture which leads to death (average = non-living)
    • Diversity + change means life!
  • Predictability + certainty is not the solution? Perhaps we embrace chaos?
  • Unpredictability, failure, brokenness, and the glitch is the way forward!
    • Truth and resolution, “truthiness”, ambiguity, and compression

Nothing is more interesting to watch than the emotional disturbance produced by any unusual disturbance of the forms of process. The slow drift is accepted. But when for human experience quick changes arrive, human nature passes into hysteria. For example, gales, thunderstorms, earthquakes, revolutions in social habits, violent illnesses, destructive fires, battles, are all occasions of special excitement. There are perfectly good reasons for this energetic reaction to quick change. My point is the exhibition of our emotional reactions to the dominance of lawful order, and to the breakdown of such order. When fundamental change arrives, sometimes heaven dawns, sometimes hell yawns open.

- Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought (93)