“Undergirding sensory perception is a more basic and primitive form of nonsensory perception that Whitehead calls ‘prehension.‘ Before sensory perception arose in evolutionary history, this was how creatures were able to take account of their immediate environment. Thus, a single-celled life form, such as an ameba, will retreat from what it prehends as danger and advance toward, and engulf, what it prehends as possible food.

Or, I can remember my favorite dog when growing up, a beagle I named Ike-ey. When I played with him, and spoke to him in a warm and friendly way, he would become very animated and frisky, and begin to bark and wag his tail and jump all over me. He was feeling, or prehending, my affection and approval, and responding in kind. A scolding, however, with sharp words and tone, would cause him to hunker down with his tail between his legs.

Another example may help to make clear how this works. When Laker basketball star Kobe Bryant ate a tainted hamburger in Sacramento during the NBA playoffs, he fell ill with food poisoning and began to feel very sick at his stomach. What Kobe experienced were not sense perceptions. He was directly feeling the causal influence of his body. He was prehending the cells of his stomach, feeling their feelings of acute distress. In fact, Whitehead’s most concise definition of ‘prehension‘ is the ‘feeling of feeling.‘

An example from the botanical world would be heliotropic flowers. In a prehensive ‘taking account of‘ sunbeams, or photons, such flowers turn their blossoms to follow the sun, from morning till evening, from horizon to horizon. Underground the same sort of thing happens with the roots as they meander here and there in a prehensive search for water and essential nutrients. This surely illustrates a primitive form of ‘awareness.‘

Even in the inorganic world something of this can be seen. The mutual ‘attraction‘ of oppositely charged particles is made manifest in magnets, for if you hold two magnets close together, you can feel them straining for union. Does this illustrate a primordial form of ‘yearning?‘”

The above passages come from Hyatt Carter’s great introduction to the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. This part in particular focuses on “prehension” and then goes on to explain well other technical terms Whitehead uses in his writing.

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Photography by Kim Keever

Tags:hyatt carterperceptionprehensionprocess philosophywhitehead