Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“Fungi are famous for changing shape in relation to their encounters and environments. Many are “potentially immortal,” meaning they die from disease, injury, or lack of resources, but not from old age. Even this little fact can alert us to how much our thoughts about knowledge and existence just assume determinate life form and old…
“Prehensions are the way that what is there becomes something here. A prehension is the bond between two actual occasions. The past occasion shares in the constitution of the new occasion…” “Suppose you are listening to music. You hear the final chord of a musical phrase. But why do you hear it as the final…
“The field of psychology, let alone psychoanalysis, is largely unaware of the magnitude of Whitehead’s contributions to philosophical psychology. But surprisingly, so is the field of philosophy. Unless you are a fervent Whiteheadian immersed in the minutia of process studies, Whitehead’s contributions to human psychology largely remain eclipsed by his other bodies of work that…
“Embodied mind theory and process theology lend themselves to an appreciation of metaphorical thinking, which takes concepts from one domain and links them with another, forming what Whitehead calls blended contrasts. The metaphors then become means by which subjects can be understood that could not be understood in more literal thinking. […] But process theology…
“…the elements or constituents of organisms are related to each other in two basic ways—through external (physical) relations and internal (nonphysical) relations. The external relations are studied in physics, and involve the four forces of electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear, and gravity. These forces bind physical components together. But the parts of our bodies (cells,…
“By introducing possibilities of such action that go beyond what the situation would otherwise allow, God expands our freedom. Violence as we ordinarily understand it restricts the freedom of its object.” –John B. Cobb, Jr., process-relational theologian Most of us have a decent understanding of what freedom is, or at least we think we do….
“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…