Observations placeholder
North Whitehead, Alfred – 06 The impossibility of a Big Bang; the emergence of the ‘concrescence’
Identifier
025750
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Whitehead referred to the ‘current’ [as opposed to past and future] that we can perceive normally with our 5 senses as opposed to our sixth sense as the ‘concrescence’, implying that – if we use the analogy – the water of spirit coalesces into the crystals of form.
The actual entity – the aggregate such as Fifi the dog – by moving forward in time also maintains all the relationships that make it into an aggregate ‘determining its own self-creation as one creature’, although, fairly obviously, this is not a conscious act. Lots of potential changes could be made because of the functions Fifi has and the possible relationships she could make, but once the processes have executed, that is it, at that moment Fifi is what she is.
But the question remains where do actual entities come from originally and, sensibly ignoring all physical explanations of ludicrous big bangs and other impossible constructs, ‘the evolution of subjective form could not be referred to any actuality’ Whitehead says that they are created, in effect, using the Tree of Life. The ‘human being package’ for example is used to spawn any number of human being copies, which are then made unique by the addition of processes that will make them so [attributes of character and personality for example].
Ontology is ‘a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them’, it can also be ‘the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being’, and in a sense Whitehead is using the word in both contexts, logic has been violated.
Notice how Whitehead’s theories make it possible to give no absolute time for the ‘beginning’ of the universe. It is always coming into being, always becoming, always evolving, always changing from moment to moment , quanta to quanta. Any changes are achieved by tweaking the master package and rolling the changes out – just as a software developer might do. This is a far better more refined theory of evolution and the nature of change than any that Darwinism [the gross corruption of Darwin’s ideas into a materialistic belief system] has ever produced.
A description of the experience
PART II DISCUSSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
Chapter II The Extensive Continuum
Section II
With the becoming of any actual entity what was previously potential in the space-time continuum is now the primary real phase in something actual. …..
In the mere continuum there are contrary potentialities; in the actual world there are definite atomic actualities determining one coherent system of real divisions throughout the region of actuality. Every actual entity in its relationship to other actual entities is in this sense somewhere in the continuum, and arises out of the data provided by this standpoint. …………….
The concrescence is dominated by a subjective aim which essentially concerns the creature as a final superject. This subjective aim is this subject itself determining its own self-creation as one creature. Thus the subjective aim does not share in this divisibility. If we confine attention to prehensions concerned with the earlier half, their subjective forms have arisen from nothing. For the subjective aim which belongs to the whole is now excluded. Thus the evolution of subjective form could not be referred to any actuality. The ontological principle has been violated. Something has floated into the world from nowhere.
Chapter I - Fact And Form
Section V
An actual entity cannot be described, even inadequately, by universals; because other actual entities do enter into the description of any one actual entity. Thus every so-called 'universal’ is particular in the sense of being just what it is, diverse from everything else; and every so- called 'particular’ is universal in the sense of entering into the constitutions of other actual entities.