In any occasion of cognition, that which is known is an actual occasion of experience, as diversified by reference to a realm of entities which transcend that immediate occasion in that they have analogous or different connections with other occasions of experience.... Also... every actual occasion is set within a realm of alternative interconnected entities.-- Alfred North Whitehead, SCIENCE IN THE MODERN WORLD, p. 227-28.
I've been playing off of concepts introduced in Whitehead's process philosophy, but have admitted that some of his more abstruse uses of jargon have confounded me. So I decided to get a better grounding in such concepts as "prehension," which by one account the great mathematician first introduced in this book, SCIENCE IN THE MODERN WORLD, a series of lectures on a unitary theme that saw book publication in 1925.
I foregrounded the above quote because it is one of many similar statements with which Whitehead critiques scientific materialism. In the first part of the quote, the author makes clear how the process of knowledge, in particular that of scientific cognition, depends upon drawing comparisons between different entities that "analogous or different connections with other occasions of experience." For instance, to use an example of my own, classifying certain creatures as mammals because they have "analogous connections," but classifying other creatures as birds because they have "different connections."
This first statement is all but identical to the way scientific materialists proceed with their cognitions. Whitehead, however, faults them on their over-willingness to abstract "discrete occasions of experience" from their connections with other entities. Continuing my example, other entities might be the ecosystem in which assorted creatures exist, and from which science abstracts them.
Although Whitehead's main project is to outline his concept of a science responsive to organic existence, he makes clear that his philosophy embraces all forms of human cognition, including ethics, religion, and aesthetics, which he calls "cosmologies." This is not a major feature of his theory, but it bears an interesting resemblance to Ernst Cassirer's theory of knowledge-forms, apparently first circulated four years prior to these lectures (so no likelihood of cross-influence between the two scholars).
Until reading SCIENCE, I didn't comprehend that his formulation of the term "prehension" was intimately linked to Whitehead's concept of a unity within discrete entities that standard materialism chooses to overlook. A couple of times he even speaks of "prehensive unification," once with explicit comparison to the opening lines of Percy Shelley's poem MONT BLANC. This tracks with separate references I've encountered, emphasizing prehension as "non-epistemological knowledge." Whitehead applies this form of unity both to biological organisms and to subatomic phenomena, asserting that both share an "inherent transitoriness" that is offset by their "actual unity," a unity that is by its nature outside the sphere of cognitive knowledge.
Though Whitehead does not devote many pages to such cultural pursuits as art and literature, he makes clear that he feels that scientific materialism, with its emphasis on discrete phenomena, resulted in a de-valuing of human experience. I was pleased to see that, though Whitehead does not use the word pluralism, SCIENCE supports a pluralist ethos. Following the opening quote, he explains that the "realm of alternative interconnected entities" is "disclosed by all the untrue propositions which can be predicated significantly of that occasion. It is the realm of alternative suggestions, whose foothold in actuality transcends each actual occasion.The real reference of untrue propositions is disclosed by art, romance, and by criticism in reference to ideals." Whitehead does not expand on this statement, and I confess that he eventually goes off on a mathematical demonstration of "possibility" that's outside my wheelhouse. But I'm egotistical enough to cite one of my own statements that shares some commonality with Whitehead's take on "untrue propositions," as seen in the fourth part of my essay-series LET FREEDOM RIDE:
For the pluralist the best understanding of freedom may be seen through an appreciation for a plurality of choices, rather than the ritualized choices between "good" and "bad" as encoded by religion or by philosophy, particularly that of Kant, who at times seems to be reinstuting the old maxim that "service is perfect freedom." I do not define freedom as service, but neither is it rebellion against service.
I am not arguing for relativism, but rather a form of Nietzchean perspectivism. Free will proves difficult not because it's hard to choose the straight path over the crooked path, or to choose tough-minded reductive realism over escapist fantasy. It's difficult because we as humans can see every situation from many perspectives, and can only choose in terms of what we think may lead to the best conclusion... Ergo, pluralist freedom is the free will to choose-- even when one makes the wrong choice-- with the knowledge that *the wrong choice always has the potential to be the right choice in another set of circumstances.*
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