ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD LECTURES 1927-1928 Notes taken by Edwin L. Marvin Indexed with an Introduction by Roselyn Schmitt Forward by Lewis Ford A joint publication of Process Studies Supplements and The Whitehead Research Project © Copyright 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction by Roselyn Schmitt................................................................................i Forward by Lewis Ford...............................................................................................iv Notes by Edwin L. Marvin..........................................................................................1 Index...........................................................................................................................168 Appendix:....................................................................................................................181 (Some terms in Process and Reality that are not mentioned in the Marvin notes.) i Introduction: "The Marvin Notes" During the academic year 1927-28, Alfred North Whitehead taught a course in the philosophy of science at Harvard University. One of the graduate students in that course was Edwin L. Marvin, who took detailed notes on the lectures for the entire year. Until now, the notes have been available only in typescript (167 pages), and were not indexed. Thus, they have not been readily accessible to the academic community. They are here presented, with a detailed index as well as with a list of some terms in Process and Reality that are not mentioned in the notes. 1 The notes may be helpful in supplementing some ideas in Process and Reality. For example, in the notes we read, "So Plato's world soul may mean our activity or creativity; subordinate deities comparable to creativity of actual entities" (M 42). 2 For one acquainted with Plato's views, that comment may suggest further content to Whitehead's notion of creativity. Again, with regard to the "ideal of itself," the notes have "Nonsense that there is one Ideal which a thing ought to be. This due to overzealous religious leaders. Want all the congregation to conform." (M 30). Compare with Process and Reality: ". . . In the primary phase of the subjective process there [is] a conceptual feeling of subjective aim . . . [which] suffers simplification in the successive phases of the concrescence. It starts with conditioned alternatives, and by successive decisions is reduced to coherence. The doctrine of responsibility is entirely concerned with this modification" (PR 224). 3 Since Process and Reality is entirely bereft of diagrams, some (especially those teaching Whitehead) may find the diagrams in Marvin (presumably Whitehead's own) helpful. For example, the diagrams relating to human perception (M 22) fit well with the text in Process and Reality (63). The diagrams on feelings/prehensions (M 63, 67, 68, 72) correlate with passages in Process and Reality on those topics (236ff). The diagrams on past/present/future (M 79, 80) correlate with the discussion of causal past, present, causal future (PR 319-320). Perhaps the most valuable role for the notes is their relevance to the development of Whitehead's thought. According to Lewis Ford, by the fall of 1927 Whitehead had completed a draft in preparation for the Gifford Lectures, which he was to give in June of 1928 (EWM 182 ff). 4 Those lectures formed the basis for part two of Process and Reality (published in 1929). Part three was apparently developed during the spring of 1928 when he was focusing more on mathematics in the philosophy of science, and so was not as germane to his class. Ford calls the draft of the summer and fall of 1927 "the Giffords draft." He considers "the most singular doctrine of the Giffords draft" to be "that concrescence starts from a single unified datum, 'the datum of the concrescence,' rather than starting from a vast multiplicity of initial data, which are reduced to unity in the final satisfaction" (188). Ford thinks that the change to the later view may have occurred sometime during the fall of 1927. Already on 10/6/27 Marvin lists "two kinds of process" as "1. Transition from [past] actual entity to an immediate actual entity. 'Objectification'--of past actual entity to immediate actual entity. . . .2. Concretion (concrescence) whereby one actual entity is built up from its many objective data, and the actual entity is the realizing those many data into one drop of experience" (7). 5 Also, throughout the Marvin notes there does not seem to be a significant distinction between the use of "datum" and "data.” ii Similarly, Ford believes that the notion of subjective form probably came in the "final transitional stages of the Giffords draft" (EWM 205). In the Marvin notes, the term "subjective form" does appear rather late (3/27/28). It is here applied to an entire actual entity--not to an individual prehension: "the totality of the prehensions acquires subjective form by a harmony" (M 138). Earlier, however (12/6/27), Marvin lists three aspects of a feeling: "1) What is felt, 2) How it is felt, 3) Where it is felt.” Whitehead has apparently not yet introduced the term "subjective form" for "how it is felt.” But in the further explanation of "how felt," Marvin has "The subject grows out of the feeling. Originative element in concrescence of the subject is in respect to how it is felt. Intensity. Adversion and aversion. Purpose." (M 67) The latter four terms (underlined by Marvin) are explicitly called "subjective forms" in Process and Reality (PR 24, 211). Another concept that Ford believes came just before the Gifford lectures were presented is the Consequent Nature of God (EWM 182). Marvin has God only as Primordial (M 75); there is no hint of the Consequent Nature or of physical feelings for God. Thus, those notions may well have been introduced in May or June of 1928, just before the lectures were given. However, Ford also suggests that "physical feelings and individualized data did not become features of Whitehead's system until the final revisions, when feelings and prehensions could be identified. That was not possible until the concept of 'negative prehensions' could be invented.” (EWM 219) The first claim appears to be problematical, if the "final revisions" occurred only after the Gifford Lectures were given (EWM 211 ff.). On 12/8/27, Marvin has "prehensions" divided into "positive=Feelings; negative=Exclusions" (M 70). In the following lecture (12/10/27) Whitehead describes "enacted feelings" as "carrying on into the present of the feelings of the past. There is conformity in these sheer physical feelings." (M 72) In support of Ford's view, however, the terms "simple," "pure," and "hybrid" physical feeling do not appear in Marvin. Ford believes that a number of Whitehead's most characteristic ideas were introduced only after part two was completed. More of the concepts he lists as being in "the final revisions" are propositional feelings, intellectual feelings, and subjective aim as providing unity of the actual entity. The fact that none of these terms appear in the Marvin notes would support that analysis. The index of terms not mentioned will be helpful in making these detailed comparisons. The preceding analyses may suggest how the indexed Marvin notes may be helpful. They are here presented in their entirety. iii Notes 1. I have corrected only obvious typographical errors in the notes, not attempting to fill in blanks or question marks left by Marvin. In a very few places, where I believe the typescript has an incorrect term, I have inserted a term and question mark in braces {}. I have kept the pagination of the typescript, and have included all the diagrams. (Special thanks to Katherine Lucas, a student worker at the College of Saint Benedict, who drew in most of the diagrams.) 2. Throughout this Introduction I will use “M” to refer to the Marvin notes. 3. In the Marvin notes, the term “subjective aim” is mentioned only once, on 3/27/28: “Final cause is the actual entity itself—its own subjective aim of what it is going to be” (M 138). “Ideal” [of itself] is used in M several times, but it does not seem to include the notion of accounting for the unity of the actual entity (cf., EWM 203). 4. Lewis Ford, The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics 1925-1929 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984). I use “EWM” to refer to this book. 5. Cf., M 11/3/27: “Two fluencies: (1) How past enters present; (2) concrescences of the present” (M33). Roselyn Schmitt Professor Emerita of Philosophy College of Saint Benedict Saint Joseph, Minnesota iv Foreword A careful comparison between parts two and three of Process and Reality shows two distinct theories of concrescence. Part two is more conventional: the external world gives rise to a given situation of what is immediately perceived, which is then ordered in subjective experience. Thus there is first a datum generated by the past, from which the concrescence proceeds. Part three is more recognizably Whiteheadian, as it does away with this initial datum for the concrescence, and interprets the causal link with the past in terms of physical prehension, thereby locating all causal activity within the subject. Both the transmission and the ordering are found in the subjective process of concrescence. I have documented this shift, principally in two essays. 1 Although the earlier theory of part two was superseded, Whitehead nevertheless published it as is, as he did for many other superseded theories entertained along the way. While it often leads to confusion in discerning his systematic position, it does enable us to understand how his thought matured in the writing of Process and Reality. This shift in the theory of concrescence, and the invention of the concept of physical prehension, are particularly important steps in the growth of his thought. We can learn a considerable amount from the text itself, but more if this is supplemented by the notes which Edwin L. Marvin has recorded. They may not be as definitive as the text itself, but they can provide us with the most probable date at which a shift occurred, as well as with the sequence of ideas suggesting how it came about. We see this shift occurring most sharply with lecture 29 on December 6, 1927 (67). This considers ‘prehension’ more fully, introducing the notions of positive and negative prehension: “A prehension is either a definite prehension into feeling or into exclusion from feeling.” These are definite features of physical prehension, as revised. To be sure, prehension is mentioned previously (44, 50), but so briefly that it cannot be discerned what kind of prehension is intended. One sentence, however, is quite striking: “Feeling is the prehension of entities admitted to effective prehension” (49). It clearly anticipates positive prehension. It also seems to place prehension within concrescence, whereas on the earlier theory prehension forms the datum from which concrescence flows. The shift appears abrupt in the Marvin notes. The previous lecture (64-66) discussed the familiar theme of part two, namely the subjectivist and sensationalist principles. The next lecture (67) plunges us into the theory of physical prehension, thereby foreshadowing part three. In the last insertions to the text of part two of PR, we can trace several steps: previously feelings feel the datum, now they directly feel past actualities as data. These feelings are identified with prehensions, which changes the nature of prehensions. The distinction between positive and negative prehensions is introduced in order to clarify the relation between prehensions and feelings. 2 In Marvin’s lectures we jump directly to prehensions. Unfortunately, that leaves us with only a little over two weeks until the end of the term on December 22. Even so, the three last lectures were devoted to other topics. Since the spring term was devoted to the philosophy of science, particularly space and time (topics for PR, part four), v there was not much room for the analysis of becoming. Occasionally, however, there were lectures of relevance, such as lecture 38 (86). Its account of universals and particulars may have been prompted by the PR section devoted to that issue (PR II.1.5=PR 48-51), although Whitehead does not present his own position all that clearly in the lectures. In PR, part two, concrescence is prefaced by a datum, signifying all that is given in experience for that occasion. Data are not mentioned. For particular actualities, the data are not ‘given’. Only the datum, strictly speaking, is given, and it comes about by a process of objectification. Thus it is somewhat surprising that data are so frequently mentioned in the lectures, as in: Any general presupposition as to the character of the experiencing subject implies a presupposition about the environment providing data for the subject. A species of subject requires a species of data as its primary phase of concrescence. But such data are just the social environment under the abstraction (perspective) effected by objectification. (56f) The basic theory of PR part two definitely would have datum in the primary phase. Objectification is here understood primarily in terms of perspectival elimination. General scheme of extensiveness qualifies the general set of data out of which we all arise. Data are primary potentialities. (20) Actual entities are the data (not merely provide them). Not formally, but objectively, viz. as they enter into perspective relations dictated by their own internal relations. (17) Objectification does not seem to be a process whereby the many data become the one datum, as in PR, part two, but an arrangement of the data: Objectification is selection--putting some things in the background, others in the foreground. Distinction between universal and particular is blurred for Whitehead. Other actual entities enter the real constitution of any actual entity. Actual entity described in terms of both eternal objects and other actual entities. (17) Again we see how objectification anticipates perspectival elimination. Some issues are presented in a surprisingly different order than in PR. Thus the distinction between transition and concrescence, which first makes its appearance at the end of part two (PR 210), already appears in lecture 4: Two kinds of process 1. Transition from [past] actual entity to an immediate actual entity. “Objectification”--of past actual entity to immediate actual entity. All data are provided by objectification. Causation and perception start from same root--objectification. 2. Concretion (concrescence) whereby one actual entity is built up from its many objective data, and the actual entity is the realizing those many data into one drop of experience. (7) vi Again, the four properties (triviality, vagueness, narrowness, and width), which appear quite early (PR 110-112) are to be found relatively late in the lectures (76). The chapter on “Organisms and Environment” may even be earlier, for it appears to make up a seamless whole with the later sections on perception (PR 117ff), and these seem to be a preliminary study for the Symbolism lectures delivered in April 1927. God is described as the complete conceptual valuation of all possibilities (PR 40). This draws upon earlier thoughts (RM 154). Yet this is an apparent insertion which inaugurates a series of insertions making a preliminary study for the final chapter on “God and the World”. If so, they may have been inserted when part three was almost completed. 3 But its mention in the Marvin notes places it more at the end of part two: The Primordial Actual Entity is a complete conceptual valuation of all possibilities. The eternal nature of God is the relation of all possibilities to each other. God is that part of the actual world which lays down the order that is relevant to the actual entity. God brings eternal objects in relation to the indetermination of the actual entity. (75) I had assumed that the passage outlining a Zeno-like argument for temporal atomicity (PR 68 ff) was made later, when Whitehead was reflecting upon the temporal implications of part three. 4 Marvin’s lectures suggest it was made in the late stages of part two. The earlier position, that the occasion is divisible, but not divided, in evident in an earlier comment: Actual entity is divisible but not divided, eliciting unity of feeling from the standpoint of its region. (27) But he moves to the position that an occasion is not divisible. What was needed was the particular sense in which it was indivisible, which is spelled out in PR such that an act of becoming is “not extensive, in the sense that it is divisible into earlier and later acts of becoming” (PR 69). He makes that same move in the next lecture, although in an aside, with no argument: There is no way of dividing up an actual entity in such a way that the parts are actual entities. (70) vii Notes 1. “The Datum from Which Concrescence Flows: Whitehead’s First Analysis of Becoming,” Process Studies Supplements 7 (2004) at http://www.ctr4process.org/PSS/. Also see “Whatever Happened to Efficient Causation?,” Process Studies 34 (2005): 117-131. 2. See “Whatever Happened to Efficient Causation?” 3. See “The Growth of Whitehead’s Theism,” Process Studies Supplements 2 (1999) at http://www.ctr4process.org/PSS/. 4. See “Locating Atomicity,” Process Studies Supplements 1 (1999) at http://www.ctr4process.org/PSS/. Lewis Ford Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Old Dominion University Norfolk, Virginia 1 Philosophy 3b. The Philosophy of Science. Alfred North Whitehead. Lecture 1. 9/29/27 19th & 20th Century philosophy is outcome of thought of Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant. Santayana--Scepticism and Animal Faith (valuable for its carrying out of Hume’s premises.) Dewey--Experience and Nature (Chs. 1, 2, 3, 4 especially.) Broad--Scientific Thought (Intro., chs. 1 and 2.) Russell--Analysis of Mind --Our Knowledge of the External World --Analysis of Matter Gibson--Locke’s Theory of Knowledge Green and Wilson on Hume N.K. Smith on Kant. (Use to check with.) Prichard on Kant. Bradley--The Notion of Immediate Experience, In Essays on Truth and Reality. The Logic; Appearance and Reality. Difficulties in Philosophy come from the substance-quality notion. It is firmly entrenched in language and tinges all the four basic philosophers. Philosophy tests whether the ideas of science have any relevance in broader fields of experience than the science itself. Read Def. 8 in Newton’s Principia and the adjoined scholium, for a classical cosmology. Plato’s Timaeus, and earlier cosmology, is nearer Whitehead’s view than Newton’s Scholium. Galileo’s dialogues on the Two Systems of the World. Burtt--The Metaphysical Foundations of Physics.