Process Studies

What bearing did the works of Whitehead have on the late Merleau-Ponty and his emerging ontology of flesh? When gauged by analysis of citations alone, Whitehead’s influence on Merleau-Ponty appears to be a brief and minor encounter. However, despite the paucity of explicit reference to Whitehead, there is an argument to be made that Whitehead’s philosophy played a pivotal role in the development of Merleau-Ponty’s late thought. This can be understood in relation to Whitehead’s theory of education, which consists of three stages: romance, precision, and generalization. It will also be shown how Whitehead’s theory of education corresponds to Merleau-Ponty’s incomplete phenomenological reduction. From this, we are provided with access to a metaphenomenological reading of Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre, which can be understood as an ongoing movement between phenomenology and ontology, a movement in which Whitehead’s thought played a significant—if largely “invisible”—role.

Whitehead’s position regarding God’s power is rather unique in the philosophical and theological landscape. Whitehead rejects divine omnipotence (unlike Aquinas), yet he claims (unlike Hans Jonas) that God’s persuasive power is required for everything to exist and occur. This intriguing position is the subject of this article. The article starts with an exploration of Aquinas’s reasoning toward God’s omnipotence. This will be followed by a close examination of Whitehead’s own position, starting with an introduction to his philosophy of organism and its two-sided concept of God. Thereupon, an analysis of Whitehead’s idiosyncratic view on God’s agency will show that, according to this conception, God and the world depend upon each other, and that God’s agency is a noncoercive but persuasive power. The difference between coercion and persuasion will be explained as well as the reason why God, according to Whitehead’s conception, cannot possibly coerce. Finally, a discussion of the issue of divine almightiness will allow for a reinterpretation of divine almightiness from a Whiteheadian perspective, which will show how, despite Whitehead’s rejection of God’s omnipotence, his concept retains essential elements of God as pantokrator (and thus markedly differs from Hans Jonas’s concept).

This article analyzes David Hume’s influential critique of worship from a process point of view informed by the thought of Whitehead and Hartshorne.

The present article illustrates the well-known affinity between Whitehead’s process philosophy and Chinese thought by mapping the category of the ultimate and the categories of existence in Whitehead’s categoreal scheme onto the Taiji and Bagua diagrams as developed in The Book of Changes, or I Ching. The Taiji-Bagua diagrams are models of organic unity that provide a framework and structure to better understand the category of the ultimate and the categories of existence—particularly how these categories are related to each other. They illustrate more clearly the coherent nature of Whitehead’s speculative philosophy as stated in Process and Reality.

A thorough appreciation of the Whiteheadian subjectivist principle necessitates both a doctrine of panexperientialism as well as a metaphysical perspectivism. Employing a dialectical analysis of these two, this article argues that reality—as understood by the Whiteheadian term “actual world”—is largely misunderstood. Far from representing a singular concrete world, reality is multiplicitous and subject-dependent. As a result of this and the core tenet of process metaphysics—that all existents can be understood as event—it is argued that human language, as its own species of event, interacts with reality in the same way all other events do, and as such must be considered genuinely ontologically creative.

This article is an extension to a theory of the present based on a model of mind and brain that began with studies of disorders of language in cases of focal brain damage and the analysis of symptoms in general neuropsychology. These studies developed into a model of the mind/brain state and its relevance to most of the central problems in speculative psychology and philosophy of mind. A new interpretation of the aphasias in relation to brain process and the application of this interpretation to the dynamic structure of action (in which phases in word and act production are mapped onto evolutionary patterns in forebrain growth) was extended to an account of perceptual disorders and a theory of normal perception that involved a radical revision of classical perception theory (see Brown, “Microgenetic”). In effect, by turning the standard account of object formation upside down, the process of object development could be aligned with that of act and language formation, such that all cognitive systems could be framed in terms of a unitary model of brain and mental process. The scope of application was such that it constituted a Bauplan or general model for the organization of mentality and the nervous system that led, organically, to a theory of the mind/brain state, then to the nature of process, change, and subjective time. Since the account was based on symptoms in relation to evolutionary concepts, it was essential to work out a theory of symptom formation, which gave rise to a more comprehensive view of the link between microgenesis and phylo-ontogeny.

The association of God with eternity, and eternity with timelessness, harms Christian spiritual life. If eternity is superior to time, then God’s placement of human beings within time is ungenerous. Fortunately, the Christian concept of God as triune commends divine becoming through time. In particular, the social Trinitarian view that God is three persons united through love demands divine temporality. Relationality relies on change for its content. So, for God to be internally related, God must be internally timeful. Moreover, to assert that the Trinitarian persons relate through time places a high value on human relationships. Created in the image of God, we are called to create ever-closer community through time. This effort sanctifies time, rendering kairos of chronos. Kairos is the experience of time as sacred, whereas chronos is the experience of time as purposeless. For the three persons of the Trinity, all time is kairos. For us, every moment contains the potential for kairos because God sustains the universe continually. Through faith, the moment-by-moment progression of time can become the grace-by-grace gift of God.

I call "material continuation" the fact of one material thing or event being followed by another in time. In this article, I address the question why material continuation obtains, as it seems to do. Johanna Seibt's theory of dynamism promises to explain material continuation by reference to Aristotle's concept of energeia. I argue that her account fails to explain how one thing at one time might be followed by another at another

The present article challenges the bifurcation of the world established by Kant, a bifurcation that continues to plague contemporary thinking about science, religion, and morality. This challenge is aided by Whitehead's alternative worldview.

I summarize here the recent scientific achievements exploring the causal chain of solar activity. Following the causal chain has led to a novel comprehensive picture, including system-level regulation of local processes, such as the mass fiows in the solar interior I call attention to some crucial aspects of solar activity and present a series of facts that demand a revision of the old picture, according to which the Sun is a mere "hot ball of gas." For example, the magnetic changes of solar activity are accelerated more than a billion times faster in comparison to theoretical expectations. The closer aspects of the comprehensive picture show that the mass fiows accelerating magnetic changes deviate significantly from their physically prescribed behavior corresponding to the given physical conditions of the solar interior. I argue that they must be orchestrated in a highly sophisticated manner. Another novel aspect that has been found is that the dynamo process is not enough to give an account of the magnetic cycle, since a regulative factor is needed to make the dynamo a machine. I show that the existence of a machine within the Sun introduces novel conceptual issues transcending the conceptualframework of physics. The novel problems have guided my search for the ultimate causes of solar activity toward biology. I present arguments showing the difference between the thermodynamic behavior of far-from-equilibrium open systems and the non-physical behavior of solar activity initiated by biological causes determining and organizing quantum uncertainties. Remarkably, the results fit adequately with the Whiteheadean view of organizational duality and show that the Sun can be regarded as a compound individual

Theodicy wrestles with suffering and pain, while seeking to understand God's engagement with these realities. Cancer raises similar questions, while focusing on specific aspects of those questions. Cancer appears to challenge many aspects of Christian doctrine, in particular issues regarding the origin of sin, Christology, and ultimately ones doctrine of God. This article explores how my own personal diagnosis of colon cancer has led to an exploration and re-evaluation of these traditional doctrines and their relevance for my own faith journey. The realities of cancer, and random cell mutation as an evolutionary driver, appear to call into question traditional understandings of the origin of suffering and sin, and, I would argue, the very role of Jesus. A process theology that redefines core features of the nature of God is proposed as one way of addressing these doctrines and their impact for faith. These features will note the limited nature of God with regard to power and knowledge as well as the nature of a God who truly risks.

The current ecological and global crises call us to reexamine our understanding of ourselves, our relationships, and the world in which we live together as well as the values that shape and determine our mutual participation within this shared world process. This article engages the dynamic relationship between the thought and writings of C. G. Jung and A. N. Whitehead, two insightful contemplative visionaries, exploring the philosophical and spiritual vision that arises from this interaction, with special attention to the emergence of principles and values that might serve as guides for reflection, evolution, and mutual understanding.

In this article I argue against the claim that "actual entity" and "actual occasion" are synonymous in Whitehead. My examination of these terms will help to illuminate the role of "society" in Whitehead's philosophy and to prepare the way for a fruitful comparison of process thought and contemporary systems theory in the sciences.