KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA1 (Muller)

Commentary 25

WHITEHEAD'S METAPHYSICAL VIEW OF TIME AND SPACE
by Peter Mutnick
2 July 2000, posted 1 August 2000

<1>
I deem the following to be an extremely quintessential passage from "Process and Reality" concerning Whitehead's view of time and space in relation to the subjective process of the genesis of an actual entity. To my mind, this passage demonstrates all the features of the metaphysical view and cannot be consistently interpreted from any other point of view. Following the passage, I have copied an exchange at a recent Whitehead conference between Jorge Luis Nobo, a prominent Whitehead scholar, and Henry P. Stapp, a world-class physicist. Nobo's answers to Stapp's questions misrepresent Whitehead and obscure an otherwise promising line of inquiry. Einstein's abiding instinct was that the deepest secrets must involve space and time themselves, and Whitehead is the one who, above all others, may have had a deep enough insight into them to forge the synthesis with quantum theory. I intend to build a new theory upon this foundation.

Process and Reality; Part IV, The Theory of Extension; Chapter I, Coordinate Division; Section I (pgs. 283-4 in the Corrected Edition):

<2>
There are two distinct ways of 'dividing' the satisfaction of an actual entity into component feelings, genetically and coordinately. Genetic division is division of the concrescence; coordinate division is division of the concrete. In the 'genetic' mode, the prehensions are exhibited in their genetic relationship to each other. The actual entity is seen as a process; there is a growth from phase to phase; there are processes of integration and of reintegration. At length a complex unity of objective datum is obtained, in the guise of a contrast of actual entities, eternal objects, and propositions, felt with corresponding complex unity of subjective form. This genetic passage from phase to phase is not in physical time: the exactly converse point of view expresses the relationship of concrescence to physical time. In can be put shortly by saying, that physical time expresses some features of the growth, but *not* the growth of the features. The final complete feeling is the 'satisfaction.'

<3>
Physical time makes its appearance in the 'coordinate' analysis of the 'satisfaction.' The actual entity is the enjoyment of a certain quantum of physical time. But the genetic process is not the temporal succession: such a view is exactly what is denied by the epochal theory of time. Each phase in the genetic process presupposes the entire quantum, and so does each feeling in each phase. The subjective unity dominating the process forbids the division of that extensive quantum which originates with the primary phase of the subjective aim. The problem dominating the concrescence is the actualization of the quantum *in solido.* The quantum is the standpoint in the extensive continuum which is consonant with the subjective aim in its original derivation from God. Here 'God' is that actuality in the world, in virtue of which there is physical 'law.'

<4>
There is a spatial element in the quantum as well as a temporal element. Thus the quantum is an extensive region. This region is the determinate basis which concrescence presupposes. This basis governs the objectifications of the actual world which are possible for the novel concrescence. The coordinate divisibility of the satisfaction is the 'satisfaction' considered in its relationship to the divisibility of this region.

<5>
The concrescence presupposes its basic region, and not the region its concrescence. Thus the subjective unity of the concrescence is irrelevant to the divisibility of the region. In dividing the region we are ignoring the subjective unity which is inconsistent with such division. But the region is, after all, divisible, although in the genetic growth it is undivided.

<6>
So this divisible character of the undivided region is reflected into the character of the satisfaction. When we divide the satisfaction coordinately we do not find feelings which *are* separate, but feelings which *might be* separate. In the same way, the divisions of the region are not divisions which *are*; they are divisions which *might be.* Each such mode of division of the extensive region yields 'extensive quanta': also an 'extensive quantum' has been termed a 'standpoint.' This notion of a standpoint must now be explained.

<7>
The notion has reference to three allied doctrines. First there is the doctrine of 'the actual world' as receiving its definition from the immediate concrescent activity in question. Each actual entity arises out of its own peculiar actual world. Secondly, there is the doctrine of each actual world as a 'medium.' According to this doctrine, if S be the concrescent subject in question, and A and B be two actual entities in its actual world, then either A is in the actual world of B, or B is in the actual world of A, or A and B are contemporaries. If, for example, A be in the actual world of B, then for the immediate subject S there are (1) the direct objectification of A in S, and (2) the indirect objectification by reason of the chain of objectification, A in B and B in S. Such chains can be extended to any length by the inclusion of many intermediate actualities between A and S.

<8>
Thirdly, it is to be noticed that 'decided' conditions are never such as to banish freedom. They only qualify it. There is always a contingency left open for immediate decision. This consideration is exemplified by an indetermination respecting '*the* actual world' which is to decide the conditions for an immediately novel concrescence. These are alternatives as to its determination which are left over for immediate decision. Some actual entities may be *either* in the settled past, *or* in the contemporary nexus, *or* even left to the undecided future, according to immediate decision. Also the indirect chains of successive objectification will be modified according to such choice. These alternatives are represented by the indecision as to the particular quantum of extension to be chosen for the basis of the novel concrescence.

<9>
The following is the exchange between Nobo and Stapp, which indicates to my mind the failure of any non-metaphysical interpretation of Whitehead, such as Nobo's, to penetrate the great mystery which Whitehead has set before us. Although Nobo recognizes the need for the metaphysical, he does not seem to have any knowledge concerning the actual structure of the metaphysical reality. This knowledge is an open secret - it has been the unrecognized subject of Western philosophy for some time now. Without employing it, Nobo's approach remains flat and sterile, although he is more or less barking up the right tree. Whitehead himself almost certainly understood this metaphysical knowledge and assumed it in all his writings. The exchange is at: http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/, listed under "wh3.txt."

<10>
C41Nobo - (Request to make his comment now before leaving to give presentation in conflicting session) Very quickly, on the issue of an actual entity deciding where it comes to be, that may be Hartshorne but it's not Whitehead. It's determined by the past and specifically by at least one actual entity in the immediate past.

Stapp - Some entity in the past decides where this entity is going to be?

Nobo-right, so what's the past?

Whitehead as I interpret him has a cumulative theory of actuality. Once a region of this continuum becomes determinate it remains determinate. Because of that it can function in later occasions where this wholistic process projects the information of that entity into later entities. It's a very redundant system because the information that has been accumulated is constantly being projected into every new eventity or actual occasion which then ? But part of its process of becoming involves a structural determination that has a causal effect on where in extension, as far as where in a supersessional order, it's the next.

Stapp - So an event itself has no input into where it's going to be; it's already fixed where it's going to be?

Nobo - That is correct. The event is begotten by the universe with a partial determination and a complete succession and, in the act of completing itself, it anticipates at least one successor but it can anticipate more than one so you can have splitting of world lines and you can also have coalescences of world lines. I would like you to consider the possibility that there is such a thing as a metaphysical double cone of which the light cone is a subset and that, until quantum physics, the metaphysical cone has been irrelevant. But when you have to deal with quantum physics there's a possibility that now the metaphysical cone becomes important? It's just like the light cone. It's got a past, a future, and an elsewhere region for contemporaries. There has to be a frame of reference. Relative to that frame of reference there will be events such that one is earlier than the other but they are all contemporaries with the frame of reference. You have the same thing but it doesn't depend on light which is a special case depending on local causation. I do agree with what you said about modifying Whitehead and this is one of the modifications that we need to make. There's a difference between causal objectification and conformation that tends to be ignored in the interpretation of Whitehead but going beyond that I think Whitehead goofed when he said that an actual entity has to conform to every entity in the past. If it only conforms to some, then that conformation relation is what is going to give you local causality requiring contiguity and so forth. But the relational causal objectification is going to give you what appears to be, what is in a sense, instantaneous communication. And there is a way in which we can have some information about contemporaries metaphysically because they are anticipated by their antecedent events. I'm very excited about this but now I have to formalize that.

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Nobo - My interpretation is based on Whitehead's but we disagree as to whether he means determinate actuality or their potentialities, their extensive?

C45 Stapp - You're saying that the regions are predetermined though. Right? Where the event is going to occur.

Nobo - No, they're not predetermined until an actual event determines where a successor is going to be.

Stapp - No, but once a bunch of things have occurred, they're going to determine, for example, where the next events are going to occur, though not necessarily what's going to happen, but definitely where they're going to occur, at least in a projective sense.

(Nobo - yes)

Although this is not a very definitive probing of Nobo's views, it implies I believe that according to Nobo the extensive region of a present actual entity is determined by past actual entities *at the very beginning* of the present entity's becoming. How then does this jive with Whitehead's statement that "Physical time makes its appearance in the 'coordinate' analysis of the 'satisfaction'"? The satisfaction, BTW, is the *final* phase of an actual entity's process of becoming. Or when Nobo affirms that "an event itself has no input into where it's going to be; it's already fixed where it's going to be," how does this jive with Whitehead's own extraordinary statement in the last paragraph above to the effect that the present entity decides upon the objective conditions which determine its quantum of extension? In other words, the actual world does not deterministically decide the quantum of extension, because the present entity has freedom in deciding, in the course of its process of becoming, what its actual world will be.

In the resolution of these paradoxes the real subtleties and metaphysical depth of Whitehead's system are revealed and its potential to serve as a model for a complete and final theory of physics. To my knowledge, the only Whitehead scholar who even began to appreciate the importance of metaphysics to Whitehead's system was William Ernest Hocking, a Harvard philosophy professor and personal friend of Whitehead. Lewis Ford, Jorge Luis Nobo, and almost all the present pundits really have no clue as to what Whitehead was talking about and cannot present views that are at all self-consistent or meaningful. Lewis Ford's primary strategy is to clear the deck of all the seeming contradictions he cannot explain by hyper-historical analysis, while Nobo attempts to promote half-truths by sugar coating them with pseudo-enthusiasm, as we have seen here. The notion of a "metaphysical" cone to replace the light cone, about which Nobo is so excited, is a falsification of the profound truth that past, present, and future constitute an essentially subjective domain, representing being, becoming, and nothing, long before they become phenomenally objective as the light cone, expressing the causality conditions within the spacetime continuum. Lacking real metaphysical insight, Whitehead's full gnosis must seem like gibberish to the present pundits, and they spew forth endless gibberish in the conviction that they are emulating Whitehead. Needless to say, such is not the case. But time will tell whose gibberish is profound truth and whose is just gibberish.

I discussed this with Henry Stapp, and I think we have at least this much consensus: that Whitehead's work in its present form is basically of little interest to physicists and that it is either gibberish or an inaccessible system of great complexity and subtlety that is inexpressible in any simple form. Henry has chosen to abandon the study of Whitehead and I have vowed to discover the ultimate theory of mathematical physics his work foreshadows. But I undertake this almost impossible task only because I have the necessary prerequisite (I.Q. over 200) and preparation (33 years of telepathic contact with the Christ, who is the true White head or head of the White Brotherhood). For any mere mortal intelligence, the task would be factually impossible. By recognizing this, Henry Stapp actually demonstrates a high degree of intelligence and wisdom in contradistinction to the folly of those who are attempting to make an institutional religion out of Whitehead.

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Peter Mutnick