Process Studies Supplement 2004 Issue 6
The Datum from Which Concrescence Flows: Whitehead’s First Analysis of Becoming
Lewis S. Ford
By Whitehead’s first analysis of becoming, I refer to the theory of transition and concrescence in part two of Process and Reality, which was superseded by the final theory of concrescence in part three.
By becoming I do not here mean simple change, as in “the leaf becoming red.” I mean rather the coming into being of an event which heretofore had no being. Enduring substances come into being by some initiatory event. Thus the becoming of a substance is based on the being of an event. In this case, however, we wish to investigate the becoming of an event. This is not the same as its being, which is its happening. Rather, we wish to examine how that happening comes into being. This is rarely undertaken.
In its most radical form becoming means the coming into being of that which had no prior being. Theologians consider this in terms of creation ex nihilo. While they reason from the implications of this idea, they tend to treat it as an unanalyzable surd, resisting all further analysis. The coming into being of substances from other beings is sometimes considered, but not the coming into being of events.
Usually no distinction is made between that which initiates a particular enduring substance and that which alters it in some respect during its career. In both cases efficient causes are at work. In Whitehead’s case, however, efficient causes are only effective during phases of becoming. Their impact upon the occasion’s being is mediated by means of its becoming.
This concern for becoming is idiosyncratic to Whitehead’s undertaking. First, we shall consider why he devoted so much of part two to the analysis of becoming (section 1). Next we shall put forth the various phases of this first analysis (sections 4-7). Because these phases differ from the phases of part three of Process and Reality, they will be largely unfamiliar to our readers. In particular the datum here refers to a datum for the entire concrescence, not to the datum of an individual prehension. Finally we shall examine a related issue: what led him to revise this theory in the direction of the final theory developed in part three (sections 8 and 9).
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