Nature and Life
Alfred North Whitehead’s Nature and Life critiques mechanistic materialism by framing nature and life as inseparable phases of creative advance—a cosmic process where actual entities (dynamic experiential units) evolve through prehensive synthesis, integrating physical, biological, and mental dimensions. He rejects bifurcation of nature, arguing that life emerges from nature’s rhythmic organism—interconnected events governed by eternal objects (timeless potentials like mathematical forms) actualized via subjective aims. Central is the theory of organism, where even inorganic matter exhibits proto-life through self-enjoyment—an entity’s intrinsic capacity to unify relations into novel concrescences. Whitehead’s extensive continuum redefines spacetime as a relational matrix where causal efficacy (historical influence) and presentational immediacy (sensory immediacy) cohere through symbolic reference. He dismantles vacuous actuality—treating matter as inert—by positing creative transformation as nature’s essence. Though condensed, this work deepened process philosophy’s interdisciplinary reach, influencing biosemiotics (Hoffmeyer’s sign-based biology), ecological ethics, and systems theory, while challenging reductionist paradigms in science and philosophy.
