Process As the Unifying Principle of Physical Reality (Part 2.2)
“The whole doctrine of the future is to be understood in terms of the account of the process of self-completion of each individual occasion.” [247] This process of self-completion can be characterized as the passage of an actual occasion from an initial stage of “re-enaction” of the past, through an intermediate stage “constituted by the acquisition of novel content,” [248] to a final phase which is an occasion’s anticipation of itself as “re-enacted” in the future.
The first stage, that of the re-enaction of the past, is a particular occasion’s “enjoyment of the past as alive in itself.” [249] In this phase, the present occasion creates itself in conformity with the necessities inherent in the constitution of the objective actualities of the past. It is through this creation of itself, based on and in accordance with the objective datum of the past, that an actual occasion re-enacts the past, embodies it, and gives it present life.
The second stage of an occasion’s process of self-completion is constituted by the acquisition of novel content. This novel content is “composed of conceptual feelings which become integrated with [the] physical feelings of antecedent occasions.” [248] These conceptual feelings are “the individual contribution of the immediate subject for the re-shaping of its primary phase of re-enaction into its final phase of anticipation.” [248] Thus, while an actual occasion creates itself in accordance with the objective datum of the past, it introduces, of itself, novel conceptual feeling. These novel conceptual feelings, when integrated with the objective datum of the past, cause a re-shaping of that past into a novel datum for the occasion’s final phase of self-completion, the phase of anticipation.
The final stage of the self-completion of an actual occasion “is a propositional realization of the essence of the present-subject, in respect to the necessities which it lays upon the future to embody it and to re-enact it so far as compatibility may permit.” [248] The anticipatory propositions involved in this stage of the process “concern the constitution of the present occasion and the necessities inherent in it.” [249] Of the necessities inherent in the constitution of the present occasion, one is that it be transcended by the creative urge (the perpetual drive toward novelty).
This transcendence of the present occasion by the creative urge, inherent in the constitution of the present occasion, necessitates that there be a future which follows it. In this way, the final stage of the self-completion of an actual occasion, the stage of anticipation, is characterized by the occasion’s “enjoyment of itself as alive in the future.” [249] Consequently, the future is immanent in the present through the present subject’s own process of self-completion, through its own propositional realization of itself as re-enacted in the immediate future.
Power up and Steem on!