September 1, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The following poem is constructed entirely from Sections VI-XI from Chapter III (“The Order of Nature”) in Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality. To create the poem, I simply chose sections of text from Whitehead’s own words. Therefore, none of the remaining words are mine, I have merely excerpted and arranged them with a few added symbols. I like think that Whitehead would appreciate a mathematical-leaning poem, its own vector of sorts.
VECTOR
I
‘specialization’ = (complexity + strictly conditioned stability);
unspecialized society = – structural pattern.
Intensity is mated
with survival.
II
The close association of all physical bodies
suggests that development of mentality
is characteristic of the actual occasions
which make up the structured societies
which we know as ‘material bodies.’
III
Subjective aim
originates novelty
to match the novelty
of the environment.
The cell
is an animal body.
IV
Life is a bid for freedom:
an enduring entity binds
any one of its occasions
to the line of its ancestry.
Life cannot be
a defining characteristic. It is
the name for originality,
and not for tradition.
Life: reaction
adapted to capture of intensity
dictated by the present
not by the past
the clutch at vivid
immediacy.
V
In the case of living societies
interplay
takes the form
of robbery.
Life is robbery.
At this point
morals become acute.
The robber
requires justification.
The complexity
of nature
is inexhaustible.
VI
life = conceptual novelty
life = novelty
life = originality
life ≠ tradition
