Philosophy of Organism

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Philosophy of Organism or Organic Realism is how Alfred North Whitehead described his metaphysics. It is now known as process philosophy.

Central to this school is the idea of concrescence. Concrescence means growing together (com/con from Latin for "together", crescence from Latin crescere/cret- grow), the present is given by a consense of subjective forms. We are multiple individuals, but there are also multiple individual agents of consciousness operant in the construction of the given. Marvin Minsky calls this the "society of mind" in his book Society of Mind.

Whitehead's "subjective forms" complement "eternal objects" in his metaphysical system; eternal objects being entities not unlike Plato's archetypal Forms. In Process and Reality, Whitehead proposes that his 'organic realism' be used in place of classical materialism.

References

• Agar, W. E. 1936. 'Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism an Introduction for Biologists'. The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 11, No. 1: 16-34.
• Whitehead, Alfred North. 1997. Science and the Modern World. Free Press.
• Whitehead, Alfred North. 1979, (2nd Ed.) Process and Reality:(Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28). Free Press.

See also

Organicism

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