For Whitehead the universe is not a competitive arena for rugged individualists but a close-knit web of intimate social relationships, so close-knit, in fact, that every item in the universe is involved in the concrescence of each actual entity. In the initial phase of concrescence, an actual entity takes account of, or prehends, all other actual entities in its immediate past. As Whitehead says,
In fact if we allow for degrees of relevance, and for negligible relevance, we must say that every actual entity is present in every other actual entity. The philosophy of organism is mainly devoted to the task of making clear the notion of ‘being present in another entity.’ (PR 50)
Actual entities are internally related, which means that the relations are essential and constitutive of what each actual entity becomes. To the question, what are actual entities made of—the reply is that they are made of other actual entities, plus what they achieve by self-completion. And so, another aspect of what is meant by the word “process” is to say that reality is a social process.
Whitehead repeatedly insists that the entire universe conspires to create each new actual entity:
The whole world conspires to produce a new creation. It presents to the creative process its opportunities and its limitations. (RM 113)
In the first place, no event can be wholly and solely the cause of another event. The whole antecedent world conspires to produce a new occasion. (MT 164)
Each task of creation is a social effort, employing the whole universe. (PR 223)
If Whitehead is right about this, and also about saying that every actual entity prehends all other actual entities in its immediate past, and this entails that they be present, in their objectified state, in that actual entity, this has a startling implication.
Indeed, philosopher Jorge Luis Nobo takes us for a quantum leap by pointing out that Whitehead’s adventurous thinking along these lines anticipates the holographic paradigm. In this light, every actual entity is revealed to contain a “metaphysical hologram” of the entire universe; and thus Nobo says:
“. . . the metaphysical chronology and topology of the universe are forever captured and enshrined in . . . its actual occasions.”
Noting that the universe is never at a standstill, Nobo qualifies what he means:
[The universe so captured], it must be noted, is a fleeting momentary state of the universe, which, nevertheless, is permanently captured in the crystallized modal structure of [an actual entity’s] own extensive standpoint.
Thus, the holographic conception of reality—the conception which physicist David Bohm, psychologist Karl Pribram, and other contemporary scientists are beginning to find so illuminating in their respective disciplines—has been an essential, but generally unacknowledged, ingredient of Whitehead’s metaphysical thought since 1924, if not earlier. (WM 327)
Nobo pushes the envelope even further:
. . . the causal objectification of each occasion in [an actual entity’s] immediate past presents for [that actual entity] the entire history of the universe up to the birth of the occasion in question, thereby leaving out only some of the information concerning the complete determinateness of its own contemporaries. (WM 328)
And so each momentary throb of actuality constellates within itself a replication, in marvelous miniature, of the entire universe, showing how all things are interdependent, interwoven together in a wonderful pattern of connectedness, a pattern linking all things together in dynamic relatedness.
Not only does an actual entity contain the whole of the past universe, it pervades the whole of the future by passing on what it achieves, an achievement that will be taken account of, or prehended, by all subsequent entities. As a holographic entity, each fleeting pulse of experience is Alpha and Omega, with prehensive roots stretching all the way back to the primordial flaring forth of the universe fifteen billion years ago, and branches of influence reaching forward into the future . . . for as long as forever is.
Of course, some of our poets, especially those of a mystical turn of mind, have been telling us this all along. For example, William Blake begins one of his poems with these lines:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
But even though some mystical poets have glimpsed this, it was left to Whitehead to formulate this penetrating insight into a rigorous metaphysical system that stands up to the rational criteria of consistency, coherence, applicability, and adequacy.
Our Buddhist friends have a wonderful image of the holographic universe. They call it The Jewel Net of Indra.
It pictures the cosmos as an infinite network of glittering jewels, all different. In each one we can see the images of all the others reflected. Each image contains an image of all the other jewels; and also the image of the images of the images, and so ad infinitum. The myriad reflections within each jewel are the essence of the jewel itself, without which it cannot exist. Thus, every part of the cosmos reflects, and brings into existence, every other part.
And thus an actual entity is a holographic entity whose datum is the boundless universe itself, stretching to the farthest reaches of intergalactic space and back to the beginning of time. If this is true of an actual entity, then it must also be true of our own momentary occasions of experience. This means that the entire universe, as a metaphysical hologram, flashes forth in our unconscious experience a dozen or so times every second.
Key to Abbreviations
PR Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. Corrected Edition. Ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.
RM Whitehead, Alfred North. Religion in the Making.
MT Whitehead, Alfred North. Modes of Thought.
WM Nobo, Jorge Luis. Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity.
HyC