Process thought holds that there is divine input, continuous but variable divine influence, in every new moment for all the natural unities throughout the universe. Such influence (Whitehead calls them “initial aims”) is variable because each individual is unique and the aim must take into account the gestalt of each unique perspective and so tailor it that there is some measure of harmony in the creative advance of all the countless entities. If this is the case, the complexity of what God accomplishes moment by moment is beyond astonishing!
This makes possibility possible—but not unlimited possibility. There is what may be called the order of actualization.
Chimpanzees cannot evolve directly from cockroaches, or Einstein could not have suddenly showed up among the ancient Sumerians. The technology of the aerospace industry presupposes many other more basic technologies that must precede the advent of airplanes or space shuttles. Far from our possibilities being unlimited or infinite, we humans are constrained within the limits of this order of actualization. What even God can accomplish in any new moment is largely, but not completely, determined by what has been accomplished in preceding moments.
This does not mean that great, wonderful, and even astonishing things cannot happen; what it does mean is that a certain level of continuity seems to be the general rule. Process thought does allow for what are called “saltations” (or “big jumps”) in evolutionary theory, in the history of ideas, in personal transformation, and in healing. But analysis will reveal an underlying continuity even here so as to avoid any suggestion of “supernatural” events.
Also, in creative breakthroughs, a fortuitous symbolism sometimes seems to point the way:
It was an image of the uroborus, the snake swallowing its own tail, presented to him while he was in a light doze, that gave Friedrich Kekulé the key to the hitherto elusive structure of the benzene molecule. Archimedes has his famous “Eureka” experience while soaking in a tub of hot water. The insight that enabled Elias Howe to invent the sewing machine came in a nightmare when he was chased by cannibals wielding spears with a hole in the tip. It was not while racking his brain in the lab, but as he was walking down a spiral staircase at Oxford that James Watson intuitively glimpsed the spiral shape of DNA.
Democritus first conceived the atomic structure of reality upon smelling the aroma of freshly baked bread.
In light of his considerable research into creativity, Csikszentmihalyi gives a lot of credit to sheer luck, and although some people make the claim that “there are no accidents,” I sometimes feel the distinct presence of a Joker in nature’s deck of cards.
Here’s a quote from Alfie:
“There are thus four creative phases in which the universe accomplishes its actuality. There is first the phase of conceptual origination, deficient in actuality, but infinite in its adjustment of valuation. Secondly, there is the temporal phase of physical origination, with its multiplicity of actualities. In this phase full actuality is attained; but there is deficiency in the solidarity of individuals with each other. This phase derives its determinate conditions from the first phase. Thirdly, there is the phase of perfected actuality, in which the many are one everlastingly, without the qualification of any loss either of individual identity or of completeness of unity. In everlastingness, immediacy is reconciled with objective immortality. This phase derives the conditions of its being from the two antecedent phases. In the fourth phase, the creative action completes itself. For the perfected actuality passes back into the temporal world, and qualifies this world so that each temporal actuality includes it as an immediate fact of relevant experience. For the kingdom of heaven is with us today. The action of the fourth phase is the love of God for the world. It is the particular providence for particular occasions. What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world.
“In this sense, God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands.”
—Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 351-52.
HyC