Abstract

Many readers of Process and Reality have felt the absence of a robust theory of efficient causation in Whitehead’s final position. There have been numerousremedies proposed, including Whitehead’s own , but all of them fail to make what to me is a crucial distinction between creative and noncreative forms of activity. The activity of the superject, the basis for causal activity, is derived from the creativity of concrescence, but is itself noncreative.It is simply the impress of the past, lacking in itself any genuine novelty