In what follows our purpose is to make clear the reasons which lie back of Whitehead's appeal to eternal objects in his explanation of the emergence of actual entities and to show that so long as one operates within his scheme of ideas no other consistent explanation is available. A thoroughgoing reconstruction of the scheme is necessary if this presupposition is to be eliminated. If the project is successful, it will be demonstrated that the theory of actual entities provides no (...) basis for the explanation of the emergence of novel things, which is one of the major tenets of the organic philosophy. The argument will develop by way of an analysis of the theory of “physical relatedness.”. (shrink)

The most satisfactory way of isolating the specific issues with which this paper is concerned is by way of a brief summary of the theory and its internal development. The development of the theory embodies two major movements. These are: an analysis of what the author considers the typical perceptual experience, “a perceptual situation”, and the projection of a theory of the physical world on the basis of the results derived. We may consider these in order.

The most direct manner of formulating the objective of this paper is to consider some passages in which Whitehead states the conception of the “subject” espoused by the organic philosophy.“The subjectivist principle is that the whole universe consists of elements disclosed in the analysis of the experiences of subjects.” “The reformed subjectivist principle adopted by the philosophy of organism...” is “... that apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness.”.