Humanity, Divinity, and the Future: Five Whiteheadian Transitions

Humanity, Divinity, and the Future Five Whiteheadian Transitions Andrew M. Davis Our civilizational precarity is philosophical in nature. It has to do with ideas and the way in which ideas find expression in our lives, societies, and planetary ecologies. We cannot ultimately progress as a civilization without recourse to a vision of the nature and character of things—not only of who and what we are, but also of who and what “God” is. This existential and theological endeavor assumes the importance of philosophy to civilizational development and survival. As Whitehead rightly states “a philosophical outlook is the very foundation of thought and of life. The sort of ideas we attend to, and the sort of ideas which we push into the negligible background, govern our hopes, our fears, our control of behaviour. As we think, we live. This is why the assemblage of philosophic ideas is more than a specialist study. It moulds our type of civilization.” Whitehead, Modes of Thought, 63 While certainly critical of theology, Whitehead did not dismiss its historical contributions to philosophical and scientific inquiry. In fact, he thought it misguided to do so, saying “It is customary to undervalue theology in a secular history of philosophical thought. This is a mistake, since for a period of about thirteen hundred years the ablest of thinkers were mostly theologians.” Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 129 Whitehead stresses that theological assumptions helped stimulate the emergence of modern science with its “faith” in a rational cosmos and its unflinching commitment to truth as an axiological presupposition. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 4, 13; “First Lecture,” 8-9; Aims of Educations, 151. “[S]cientific interest is merely a variant form of religious interest” he states, “the scientific devotion to ‘truth,’ as an ideal confirms this statement.” Whitehead, Process and Reality, 16. While he certainly agrees that, in principle, “[j]udgments of worth are no part of the texture of physical science,” he insist that they “are part of the motive of its production.” Indeed, “…without judgments of value there would have been no science.” Whitehead, Aims of Education, 151. Of course, the notion of “God” is precisely one of those “philosophical ideas” that continues to shift and shape civilization for better or worse. “Today there is but one religious dogma in debate,” Whiteheads insists: “What do you mean by ‘God’?” Truly, the answer one gives to this question is of no small consequence for our future. With Gordon Kaufman, process philosophers and theologians have long held that “Theology is not merely a rehearsal and translation of tradition, it is (and always has been) a creative activity of the human imagination seeking to provide more adequate orientation for human life.” Kaufman, Theology for A Nuclear Age, 20. In this respect, a shift in our understanding of the nature and concept of God can have significant consequences at a societal level. As David Buchdahl stresses, “A change in the conception of God is a cultural event of some magnitude, especially because the character of a culture is heavily influenced by the notion of God that predominates within it.” Quoted in McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, 215. In this chapter I review five existential and theological transitions at the heart of Whitehead’s process philosophy. These are transitions in ideas—transitions in how we think about ourselves, the world, and the reality and function of God. As shown below (Fig. 1), these Whiteheadian transitions are mutually related in their movements: 1. From Exception to Exemplification; 2. From Being to Becoming; 3. From Mechanism to Organism; 4. From Independence to Interwovenness; and 5. From Force to Persuasion. Figure 1: Five Whiteheadian Transitions This diagram is my own, but was greatly improved by Jared Morningstar. While these transitions are in no way exhaustive, they do begin to collectively support the emergence of a new process-relational worldview, and with it, an alternative vision of humanity, divinity, and the future. For my consideration of five additional transitions beyond those considered here, see my presentation titled “Ideas in Process: Ten Whiteheadian Transitions” with the Cobb Institute in Claremont, CA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5ua0Fkim3Q&t=1828s. Although this discussion will at times be theoretical, my engagement with these transitions will also draw out practical implications and/or examples that complement the discussion. Transition One: From Exception to Exemplification Chief among Whitehead’s criticisms of modern philosopy and science are their unconscious sins of “bifurcation” and “abstraction.” Refer especially to Whitehead, Science and the Modern World and The Concept of Nature. That is, in their effort to objectively grasp “nature” as it really is, “orthodox” science and philosopy abstracted human existence and experience from their considerations. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 17; Process and Reality, 50. Put simply, human beings were treated as exceptions to rather than exemplifications of everything that is going on in nature. Without recourse to human existence and experience as fully natural, nature became utterly foreign to us: purely material, non-experiential, “senseless, valueless, purposeless,” and ultimately blind. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 17. These vices of bifurcation and abstraction persist today. Many of the most popular scientists continue to presuppose that human beings remain a compete exception to nature, such that our experience is of no real consequence to our understanding of the wider universe. This is poignantly illustrated through a recent Tweet exchange (March 4, 2019) between the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and the late comedian Norm Macdonald. Consider the differing assumptions behind Tyson’s Tweet and MacDonalds response. Neil deGrasse Tyson: The universe is blind to our sorrows and indifferent by our pains. Have a nice day. Norm Macdonald: Neil, there is a logic flaw in your little aphorism that seems quite telling. Since you and I are part of the Universe, then we would also be indifferent and uncaring. Perhaps you forgot, Neil, that we are not superior to the Universe but merely a fraction of it. Nice day, indeed. These two statements capture the thrust of this first Whiteheadian transition. Tyson’s statements assume that human beings are an exception to nature, since he can only utter them by completely removing himself from the equation. After all, we are hardly the kind of creatures that are “blind to sorrow” and “indifferent” to pain—such traits being widely recognized as sociopathic moral failures. Macdonald presses Tyson precisely on this point, and in doing so, recognizes human being as an exemplification of the universe. For Whitehead, we are an exemplification and not an exception to nature. This is the essential empirical starting point of his philosophy. What this means is that our experience is a fundamental clue to the nature and character of reality at all levels. We in fact must say this since we know definitively that we have not dropped into the world from somewhere else so that we might be totally different from it. Rather, to use an organic metaphor, we have grown out of the universe like a plant out of soil. In a deep and significant sense, we are the world in intimate experiential form. In both body and mind: we are geography. We think of ourselves as so intimately entwined in bodily life that a man is a complex unity—body and mind. But the body is part of the external world, continuous with it. In fact, it is just as much part of nature as anything else there—a river, or a mountain, or a cloud. Also, if we are fussily exact, we cannot define where a body begins and where external nature begins. Whitehead, Modes of Thought, 21. The re-embedding of human existence and experience in nature is of no small existential consequence. For Whitehead, although we remain very small in this universe, our experience is actually very large because it expresses the same metaphysical depths that reign throughout nature in various intensities. Although our experience is immanent to ourselves, it also transcends us because it is connected to the entire cosmos as a whole. Indeed, Whitehead fully appreciates that to approach human experience in this way is to begin to marvel at the sense of belonging that emerges. “[I]n being ourselves we are more than ourselves,” he states, “to know that our experience, dim and fragmentary as it is yet sounds the utmost depths of reality.” Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 18. To exist and experience in the way that we do means that we belong here. This is not just wishful sentiment. The universe welcomes our being and if it did not, we would not be. I would suggest that this is a truly important existential starting point to Whitehead’s philosophy, and it inverts our understanding of nature such that nature is complimented by and not contradictory to our existence and experience. Arguably, the widespread “meaning crisis” pervading our current culture is a belonging crisis. Belonging, we might say, is the harmonious confluence of our being and our longing, both of which come together in Whitehead’s insistence that you are an exemplification and not an exception to the universe. How does this first transition apply to our thinking about God? For Whitehead, it is not only the case that you are an exemplification rather than an exception to the “utmost depths of reality,” but so too is God, albeit preeminently. As he famously states, “God is not to be treated as an exception to the [utmost depths of reality], invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification.” Whitehead, Process and Reality, 343. When it comes to making philosophical and theological commitments, there are largely two options one can take when thinking about how God might relate to the metaphysical depths of reality. The first option understands God as an exception to them. God is pictured as supernaturally establishing the ultimate principles of reality, and thus stands outside of them, the world, and you. The second option is that God is an exemplification of these depths in that God chiefly embodies the ultimate principles of reality within God’s own life, and is thus naturally and congruently related to the world from the inside. God’s existence for Whitehead is not a contradiction to the ultimate categories of existence; instead, God is their embodied culmination. Rather than supernaturally establishing the very depths of reality, God lives through them as their primordial exemplification. It is this theological inversion for Whitehead that categorically bars “supernatural” action and makes divine activity part and parcel of the world’s normal natural processes and never their competition or interruption. This is no small claim: If God is an exemplification and not an exception to the ultimate principles of reality, then God is naturally, as opposed to supernaturally, related to the world and its processes. This first transition undergirds the conviction that humanity and divinity are not only natural, but that they ultimately belong together. This has the potential to drastically alter our understanding of ourselves, the world, and God. Transition Two: From Being to Becoming For Whitehead, one of the most fundamental convictions wedded to the data of human experience is that reality is a process of becoming. As Closer to Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn once put it, for process philosophy “becoming is bedrock” and “being is by product.” For my Closer to Truth interview with Kuhn for the “Global Philosophy of Religion Project,” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r43Bl2yrRgs&t=3247s. Process philosophy is rooted in the notion that becoming is more fundamental than being, that reality is verb-like before it is noun-like. As Whitehead insists, “Reality is not static: it is a process of becoming…Indeed the fact is too obvious to escape notice. But unfortunately things which are too obvious often escape receiving their due emphasis.” Whitehead, “First Lecture,” 16. Whitehead here signals the neglect that “process” and “becoming” have received in the philosophical tradition. This tradition has sustained alternative metaphysical convictions—those of substance on one hand and process on the other. Consider a basic comparison. Substance Philosophy Process Philosophy -things (noun-entities) -happenings (verb-entities) -discrete individuality -active relations -separateness & independence -relationality & interdependence -fixity & stability -innovation & novelty -surface level change -fundamental change -eternity -temporality -passivity & indifference -activity & participation -stone, pyramid, statue -stream, river, rain -Being -Becoming The question as to which of these lists takes precedence over the other, or which is more fundamental, has been central to philosophical and theological debate through history. Is one primary and the other secondary? Which is derivative from the other? On the whole, the philosophical tradition prioritized assumptions belonging to substance philosophy and viewed process-relational elements as merely derivative from them. However, to be a process thinker in the tradition of Whitehead (and others) is to see the inverse as the truth: process, relationality, and flux are bedrock. Nicholas Rescher rightly states, “Becoming and change—the origination, flourishing, and passing of the old and the innovative emergence of ever-new existence—constitute the central themes of process metaphysis.” Rescher, Process Metaphysics, 28. What does this conviction that becoming is more fundamental than being mean for us? It means that we are not so much beings that become; rather we are becoming into beings that are happening moment by moment. This means that who and what we are or could be in this life is open and not closed. We are not simply defined by noun-like fixity; rather we, and the world of which we are a part, are verb-like patterns that shift, shape, and adventure forward. This is not only existentially significant for us individually, but also for society collectively. In our transition from categories of being to those of becoming, we find that the world need not be imprisoned to the sameness of repetition nor determined by noun-like fixations of the past. Rather, the world is never the same twice: it verbs itself beyond the past and into an open future like a flowing river—the ancient Heraclitan image of a world in process. How does this transition impact our consideration of God? Throughout the western philosophical tradition God has been conceived in terms “being” to the neglect of “becoming.” Dominant philosophical theology viewed God as the “ground of all being” or “being itself” and exempted God from the all attributes of particular “beings.” Being itself was perfect and thus eternal and unchanging, while finite beings were imperfect because they were temporal and subject to change. God and the world were essentially at odds; they were the antithesis of each other. Whitehead’s philosophy, however, reunites being and becoming in a vision of God that grounds both. Becoming is not contradictory to God, but complimentary. It is part of divine excellence to be truly related to a becoming world—to not only influence that world, but also be influenced by it such that God too becomes. “Such an idea of divine becoming,” Hans Jonas rightly states, “is surely at variance with the Greek, Platonic-Aristotelian tradition of philosophical theology that, since its incorporation into the Jewish and Christian theological tradition, has somehow usurped for itself an authority to which it is not at all entitled…” Jonas, “The Concept of God after Auschwitz” 6. Indeed, static being continues to hold a dominant place in our cultural categories. As Iain McGilchrist states, “…[O]ur culture emphasizes being to the exclusion of Becoming. However…there is an asymmetry: they are not equal. In the philosophy of Whitehead, the divine is in Becoming, and Becoming is even more fundamental than Being.” McGilchrist, The Matter With Things, 1241. A transition to becoming existentially, theologically, and culturally supports the notion that we are not finished either individually or collectively; we can become better than we currently are and more than we have previously been. Transition Three: From Mechanism to Organism Whitehead called his philosophy the “philosophy of organism.” In part, his philosophy was a response to the collapse of the mechanistic-materialistic universe with its assumption of “senseless, valueless, purposeless” matter as the ultimate base of reality. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 17. Indeed, Cartesian-Newtonian physics was based upon the static “individuality of each bit of matter,” yet “bit by bit,” Whitehead states, this concept was “given away, or dissolved, by the advance of modern physics.” Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 156-157. Matter essentially dissolved into something far more, fluid, organic, and interrelated in nature, and Whitehead saw the emerging opportunity to rethink our understanding of the world in precisely these terms. “The field is now open for the introduction of some new doctrine of organism which may take the place of the materialism with which, since the seventeenth century, science has saddled philosophy,” he states. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World 36. Thomas Hosinski rightly comments, “Whitehead was convinced that [actualities] and the universe as a whole are more like organisms than like machines; and he found that modern physics itself suggested this view.” Hosinski, Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance, 26. Whitehead was deeply invested in the new insights of the sciences, whether psychology, physiology, biology, or physics. In a deep way, each of these fields was taking an organic turn that he fully recognized. He saw that physics and biology in particular were supporting a new organic awakening in the sciences. Alongside others, Whitehead thus helped inaugurate a battle of metaphors when it comes to picturing ourselves and the universe we inhabit. Is the universe more like a vast machine or a developing organism? The differences are stark. Mechanistic Universe Organic Universe -nature is like a deterministic machine -nature is like a growing organism -independent bits of (dead) matter -living relational happenings -external relationships -internal (and external) relationships -not constituted by relationships -fundamentally constituted by relationships -externally designed -internally self-created -push and pull -evoke and feel -surface level movement -real evolution -clock, watch, lever -plant, animal, human In considering the viability of each of these lists, we must consider our own experience and how we relate to the world. Since we are not an exception to the wider world, our relationship to the world is literally the world’s relationship to itself. As seen in the first transition above, we are organic constituents of this universe, and our experience testifies to the reality of growth, relationality, internal (and not just external) relationships, self-creation, evoking, feeling—all elements characterizing an organic rather than mechanistic universe. If this is truly the case as science, reason, and intuition confirm, then practical changes are immediately required. In the first place, we need to stop living as though the world and its constituents are mechanical. We do this relationally, economically, politically, theologically, and often as a default setting. On Whitehead’s scheme, it is not enough to simply “buy organic” or “eat organic” (important as these are); rather, we must be organic in our very mode of relating to the world and its inhabitants. I would suggest that this is an organic spirituality that is at the heart of living out Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. For Whitehead, the roots of this organic spirituality are not shallow, but deep and ultimately divine. Indeed, he affirms a profoundly organic vision of God and his contributions continue to inspire theological rage against the machine. Being externally related to the universe, the God of the machine-universe had to supernaturally “intervene” into it much like a mechanic has to adjust a machines misfiring’s from the outside and with absolute control. For Whitehead, however, an organic universe requires an organic God that expresses in its very nature those ecological relations which wed it to the universe as a participant. On this vision, God and the universe are symbiotically and not mechanically related such that each influences and constitutes the environment of the other. This third transition presupposes that the metaphors we use for understanding the universe theologically matter. The way we view the world is connected to the way we view God. As John B. Cobb Jr. states, “If the world is viewed as a complex machine, then the correlative doctrine of God is likely to be that of a creator who stands outside of his creation. But if the world is viewed in organic terms, then the principle of life, order, and growth must be immanent to the organisms.” Cobb, A Christian Natural Theology, 110. This transition is itself a call to be organic to each other, the world, and God. Transition Four: From Independence to Interwovenness In surveying the development of modern thought, Whitehead laments the fact that categories of independence, isolation, and non-relation were elevated to philosophical and scientific orthodoxy. These categories reinforced a vision of mechanistic-materialism where independent bits of matter in external relations were fundamental. Whitehead strongly rejects this picture as one of the chief misconceptions of philosophy. “The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature…is the notion of ‘independent existence,’” he states. “There is no such mode of existence. Rather every entity is only to be understood in terms of the way in which it is interwoven with the rest of the Universe.” Whitehead, “Immortality,” 91. Notice that in addition to pointing out the misconception of independent existence, Whitehead also points to its remedy in a relationship of interwovenness. Such a relationship, however, was undermined at the very origins of modern philosophy. Under Whitehead’s criticism, the modern philosophical tradition suffered from a philosophical ailment that I term “Nothing-But Syndrome.” I call it this because the founder of modern philosophy, René Descartes, following Aristotle and the Greek lineage, insisted that the world is made up of substances. A substance according to Descartes, was an “existent thing which requires nothing but itself in order to exist.” Whitehead, Process and Reality, 50, my emphasis. Put differently, he conceived the fundamental entities which populate the world as ultimately independent, isolated, and unrelated to each other. They require “nothing-but” themselves in order to exist. In a significant sense, Whitehead’s entire philosophy is a refutation of this philosophical syndrome and its implications. “It is this final conclusion of the absoluteness of independence to which I am objecting,” he states. Whitehead, “Immortality,” 100. With indebtedness to Whitehead, Iain McGilchrist expresses his own disdain for nothing-but syndrome. At the core of the contemporary world is the reductionist view that we are – nature is – ‘nothing but’ a bundle of senseless particles, pointlessly, helplessly, colliding in a predictable fashion, whose existence is purely material, and whose only value is utility…I cannot remember a time when I thought this sounded at all convincing; and a lifetime’s thinking and learning had done nothing at all to allay my scepticism. Not only is it mistaken, I believe, but actively damaging – physically, to the naturally world; and psychologically, morally, and spiritually to ourselves as part of that world. It endangers everything that we should value. McGilchrist, The Matter With Things, 5. This is a profound statement that could have been equally uttered by Whitehead. Another pertinent rejection of nothing-but syndrome comes from the late Roger Scruton. There is a widespread habit of declaring…realities to be ‘nothing but’ the things in which we perceive them. The human person is ‘nothing but’ the human animal; law is ‘nothing but’ relations of social power; sexual love is ‘nothing but’ the urge to procreation; altruism is ‘nothing but’ the dominant genetic strategy…the Mona Lisa is ‘nothing but’ a spread of pigments on a canvas, the Ninth Symphony is ‘nothing but’ a sequence of pitched sounds of varying timber. And so on. Getting rid of this habit is, to my mind, the true goal of philosophy. Scruton, Soul of the World, 39-40. Scruton would go on to say that if we are willing to get rid of nothing-but syndrome with respect to the small things, then we should also be willing to get rid of it with respect to large things like the universe itself. In this case, we can no longer insist that the universe is nothing but the laws or order of nature. “Drawing that conclusion,” Scruton states, “is the first step in the search for God.” Ibid., 40. Whitehead points out, however, that the theological tradition also suffered from nothing-but syndrome in that God’s existence was conceived as the ultimate substance such that God was ultimately independent, isolated, and non-related to the world. He instead directs us to the relationship of interwovenness—what he calls “mutual immanence”—as the fundamental relationship not only between the entities of the world, but also between God and the world. Mutual immanence he states is a “fundamental philosophic doctrine” and while it was not applied to the concept of God—it should have been. Whitehead, “Immortality,” 91. “There is no entity, not even God ‘which requires nothing but itself in order to exist’”; rather, “It is as true to say that the world is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.” Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 94; Process and Reality, 348. For this forth transition, independence, isolation, and non-relation are simply reductive abstractions; the reality of the matter is that all is in all and all affects all. Transition Five: From Force to Persuasion Whitehead was a voracious critic of coercive power. Coercive power involves force, intimidation, and fear; it is a push-and-pull power that is able to compel obedience through violence. “The recourse to force,” Whitehead insists “…is a disclosure of the failure of civilization…” Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 83. It is also a failure of that barbaric theology which imagines God to be the ultimate expression of coercive power in the universe. What Whitehead calls the “tragic history of Christianity” largely concerns its failure to live up to the tender ideals of Christ and opt instead for barbarism and power. The [theological] failure consisted in the fact that barbaric elements…had not been discarded, but remained as essential elements in the various formulations of Christian theology, orthodox and heretical alike…The issue of these failures is the tragic history of Christianity. Ibid., 166. This history could have been different. Whitehead looks to Plato as having made “the greatest intellectual discovery in the history of religion...” This was Plato’s discovery that “the divine element is to be conceived as a persuasive agency and not as coercive agency.” Ibid., 166, emphasis mine. “More than two thousand years ago,” Whitehead states, “the wisest of men proclaimed that the divine persuasion is the foundation of the order of the world, but that it can only produce such a measure of harmony as amid brute forces it was possible to accomplish. Ibid., 160. For Whitehead, the very essence of Christianity is “the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of his agency in the world.” Ibid., 167. He remained adamant that “[t]he life of Christ is not an exhibition of over-ruling power…It’s power lies in its absence of force.” Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 47. He thus asks: “Can there be any doubt that the power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act of that which Plato divined in theory?” Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 167. What Whitehead is saying here is that in the person of Christ we find the realized or active revelation of the “divine element” that Plato intellectually discerned, namely, persuasive love. Persuasive love as revealed in the life of Christ, however, was the opposite of what the doctrine of God ultimately became, namely, coercive force. As Whitehead states, the “deeper idolatry of fashioning God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers” prevailed and the church ultimately “gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar.” In doing so, it annulled its existential, philosophical, and religious authority and forgot the “Galilean vision of humility” which “flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly”—and still does today. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 342. We are at a stage in our civilization where violence, totalitarianism, and coercion are taking disturbingly visible and invisible forms. Whether justified by a barbaric conception of God, or simply the omnipotence of the state’s reigning ideologies, Whitehead points to triumphs of persuasion as not simply a reality of the past (in Plato or Christ), but also a living reality in his own time, and indeed, a haunting possibility of the future. …the religious spirit as an effective element in the affairs of men has just [April, 1931] obtained one of its most signal triumphs. In India the forces of violence and strife, between rulers and people, between races, between religions, between social grades,—forces threatening to overwhelm with violence hundreds of millions of mankind—these forces have for the moment been halted by two men acting with the moral authority of religious conviction, the Mahatma Gandhi and the Viceroy of India [Lord Irwin]. They may fail. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 160, brackets his. Whitehead continues, “But the dramatic halt effected by Gandhi and the Viceroy, requiring as it does an effective response from uncounted millions in India, in England, in Europe, and America, witnesses that the religious motive, I mean the response to the divine persuasion, still holds its old power…” Ibid., 160-161. With Gandhi and Irwin, Martin Luther King Jr. (and countless others) also responded to, and embodied, this divine persuasion through nonviolent resistance. It is not well known that King was influenced by Whitehead’s philosophy and his understanding of God. See Henning, “A. N. Whitehead’s Influence on Martin Luther King Jr.” King realized profoundly the importance of challenging and changing the ideological presuppositions that currently reign in our civilization. He in fact paraphrases Whitehead in his acceptance lecture of the Nobel Peace Prize, saying: “We live in a day, says the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, ‘when civilization is shifting its basic outlook: a major turning point in history where the presuppositions on which society is structured are being analyzed, sharply challenged, and profoundly changed.’” Ibid. In a deep sense, King himself was a “revelation in act” of precisely these words. Conclusion: Faith and Philosophy Ideas matter, and matter greatly for the future of our civilization. “As we think, we live” Whitehead reminds us. This brief discussion has called attention to five important existential and theological transitions at the heart of Whitehead’s philosophy. From Exception to Exemplification. From Being to Becoming. From Mechanism to Organism. From Independence to Mutual Immanence. From Force to Persuasion. As shown in the figure above (fig. 1), these transitions are mutually related and while theoretical in nature, they nevertheless produce real world consequences. How we think about ourselves, nature, and God will continue to shape current culture and the many hurdles we face. We require the best of our disciplines functioning together as we forge an uncertain future on this planet. We require not simply knowledge, but wisdom. In this regard the role of philosophy (the love of wisdom) remains vital and continues to shape civilization in ways that often go unnoticed. “In one sense philosophy does nothing,” Whitehead states, “It merely satisfies the entirely impractical craving to probe and adjust ideas which have been found adequate each in its special sphere of use.” In the same way one might also say “the ocean tides do nothing.” “Twice daily they beat upon the cliffs of continents and then retire,” Whitehead continues. “But have patience and look deeper, and you find that in the end whole continents of thought have been submerged by philosophic tides, and have been rebuilt in the depths awaiting emergence. The fate of humanity depends upon the ultimate continental faith by which it shapes its action, and this faith is in the end shaped by philosophy.” Whitehead, “First Lecture,” 23. Bibliography Closer to Truth, “Andrew M. Davis: The Global Philosophy of Religion Project: Process Theology.” Accessed June 6, 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r43Bl2yrRgs&t=3247s. Cobb, J.B. Jr. A Christian Natural Theology: Based on the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007. Davis, A.M. “Ideas in Process: Ten Whiteheadian Transitions.” Lecture Delivered to the Cobb Institute in Claremont, CA. Accessed June 6, 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5ua0Fkim3Q&t=1828s. Henning, B. “A. N. Whitehead’s Influence on Martin Luther King Jr.” Whitehead Research Project. Accessed June 6, 2023: http://whiteheadresearch.org/2022/01/17/a-n-whiteheads-influence-on-martin-luther-king-jr/. Hosinski, T. Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance: An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993. Jonas, H. “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice.” The Journal of Religion, Vol. 67, No. 1 (1987): 1-13. Kaufman, G.D. Theology for A Nuclear Age. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985. McGilchrist, I. The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, Vol. 1 & 2. London: Perspectiva Press, 2021. McLoughlin, W.G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Rescher, N. Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy. Albany: SUNY, 1996. Scruton, R. Soul of the World. Princeton University Press, 2016. Whitehead, A.N. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press, 1967. Whitehead, A.N. Aims of Education. New York: Free Press, 1967. Whitehead, A.N. The Concept of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964. Whitehead, A.N. “First lecture.” Whitehead Research Library. Accessed March 9, 2022: http://wrl.whiteheadresearch.org/items/show/2093. Whitehead, A.N. “Immortality.” In Science and Philosophy. Paterson: Littlefield, Adams & Co. 1964, 85-104. Whitehead, A.N. Modes of Thought. New York: Free Press, 1968. Whitehead, A.N. Process and Reality. Corrected edition. Edited by D.R. Griffin and D. Sherburne. New York: The Free Press, 1978. Whitehead, A.N. Religion in the Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926. Whitehead, A.N. Science and the Modern World. New York: The Free Press, 1967.