1271. Jorge Nobo

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According to Jorge Nobo, "the ultimate ground of the organic it is termed 'extension' (Whitehead's !:)o/itillrity: 255 f.). universe" has "two differentiable, but inseparable, aspects": "insofar as thisground is the whereby of all becoming, it is termed 'creativity'; and insofar asit is the wherein of all interconnected actual existence,[or 'the extensive continuum']." Thus "creativity and extension areindissoluable aspects of one ultinlate reality-a reality underlying thebecoming, the being and the solidarity of all actual entities"Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity 255 f.)

The difficulty with this thesis, however, is that it fails to take sufficiently seriously Whitehead's emphatic statements that both creativity and the extensive continuum are abstractions and the clear implication of his so-called ontological principle that the only "reasons" for things and, therefore, the only "wherebys" or "whereins," are actual entities. In other words, for Whitehead himself, the only whereby of all becoming is not creativity/ but creativity's prilnordial, nontelnporal accident, i.e., the primordial nature of God, just as the only wherein of all interconnected actual existence is not the extensive continuum, but the consequent nature of God. 

Thus, if by "the ultilnate ground of the organic universe" is meant, as should be meant, "the transfactual source [=whereby] and bearer [=wherein] of fact as such" (Hartshorne), the only candidate for the role in Whitehead's metaphysics is God as primordially consequent. 

Cf. Hartshorne, CSPM: 17 f.: "[God] is 'the place' of all things, and all things are, in the most utterly literal sense, 'in' [God]."Also MVG: 305: "To conceive God is not to conceive what might exist, but what 'existence' itself must be-if the idea of God is not meaningless. Either God is nothing at all, or all else that exists exists in [=wherein] and through [=whereby] [God], and therefore contingently, and [God Godself] exists (in [God's] essence, though not in [God's] accidents) solely in and through [Godself], that is, necessarily."Also RSP: 151 f.: "[S]pace is in God, not God merely in space or merely 'outside' space (in sorne superspace?). All is within the divine sympathy. We are members one of another because we are members of the living whole, bound together by solidarity of feeling, a solidarity imperfect in us but perfect and absolute in God."

25 September 1995