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I judge that the referent is the same, because what Hartshorne means here by "the supreme creativity" is not Whitehead's "creativity" as distinct from God, and thus some kind of a "God above God," if you will, but rather precisely God's creatiyity, God's own (unbegun and unending) self-creation in response to, or interaction with, the nonsupreme but nonetheless genuinely real and significant self-creations, and so creativity, of all others. Thus he says later in the same book, "God has the supreme form of creativity, creatures have lesser forms." And, more telling still, "supreme reality consists in supreme creativity," and "lesser realities must be lesser -- but not-zero -- forms of such creativity" (197, 207).

Wiki MarkupMy point, then, is that "_supreme_ creativity" is to be understood as an alternative way of saying "_divine_ creativity," as the second phrase is used, say, when Hartshorne says, "\[d\]ivine creativity, or creaturely creativity, partly in act, partly in potency, is all that reality, actual or possible, can be" (cf. also what I've said about the phrase "the ultimate productive power" in 9 February 1998; rev. 10 September 2004).

10 September 2004