941. Hartshorne says "Subjects are . . .

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Hartshorne says: "Subjects are what they are not through mere private predicates or properties, but through the references which it is their natures to make to certain other subjects" ("Religion in Process Philosophy": 247).

Unless I'm mistaken, Hartshorne's underlying point here is the same as Whitehead's in saying, "It was the defect of the Greek analysis of generation that it conceived it in terms of the bare incoming of novel abstract form. This ancient analysis failed to grasp the real operation of the antecedent particulars imposing themselves on the novel particular in process of creation. Thus the geometry exemplified in fact was disjoined [in their account from] the generation of fact" (AI: 242).

Of course, there is the difference that Hartshorne talks about it being the nature of subjects to make references to certain other subjects, while Whitehead talks, instead, of antecedent particulars imposing themselves on the novel particular now becoming. But, clearly, the reality both refer to is the same reality of concrescence, creativity, or creative synthesis, which, by its very nature, can—indeed, must—be viewed in both of these ways.

5 October 2004