1432. Possibility is futurity . . .

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Possibility is futurity, the indefiniteness/ indeterminateness of what, given the present, not only can be but also must be further defined/determined by successor presents. Thus possibility/futurity is only an aspect of actualities as such, as concretes, i.e., events and individuals, and also aggregates/composites thereof. Each event/state of an individual has data whose futures it further defines/determines. And it itself will be a datum in events/states of individuals that are anticipated by its future, although not fully defined/determined thereby.

So every actuality / concrete is, in one aspect, definite/determinate, while, in another aspect, it is indefinite/indeterminate / / definable/ determinable. Relative to its past, it is definite/determinate, in that it has somehow resolved the indefiniteness/indeterminateness / / definability/ determinability bequeathed to it by its past for further definition/ determination. But relative to its future, it itself bequeaths a certain indefiniteness/ indeterminateness / / definability/ determinability that its successor presents will in turn have to resolve, each by its own self-determination.

Whereas a concrete is not continuous, but discontinuous, the possible ways in which a concrete can be succeeded, or objectified, by other concretes are continuous, in that they form a continuous range. Any ordinary abstract, then, is simply a still wider range of continuous possibilities—a species being a wider range than an individuality (= individual essence), a genus being a wider range than a species, and a category being a still wider range than a genus. 

An extraordinary abstract is the widest range of continuous possibilities conceivable, and therefore an unlimited range. There is literally an infinite number of possible ways in which it can be succeeded or objectified, by concretes as well as, in their different ways, by ordinary abstracts—from categories through genera and species to individualities (= individual essences).

If God simply as such—as the all-worshipful and unsurpassable, and therefore universal, individual—is, in Hartshorne's phrase, "modally all-inclusive," and so excludes, or is competitive with, absolutely nothing, either actual or possible, then the range of continuous possibilities for God to be somehow succeeded or objectified qua existent, or actualized merely somehow, has to be as infinite as for any other transcendental. In other words, the infinitude of God's "primordial nature" (or as, in Peirce's term, "First") is a function of God's being by nature utterly non-exclusive, or non-competitive. Thus Whitehead says, rightly, "We must conceive the Divine Eros as the active entertainment of all ideals, with the urge to their finite realization, each in its due season. Thus a process must be inherent in God's nature whereby [God's] infinity is acquiring realization" (AI: 357; italics added).

The reason, however, why the nature of things is, in the final analysis, tragic as well as beautiful is that, as Whitehead argues, "every occasion of actuality is in its own nature finite. There is no totality which is the harmony of all perfections. Whatever is realized in any one occasion of experience necessarily excludes the unbounded welter of contrary possibilities. There are always 'others' which might have been and are not" (AI: 356; or, as Hartshorne puts it, "No infima species of possibility ever recurs" [RSP: 118]). In other words, there is, inevitably, tragic loss: God's infinity simply cannot acquire realization! In this sense, Whitehead says, "At the heart of the nature of things, there are always the dream of youth and the harvest of tragedy. The Adventure of the Universe starts with the dream and reaps tragic Beauty" (AI: 381).

So, if God simply as such, as existent, and therefore actualized somehow, although in no particular how, excludes nothing and is competitive with nothing, God qua actualized, and hence particularized in this, rather than in that, particular how, is exclusive and competitive. Consequently, the range of continuous possibilities for succeeding or objectifying God so actualized and particularized is not unlimited, but limited. It is limited, namely, by the particular de facto order that it lies in the nature of God—not simply as God, and as therefore God of some world only, but as God of this, that, or the other particular world—to impose on every new successor world now in process of coming into being. In this sense, it is not God as "primordial" ("First") or even as "consequent" ("Second"), but God as "superject" ('Third") that is rightly said to be "the principle of concretion—the principle whereby," as Whitehead says, "there is initiated a definite outcome from a situation otherwise riddled with ambiguity" (PRc: 345).

September 1995; rev. 16 October 2009