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Sep. 5th, 2024 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the characteristics of life are absolute self-enjoyment, creative activity, aim. Here 'aim' evidently involves the entertainment of the purely ideal so as to be directive of the creative process. Also the enjoyment belongs to the process and is not a characteristic of any static result. The aim is at the enjoyment belonging to the process.
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It is nonsense to conceive of nature as a static fact, even for an instant devoid of duration. There is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration. This is the reason why the notion of an instant of time, conceived as a primary simple fact, is nonsense.
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By this term 'aim' is meant the exclusion of the boundless wealth of alternative
(208) potentiality, and the inclusion of that definite factor of novelty which constitutes the selected way of entertaining those data in that process of unification. The aim is at that complex of feeling which is the enjoyment of those data in that way. 'That way of enjoyment' is selected from the boundless wealth of alternatives. It has been aimed at for actualization in that process.
Whitehead. Nature Alive, 1938. Lecture 8.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_08.html
...
It is nonsense to conceive of nature as a static fact, even for an instant devoid of duration. There is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration. This is the reason why the notion of an instant of time, conceived as a primary simple fact, is nonsense.
====
By this term 'aim' is meant the exclusion of the boundless wealth of alternative
(208) potentiality, and the inclusion of that definite factor of novelty which constitutes the selected way of entertaining those data in that process of unification. The aim is at that complex of feeling which is the enjoyment of those data in that way. 'That way of enjoyment' is selected from the boundless wealth of alternatives. It has been aimed at for actualization in that process.
Whitehead. Nature Alive, 1938. Lecture 8.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_08.html