Through his writing of Science and the Modern World (1925), Religion in the Making (1926), and Process and Reality (1929), Whitehead largely developed his own idea of process. In his early stage, process was understood as a transition from one event to the other succeeding event. In this particular sense, a proposition which says "The reality is the process" has been widely accepted as fundamental in Whitehead's idea of process. However, this is not the only meaning of 'process'. There is another side of 'process' and it is expressed by the term, 'concrescence'. This is the side of self-creative activity, and the 'transition' can be regarded as its derivative manifestation of the 'concrescence'. Therefore, in his later stage, Whitehead shows a large development in his idea of 'process'. The being (or reality) of an event is "constituted by its 'becoming'", so that 'process' can be undertood in a more dynamic sense of 'being constituted', that is, of 'self-creation'. The aim of this article is to trace the development of this idea of process in Whitehead.
|