…to evaluate formal ideas so I found Whitehead's metaphysic as expressed in process and reality completely compatible with this idea Whitehead talks about he uses the phrase, ingression of novelty into ordinary space-time. In other words, he was a Platonist…

…your mind in a single instant but so it is you know it is cognized and it is felt as understanding and Whitehead who also wrote about understanding gave a wonderful definition of it which confirms this He said understanding is the apperception of pattern…

…around. And then there are other things, wave phenomena and these stirrings and It's like what we said yesterday about Whitehead defining understanding as that perception of pattern as such. Well, nature is pattern upon pattern on every scale, in energy,…

…meaning in the unspeakable, and then return with this sense of meaning. But meaning is very provisional. It is basically, as Whitehead, brilliantly understood, a feeling. Meaning is a feeling. No matter how abstract the meaning may be, it ultimately is a…

…That's really the difference. The fundamental difference between science and magic is that science believes there is something, what Whitehead called stubborn facts, which need to be illuminated, and the magician knows that the world is being created by…

…in self reflection, intelligence, material downloading of ideas into matter. If there is an appetition for completion, as Alfred north Whitehead thought, then we have turned a corner in the high stakes game of nature's unfoldment. Well, I mean, certainly they…

…down to saying what appears to be going on is that there is what I call borrowing the term from Whitehead, concrescence, that everything is being pushed toward a state of greater and greater density, compactedness, connectedness, integration into itself. You…

…in this crisis is consciousness, whatever that means. The ability to integrate data about the situation that we are in. You know, Whitehead said, understanding is the apperception of pattern as such. I mean, if you see a pattern in how people are seated…

…through the act of a good act of contrition. That won't be sufficient. We have to understand. And I recall, you know, Whitehead said, understanding is the apperception of pattern as such, because to fear death is to not understand what's going on. And to…

…then electronic information movement and this kind of thing. What is happening is there is an ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead and I took his term called concrescence. And this is a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together. And in fact,…

…am the adamic human being made of light. And you leave the realm of matter and return to some previously hidden dimension. Whitehead called these things epochs, these long periods of time, and he called transitions from one to the other a shift of epochs.…

…It simply means that your calendar spins off its axis and you have to reset your clock. Maybe it may mean something else. Whitehead, who I'm a great follower of, had the idea of what he called epochs, and he pointed out that a constant, for instance,…

…have we looked at? We have sampled 80 years in one spot in the universe. And yet from that, our physics is extrapolated. Whitehead had the idea of what he called epochs, which were like bubbles in the universe of possible time. And within these bubbles,…

…rainbow bridge through the act of a good act of contrition. That won't be sufficient. We have to understand, and I recall Whitehead said understanding is the apperception of pattern as such, because to fear death is to not understand what's going on and…

…then electronic information movement and this kind of thing, what is happening is there is an ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead and I took his term called concrescence. And this is a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together and in fact the…

…this entire school of thinkers, and it is. That's as close as you can come within the confines of formal philosophical method Whitehead has done. His cosmology is real and it accounts for minds and organisms and a number of things that are foreboding by…

…they don't know what they're talking about. It's wonderful to be able to build on so firm a foundation. Now the other idea that Whitehead had that is part of this shtick is what he called novelty. And novelty, to my mind is even a richer concept than…

…in New York you could meet anything. There are no limits, you see. Well I think that this principle of novelty, which Whitehead articulated and which the ancient Chinese systematized, is in a sense the missing piece from our models of how reality works…

…reward enough. What did you think you were going to get? A Mercedes or something for being an ethical person. Yeah back in Whitehead, and I follow him on this he just says that the universe has what he calls appetition for novelty, that the universe is…

…your question may shed light on this phenomenon of how it accelerates as it goes through each change. It's almost as though and Whitehead had this idea he had the idea of what he called the aboriginal god, that god is not something that exists, god is…

…meaning in the unspeakable and then return with this sense of meaning. But meaning is very provisional it is basically as Whitehead Brilliantly understood a feeling. Meaning is a feeling. No matter how abstract the meaning may be it ultimately is a feeling…

…that point will be data points in the future. So this is not only a theory of history time which has undergone what Whitehead calls the formality of actually occurring but it is also a theory of the future, time which has not yet undergone the formality…

…from those places. I respect astrology because I know nothing about it, but this seems quite strange to me that this works. Whitehead said a wonderful thing. He said understanding is the apperception of pattern as such, and I think this illuminates a lot…

…I think you know. If you want to get this nailed down philosophically, then Alfred North Whitehead is your guy, because Whitehead is a platonist but he understands the danger of pure idealism. Pure idealism contains paradoxes and problems that are almost…

…by the world of phenomena, I think, won't withstand modern logical laundering and that what we have to see is, as Whitehead Understood that the universe is an organism. It's changing, it's evolving, it has an internal dynamic of unfoldment. Final causes are…

…and the main thing that's always said about Dao is: you can't understand it so don't try. But the notion of novelty in Whitehead is the notion that there is an ebb and flow of that which builds up and deconstructs something not recognized by science…

…lexicons away, you can get rid of all of that stuff. It has been completely and thoroughly and rigorously presented in Whitehead, and the great thing about Alfred North Whitehead is the man was a world class mathematician. With Bertrand Russell he wrote…

…your question in a spirit of perversity or ignorance but you must know that Bertrand Russell had an affair with Evelyn Whitehead, and so what Bertrand Russell would say about Alfred North Whitehead is inevitably colored with monkey business. No no I'm…

…Of course the affair with Evelyn was in there but I like to think that there was actually a parting of the ways. No Whitehead is a metaphysician it is the only metaphysic worked out in English in the 20th century. Otherwise you have to go to Heidegger…

…it and then if need be I'll harangue so anybody have anything they want to. Yeah, I like understanding. I think you know Whitehead said that understanding is the apperception of pattern as such. That's all as such and so you can look at any situation…

…was and what it was was it was though a switch had been thrown, and I began to understand. That's all it was. Whitehead defines understanding as the apperception of pattern as such and suddenly I began seeing things very differently. I began to see the…

…the complete works of Gordon Watson, Wells, Herbert George the time machine, whitham, colonel Henry, Explorations of the Upper Amazon Whitehead, Alfred North, process and reality, Wilson, Robert Anton, Illuminatus and I might add, valais by Philip K dick. Any…

…it means is: finally finally, finally, when all the debris is cleared away, all you have is intuition, aesthetics the final appeal, Whitehead says is to elegance of design and intuition and that hands the whole thing back to the artist and opens a doorway…

…into some higher topological situation and when that happens there will be what Alfred North Whitehead called a shift of epochs. Whitehead had the notion that physical laws don't last forever they just reign over epochs. And when the epoch shifts, the laws…

…hour, day, year, millennium heliocosm of time. Habit and novelty are locked in some kind of dynamic struggle. You mentioned this is a Whitehead thing. I've never read a Whitehead book. Did he use it in a similar kind of a context that you were using it?…

…of time. Habit and novelty are locked in some kind of dynamic struggle. You mentioned this is a Whitehead thing. I've never read a Whitehead book. Did he use it in a similar kind of a context that you were using it? He didn't have this wave. He…

…and so on. You know if you want to expand the circle larger and talk about influences on my thought generally Whitehead you know I'm basically a kind of platonist in the tradition of modified neoplatonic idealism so is Whitehead all process philosophy…

…on my thought generally Whitehead you know I'm basically a kind of platonist in the tradition of modified neoplatonic idealism so is Whitehead all process philosophy falls under that. I was influenced by people like l l white and c h Waddington. These are…

…said at various times in these talks is it's easy to sketch out dilemmas it's almost impossible to bring to offer reassuring closure. Whitehead said it's the business of the future to be dangerous. Of course he said that in 1920 when it wasn't nearly as…

…meaning in the unspeakable and then return with this sense of meaning. But meaning is very provisional. It is basically, as Whitehead Brilliantly understood, a feeling. Meaning is a feeling, no matter how abstract the meaning may be it ultimately is a…

…an appetition for completion. Everything in the universe strives to transcend itself. Everything in the universe has what Whitehead called an internal horizon of transcendence, and in the human organism this internal transcendent horizon within historical times…

…century. I mean I think you can throw away your sanskrit dictionaries folks. It was all done in good oxfordian English by Whitehead and in a book called process and reality which is his masterpiece, he develops at great length the concept of novelty and…

…novelty, that the way to think of reality is as a kind of dynamic tension between two forces, which I've adapted from Whitehead and then following a suggestion of Rupert Sheldrake, I've called these two forces habit and novelty. And habit and novelty are…

…was there before you got here and will be there after you depart, and this is essentially the view of science. You know Whitehead said there are certain stubborn facts and the world is one of them or if you were the other philosophical flavor has…

…essentially on a 19th century hamiltonian model of the atom. They actually believe in simple location. They're victims of what Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. They take the physical world at Face value. They don't understand you know…

…of the very large class of the possible, certain things are going to have to be selected to actually happen, to undergo what Whitehead calls the formality of actually occurring. And an idea like Rupert's is a way of saying: well here it's the past. The…

…laws of gene segregation come into being a billion years before biology existed anywhere in the universe? That seems naive and preposterous. Whitehead had this idea of what he called the aboriginal god. What we call natural laws are simply habits of a very…

…into some higher topological situation and when that happens there will be what Alfred North Whitehead called a shift of epochs. Whitehead had the notion that physical laws don't last forever they just reign over epochs and when the epoch shifts the laws…

…that none of our reality is based on inexorable physical law but I only want that to be true. I'm not sure it is true. Whitehead used to he had this thing about what he called stubborn facts and he said there are some stubborn facts and you can cut…

…Whitehead who I think is the great unsung philosopher of the West I mean you can throw your sanskrit dictionaries away and Whitehead had the idea of what he called the cosmic epochs and how the transition from one to another was actually accompanied by…

…mechanical work. The only way you can understand it is if time is extenuating itself in some way. People need to read Whitehead, who was one of the 20th century's best mathematicians and he actually worked out the implications of these kinds of collapses…

…driven by the blind momentum of atomic structure. Who was it who said the atoms blindly run? And then I think it was Whitehead who said: yes but within the body they blindly run according to the body's plan. You see, what I think we're dealing with…

…about this today as I can't even remember why but I produced a definition. It's a kind of a cribbing from Whitehead. Whitehead defined understanding in the following way he said: understanding is the apperception of pattern as such. That's all. For instance…

…this today as I can't even remember why but I produced a definition. It's a kind of a cribbing from Whitehead. Whitehead defined understanding in the following way he said: understanding is the apperception of pattern as such. That's all. For instance in…

…about the situation and presumably there are an infinite number of these informative patterns. So I would define intelligence as Whitehead defined understanding intelligence is the apperception of pattern as such and the more of the pattern and the more…

…improbable that it can only carry half the universe with it into the domain of its undergoing the formality of what Whitehead calls actually occurring. Okay, so at the moment of the immaculate conception, where there had been one universe, suddenly there…

…of the very large class of the possible certain things are going to have to be selected to actually happen, to undergo what Whitehead calls the formality of actually occurring. And an idea like Rupert's is a way of saying: well here it's the past. The…

…a book of that title I think? What is meaning and then what does it mean that there is meaning? Is it simply, as Whitehead suggests, the apperception of pattern as such? Or is there eventually some kind of a of a metaphysic, some kind of a discernible…

…an exploration process. Yes it seems to be an amplifier for resonance, something like putting helium in a violin. Well Whitehead defined understanding as the apperception of patterns as such, and that means then that what you're saying, that mathematics is…

…names for the same program of mental activity. That's one way I guess you could say that then of course that's Whitehead who would see understanding as primarily a mathematical function who was both a platonist and a mathematician. The word apperception, I…

…Is that possible, Francis? Well the nature of the matrices and the matrices seem to exist. Well, culture recognition is culture. Whitehead said understanding is the recognition of pattern as such. Yes, through the eyes of one's culture. Well inasmuch as we…

…linguistic analysis, epistemology and the nature of thought itself. So yes I agree that this is a problem, but nevertheless, as Whitehead said, nevertheless there are stubborn facts. I mean science isn't like that science works. A stubborn fact is a belief.…

…fate of Bergson, his influence on modern philosophy is certainly minimal. Alfred North Whitehead is my great favorite. I mean I think Whitehead is just you know the cat's pajamas and he has this idea of a living cosmos that life and vitality extend right…

…into the electron. And yet, in spite of his mathematical contributions, the fact that he wrote principia mathematica with Bertrand Russell, Whitehead is not taught. I mean there's some I guess one university in this country where they take him seriously. The…

…it and then if need be I'll harangue, so anybody have anything they want to. Yeah, I like understanding. I think you know Whitehead said that understanding is the apperception of pattern as such. That's all as such, and so you can look at any situation…

…that Rupert and I were chatting last night in our room about the aboriginal nature of god, this idea which is built into Whitehead, that somehow time is the theater of god's becoming but it's also, from the point of view of a higher dimensional manifold,…

…and the way you do it is you say that the universe is not determined in what will happen what will undergo what Whitehead calls the formality of occurring, but rather the universe is determined in the way I mentioned last night. Time is a topological…

…and the other is David Abrams book the spell of the sensuous. And both of these books are about feelings essentially and Whitehead, who I take as my mentor, created a mathematically formal metaphysic in which the primary datum of experience is feelings. I…

…my mentor, created a mathematically formal metaphysic in which the primary datum of experience is feelings. I mean that's a direct quote from Whitehead. The only thing you can trust at this point and some of you have heard me say this before is the felt…

…it simply means that your calendar spins off its axis and you have to reset your clock. Maybe it may mean something else. Whitehead, who I'm a great follower of, had the idea of what he called epochs, and he pointed out that a constant, for instance…

…we looked at? We have sampled 80 years in one spot in the universe. And yet from that our physics is extrapolated and Whitehead had the idea of what he called epochs, which were like bubbles in the universe of possible time, and within these bubbles…

…infinite Frontier of potential intellectual evolution opens up through the concept of an unlimited project of understanding. You know Whitehead once pushed on the subject of understanding, said understanding is the apperception of pattern as such. That's all it…

…Human society is almost a pure novelty production process and what all this novelty? One way of thinking of novelty and Whitehead suggested this is density of connectedness. Well then if you define novelty as density of connectedness then you can predict…

…weight. But the plant obviously experiences itself very differently. All life has an internal horizon of transcendence toward which it aims. Whitehead called it appetition it's inclusion of sensory data out of which it maps being. But what the nature of this…

…of modern philosophy to realize that there are certain naive aspects of it that haunt it. That that's why I try to follow Whitehead, because I think he was a platonist he was a superb mathematician and he also was haunted by the difficulties inherent in…

…of the ongoing process of the world but I haven't quite figured out how to get these ducks all in a row. Well Whitehead preceded the computer revolution, and at that time there might have been some question as to the pre existence of all mathematical…

…been identified by various travelers who came back and gave their reports. The mathematical equivalent of Terence McKenna is maybe Whitehead I don't know. We have then a process of discovery of the already existing landscape and also the modification and…

…experimenter, that we know from studying quantum mechanics that things are not simply located in space and time. This is what Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. And it seems, I've always felt that what biology is is a strategy, a…

…seriously the contention that it predicts the part of history that has not yet undergone the formality of actually occurring. As Whitehead would say and under different circumstances I would demonstrate this wave because it gets down to a very, very finely…

…novel domains, and it spends less time in each domain of novelty until it moves on to the next one. This is what Whitehead called concrescence it's what it means that in a hundred years, we've gone from a world where most people didn't possess telephones…

…Concrescence is a word that I cribbed from the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, and in fact much of what I say Whitehead provides the foundation for he, like myself, had the idea that history grows toward what he called a nexus of completion, and…

…who are very heavy pot users. Well you see it with alcohol, you see it with tobacco. Life is not user safe. You know Whitehead said it's the business of the future to be dangerous. On the other hand it's good to get an education, it's good to know…

…for talking about being and you know it comes off as very psychedelic and very chaotic dynamical kind of anticipation check out Whitehead the the thing which has you know made my main novelty theory difficult to sell in terms of the ugly knobs and…

…seriously the contention that it predicts the part of history that has not yet undergone the formality of actually occurring, as Whitehead would say. And if you know under different circumstances I would demonstrate this wave because it is a finely grained…

…an appetition for completion. Everything in the universe strives to transcend itself. Everything in the universe has what Whitehead called an internal horizon of transcendence and in the human organism this internal transcendent horizon within historical times…

…What Ahmet has gotten at in this conference that consciousness collapses the state vector and causes the stuff to undergo what Whitehead called the formality of actually occurring is the beginning of the understanding of the centrality of man. We have been…

…life and you know we try to make a respectable list that makes us seem profound. So you know moby dick, Finnegan's wake, Whitehead you say ok that's the public list. What are the real books? Well, Bartholomew Cubbins and the 500 hats that was the…

…experimenter that we know from studying quantum mechanics that things are not simply located in space and time. This is what Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. And it seems I've always felt that what biology is is a strategy, a chemical…

…was was it was though a switch had been thrown and I began to understand. That's all it was. It was. You know Whitehead defines understanding as the apperception of pattern as such, and suddenly I began seeing things very differently I began to see the…

…understanding of the compression and densification of time and this is what is experienced in the psychedelic experience. Really, you know Whitehead said of dove gray that it haunts time like a ghost. Well I think that the compression of the three…

…at an ever faster and faster rate and that the presence of human history actually indicates that we have entered into what Whitehead called the short epochs, meaning kinds of time that are coherent unto themselves but that may last only a few centuries or…

…to any of these, that is the internal horizon of its own transcendence. Now this kind of talk is whiteheadian talk. Whitehead in the 20s and 30s actually created a philosophy, a rigorous metaphysic entirely capable of working in a psychedelic environment.…

…the coming together of actual events in a real world and the dissolution of those events into a world of potentiality this is all Whitehead type stuff. Some of you may know the notion of memes. A meme is the smallest unit of an idea. It's to ideas…

…matter, and that is, in my definition, a delusion: a point of view purchased at the expense of the facts of the matter. Whitehead said: there are stubborn facts you can reduce and reduce all you want but there are certain stubborn facts. Well one of…

…rainbow bridge through the act of a good act of contrition. That won't be sufficient. We have to understand, and I recall Whitehead said understanding is the apperception of pattern as such, because to fear death is to not understand what's going on, and…

…then electronic information movement and this kind of thing what is happening is there is an ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead and I took his term called concrescence. And this is a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together and in fact the…

…weight but the plant obviously experiences itself very differently. All life has an internal horizon of transcendence toward which it aims. Whitehead called it appetition, it's inclusion of sensory data out of which it maps being. But what the nature of this…

…shaman space with the a priori categories of Kant, with the eidetic reduction of Wittgenstein with the ideas of Merleau Ponty and Whitehead. All the intellectual equipage of our culture must be carried with us into that space to attempt to map it in a…