actual entities

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Actual entities, developed through actual occasions in Whitehead’s process account, are momentary units of becoming that gather inherited influences into a new unity and pass effects onward. They are not enduring substances behind change. The corpus borrows this relational ontology while expressly declining Whitehead’s panexperientialism, so the term must not imply that everything is conscious or that the author adopts his entire system.

Explanation

RB1 explains an occasion as concrescence: prior influences enter a newly achieved togetherness. The resulting unity adds something to subsequent becoming rather than merely exposing a static core. AB’s formulation likewise locates what an actual entity is in how it becomes, extending the point carefully to enduring organizations.

RB2 describes prehension as an occasion’s taking account of prior occasions and stresses that its achieved coherence perishes while transmitting effects. Continued things therefore require patterns of renewal, rather than a single occasion remaining unchanged through the whole duration of an organism or institution.

The source explicitly separates Whitehead’s experience-all-the-way-down from consciousness and then declines that panexperientialist commitment itself. RB3’s synthesis supplies another processual comparison, not permission to erase this qualification. The proposed main entry retains the metaphysical attribution without declaring every physical event a felt subject.

Scope and attribution

Retain the Whitehead-attributed main entry without harmonizing away the author’s refusal.

AB — The Actual Book

Actual entities support the process principle rather than a timeless hidden core.

Occurrence locators: 121, 122; Notes: 243.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

Concrescence integrates inherited influences into novel togetherness.

Occurrence locators: 65, 69, 116, 123, 137, 158, 257.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

The author borrows relational process while declining panexperientialism.

Occurrence locators: 184, 185, 189, 204, 205, 206, 232.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Actual occasions recur in the relational synthesis.

Occurrence locators: 333.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.