​​Throbs of Emotional Intensity

Whitehead's Idea that the Universe is Alive with Desire and Feeling
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​Finally, the reformed subjectivist principle must be repeated: that apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness.


The direct perception whereby the datum in the immediate subject is inherited from the past can thus, under an abstraction, be conceived as the transference of throbs of emotional energy, clothed in the specific forms provided by sensa.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh ,. Free Press. Kindle Edition. 

The Whiteheadian Geologist

"It’s odd to say, but as a geologist I don’t draw a sharp line between dead matter and living matter. None of it is really dead to me. Rocks, mountains, rivers—they all pulse with something. I think of landscape painters who treat mountains with the same reverence they give trees. And I’ve heard the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead describes matter as ‘throbs of emotional intensity.’ That rings true. I guess you could say I’m a Whiteheadian geologist—seeing life where others see only stone."

The Reformed Subjectivist Principle

"Finally, the reformed subjectivist principle must be repeated: that apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness."

​It is tempting to interpret Whitehead here as referring solely to human subjects. But in fact, he is speaking of concrescing subjects—actual entities undergoing the process of becoming—wherever they are found in the universe, and in whatever state of matter they may exist. These subjects are not limited to human minds or animal consciousness; they may include quantum events, droplets of plasma, cells, stars, or even ecosystems, depending on their level of complexity and integration.

Today, scientists identify at least four classical states of matter—solid, liquid, gas, and plasma—along with others such as Bose-Einstein condensates and quark-gluon plasma. From a Whiteheadian point of view, wherever there is process and becoming, there may be subjectivity, however primitive. The universe, in this view, is not a collection of lifeless objects but a field of experiential occasions. Apart from these occasions—these moments of felt becoming—there is no reality at all, only what Whitehead calls “bare nothingness.”

​Moreover, each concrescing subject is guided by a desire for intensity—what Whitehead calls a subjective aim—a lure toward some form of heightened experience in the immediacy of the moment. This subject, however small, carries the capacity to spontaneously decide from among the potentialities available to it, shaping its experience of value in a way that is not predetermined. And amid this process of desiring, aiming, and deciding, it is clothed in what Whitehead calls subjective forms—the felt qualities of its becoming, akin to emotional tones.

Once a subject achieves some degree of satisfaction—however fleeting—it becomes, in Whitehead’s words, a “throb of emotional intensity” that reverberates into the world. Its experience is inherited and felt by subsequent concrescing subjects, who incorporate it into their own becoming. In this way, the universe is not only composed of events, but of felt inheritances—rippling pulses of value and emotion passed from moment to moment, entity to entity, like music echoing through time.

​Adversion and Aversion

Two of the most basic emotions, from Whitehead’s perspective, are adversion (a feeling of attraction or drawing toward) and aversion (a feeling of repulsion or pulling away). These are the primordial emotional tones that shape how any actual entity prehends its world. All other emotions—joy, fear, love, shame, awe—can be seen as elaborations or complexifications of these basic tendencies toward or away, affirming or negating, embracing or resisting. Adversion and aversion are part of, and precede, matter.

Matter, as traditionally understood, exists in several states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma—with more recent additions such as Bose-Einstein condensates and fermionic condensates under extreme conditions. Each of these states represents a different configuration of energy and structure. Solids are structured and stable, liquids are fluid and adaptable, gases are expansive and volatile, and plasma—often called the fourth state—is ionized, electrically charged, and intensely energetic.

But beneath this scientific typology lies a deeper insight from process philosophy: all matter is not inert substance but dynamic activity—energy in motion. And this energy, according to Whitehead, is not purely mechanical or impersonal. It is subjective feeling. Wherever there is energy, there is experience or the potential for experience, however primitive. Even at the quantum level, particles respond to their environment, make "decisions" in a probabilistic sense, and are shaped by relational encounters.
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Whitehead’s notion of “subjective forms”—which include emotions—suggests that every actual occasion (or energy-event) carries with it a tone, a feeling, an affective texture. Emotions, then, are not foreign to matter but intrinsic to it. The molten flow of lava, the stillness of a rock, the swirling of wind, the eruption of a star—all may embody rudimentary emotional tones: stability, tension, release, expansion, contraction.
In this light, emotions are not merely byproducts of human consciousness. They are woven into the fabric of becoming. They are how the universe feels itself into existence.

The Hardness of Rocks

Some Whiteheadians will quickly point out that solid objects moving through space—rocks, chairs, or even human bodies—are not actual entities as such, but rather nexūs (plural of nexus) of actual entities. More precisely, they are what Whitehead calls corpuscular societies: enduring patterns of actual occasions that maintain a common form through time. These societies are not subjects in the strict metaphysical sense, but they are composed of subjects—momentary concrescences that each feel, aim, and decide.

And yet, as societies, they are aggregate expressions of subjectivity, organized unities of countless micro-decisions, each guided by a subjective aim and each colored by a felt tone—what Whitehead calls subjective forms. These societies, though not conscious in the human sense, embody the accumulated effects of subjectivity at lower levels of organization. Even the hardness of a rock, from this point of view, is not merely a material property but a stabilized pattern of emotional and purposive micro-events, bound into a resilient structure.

Perceiving

​What might it be like, then, to perceive the physical world in this way? It would mean seeing the world not as a collection of inert, silent objects, but as a vast and intricate communion of becoming subjects—each pulsing with its own micro-aims, its own emotional tones, its own flickering self-creativity. A tree would no longer be a passive thing, but a society of living events reaching for sunlight. A river would be felt as a flowing chorus of watery concrescences, each prehending what came before and luring what comes next. Even a stone would become a kind of frozen music—its solidity the rhythmic stabilization of innumerable tiny decisions. To walk through the world with such a vision would be to walk through a field of feeling, a universe alive with purpose, beauty, and countless forms of inwardness. It would be to perceive, as Whitehead said, “the withness of the body”—and the world—as something deeply, quietly alive.
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Thus, just as apart from the experiences of subjects there is “nothing, nothing, nothing,” so too, apart from the reality of decisions, subjective aims, and emotions, there is no world at all. These are not afterthoughts or human projections onto a mute cosmos. They are intrinsic to the very fabric of actuality. The universe is not merely made up of things; it is composed of acts of feeling—of choices, aims, and emotional tones that constitute reality from the inside out.