Foundations

The Glossary of Terms in 
John Cobb's Whitehead Wordbook

Conceptual Map (Sequence-Based): An Experiential Pathway

This map tracks the terms in the exact order you specified. Each step names the experiential role the term points to.

Orientation and Method

1. Speculative philosophy — the stance of open-ended inquiry into experience as a whole.
2. Fallacy of the perfect dictionary — the recognition that lived experience outruns fixed definitions.
3. Categories of existence — the basic kinds of what shows up in experience and must be acknowledged.

The Basic Unit of Reality

4. Actual entity — this moment happening: a concrete act of experience.
5. Actual occasion — the same reality emphasized as becoming-and-deciding.
6. Occasion of experience — the felt unity of a moment as lived from the inside.
7. Actual world — the many past occasions pressing into the present as data.
8. Events — reality understood as happenings, not static substances.

Possibility, Relation, and Order

9. Eternal objects — qualitative possibilities for how experience may be shaped.
10. Nexus — interrelated actual entities forming patterns of connection.
11. Societies and empty space — ordered nexus amid gaps that allow novelty and divergence.
12. Enduring objects or personally ordered societies and corpuscular societies — persistence through repetition: persons and things that “hold together.”
13. Structured societies — complex, rule-governed orders (organisms, institutions, systems).

Feeling as Fundamental

14. Prehension — the most basic experience of being affected; taking account of the world.
15. Feeling — prehension as lived; always includes a subjective form or tone (pleasure, pain, interest, delight, anxiety, hope).
16. Subject and superject — experiencing now as subject; becoming datum for others as superject.
17. Negative prehensions — selective exclusion: what is not taken up, noticed, or allowed to matter.
18. Conceptual and reverted prehensions or feelings — imagining alternatives; entertaining unrealized possibilities.

Form and Qualification

19. Objective and subjective species of eternal objects — qualities as given vs. qualities as felt and valued.
20. Ingression of eternal objects — possibilities taking concrete form in a particular experience.
21. Restricted and unrestricted ingression of eternal objects — constraint vs. latitude in how possibilities enter and shape becoming.

Polarity and Integration

22. The physical and mental or conceptual poles — bodily inheritance alongside imagination, meaning, and interpretation.
23. Simple causal physical feelings and transmuted feelings — raw impact transformed into interpreted feeling.
24. Pure and hybrid physical prehensions or feelings — direct bodily influence vs. bodily feeling shaped by conceptual context.

Personal Continuity

25. Living person — a personally ordered society: continuity through successive occasions.
26. Pure and impure conceptual prehensions or feelings propositional feelings — ideas felt abstractly or emotionally; lures that invite response.

Possibility as Lure

27. Proposition — a felt “this could be so.”
28. Perceptive and imaginative propositions — recognizing what is vs. imagining what might be.
29. Truth — felt fit: the resonance of a proposition with how things actually unfold.

Contrasts and Meaning

30. Intellectual feelings and physical purposes as generic contrasts — tensions between understanding and bodily/habitual drive held together.
31. Perception in the modes of causal efficacy and presentation or immediacy — feeling the weight of the past plus the clarity of present sensation.
32. Symbolic reference — meaning emerging when those two modes are integrated.

Metaphysical Commitments

33. The subjective principle and the reformed subjectivist principle — explanation must finally refer to experience, not abstractions alone.
34. The ontological principle — actual entities are the concrete reasons for what happens.

Decision and Becoming

35. Subjective aim and decision — the inward leaning toward one possibility rather than another.
36. Coordinate and genetic division of actual occasions — the moment as spatially spread and temporally unfolding.
37. Concrescence and time — becoming as the gathering of influences into a single completion.
38. Phases of concrescence — felt stages: receiving, integrating, deciding, completing.

Completion and the Afterlife of the Moment

39. Subjective immediacy Consciousness — vivid presentness: “this is happening now.”
40. Objective immortality — the completed occasion as fact and datum for the future.

Scale and Cosmos

41. Microscopic and macroscopic processes — small moments accumulating into large patterns: habits, histories, cultures.
42. Creativity as the ultimate — the universe as creative advance into novelty, moment by moment; and self-creativity in each decision.

God and Value

43. God — the felt lure toward meaning, beauty, and wholeness.
44. The primordial and consequent natures of God — possibilities offered (primordial) and the world received/remembered (consequent).

Time, Tension, and Space

45. Perpetual perishing — each moment passes irretrievably, even as it contributes to what comes next.
46. Initial aim — the first directional lure in becoming: a “how to become” offered to the moment.
47. Intensity — depth, richness, and aliveness in experience.
48. Strain feelings — a directed straight-line tension between what is here and what is there.
49. The extensive continuum and its regions — lived spatial relatedness: here/there, near/far.
50. Durations — lived time as stretches: waiting, flowing, lingering.

One-line summary: Speculative orientation → categories → momentary becoming → feeling (with tone) → ingression of possibilities → integration and contrasts → propositions and truth → decision through concrescence → conscious immediacy → perishing into objective immortality → new nexus and societies → all within creativity’s advance and the divine horizon of primordial offering and consequent receiving.

Experiential Approach

An Experiential Map of Key Whiteheadian Terms

Each entry offers a phenomenological pointer: the kind of lived experience the term abstracts from or illuminates.

1. Speculative philosophy: The experience of wondering beyond immediate utility—letting imagination range widely in order to make sense of life as a whole.
2. Fallacy of the perfect dictionary: The experience of realizing that no definition quite captures what is happening—that life always outruns our words.
3. Categories of existence: The experience of discovering recurring patterns in experience that seem unavoidable, no matter what one is experiencing.
4. Actual entity: The experience of this moment happening—a pulse of existence that is here and then gone.
5. Actual occasion: The experience of a single act of becoming: deciding, feeling, responding—however briefly.
6. Occasion of experience: The felt unity of a moment: everything you are aware of right now, as one lived whole.
7. Actual world: The experience of being shaped by what has already happened—memory, habit, environment, history pressing into the present.
8. Events: The experience of things happening rather than simply being: changes, encounters, transitions.
9. Eternal objects: The experience of recognizable qualities—colors, shapes, emotions, values—that can show up again and again in different situations.
10. Nexus: The experience of interconnectedness: realizing that what is happening now is entangled with many other happenings.
11. Societies and empty space: The experience of patterned continuity (a room, a body, a community) amid gaps, absences, and openness.
12. Enduring objects or personally ordered societies and corpuscular societies: The experience of persistence: a person remaining “the same” over time, or a thing holding together through repetition.
13. Structured societies: The experience of order and organization—institutions, habits, systems—that stabilize behavior over time.
14. Prehension: The most basic experience of being affected—the way the world enters into experience prior to reflection or judgment.
15. Feeling: The experience of being affected—the concrete way in which something is taken up into experience. Feeling is not an addition to prehension but prehension itself as lived. Every feeling includes an emotional quality or subjective form, a tonal “how” of feeling, such as pleasure or pain, interest or boredom, delight, anxiety, hope, or fear. Nothing is felt neutrally; every prehension is qualified by how it feels.
16. Subject and superject: The experience of being a subject while becoming something others can feel—acting now, leaving traces later.
17. Negative prehensions: The experience of selective inattention: what you do not notice, exclude, or let matter, often accompanied by a muted or avoided tone of feeling.
18. Conceptual and reverted prehensions or feelings: The experience of imagining alternatives, sensing “what might have been,” or entertaining unrealized possibilities.
19. Objective and subjective species of eternal objects: The experience of qualities as given (red, loud, heavy) versus as felt (comforting, threatening, beautiful).
20. Ingression of eternal objects: The experience of a quality taking on concrete form—this sadness, this shade of blue, this precise harmony.
21. Restricted and unrestricted ingression of external objects: The experience of constraint versus freedom in how possibilities are allowed to shape the present.
22. The physical and mental or conceptual poles: The experience of bodily inheritance (fatigue, sensation) alongside imagination, thought, and meaning.
23. Simple causal physical feelings and transmuted feelings: The experience of raw impact (a sound, a blow, a warmth) transformed into interpreted feeling (alarm, comfort, curiosity).
24. Pure and hybrid physical prehensions or feelings: The experience of direct bodily influence versus bodily feeling already shaped by interpretation.
25. Living person: The experience of being a continuing self who remembers, anticipates, and responds over time.
26. Pure and impure conceptual prehensions or feelings; propositional feelings: The experience of entertaining ideas—some abstract, some emotionally charged, some inviting action.
27. Proposition: The experience of being presented with a possibility: “This could be so.”
28. Perceptive and imaginative propositions: The experience of recognizing what is and imagining what might be.
29. Truth: The experience of fit—when a way of seeing resonates with how things actually unfold.
30. Intellectual feelings and physical purposes as generic contrasts: The experience of tension between what you understand and what your body, habits, or impulses want.
31. Perception in the modes of causal efficacy and presentation or immediacy: The experience of being influenced by the past (weight, mood, tone) alongside clear sensory appearance.
32. Symbolic reference: The experience of meaning emerging when bodily feeling and sensory clarity are held together.
33. The subjective principle and the reformed subjectivist principle: The experience of realizing that explanation must finally refer to lived experience, not abstractions alone.
34. The ontological principle: The experience that something concrete must be responsible for whatever is happening.
35. Subjective aim and decision: The experience of leaning toward one possibility rather than another—choosing, even unconsciously.
36. Coordinate and genetic division of actual occasions: The experience of a moment as both spatially spread and temporally unfolding.
37. Concrescence and time: The experience of becoming—gathering influences into a single, decisive moment.
38. Phases of concrescence: The experience of stages within a moment: sensing, weighing, deciding, completing.
39. Subjective immediacy / Consciousness: The experience of vivid presence—“this is happening now.”
40. Objective immortality: The experience of knowing that what you do matters beyond the moment—others will feel its effects.
41. Microscopic and macroscopic processes: The experience of small moments accumulating into large patterns—habits, histories, cultures.
42. Creativity as the ultimate: The experience of the universe as a creative advance into novelty, felt moment by moment as the sense that something new is always coming into being. It is also the inward feeling of self-creativity—the awareness, however faint, that in each moment one is not merely receiving the world but deciding how it will become.
43. God: The experience of being lured toward meaning, beauty, or wholeness beyond mere survival.
44. The primordial and consequent natures of God: The experience of being offered possibilities (primordial) and of being received, understood, or remembered after acting (consequent).
45. Perpetual perishing: The experience that each moment passes irretrievably—even as it contributes to what comes next.
46. Initial aim: The experience of a gentle push or pull toward a way of responding that feels right.
47. Intensity: The experience of aliveness, richness, or depth in a moment.
48. Strain feelings: The experience of a directed tension, as if a straight line were drawn between what is here and what is there—between the present situation and a felt possibility not yet realized.
49. The extensive continuum and its regions: The experience of spatial relatedness—here and there, near and far—as lived rather than merely measured.
50. Durations: The experience of time as lived stretches—waiting, flowing, lingering—rather than clock units.

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Alternative Organization of Terms for Conceptual Clarity

A One-Page Conceptual Map of Process and Reality (All Terms Included)

A structured, sectioned map that explicitly includes each requested term and locates it within the overall scheme.

I. Method and Orientation

• Speculative philosophy
• Fallacy of the perfect dictionary
• Categories of existence

Method sets the terms of inquiry: a categoreal scheme adequate to experience, without reifying definitions.

II. Ultimate Principles

• Creativity as the ultimate
• The ontological principle
• The subjective principle and the reformed subjectivist principle

Creativity is ultimate; actual entities are final reasons; explanation is grounded in concrete experience.

III. Actuality and World

• Actual entity
• Actual occasion
• Occasion of experience
• Actual world
• Events

Reality is composed of momentary acts of experience (events), each arising from a determinate past (its actual world).

IV. Prehension, Feeling, and Internal Constitution

• Prehension
• Feeling
• Negative prehensions
• Conceptual and reverted prehensions or feelings
• Pure and hybrid physical prehensions or feelings
• Simple causal physical feelings and transmuted feelings
• The physical and mental or conceptual poles
• Subject and superject

An actual occasion is internally constituted by how it feels the world and possibilities, becoming a subject and then a superject.

V. Eternal Objects and Their Realization

• Eternal objects
• Objective and subjective species of eternal objects
• Ingression of eternal objects
• Restricted and unrestricted ingression of external objects

Eternal objects provide forms of definiteness; ingression names their realization in concrete occasions.

VI. Propositions, Perception, and Truth

• Pure and impure conceptual prehensions or feelings propositional feelings
• Proposition
• Perceptive and imaginative propositions
• Truth
• Perception in the modes of causal efficacy and presentation or immediacy
• Symbolic reference

Propositions function as lures for feeling; perception integrates bodily inheritance and sensory presentation by symbolic reference.

VII. Contrasts, Purposes, and Intensity

• Intellectual feelings and physical purposes as generic contrasts
• Intensity
• Strain feelings

Experience aims at intensity: contrasts are held together, often with strain, in the movement toward satisfaction.

VIII. Becoming: Aim, Decision, and Concrescence

• Subjective aim and decision
• Initial aim
• Concrescence and time
• Phases of concrescence
• Coordinate and genetic division of actual occasions
• Subjective immediacy Consciousness

An occasion becomes through phases of concrescence, guided by an initial aim and culminating in subjective immediacy (consciousness).

IX. Perishing and Immortality

• Perpetual perishing
• Objective immortality

The immediacy of becoming perishes; the completed occasion remains as an objective datum for subsequent occasions.

X. Nexus, Societies, and Personal Order

• Nexus
• Societies and empty space
• Structured societies
• Enduring objects or personally ordered societies and corpuscular societies
• Living person

Recurrent patterns of nexus yield societies; personal order is a distinctive kind of societal endurance culminating in living persons.

XI. Scale, Space, and Time

• Microscopic and macroscopic processes
• The extensive continuum and its regions
• Durations

Macroscopic order emerges from microscopic occasions; spatial and temporal extension are expressed via the extensive continuum and durations.

XII. God and the Twofold Nature

• God
• The primordial and consequent natures of God

God orders possibility (primordial) and receives the world with value (consequent), providing an initial aim without coercion.

Integrated Summary Flow

From speculative philosophy and the categories of existence, Whitehead develops a scheme in which creativity issues in actual occasions that arise from an actual world, are constituted by prehensions and feelings (physical and conceptual poles), realize eternal objects through ingression, entertain propositions and evaluate truth in experience, move by subjective aim, initial aim, and decision through concrescence toward intensity, attain subjective immediacy, undergo perpetual perishing into objective immortality, and contribute to nexus, societies, and the spatiotemporal order of the extensive continuum, its regions, and durations, all within the divine horizon of God in the primordial and consequent natures.