The Translucency of Realization
Whitehead, the I Ching, and the
Suchness of Pure Potentialities
Whitehead has a way with words. In his chapter on Abstraction in Science and the Modern World, he introduces a principle he calls "The Translucency of Realisation."
Someone unfamiliar with his work, with Buddhist leanings, might think he is referring to enlightenment. But he isn’t. He’s talking about how high abstractions—pure potentialities that can be actualized in the world—retain a certain translucency. They are clearly themselves and nothing else, neutral regarding their realization in the world. They remain “just themselves,” transparent enough to enter diverse contexts without distortion.
Here is the paragraph:
"There is one metaphysical principle which is essential for the rational coherence of this account of the general character of an experient occasion. I call this principle, ‘The Translucency of Realisation.’ By this I mean that any eternal object is just itself in whatever mode of realisation it is involved. There can be no distortion of the individual essence without thereby producing a different eternal object. In the essence of each eternal object there stands an indeterminateness which expresses its indifferent patience for any mode of ingression into any actual occasion. Thus in cognitive experience, there can be the cognition of the same eternal object as in the same occasion having ingression with implication in more than one grade of realisation. Thus the translucency of realisation, and the possible multiplicity of modes of ingression into the same occasion, together form the foundation for the correspondence theory of truth."
(Science and the Modern World, p. 172, underlining mine)
Whitehead is describing how eternal objects—concepts, forms, or qualities—maintain their identity regardless of how or where they are actualized. There is no distortion in their essence; if their nature were altered, they would no longer be the same object. Instead, they display “indifferent patience”—they await any mode of participation, whether simple or complex. This translucency and multiplicity of modes allow eternal objects to ingress into different contexts without compromising their integrity, providing the basis for Whitehead’s correspondence theory of truth.
Two Links with Buddhism: Suchness and Radiance
At face value, this may seem entirely unrelated to Buddhist points of view. However, I suggest two ways in which it reflects a Buddhist sensibility.
First, it appeals to what a Buddhist might call the unique "suchness" of eternal objects or pure potentialities, such that we can feel their presence—or "prehend" them, as Whitehead would say—as "just themselves" in their own right. This corresponds to what Whitehead in Process and Reality refers to as "conceptual prehensions." Mathematicians, for example, exemplify this capacity by taking aesthetic delight in mathematical patterns. These patterns, abstracted from the world, have their own identities and exhibit a certain kind of beauty or integrity—a kind of translucence.
Second, the principle invites us to recognize that abstractions do indeed "ingress" into the material world. Some of the patterns we contemplate, particularly in pure mathematics, are embodied in the physical world, making the world itself a participant in timeless potentialities. These abstractions are like prisms through which eternal lights shine. However, this does not imply that the eternal lights are more real than the world. As pure potentialities, they cannot exist at all without being prehended by experiential subjects of one sort or another. When actualized in the forms and patterns of the world, the world itself takes on a radiant or shining quality.
It is possible that some forms of Buddhist enlightenment, among other kinds of experiences, open the doors of perception to this radiance. This experience is not one of abstraction but rather an attunement to the way in which the world, in its concreteness, participates in and reflects these timeless potentialities.
The I Ching
One thing is clear: the notion of timeless potentialities can be harmonized with a complementary understanding that the actual world, and indeed the cosmos as a whole, is fluid and constantly evolving, never the same at any two moments—a "creative advance into novelty," as Whitehead would put it. This dynamic change unfolds even as it simultaneously reveals timeless potentialities. In the history of Asian thought, the pattern recognition embedded in the I Ching points toward this interplay between the fluid and the eternal.
The I Ching (also spelled Yi Jing, meaning "Book of Changes") is an ancient Chinese text and one of the oldest known works of philosophy and divination, dating back over 3,000 years. It offers guidance through a system of hexagrams—patterns composed of six broken or unbroken lines. These hexagrams are interpreted to provide insights into personal situations, decision-making, and the flow of events, offering glimpses into the interaction between change and constancy.
The Human Process of Self-Transformation: Linyu Gi
When the hexagrams are viewed as disclosures of a world of pure potential, they introduce an element that is often absent from much of Western Whiteheadian scholarship: a deeper engagement with morality and emotion. In this way, the I Ching enriches the conceptual framework provided by Whitehead’s metaphysics.
Linyu Gu sees this, Gu is professor of Chinese philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and managing editor of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, specializing in the intersection of process metaphysics and Asian philosophy. In the essay Gu, explores how Whitehead's ideas can be expanded through engagement with Yi Jing philosophy:
"One of the unique contributions of Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics is its potential to develop an integrated view of time and emotion, which can be enriched by appropriating the moralistic dimension of time and harmonization in Chinese Yi philosophy. From the Yi perspective, whereas Whitehead sees the primitive experience of time as the emotional harmony between the physical and mental worlds, the Chinese concept of Yi (change) presents time (shi) as 'ceaseless creativity' (sheng sheng) and 'human self-cultivation' (zi qiang), leading toward a 'harmonious unity of heaven, earth, and humanity' (tian ren he yi).
"While both Whitehead and the I Ching treat time as a creative process of harmonization, Whitehead’s focus on the creative advance does not give the same emphasis to human self-transformation as found in Chinese philosophy. In Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, the practical activity of creative individuals holds no significant, independent status but is integrated into the broader processes of the cosmos." (Gu, 2009)
A Response to Gu
While I appreciate Gu’s insights, I find Gu's critique of Whitehead to be somewhat inaccurate. Whitehead indeed emphasizes the importance of practical human activity in much of this writing, especially The Aims of Education and Adventures of Ideas,—viewing individuals as creative agents whose actions shape the unfolding of novelty within the world. The notion that human creativity is merely absorbed into the cosmic process overlooks Whitehead’s respect for individual agency and self-actualization as evident in his emphases on love, adventure, and peace in Adventures of Ideas,
However, I do find Gu’s emphasis on "ceaseless creativity" and self-cultivation illuminating. This mirrors Whitehead’s "creative advance into novelty," suggesting profound resonance between the two traditions. The I Ching also aligns with Whitehead’s metaphysics by emphasizing harmony between physical and mental aspects of life. Whitehead’s concept of each moment containing a "physical pole" (grounded in concrete experience) and a "mental pole" (attuned to possibilities) resonates with the I Ching's invitation to align personal and social life with larger cosmic patterns. In both frameworks, living well involves attuning oneself to the subtle interplay of temporal and timeless realities.
The Hexagrams as Invitations to Harmonious Living
In this view, the hexagrams of the I Ching are more than mere symbols for divination—they are guides for existential and social harmony. They invite us to participate in the translucent patterns of possibility that underlie reality and offer insight into how these patterns can shape harmonious living. They existentialize Whitehead's realm of eternal objects and, along the way, remind us that many of these objects are indeed potentials for human becoming. both outwardly and inwardly.
In Whitehead the realm of eternal objects includes two kinds: eternal object of the objective species and eternal objects of the subjective species. The former are potentials for objective, spatial relations among objects in the world: geometrical and mathematical. The latter are potentials for emotion and subjective aims or purposes. Whitehead puts it this way in Process and Reality:
"A member of the subjective species is, in its primary character, an element in the definiteness of the subjective form of a feeling. It is a determinate way in which a feeling can feel. It is an emotion, or an intensity, or an adversion, or an aversion, or a pleasure, or a pain. It defines the subjective form of feeling of one actual entity." [2]
This parallels Gu's point that the I Ching, interpreted with help from Whitehead, offers "an integrated view of time and emotion." Needless to say, the emotions at issue are not merely objects in a spatio-temporal field or patterns of external happenings. They are also feelings and purposes, hopes and dreams, and include the moral dimension of life. of which "harmony" with the world of other people and the more than human world (the hills and rivers, trees and stars) is an example.
It is possible that harmony itself is an eternal object of a kind, both objective and subjective, not unlike the Yin and Yang of Chinese philosophy. But it finds it home in the dynamics of human life, not simply as an ideal to be beheld in the mental pole of experience. And when it finds its home, that home is itself a process - a process of living, moment by moment, day by day, dynamically.
The I Ching as a Collective Proposition
The I Ching teaches that harmony is not static; it is an ongoing process of change, creativity, and self-transformation—concepts that Whitehead would surely affirm. Through this lens, the I Ching becomes a practical tool, or, perhaps better, a poetic invitation, for living within the creative flux of life, helping individuals cultivate inner and outer harmony in alignment with both human and cosmic rhythms.
I say poetic invitation, because I do not want to suggest that the hexagrams of the I Chint need to be understood literally in order to be appreciated. Individually and collectively, they function as what Whitehead calls a proposition: a lure (his word) for how we might understand and live in the world. Proposition of this sort partake of two realities held in contrast: potential realities concerning how we might live in the world, and actual realities in which we live. They are a half-way house between potentiality and actuality a hybrid of what can be and what is. My point is that the hexagrams of the I Ching function in this way: that is, as propositional lures for feeling, understanding, and acting in the world.
Ecological Civilization
In our time, most Whitehead-influenced thinkers throughout the world recognize that the proposition to live in harmony with one another and the more than human world is not relevant to individuals alone. It is also relevant to societies and cultures. What the world needs now, perhaps more than ever, are societies in which people live with respect and care for the community of life, humans much included, and build communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, humane to animals, and in harmony with the earth, with no one left behind. Such societies will be, as it were, "translucent" to the better possibilities of human life, such that those possibilities, for survival and well-being, "shine" in the way we live our lives collectively. The I Ching, understood in a contemporary context, is a powerful invitation to this kind of radiant living, upon which so much of the world now depends
Reference:
[1] Gu, L. (2009). "Time as Emotion Versus Time as Moralization: Whitehead and the Yijing." Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 36, 129-151. Link.
[2] Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28) (p. 291). Free Press. Kindle Edition.
Someone unfamiliar with his work, with Buddhist leanings, might think he is referring to enlightenment. But he isn’t. He’s talking about how high abstractions—pure potentialities that can be actualized in the world—retain a certain translucency. They are clearly themselves and nothing else, neutral regarding their realization in the world. They remain “just themselves,” transparent enough to enter diverse contexts without distortion.
Here is the paragraph:
"There is one metaphysical principle which is essential for the rational coherence of this account of the general character of an experient occasion. I call this principle, ‘The Translucency of Realisation.’ By this I mean that any eternal object is just itself in whatever mode of realisation it is involved. There can be no distortion of the individual essence without thereby producing a different eternal object. In the essence of each eternal object there stands an indeterminateness which expresses its indifferent patience for any mode of ingression into any actual occasion. Thus in cognitive experience, there can be the cognition of the same eternal object as in the same occasion having ingression with implication in more than one grade of realisation. Thus the translucency of realisation, and the possible multiplicity of modes of ingression into the same occasion, together form the foundation for the correspondence theory of truth."
(Science and the Modern World, p. 172, underlining mine)
Whitehead is describing how eternal objects—concepts, forms, or qualities—maintain their identity regardless of how or where they are actualized. There is no distortion in their essence; if their nature were altered, they would no longer be the same object. Instead, they display “indifferent patience”—they await any mode of participation, whether simple or complex. This translucency and multiplicity of modes allow eternal objects to ingress into different contexts without compromising their integrity, providing the basis for Whitehead’s correspondence theory of truth.
Two Links with Buddhism: Suchness and Radiance
At face value, this may seem entirely unrelated to Buddhist points of view. However, I suggest two ways in which it reflects a Buddhist sensibility.
First, it appeals to what a Buddhist might call the unique "suchness" of eternal objects or pure potentialities, such that we can feel their presence—or "prehend" them, as Whitehead would say—as "just themselves" in their own right. This corresponds to what Whitehead in Process and Reality refers to as "conceptual prehensions." Mathematicians, for example, exemplify this capacity by taking aesthetic delight in mathematical patterns. These patterns, abstracted from the world, have their own identities and exhibit a certain kind of beauty or integrity—a kind of translucence.
Second, the principle invites us to recognize that abstractions do indeed "ingress" into the material world. Some of the patterns we contemplate, particularly in pure mathematics, are embodied in the physical world, making the world itself a participant in timeless potentialities. These abstractions are like prisms through which eternal lights shine. However, this does not imply that the eternal lights are more real than the world. As pure potentialities, they cannot exist at all without being prehended by experiential subjects of one sort or another. When actualized in the forms and patterns of the world, the world itself takes on a radiant or shining quality.
It is possible that some forms of Buddhist enlightenment, among other kinds of experiences, open the doors of perception to this radiance. This experience is not one of abstraction but rather an attunement to the way in which the world, in its concreteness, participates in and reflects these timeless potentialities.
The I Ching
One thing is clear: the notion of timeless potentialities can be harmonized with a complementary understanding that the actual world, and indeed the cosmos as a whole, is fluid and constantly evolving, never the same at any two moments—a "creative advance into novelty," as Whitehead would put it. This dynamic change unfolds even as it simultaneously reveals timeless potentialities. In the history of Asian thought, the pattern recognition embedded in the I Ching points toward this interplay between the fluid and the eternal.
The I Ching (also spelled Yi Jing, meaning "Book of Changes") is an ancient Chinese text and one of the oldest known works of philosophy and divination, dating back over 3,000 years. It offers guidance through a system of hexagrams—patterns composed of six broken or unbroken lines. These hexagrams are interpreted to provide insights into personal situations, decision-making, and the flow of events, offering glimpses into the interaction between change and constancy.
The Human Process of Self-Transformation: Linyu Gi
When the hexagrams are viewed as disclosures of a world of pure potential, they introduce an element that is often absent from much of Western Whiteheadian scholarship: a deeper engagement with morality and emotion. In this way, the I Ching enriches the conceptual framework provided by Whitehead’s metaphysics.
Linyu Gu sees this, Gu is professor of Chinese philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and managing editor of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, specializing in the intersection of process metaphysics and Asian philosophy. In the essay Gu, explores how Whitehead's ideas can be expanded through engagement with Yi Jing philosophy:
"One of the unique contributions of Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics is its potential to develop an integrated view of time and emotion, which can be enriched by appropriating the moralistic dimension of time and harmonization in Chinese Yi philosophy. From the Yi perspective, whereas Whitehead sees the primitive experience of time as the emotional harmony between the physical and mental worlds, the Chinese concept of Yi (change) presents time (shi) as 'ceaseless creativity' (sheng sheng) and 'human self-cultivation' (zi qiang), leading toward a 'harmonious unity of heaven, earth, and humanity' (tian ren he yi).
"While both Whitehead and the I Ching treat time as a creative process of harmonization, Whitehead’s focus on the creative advance does not give the same emphasis to human self-transformation as found in Chinese philosophy. In Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, the practical activity of creative individuals holds no significant, independent status but is integrated into the broader processes of the cosmos." (Gu, 2009)
A Response to Gu
While I appreciate Gu’s insights, I find Gu's critique of Whitehead to be somewhat inaccurate. Whitehead indeed emphasizes the importance of practical human activity in much of this writing, especially The Aims of Education and Adventures of Ideas,—viewing individuals as creative agents whose actions shape the unfolding of novelty within the world. The notion that human creativity is merely absorbed into the cosmic process overlooks Whitehead’s respect for individual agency and self-actualization as evident in his emphases on love, adventure, and peace in Adventures of Ideas,
However, I do find Gu’s emphasis on "ceaseless creativity" and self-cultivation illuminating. This mirrors Whitehead’s "creative advance into novelty," suggesting profound resonance between the two traditions. The I Ching also aligns with Whitehead’s metaphysics by emphasizing harmony between physical and mental aspects of life. Whitehead’s concept of each moment containing a "physical pole" (grounded in concrete experience) and a "mental pole" (attuned to possibilities) resonates with the I Ching's invitation to align personal and social life with larger cosmic patterns. In both frameworks, living well involves attuning oneself to the subtle interplay of temporal and timeless realities.
The Hexagrams as Invitations to Harmonious Living
In this view, the hexagrams of the I Ching are more than mere symbols for divination—they are guides for existential and social harmony. They invite us to participate in the translucent patterns of possibility that underlie reality and offer insight into how these patterns can shape harmonious living. They existentialize Whitehead's realm of eternal objects and, along the way, remind us that many of these objects are indeed potentials for human becoming. both outwardly and inwardly.
In Whitehead the realm of eternal objects includes two kinds: eternal object of the objective species and eternal objects of the subjective species. The former are potentials for objective, spatial relations among objects in the world: geometrical and mathematical. The latter are potentials for emotion and subjective aims or purposes. Whitehead puts it this way in Process and Reality:
"A member of the subjective species is, in its primary character, an element in the definiteness of the subjective form of a feeling. It is a determinate way in which a feeling can feel. It is an emotion, or an intensity, or an adversion, or an aversion, or a pleasure, or a pain. It defines the subjective form of feeling of one actual entity." [2]
This parallels Gu's point that the I Ching, interpreted with help from Whitehead, offers "an integrated view of time and emotion." Needless to say, the emotions at issue are not merely objects in a spatio-temporal field or patterns of external happenings. They are also feelings and purposes, hopes and dreams, and include the moral dimension of life. of which "harmony" with the world of other people and the more than human world (the hills and rivers, trees and stars) is an example.
It is possible that harmony itself is an eternal object of a kind, both objective and subjective, not unlike the Yin and Yang of Chinese philosophy. But it finds it home in the dynamics of human life, not simply as an ideal to be beheld in the mental pole of experience. And when it finds its home, that home is itself a process - a process of living, moment by moment, day by day, dynamically.
The I Ching as a Collective Proposition
The I Ching teaches that harmony is not static; it is an ongoing process of change, creativity, and self-transformation—concepts that Whitehead would surely affirm. Through this lens, the I Ching becomes a practical tool, or, perhaps better, a poetic invitation, for living within the creative flux of life, helping individuals cultivate inner and outer harmony in alignment with both human and cosmic rhythms.
I say poetic invitation, because I do not want to suggest that the hexagrams of the I Chint need to be understood literally in order to be appreciated. Individually and collectively, they function as what Whitehead calls a proposition: a lure (his word) for how we might understand and live in the world. Proposition of this sort partake of two realities held in contrast: potential realities concerning how we might live in the world, and actual realities in which we live. They are a half-way house between potentiality and actuality a hybrid of what can be and what is. My point is that the hexagrams of the I Ching function in this way: that is, as propositional lures for feeling, understanding, and acting in the world.
Ecological Civilization
In our time, most Whitehead-influenced thinkers throughout the world recognize that the proposition to live in harmony with one another and the more than human world is not relevant to individuals alone. It is also relevant to societies and cultures. What the world needs now, perhaps more than ever, are societies in which people live with respect and care for the community of life, humans much included, and build communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, humane to animals, and in harmony with the earth, with no one left behind. Such societies will be, as it were, "translucent" to the better possibilities of human life, such that those possibilities, for survival and well-being, "shine" in the way we live our lives collectively. The I Ching, understood in a contemporary context, is a powerful invitation to this kind of radiant living, upon which so much of the world now depends
Reference:
[1] Gu, L. (2009). "Time as Emotion Versus Time as Moralization: Whitehead and the Yijing." Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 36, 129-151. Link.
[2] Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28) (p. 291). Free Press. Kindle Edition.