Process and Reality - Alfred North Whitehead

"Consciousness is the crown of experience, only occasionally attained, not its necessary base.” p 378

Whitehead brings a theory of everything, it being cosmology after all, by offering a Philosophy of the Organism to explain  how reality is a passage at the knife edge of now. Rather than taking the substance-predicate at face value, Whitehead exposes the contradictions in the Cartesian thought and demonstrates how conceptions of interaction and atomism are not exclusive. Stunning in its breadth and ability to explain what Whitehead sees as the composition of our world Process and Reality (relatively) simply is an absolutely seminal piece of modern philosophy.

The Philosophy of the Organism looks at the manner in which objects become concretized and therefore incorporate other prior objectifications in their composition. Whitehead cleaves reality into two - interdependent - types of entities: the actual and the eternal. Actual entities, also known as occasions, are "the final real things" the world is made of, but are themselves also nexus. The manner in which different entities interact with one another is called their prehensions: without their prehensions actual entities are unrecognizable, and with an understanding of the actual entities prehensions become meaningless. Throughout this it is of paramount importance to keep in mind that actual entities are never to be conceived as unchanging subjects: the moment they are come together into a public the object has begun its perishing into a new process of becoming. Eternal objects participate in the actual by the means of ingression. Eternal objects are the mode of possibility of any concrescence, but are not realized except in the actual. Being able to truly pick apart what Whitehead means by this and the implications, even after a close reading of Process and Reality, is far from straight forward.

There is much more in this work than can be covered here. What seems of crucial importance is to include Whitehead's conception of the antithesis. Whitehead's Philosophy of the Organism cannot be separated from his conception of novelty in the universe, or, what he calls God. For the Philosophy of the Organism recognizes that all things are constantly engaged in the emergence of creation and dying, and that the emergence of new things can never fully be understood in terms of their compositional entities. That the universe is both fluid and static, that the dynamic, to meaningfully exist, must be grounded is, for Whitehead, apparent. That which is not, but all that is novel in the process of becoming, is the crux of existence.

"In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by submission to permanence." p. 478

Phaedrus - Plato

“Shouldn’t one reflect about the nature of anything like this: First, is the thing about which we shall want to be experts ourselves and be capable of making others expert about something that is simple or complex [many formed]? Next, if it is simple, we should consider, shouldn’t we, what natural capacity it has for being acted upon, and by what; and if it has more forms than one, we should count these, and see in the case of each, as in the case of where it had only one, with which of them it is its nature to do what, or with which to have what done to it by what?.. And at any rate, proceeding without doing these things would seem to be just like a blind man’s progress.” P. 56-57

Most likely one of Plato's later dialogues, and certainly one of his more famous, the Phaedrus is one of Plato's most direct addresses on the subject of rhetoric and, one would figure, the sophists that normally served as his foil. Running throughout, as in many of his works, is Plato's insistence that a comprehensive knowledge of a subject must first be obtained before creative thought within that realm can begin. Crucial to such an understanding is finding the pivot points, or "joints", which are of key importance to a things existence and interactions. It would seem that Plato would label the forms as those crucial points, though it is unclear how to find crucial points within the particulars of the world. We know that Plato distinguishes between that which is simple and that which is complex, though how this relates to change and particulars in the world is not directly addressed here.

This translation offers a lively and accessible reading of a dialogue that requires a bit of foreknowledge concerning Plato's other works. Rowe has provided copious notes concerning earlier references and potential vagaries in meaning. A good introduction to Plato's work and thoughts in general.

The Two Cultures: and A Second Look

Originally a speech given at Cambridge, C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures went a long way towards defining the broader intellectual class' discomfort with the rise in industrial-technology and the seeming lack of moral rigor it was being subjected to. A self-described scientist, Snow laments the seemingly unbridgeable gap between his university colleagues in the sciences and the humanities. As he famously put it, it seems that scientists in Cambridge had more in common with scientists at M.I.T. than with their colleagues across the campus. For Snow this was problem that threatened to, not only undermine the pursuits of the educated, but spread to broader concerns of morality and progress in society.

Though their realms of investigation differ, Snow believed that the sciences and humanities had much to teach one another. “As we read our imaginations stretch wider than our beliefs. If we construct mental boxes to shut out what won’t fit, then we make ourselves meaner.” P. 92-3

He believed that this applied for scientists looking to broaden their thinking through the humanities as much as poets and novelists could learn about the world around them through the sciences. As a scientist and writer of fiction, Snow lived what he spoke.

Of course this critique feels strikingly modern, and but for a few asides concerning the communist manner of education it could have been written recently. We should pause to wonder what the purpose of our educational systems are, and if they are accomplishing what we hope?

Born to Run - Christopher McDougall

Starting with the basic question, "why does my foot hurt?" Christopher McDougall travels around the world and puts his own body on the line to discover the secret of the running people: that humans may be biologically born to run. Though such a claim may ring dubious to many of us - there are many well-respected thinkers and knowledgeable people who will claim that the human body is an imperfect machine never designed to take the stress and strain of running - McDougall marshals evidence that he argues is hidden in plain sight.

Taking a broad sweep of running nutrition, competitive history, technique and maybe even a few secrets along the way, Born to Run has already cast a broad shadow over the running community and continues to find its footing deeper in the popular consciousness. Reading a bit like a modern Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the work starts off with simple premises and comfortable realms of thought (issues like training techniques, human physiology and athletic shoe construction) and slowly develops a deeper thesis: that running has made us into the people we are, that modern man (and woman) has what it takes, is outfitted like no other species on this Earth, to run and that it was this unique ability that allowed us to compete and survive for millions of years. Finally, McDougall talks about the important effects of running for each person. Beyond health and fitness, he looks to the proof he sees in some of the greatest runners he has encountered and finds that, almost without fail, the best long-distance runners are those who participate out of the sheer joy of running, the extent to which it fulfills their humanity and binds them together.

Like many other works relying upon an intuitive connection with the reader, Born to Run succeeds or fails to the extent that we are able to identify with its premises. This is my second time reading the book and I feel as though I have found even more to mull over the second time. If nothing else I find it a work that energizes me to get out there and be one of the running people; that it continues to change the way I think about running and my own well-being is, I believe, testament enough as to whether McDougall's work is successful.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse - Peter Matthiessen

Perhaps, the things that ought to change the most never do. Growing up the historical treatment of American Indians by settlers of the Americas and subsequently by the United States government is a topic more alluded to than it is fully addressed. Throughout the pervasive attitude is one of historical inquiry only. Certainly it is terrible that our forefathers subjected millions of people to targeted attacks, forced removals, massacres, not only of men, but of women and children, and did everything in their power to cheat Indians out of the lands occupied since time out of mind, but we could safely view such duplicity as days gone by, a past that the United States has done its best to forget.

Peter Matthiessen reminds us that everything old can be made new again. Indeed, In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, gives scant attention to the saddening past of the United States relations with Indians and instead focuses more on what Matthiessen paints as an outrageous present. Though the book was first published in 1981 – after many years of legal wrangling – its story continues. Matthiessen’s primary focus is the murder of three men (two FBI agents and one Indian) during a shootout between FBI agents and an untold number of Indian men on the Pine Ridge Reservation in June of 1975. Though the FBI would do nothing to investigate the death of AIM activist Jim Stuntz, when two FBI agents are gunned down, particularly potentially in conjunction with a movement that the FBI views as a subversive, perhaps terrorist organization, we are treated to a story in which the Bureau will stop at nothing to get it’s man – guilty or not. The brunt of the government’s case was eventually to fall on Leonard Peltier – currently ineligible for parole until at least 2040. It was Peltier, the FBI would claim, that executed agents Williams and Coler at close range. Whether or not this is true may never be known, what Matthiessen does convincingly show is that, according to the letter of American justice, the manner in which Peltier was convicted hardly accords with even the barest essence of judicial fairness. Matthiessen recounts the perjuring of many witnesses, the shifting in evidence and what appears to be the blatant disregard of defense claims by judges. The list of obstacles placed before Peltier’s attorneys and supporters verges on the unbelievable, and surely Matthiessen engages in strategic remembering – he is unabashedly siding with the Indians. Yet the facts stand even today and ought to make all Americans wonder at the true motive of government.

Whatever happened outside of the Jumping Bull camp on Pine Ridge that day is saddening in the extreme, who is to blame remains elusive. What is known is the Leonard Peltier, in accordance with a long tradition of gross abuse of Indians by the United States government, remains there still. We cannot help but wonder to what extent justice is all of our concern.

Spatial Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems - Graeme S. Cumming

An introduction and overview of the necessity of including spatial components concerns to our analysis of social-ecological systems (SES), Cumming adroitly breaks down aspects of resiliency and clearly indicates the necessity of thinking in and across spatial scales when considering the functioning of complex systems. Operating under the premise that organization in complex systems is an emergent quality of a host of quantifiable variables, Cumming's focus on the SESs indicates how the nexus of human/natural interactions can be parsed in many ways and contrasted across differing scales. Throughout he has broken-down, in simple English, how properties of resilience are emergent of integrated systems of people and their surrounding environments. As the concepts continue to be elucidated throughout the work it becomes gradually apparent that Cumming is revealing a broad-sweeping critique of how we connect theory to practice in managing SESs.

Grounded in notions of network analysis, social-ecological systems are predicated upon the idea that all locations of arrival are derivative of the interactions of socio-environmental actors across scales and nested within contexts. Indeed, it can be argued that separations of people and nature are less points of departure, than they are points of arrival; SESs speak to this. By refusing to make an a priori demarcation between the social and the ecological, Cumming allows for the actors (or vertices, or nodes) to speak for themselves the only way they know how, through their relationships (or connections, or edges or articulations) with one another. In so situating himself Cumming is approaching complex issues of the natural sciences from a more dialectical point of view than is often taken. Though the work does delve into the foundations of how entities from which these systems emerge, are composed, an extrapolation of his work leads the reader to posit an inter-related world, one where components of analysis can never be understood, much less conserved, in isolation. Though he brushes upon system identity, one cannot help but wonder if Cumming would be willing to extend the emergent nature of his complex systems to the individual?

The Choice: How Clinton Won - Bob Woodward

Inside the formative months of the 1996 Presidential Campaign, the foremost Washington insider contrasts the machinations of Bob Dole's quest for the presidency with Clinton's concern of how to make his own case to the American electorate. In Woodward's recounting President Clinton had all-but assured victory before the general election began. By June the Clinton-Gore apparatus was well on its way to raising a record $180 million while Dole's campaign would battle with message and fundraising issues throughout. For Woodward this was a campaign more about communication and funding than anything else. Thus it is little surprise that Dole, the consummate senator and nuanced equivocator, could scarcely compete with Bill Clinton, the master communicator.

While few men in American public life may have been more qualified to be President than Robert J. Dole, Woodward's appraisal of Dole's character forces the question of what is required of a President besides experience? Throughout the campaign cycle Dole is frequently unable to master his organization and unable to make executive-style decisions concerning policy, message and strategy. Dole seems to be the archetype of go-along/get-along senate collegiality. In contrast, Clinton, while it is lamented that he often over-analyzes all points, has the bearing of an executive and the willingness to make decisions and soldier forward. Surely some of this difference of tenor cannot be separated  from the aura surrounding the presidency - one wonders how the two would be cast differently were Dole the incumbent and Clinton the challenger - but we are certainly left with the impression that the illusory quality of leadership inheres more in Clinton than Dole. Inasmuch as the presidency may require a sort of American father figure Clinton seems to relish this role, while Dole shrinks from it.

Though it may be apocryphal, Averell Harriman was remarked to have said that men seeking the Presidency must desire, above all else, to be President. Whether or not this is true, and whether or not it reflects well on American politics is open to debate. What is clear is that in the 1996 Presidential Election Bill Clinton desired more than anything else to retain the presidency. That Bob Dole could not give a satisfactory reason for why America should alter course appears inseparable from the portrait Woodward paints of Dole as a decent man. Perhaps he simply was not willing to sacrifice enough to be President; Woodward leaves us unsure as to whether or not this ought redound to his credit.