Life, Subjectivity and Creativity: Alfred North Whitehead’s Metaphysical Understanding of Evolutionism

Abstract

The theory of evolution has had a well-known complex and tumultuous public journey, from its beginning as a shocking and bold hypothesis about animal life on Earth, until its present status almost as common ground and, as some may argue, an almost (scientific) common sense framework for interpreting the metamorphoses of life as a general phenomenon. Although the biological and environmental mechanisms of evolution have been thoroughly described and structurally analyzed during the past century and a half, the metaphysical possibility, grounding and implications of Charles Darwin’s ideas were rarely accounted for in a philosophically satisfying manner. In my paper, I will argue that Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy has at its core exactly such an attempt of deducing, coherently expressing and conceptually understanding the inner metaphysical significance of speaking about ‘life’ in evolutionary terms. This attempt is not the only source of Whitehead’s groundbreaking metaphysics (as cosmology), but is among the most important because is directly related to his famous formulation of the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, to his description of an ‘actual occasion’ inspired by the ‘vibratory organism’, to his non-Cartesian insights on ‘subjectivity’ as embedded by ‘feelings’ and a ‘subjective aim’ and, finally, is related to his rendering of Creativity as the Category of the Ultimate, the driving force of existence. Especially regarding creativity, the theory of evolution has been of invaluable support, yet, according to Whitehead himself, the scientific mind is leaning towards neglecting this beautiful and optimistic side of evolution, concentrating more on its destructive and brutal side: ‘The other side of the evolutionary machinery, the neglected side, is expressed by the word creativeness’ (Science and the Modern World).