1.57 Form within Form

Section 54 (first updated 02.25.2021)

In the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, the term situation refers to the concrete relational context within which an event or “actual occasion” exists. Whitehead’s metaphysics, especially as developed in Process and Reality, replaces the notion of static substances with dynamic events. Reality, for him, is composed not of enduring things but of processes of becoming. A “situation” therefore is not a passive background or container in which events occur; it is the structured field of relations that gives an event its determinate character.

Whitehead argues that every actual occasion arises out of a given situation. This situation consists of the prior actual world—the network of already completed events—that the new occasion must take account of. He calls this process “prehension,” meaning that each new event feels, absorbs, or integrates aspects of past events into its own becoming. Thus, a situation is the inherited pattern of relations that conditions what can emerge next. It is not merely spatial placement but historical and relational embeddedness.

Importantly, a situation is not external to the event; it is internally constitutive of it. The event does not stand outside its situation like an object placed in space. Rather, it is partially made by its situation. The situation supplies data, constraints, and potentials. Each actual occasion synthesizes these inherited elements into a new unity. In this sense, a situation is a field of potential shaped by the past but open to novel integration.

Whitehead’s notion of situation also reframes the meaning of space and time. Space is not an empty stage; it is an abstraction from the relations among events. Time is not a linear container but the order of successive acts of becoming. A situation therefore includes both spatial and temporal dimensions—it is the specific configuration of relations at a given phase of process. To understand something is to understand the situation out of which it emerges and the way it integrates that situation into a new pattern.

Furthermore, Whitehead distinguishes between the “actual world” of a new occasion and the broader universe. The actual world is the relevant situation—the subset of prior events that causally and meaningfully influence the new becoming. Not every event in the universe affects every other equally. A situation, then, is selective; it defines what is relevant for the formation of the next event.

In summary, for Whitehead, a situation is the concrete relational matrix that conditions and participates in the becoming of an event. It is not a static setting but an active inheritance of past processes. Every act of becoming is situated, meaning it arises from and responds to a determinate field of relations. Reality, therefore, is a continuous succession of situations giving rise to new situations—a world not of isolated substances, but of interwoven processes.

A situation is not merely the space in which things occur, nor simply a snapshot of events that we isolate and label as a fixed arrangement of reactions between opposing elements. It is more than a static configuration. A situation includes the qualitative value of the interactions and relations between distinct entities. It is defined not only by what is present, but by how what is present relates, conflicts, and integrates.

The quality of these interactions often appears in the form of contradiction or tension. Opposing forces, competing tendencies, and incompatible structures generate friction within the situation. These conflicts are not merely accidental collisions; they shape the character of what emerges. The question then arises: are such conflicts arbitrary and without purpose, or are they teleological—directed toward some end inherent within the very structure of opposition? In other words, do contradictions exist randomly, or do they function as necessary moments in the realization of a greater unity?

If conflicts are arbitrary, then a situation is merely a chaotic intersection of forces with no intrinsic direction. However, if they are teleological, then opposition becomes productive. The very clash between elements generates development. Through tension, something new is actualized. The result of opposition is not annihilation but transformation. A rational observer can discern that from the interplay of contradictions there often arises a determinate outcome—a structured resolution that was implicit in the conflict itself.

Whether this teleological interpretation is ultimately valid remains an ontological question. It concerns the nature of being itself: whether reality unfolds toward ends or simply unfolds without intrinsic purpose. Yet regardless of the answer, the situation stands as something in which the observer always already finds himself. At the macroscopic level, the observer encounters situations as environments, historical conditions, social dynamics, and physical settings. These appear as coherent wholes structured by visible relations.

More deeply, however, each macroscopic situation is composed of microscopic relations—complex networks of molecular, biological, psychological, and social interactions. What seems stable at the surface is sustained by countless underlying processes. The situation is therefore layered: it is both the visible arrangement of interacting objects and the invisible complexity that makes those interactions possible.

A situation, then, is not a passive background but a dynamic field of relations, tensions, and qualitative determinations. It includes space, but is not reducible to it. It includes events, but is not merely their snapshot. It is the living totality of interactions through which contradictions generate form, and through which the observer participates in the unfolding of reality itself.

In the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, the fundamental units of reality are not enduring substances or material particles, but what he calls “actual occasions”—sometimes interpreted as event-particles. Whitehead’s metaphysics, most fully articulated in Process and Reality, replaces the traditional notion of static matter with a process-based ontology. Reality is composed of events of becoming rather than things that simply persist through time.[1]

An event-particle, or actual occasion, is a momentary act of experience. It is not “experience” in the limited human sense, but a more general notion of feeling or prehension—Whitehead’s term for the way an occasion takes account of, or internally relates to, prior events.[2] Each actual occasion arises by integrating aspects of the past into a new unified whole. It is therefore both a product of prior reality and a novel addition to it. Once completed, it becomes part of the settled past and conditions future occasions.

Unlike classical atoms, which are imagined as small, solid, enduring bits of matter, Whitehead’s event-particles are temporal and processual. They do not endure; they occur. Their being consists in their becoming. An actual occasion begins as a many—absorbing influences from the past—and culminates in a one—a unified satisfaction. Whitehead summarizes this as “the many become one, and are increased by one.”[3] After reaching completion, the occasion perishes as an active process but remains objectively available as data for future events.

Whitehead developed this view partly in response to modern physics, particularly relativity theory. In a relativistic universe, space and time are interwoven, and the idea of independently existing, static particles becomes problematic. Whitehead instead proposes that what we call a particle is better understood as a series of related events forming a historical route through spacetime.[4] A so-called “electron,” for example, would not be a tiny solid object but a continuous succession of event-occasions exhibiting a consistent pattern of behavior.

Each event-particle is defined by its relations. It has no independent essence apart from the network of prehensions that constitute it. This relational structure means that the universe is fundamentally interconnected. Every actual occasion arises within a determinate “actual world,” which is the set of past events relevant to its formation. Thus, causation is not the transfer of substance but the transmission of influence through relational integration.

Importantly, Whitehead attributes a rudimentary form of subjectivity to every actual occasion. Each event has an internal perspective—a way it unifies its inherited data. This does not imply consciousness in the human sense, but rather that reality at every level involves self-organization and internal synthesis. The distinction between subject and object becomes relative: what is subject in its becoming becomes object for future becomings.[5]

The concept of the event-particle therefore dissolves the rigid boundary between matter and mind. What appears as inert matter is, at its base, composed of dynamic acts of self-unifying process. Enduring objects—rocks, trees, bodies—are patterns or societies of many such occasions ordered in stable ways.[6] Stability arises from repetition and structured inheritance, not from static substance.

In summary, Whitehead’s idea of the event-particle replaces material metaphysics with process metaphysics. Reality is composed of momentary acts of becoming that integrate the past, achieve a unity, and contribute to the future. The world is not a collection of things but a creative advance of interrelated events, each one a microcosmic synthesis of the universe that precedes it.

Footnotes

[1] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929), where he develops his process ontology centered on “actual occasions.”

[2] “Prehension” is Whitehead’s technical term for the way an actual occasion feels or takes account of other occasions.

[3] Whitehead’s formula: “The many become one, and are increased by one,” describing the process of concrescence (the unification of many data into one actual occasion).

[4] Whitehead’s metaphysics was influenced by relativity theory, which reconceived physical reality in terms of spacetime events rather than static particles.

[5] In Whitehead’s system, each actual occasion is a subject during its process of becoming and becomes an object once it has completed its concrescence.

[6] A “society” in Whitehead’s terminology is a structured set of actual occasions sharing a defining characteristic, forming what appears as a stable object.

The complex difficulty in describing the base components of extension as events rather than as physical units of measurement—such as atoms—is that both the atom and the event are, in one sense, abstractions. They are conceptual formulations developed by the mind in order to describe reality. Yet this does not mean they are merely theoretical inventions. Rather, they are rational descriptions of structures that truly operate in the world. To say they are abstractions is to say that they are modes of intelligibility. They express how reality can be understood.

For Alfred North Whitehead, the shift from atoms to events reflects a deeper metaphysical claim: the world is fundamentally process, not substance. What we call an “atom” in classical physics is already a theoretical construct—an explanatory unit posited to account for measurable phenomena. Whitehead argues that even this unit is better understood as a pattern of events rather than a self-subsisting material particle. Both atoms and events are conceptual, but the event better captures the dynamic, relational nature of reality.[1]

This leads to the question of rationality. If the world is describable through abstract concepts such as atom or event, then reality itself must be structured in a way that is intelligible. The observer—the mind or organism—is not separate from this rational structure. Rather, the observer is one expression of it. The act of observing is itself an event within the same field of reality that it observes. Thus, the observer is not divisible from the physical components used to measure the content of experience. The distinction between subject and object becomes relational rather than absolute.

Central to Whitehead’s explanation of this relation is his concept of prehension. Prehension is his technical term for the fundamental way in which one event relates to another.[2] Unlike perception in the ordinary sense, prehension is not limited to conscious awareness. It is a basic mode of “feeling” or “taking account of.” Every actual occasion, in its process of becoming, prehends—or integrates—the data of prior occasions. In other words, each event incorporates aspects of the past into its own constitution.

Prehension replaces the traditional idea of external causation. Instead of one object pushing another, Whitehead proposes that each new event internally appropriates elements of previous events. Causation is therefore immanent rather than mechanical. The past does not strike the present from outside; it is inherited and synthesized from within.[3]

There are two main types of prehension in Whitehead’s system: positive and negative. A positive prehension includes aspects of the past in the new occasion’s formation. A negative prehension excludes or ignores certain data.[4] In this way, every event selectively constitutes its own perspective on the universe. Each occasion is a microcosm, integrating the world according to its own determinate pattern.

The observer, then, always finds himself as an indivisible aspect of the object of prehension because he is constituted by prehensions. The act of knowing is not a detached inspection but an event in which the knower integrates the known into his own experiential unity. Subject and object are phases within a single process: what is subject in the act of becoming becomes object for future acts.

Thus, the move from atom to event is not a denial of physical reality but a deepening of its interpretation. The fundamental units of the world are not inert particles but acts of relational synthesis. Prehension is the mechanism by which the many become one. Reality is rational not because it is imposed upon by mind, but because its very structure is one of intelligible relation—events integrating events in a continuous creative advance.

Footnotes

[1] Whitehead develops this process-based ontology in Process and Reality (1929), arguing that actual occasions are more fundamental than enduring substances.

[2] “Prehension” is Whitehead’s term for the basic relational activity by which an actual occasion takes account of other occasions.

[3] In Whitehead’s theory of concrescence, an actual occasion becomes by synthesizing inherited data from its “actual world.”

[4] Positive prehensions include data; negative prehensions exclude certain aspects, shaping the unique perspective of each occasion.

To clarify what is meant by an event, we may turn to Alfred North Whitehead. For Whitehead, reality is not composed of enduring substances but of events, which he calls “actual occasions.” An event is not a static thing but a moment of becoming—a unit of process. It is a happening rather than a thing. What we ordinarily call an object (for example, a needle) is, in Whitehead’s analysis, a society of events—a structured continuity of many actual occasions inheriting from one another.[1]

When we refer to a “needle,” we typically imagine a fixed, self-identical object extended in space. But for Whitehead, the needle is not fundamentally a substance; it is a pattern of activity sustained through successive events. Each event that constitutes the needle is a momentary act of becoming that gathers the past into itself and then perishes, contributing itself to the future. The apparent endurance of the needle is the ordered repetition of these event-units across time.

This is where Whitehead’s concept of prehension becomes essential. Prehension (sometimes miswritten as “pretension”) is the basic relational activity by which one event grasps, feels, or takes account of another.[2] Every actual occasion prehends prior occasions; it incorporates aspects of them into its own becoming. Prehension is not necessarily conscious—it is the fundamental way in which reality is relational. Thus, the needle at any moment is the outcome of countless prehensions: each event constituting it “feels” and integrates the prior state of the needle and its environment.

In this sense, the needle is not an independently existing block of matter but a nexus of relations. Its solidity, sharpness, and metallic continuity are stabilized outcomes of ongoing prehensive activity. The event is the true ontological unit; the object is the abstraction we make from a series of related events. Whitehead therefore replaces substance with process: what exists most fundamentally are acts of becoming that unify multiplicity into a momentary one.[3]

To connect this to the broader metaphysical point: when we say that form is activity, we mean that what appears as a stable object (such as the needle) is actually the structured outcome of relational events. Prehension is the “needle” that threads events together—it stitches the past into the present. Without prehension, events would be isolated flashes with no continuity. Through prehension, each event inherits, transforms, and transmits the world forward.

Thus, an event is not merely something that happens in time; it is the very constitution of reality as becoming. The needle, as an object, is the visible trace of invisible prehensive activity. Its being is its process of self-renewal. What we perceive as static extension is, at a deeper level, a continuity of relational acts—each event prehending, integrating, and passing on the form that we recognize as the needle.

Footnotes

[1] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, on “actual occasions” as the fundamental units of reality.
[2] Ibid., on prehension as the basic relational “feeling” by which occasions incorporate others.
[3] Ibid., on the principle that “the many become one, and are increased by one.”

The fundamental substance of reality is process rather than matter is another way of saying the universe is rational, meaning it is mental. The process described lies in the behavior or fundamental substance of Reason, namely that it is process. The end result of a process, or rather what it actually achieves, is the substance known as matter or atom, or the content of prehension—the idea of conception. Its feeling, how it comes to know itself, is the prehension or feeling, or better yet, the sense of it being there. Whether it is truly there or not does not matter, for to describe the world as mental confronts us with the most immediate contradictions that we must resolve.

If the world is mental, we are immediately confronted with the contradiction of how it can maintain a stable, consistent reality. The mind is known as something constantly shifting, changing, and in flux. The mind is the principle of flow, for its conception is constantly changing, and the element of mind is novelty; it continually returns or is reborn anew again and again. But how does it maintain this constant flow of renewal? What endures throughout the transition from one new state to another?

If we say it is matter, we cannot have an intelligible understanding of this substrate, as matter is only known directly or indirectly through reason, through prehension, by a mind. And if mind is at one moment being and at another moment non-being, what maintains being during the moment of non-being? One answer, through Plato, is that the Forms, or the conceptions of mind, are eternal, meaning they never actually regenerate or degenerate. They are also variable, such that even if one is not being conceived at a given moment, it is maintained in existence by virtue of the conception of another form.

To say that the fundamental substance of reality is process rather than matter is another way of saying that the universe is rational—indeed, that it is in some sense mental. The term “process” does not merely describe movement; it describes the behaviour of reason itself. Reason is not static substance but activity. Its essence lies in unfolding, relating, synthesizing. If reality at its base is process, then it behaves according to the structure of intelligibility rather than inert extension.

What we ordinarily call matter or atom may then be understood as the stabilized result of process—the achieved outcome of dynamic relations. Matter appears as attraction, as pattern, as the content of prehension. It is what a process achieves when it settles into determinate form. The “feeling” or sense of something being there—whether it is ultimately independent or not—arises through prehension, through the act by which reality relates to itself. The presence of the world is inseparable from the act through which it is apprehended.

Yet to describe the world as mental immediately confronts us with contradiction. If reality is mental, how does it maintain a stable, enduring structure? The mind, as we experience it, is constantly shifting, changing, and flowing. Its principle seems to be flux. Conception renews itself continuously; novelty is intrinsic to it. The mind appears to die and be reborn at every moment of new awareness. How, then, can such a principle sustain continuity? What endures through the transition from one state to another?

If we answer that matter endures, we encounter another difficulty. Matter itself is known only through reason—through perception, conception, and prehension. We never encounter matter apart from its intelligible form. Thus, matter cannot serve as an independent substrate outside the rational process that discloses it. If mind is being in one moment and non-being in another, what maintains being through non-being?

One classical answer, articulated by Plato, is that forms—or intelligible structures—are eternal.[1] Forms do not come into or pass out of existence. They are not regenerated or destroyed; they are. Even when not actively conceived by one mind, they remain intelligible and may be conceived by another. Their endurance lies in their participation in an eternal order of intelligibility. Thus, fluctuation at the level of experience does not eliminate permanence at the level of form. The Forms are also variable meaning that they are also changeable, such that even if one is not being conceived at a given moment, it is maintained in existence by virtue of the conception of another form.

Modern theoretical physics offers a different suggestive analogy. In string theory, fundamental reality is described as oscillating energy structured like vibrating strings.[2] The apparent stability of particles arises from patterns of vibration. The oscillation is continuous, yet it produces stable appearances. The question then becomes: what is contained in that fluctuation? What is the “energy” of this oscillation? One answer is that it is pure potential—the capacity for one event to open into another, one state of reality to generate the next.

This enduring “substance” is not static matter but structured potentiality. It is internally active, continuously giving rise to successive determinations. Yet the mystery remains: how does potential become actual in a coherent way? How does one moment transition into the next without collapsing into discontinuity?

If process is fundamental, then continuity must lie within process itself. Endurance is not the persistence of a thing but the coherence of successive becomings. Being is maintained not by resisting change, but by flowing through it in an ordered way. The rational structure of reality—its intelligibility—may be the very principle that carries one moment into the next. The universe endures not because it stands still, but because its transformations are structured.

Thus, to call reality mental is not to deny its stability but to relocate stability within dynamic form. The enduring is not beneath process; it is the pattern of process. What persists through fluctuation is not inert substance, but intelligible relation—the continuity of reason unfolding through successive moments of becoming.

Footnotes

[1] Plato’s theory of Forms, presented in dialogues such as the Republic and Phaedo, holds that intelligible Forms are eternal and unchanging, while sensible things participate in them.

[2] String theory in modern theoretical physics proposes that fundamental particles are vibrational modes of one-dimensional strings, with different vibrations corresponding to different particle properties.

The Way a Series of Possible Events Congregate to Form an Event

René Descartes defines a “situation” as involving opposing forces whose commonality consists in their mutual reference to one another. What they share is precisely this reference. A situation, therefore, is not merely a background in which objects happen to be placed; it is an object whose unity consists in the relations its elements bear to each other. When we speak of a “state of affairs,” we often imagine an overarching set of circumstances in which entities find themselves. Yet these circumstances are always linked to a particular object within the series, an object in relation to which the state of affairs is articulated.[1]

The notion of dependent being clarifies this further. If my being is dependent on God, then God is the cause of my capacity to doubt, because this capacity does not originate from me as its ultimate author.[2] In the Meditations, Descartes raises the question of how he continues to exist from one moment to the next. His answer is that existence at each moment depends upon the sustaining activity of God. Thus, being is not self-grounded but mediated; it is sustained through a relation to that which transcends it. The continuity of existence is therefore not automatic but requires an ongoing cause.

The concept of the infinite is likewise arrived at through negation. We negate finite determinations in order to conceive infinity; yet, in doing so, we discover that infinity must in some sense be prior to and contain the finite. For Descartes, the idea of the infinite could not have originated from a finite being such as himself. Rather, the finite is understood as a limitation of the infinite.[3]

At a later point in the Meditations, Descartes questions whether his ideas correspond to objects independent of his own thinking. He introduces the notion of “material falsity,” which arises when nothing is represented as if it were something.[4] For example, the ideas of heat and cold are not clear and distinct because it is uncertain whether cold is merely the privation of heat or whether heat is the privation of cold. The ambiguity concerns whether these are genuine qualities or simply the absence of one another. The mind confronts a distinction whose ontological status remains indeterminate.

Common optical illusions provide a helpful illustration. Consider the well-known ambiguous image often called the Rubin vase, in which a single shape may be seen either as a vase or as two faces in profile.[5] The same form constitutes both images, yet separates them into distinct perceptual interpretations. This illustrates what Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel means when he argues that distinction is what is shared by opposing determinations.[6] The opposition is not external to what it divides; rather, the distinction itself is the common structure that enables the two sides to appear as different.

The ability to distinguish is the capacity to identify differences among presented objects. Yet this capacity presupposes that distinction itself functions as an object. Distinction is not merely a subjective act but has objective structure. It is what both unites and separates opposing determinations. In this way, the distinction is what is shared by inverse or opposing determinations.

Such illusory artworks are compelling because they portray the simultaneity and instantaneity present in nature. What appears as one configuration at one level can appear as another at a different level of interpretation. For example, cells that form a face are, at one dimension, individual living organisms; at another dimension, they constitute the skin of the face. The same material elements participate in multiple levels of organization.

Distinction itself can therefore be understood as a special kind of object. It gives form to other things while deriving its own form from the relations it establishes. It is not any particular object, but rather the condition of possibility for any object to appear as this rather than that. When we look at an object, we perceive its content and detail by contrasting it with what it is not. The object not directly attended to serves as the background distinction that outlines the form of the object we focus upon. Thus, every event emerges from a field of possible relations; a series of potential determinations congregates, and through their structured distinction, an event takes form.

Footnotes

[1] René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, on the relational structure of ideas and their objects.
[2] Ibid., Meditation III, on God as the sustaining cause of existence and the source of the idea of the infinite.
[3] Ibid., on the priority of the infinite over the finite in the order of ideas.
[4] Ibid., Meditation III, discussion of “materially false ideas.”
[5] Edgar Rubin, the Rubin vase illusion (1915), demonstrating figure-ground ambiguity.
[6] G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, on determinateness and opposition as internally related moments.

The Study of Form as the Science of Generation via Self-Creation

The idea that the nature of being is self-creation has historically been difficult to articulate with precision. Monotheistic creation narratives, for example, illustrate the human struggle to comprehend how the universe comes into being.[1] We are accustomed to thinking in dualistic terms: an external agent (A) creates something distinct from itself (B). To build a house, I require my body to stand outside the raw materials in order to shape them into a constructed form.

Yet what often goes unnoticed is the principle of non-duality implicit even within such apparently external relations. My bringing a house into being occurs within spacetime, which is not itself external to either me or the materials. Space and time form an indivisible framework within which so-called external relations unfold. There is nothing “outside” space as such; there are only relations between things within space. Space functions as the dimension of externality itself, while time expresses the activity occurring within that dimension. In this sense, space may be described as the object of time, the field within which temporal activity becomes manifest.

The primary ontological concept used to explain self-creation is the dialectic. According to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the dialectic is not merely a method of argument but the fundamental principle of life and activity.[2] As an ontological principle, it proposes that substance is inherently self-reflective: being unfolds through internal differentiation and return to itself. Long before Hegel, Aristotle described the highest form of actuality as “thinking thinking itself,” indicating that the ultimate principle is self-related activity.[3]

In modern psychological terms, we observe a reflection of this dialectical structure in our own mental life. Individually, we are often engaged in dialogue with ourselves, reflecting upon our conscious intentions and unconscious motivations. We think in language, evaluate possibilities, and act upon those thoughts. However, the dialectic extends beyond subjective psychology. It describes not merely inner dialogue but the generative movement of reality itself.

The form of self-thinking articulated by the dialectic is responsible for the enactment of reality. Our internal self-dialogue is a prototype of self-conscious reason, but the deeper claim is that thought—or more precisely, rational activity—is the formative principle of generation. To say that something “comes into being” is to say that it assumes form. Form is not a static outline but an activity of structuring and organizing. Thus, the coming into existence of an object identified by the mind is inseparable from the formative process that constitutes it.

If matter is understood as indivisible substance, its indivisibility reflects a dialectical principle: it is not inert but structured by internal relations. The activity of thought serves as the model for understanding this structure. Thought determines goals and the means of attaining them; it is purposive activity. In this sense, the being of substance may be understood as rational activity—not because it resembles human deliberation, but because it exhibits ordered, self-relating structure.

The investigation of Reason therefore begins as activity oriented toward an end. Without orientation toward an end, the second definition of reason—as a system or ordered method—would be unnecessary. A system is the principle according to which something is done; it is the structured pathway through which an end is realized.[4] The study of form, then, becomes the science of generation: the examination of how reality, through its own self-relating activity, brings itself into determinate existence.

Footnotes

[1] See, for example, the creation narrative in Genesis 1–2, which portrays creation as the act of a transcendent deity bringing the world into being.
[2] G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit, on dialectic as the self-movement of substance.
[3] Aristotle, Metaphysics XII.9, on noesis noeseos (“thought thinking itself”) as the highest actuality.
[4] Hegel, Encyclopaedia Logic, on reason as both purposive activity and systematic structure.

A system is method. The content of a system is the structured way in which an aim is attained. Order is the consciousness of the aim, because even disorder is recognized as disorder only in relation to an implicit standard of order. Thus, consciousness functions as the reality principle of the aim: it is that through which the end becomes explicit. Even when something appears chaotic, its deviation presupposes an intelligible structure against which it is measured.

As stated earlier, activity directed toward an aim is rational and, in this way, exhibits form. Form is not merely an outline but structured activity. Within the nature of form as structure exists the potential recognition of another form. Form implies system because it involves the interplay of opposed or inverse variables that work against one another to produce a unified whole. Thought itself is the activity of form, because through its self-negations it differentiates itself into variable determinations. The unity of these determinations is the whole that thought contemplates. In contemplation, the material of thought is transformed, and the expansion of conceptions is the expansion of activity itself.

In the very act of thinking, the form of the thought is already present. Thinking does not merely attach form afterward; it brings form with it. For example, in geometry, the thought of a triangle is inseparable from its form: a figure with three straight sides and three angles. There is no way to conceptualize three angles and three sides without that concept taking the form of a triangle. It is logically necessary. No matter the size or type of triangle, it remains a triangle. Aristotle, in On the Heavens, notes that three is the first number to which the term “all” can properly be applied, since it has beginning, middle, and end.[1] Thus, the triadic structure already expresses a fundamental logical completeness.

If we extend this reasoning into higher dimensions, we see that form unfolds systematically. A two-dimensional triangle extended through another dimension can generate more complex figures. In abstract geometry, dimensional extension yields new forms from prior ones according to intelligible relations. The square, for example, can be understood as emerging from the systematic relation of lines in space. The point is not merely spatial but methodological: new forms arise from the ordered development of prior determinations.

The circle is often regarded as the most fundamental geometric shape because it represents unity without beginning or end. In a sense, all polygons can be inscribed within a circle, and the circle can be understood as the limiting case toward which regular polygons approximate. This illustrates how method must be stable—almost static—in order for reason to apprehend nature consistently. The circle’s constancy provides a reference against which variation is measured. Without such stable forms, recognition would dissolve into indeterminacy.

Animals experience nature and respond to it, but they do not necessarily apprehend its form as form. Self-consciousness is not required for life as such; it is required for life that reflects upon its own activity. Human beings do not merely live within systems—they conceptualize them. The ability to identify method as method marks a higher stage of development.

Modern evolutionary theory proposes that human beings emerged through mutation and natural selection. It often describes mutation as “random.” However, in scientific usage, “random” does not mean uncaused; it means that mutations occur without reference to the needs of the organism.[2] They are not directed toward specific goals. Natural selection then preserves variations that confer survival advantages. To say mutations are random is to say they are not teleologically guided in advance, not that they occur without physical causes.

Speculations that advanced beings manipulated evolution to produce human self-consciousness remain unsupported by empirical evidence. The scientific account holds that complex life emerged gradually through cumulative selection acting on genetic variation over immense spans of time.[3] The appearance of rapid development often reflects geological timescales that far exceed ordinary human intuition.

Philosophically, however, the deeper question remains whether rational structure is intrinsic to nature or merely projected onto it by human cognition. If system is method, and method is the way an aim becomes actual, then the intelligibility of evolution itself suggests that nature unfolds according to lawful processes. Whether one interprets this as immanent rationality or as the product of blind mechanism remains an open metaphysical question. What is clear is that without stable forms—logical, mathematical, biological—no recognition of development would be possible. Method must exhibit constancy in order for consciousness to apprehend reason in nature.

Footnotes

[1] Aristotle, On the Heavens, I.1–2, on the completeness of the number three.
[2] See standard evolutionary biology texts on mutation: “random” refers to mutations occurring without regard to adaptive value, not without cause.
[3] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859), on natural selection as the mechanism of evolutionary change.

Animals experience nature and have experiences within nature, yet they are not conscious of being self-conscious. In other words, self-consciousness is not a requirement for life as life, but only for advanced life. Modern evolutionary theory interestingly says that human life has occurred through mutation, but they are wrong when they say it is “random” mutation. They say it is random mutation insofar as they do not have an explainable cause for the cause of such mutation that gave rise to the rapid development into a self-conscious being. The question is whether it is from purely natural reasons—whether nature simply produced advanced self-conscious beings like humans—or whether nature was manipulated by already advanced beings, and those advanced beings caused the mutation that gave rapidly fast growth on Earth leading to humans from Homo sapiens.

Either way, there is a conundrum we face. If self-conscious beings like humans arose naturally from random mutation, we do not truly have a satisfactory explanation for the evolution of animal life within the mammalian family toward humans, who almost have a class of their own as a species, even though they belong to similar genera. Nothing else on Earth is truly like humans—not because they are greater, or merely self-conscious, but because they produce artificial developments. They create artificially within what is otherwise a planet that produces only naturally.

If we take the second position—that advanced observers came to Earth and manipulated the already natural conditions to give rise to self-conscious beings like humans—then we still do not have an explanation of how advanced beings in general could come to exist if not naturally through mutation. It becomes the problem of the chicken and the egg: which comes first? Do advanced observers always give rise to one another, as in the ancient Greek Socratic tradition that “man begets man”? If beings always give rise to further beings, who was the first being?

If the answer is that God is the uncaused cause, as Aristotle proposes, we still cannot fully explain development, because that would imply a kind of devolution—life always falling further and further away from the ideal version of God or from its original creation.

The materialists gave the correct information when they said humans evolved through mutation, but they convoluted this fact with an erroneous ontology. They called it “random mutation.” Yet even if the mechanisms of mutation are random by nature, that does not mean they were not caused by a rational being more advanced at that moment in time than the being that was created. An advanced being could still cause a random mutation in order to accelerate the development of life on Earth.

The point of geometry is to show that form is identical with logic. Logic is not merely theoretical, as is sometimes suggested by its formal or symbolic applications. Rather, logic is abstract in the sense that it expresses the universal activity of form itself. Logic is self-connecting activity: it is the way in which determinations relate, negate, and preserve one another within a structured whole.[1]

The very generation of an object begins as a proposition—not as a mere assertion, but as a relation. The connective “if…then” (→), or “and/or,” expresses this relational structure. The logical forms of affirmation and denial are constructions of thought. Validity begins, in one sense, with affirmation: something is valid insofar as it can be demonstrated and judged within a system of relations.

The basic logical form may be expressed as:

If P, then Q
P
∴ Q

This is the rule known as modus ponens.[2] By affirming the antecedent (P), we eliminate the indefinite range of possible implications and arrive at a determinate conclusion (Q). For this reason, modus ponens is often described as a rule of implication elimination. It is a fundamental law of determination: it isolates what follows necessarily from what has been affirmed.

If we merely assert “If P, then Q,” the proposition carries potentially infinite implications unless grounded. By affirming P, we constrain the structure and detach Q as a necessary consequence. Logical determination thus functions as a principle of detachment—not detachment in space, as when a branch is separated from a tree, but conceptual detachment within thought. An idea cannot be assumed to be separate from thinking; it must be affirmed and maintained as distinct within the activity of thinking itself.

The biconditional (↔) further clarifies this structure. A conditional (P → Q) asserts a one-way relation. A biconditional (P ↔ Q) asserts mutual implication: P if and only if Q. From a biconditional, we may infer both conditionals:

• P → Q
• Q → P

This is known as biconditional elimination.[3] By showing that each implies the other, the relation becomes self-contained. The proposition is maintained in isolation because its implications are reciprocally closed. In this sense, unity (↔) contains binary inversion (→, ←).

However, it is important to clarify that from “If P then Q” alone, one may not validly infer “If Q then P.” That reversal (the converse) does not follow unless a biconditional has been established. Only when P ↔ Q is affirmed may both P → Q and Q → P be asserted legitimately.

Thus we may schematize:

• Unity: P ↔ Q
• Binary inversion: (P → Q) and (Q → P)

The inversion of the binary yields unity, and unity expresses itself through binary relations. This dynamic relation can be metaphorically associated with triangular structure. A triangle represents the minimal closed figure in geometry, just as the biconditional represents a closed inferential loop in logic. Aristotle notes that three is the first number that constitutes a complete whole, having beginning, middle, and end.[4]

Let:

• a = P → Q
• b = Q → P
• c = P ↔ Q

The right triangle, foundational in trigonometry, demonstrates that the properties of one figure are implicit in another. Through the Pythagorean relation, the square is contained within the triangle’s structure.[5] Likewise, the conditional and biconditional are not separate forms but transformations of one another within a logical system.

Negation further completes the structure:

If P, then Q
Not Q
∴ Not P

This is modus tollens, another valid form of inference.[6] Negation does not destroy the structure but reveals its harmony with the positive. Logical space includes both affirmation and denial; each determination carries its opposite within the field of relations.

In the activity of form, angles or aspects can be emphasized and transformed into new configurations. It is in this sense that being may be described as self-creation. Self-creation is not mechanical manipulation of a pre-existing part; rather, it is grounded in the necessity of form as activity. Because form is the activity of thought, to think a form is already to recognize its capacity for transformation. Within any form lies the potential for another form.

Thus, it becomes evident that any form, by virtue of its internal relations, contains the capacity for self-transformation. The substance of being is not inert matter but structured activity. As Hegel argues, substance is subject—it becomes itself through its own self-mediation.[7] Geometry demonstrates this visually; logic demonstrates it conceptually. In both cases, form is not imposed from without but unfolds from within.

Footnotes

[1] G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, on logic as the self-movement of the Concept.
[2] Standard rule of inference in classical propositional logic: modus ponens.
[3] See introductory texts in symbolic logic on biconditional elimination.
[4] Aristotle, On the Heavens, I.1–2, on the completeness of the number three.
[5] Euclid, Elements, Book I, Proposition 47 (Pythagorean Theorem).
[6] Standard rule of inference in classical logic: modus tollens.
[7] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, on substance as subject.

Form and activity are known only through thought and reason. Activity as such is not something we directly see. What we see are objects in motion. Yet what moves the object is not itself visible. The object, strictly speaking, is already an abstraction from motion. It is a stabilized conception of an energetic process. What we call an “object” is a relatively enduring pattern within a field of activity.

Physics confirms that what appears static is in fact dynamic. At the atomic and subatomic level, matter consists of structured energy: particles are excitations of underlying fields, and even in apparently solid bodies there are constant micro-movements—vibrations, oscillations, exchanges of energy.[1] The solidity of a table or a stone is not the absence of motion but the equilibrium of countless motions held in relation. The object is a dynamic stability.

Thus, an object is a static conception imposed upon—or rather abstracted from—an energetic process. There are processes within it: minute, infinitesimal vibrations and interactions that maintain its structure. The evolved mind selects from this indeterminate flux a determinate whole. It geometrizes becoming. It identifies boundaries, shapes, and unities, forming a finite conception of something that, in itself, is continuous process.

This act of selection is not arbitrary. It is functional. The mind unifies a field of motion into a self-identical object because such unification serves practical and cognitive ends. A tree, for example, is not merely a mass of molecular exchanges; it is grasped as a unified organism with a function and identity. The concept “tree” stabilizes an ongoing metabolic and energetic activity into something intelligible.

In this way, form is the rational articulation of activity. What we call “form” is the intelligible structure of motion. Reason does not invent activity but organizes and recognizes it. The identity of an object—its being “this” rather than “that”—is the mind’s determination of a relatively stable pattern within a continuum of change. Heraclitus famously suggested that all things flow,[2] while Aristotle later defined substance as that which persists through change.[3] Both insights converge here: persistence is structured activity.

We cannot see activity as such because activity is not a visible thing; it is the principle by which things appear. We see effects, positions, transformations—but the underlying dynamism that sustains them is inferred through reason. The object is thus a conceptual resting point in the flux of energy. It is a geometric and logical stabilization of process.

The evolved mind, therefore, does not merely observe a ready-made static world. It participates in articulating reality by identifying patterns, boundaries, and unities. The “self-identity” of an object is the result of this articulation. Yet this identity is not false; it corresponds to a real coherence in the process itself. The unity we conceive reflects an actual structural consistency in the energetic field.

In this sense, form and activity are inseparable. Form is activity understood. Activity is form unfolding. What appears as a static object is the visible face of invisible motion—a temporary equilibrium in the ceaseless becoming of energy.

Footnotes

[1] Modern quantum field theory describes particles as excitations of underlying fields; see standard physics texts on quantum field theory.
[2] Heraclitus, fragments (e.g., “πάντα ῥεῖ” — “all things flow”).
[3] Aristotle, Metaphysics, on substance as that which persists through accidental change.

Motion is not something we see directly, because activity itself is abstract and apprehended through reason. We see objects moving, but motion as such—the principle of activity—is not visible. Yet this activity is responsible for creating and maintaining what we take to be “real” concrete objects. Objects are real insofar as they are forms perceived within the activity of thought, just as a square is real as a geometrical form.

Consider how, within a triangle, we may derive a square through construction. The movement by which we discover the square within the triangle parallels the way objects come into being for consciousness. The very act of recognizing the form brings it into determinate presence. In geometry, a square constructed within a triangle was always implicitly possible within the relations of lines and angles; its emergence depends upon the act of rational construction.[1] Likewise, objects in experience are not fabricated arbitrarily but articulated through the activity of consciousness.

At this point, the problem of infinite regress arises. We say that we derive the square from the triangle, but this seems to presuppose that the triangle already exists. Does this not merely push the question back? However, this objection misunderstands the nature of regress. Infinite regress becomes problematic only when applied to content—when we ask which object comes first. Is the chicken before the egg? And if so, what is before the chicken? Such questioning can continue indefinitely, because we can always posit a prior content.

Yet when regress is applied to form rather than content, it resolves rather than destabilizes. Form suggests that prior to any object there is the recognition of that object as such. The objects that constitute the content of thought presuppose thought as their form. In this sense, consciousness is logically prior—not temporally prior—to the objects it apprehends. This echoes the insight articulated by Immanuel Kant, who argued that objects of experience conform to the conditions of possible experience rather than existing independently of them as known objects.[2]

If we regress to what appears to be the “first” object, and define it as prior to all others, what remains prior to it is its form—the consciousness of it as the kind of object it is. If we say the object is “nothing,” then its form is the recognition of that nothing. Yet this recognition transforms nothing into something, namely, an object of thought. Thus, the regress does not end in negation but in productive contradiction. As Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argues, pure being and pure nothing pass over into one another, and their unity is becoming.[3] The form of nothing is not a dead end but the generative point from which determination arises.

The question then becomes whether, in transformation, form loses itself entirely and becomes something wholly other. But why should it? The assumption that transformation requires the annihilation of the “old” form in favor of a “new” one is a limitation imposed by the understanding. Reason recognizes continuity within transformation. The past form persists within the future form as a moment of its development.

To say that the triangle remains present within the square once recognized is to affirm that transformation is not destruction but reconfiguration. The triangle is not abolished; its relations are preserved and reorganized. Similarly, transformations of form are changes in consciousness concerning the same underlying activity. What remains constant in the object is the difference within it that makes change possible. Change is not the loss of identity but the articulation of identity through difference.

The object, therefore, is what the activity of thought forms. It is not merely passively received but actively constituted as a determinate unity. The object is the experience of form—form stabilized within consciousness. Motion and transformation do not undermine reality; they disclose its structure as dynamic. What appears as a stable object is the enduring articulation of activity, and what appears as change is the unfolding of that same form through self-differentiation.

Footnotes

[1] See Euclid, Elements, for classical geometric constructions demonstrating how new forms emerge from prior relations.
[2] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, on the a priori conditions that structure objects of possible experience.
[3] G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, Book I, on the dialectic of Being, Nothing, and Becoming.

last updated 2.18.2026