Strange Attractions

Symbolism is maybe one of the most obscure books of Whitehead's oeuvre: in between grand projects, small in appearance, seemingly integrated with other works, lesser known, and, to a certain extent, considered superfluous. Yet, on second thought, it may be the case that in its fringe existence Symbolism holds some gems to be rediscovered and cherished.

Strangely, this is the only book in which Whitehead directly addresses political philosophy; what is more, he develops it from his theory of perception, of all things. It is also the only book foregoing any reference to religion or God, at least explicitly. And it is a book in which all of the elements of thought developed relate directly to thinking and ‘articulating’ the body physiologically, socially and ecologically, but all fractured through the highly creative concept of a threefold modality of perception, or, in other words, the symbolisation of existence in the evolutionary development of organisms. We are left with warnings of survival, but paradoxically – mediated through our ability to symbolise the world and the future – by developing cultures of ecology.

In elaborating these connections, Symbolism can be read in different ways: one way to look at it is to integrate it back into Process and Reality, which will become its context; another way would be to view it as expressing the pivotal point of Whitehead's metaphysical work being a metaphysics of experience; yet another way would be to consider it as harbouring a series of strange attractors, which, while not absent from other works, might be found to be more densely interwoven here than elsewhere. This is the approach I am choosing here (not to the exclusion of the other ways that I have explored in other contexts, as have many others).

A ‘strange attractor’ is not strange because that which it reveals in a series of circumambulations is foreign to, or outside of, any expectation, but because it is somehow surprising in its connectivity, a novelty without apparent system of integration. I look at the text in concert with the symbolism of Deleuze's conceptual movement of infinite speed. Enfolded in the aura of Whitehead's symbolisations, we might escape simplifications of looking at Whitehead's later work as simply prolonging the metaphysical age beyond its death.