{"id":14555,"date":"2026-07-07T06:45:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T11:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=14555"},"modified":"2026-07-07T07:56:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T12:56:24","slug":"process-into-reality-10-years-or-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2026\/07\/07\/process-into-reality-10-years-or-100\/","title":{"rendered":"Process into reality: 10 years, or 100"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ten years ago, I wrote about Alfred North Whitehead\u2019s time<\/a> spent at Caspian Lake in Greensboro, Vermont. It was there that, according to his biographer Victor Lowe, “Whitehead\u2019s metaphysical system was created and his magnum opus, later named\u00a0Process and Reality<\/em>, was shaped.\u201d In a follow-up note<\/a>, I noted the exact place where he stayed and some other details of his retreat at the northeast Vermont lake. (At the time, I happened to be at Caspian Lake writing what became Shadowing the Anthropocene<\/a><\/em>, OA here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten years later, with the help of AI (and with apologies to my anti-AI friends and colleagues), I can say a bit more about that. Citing Whitehead\u2019s \u201clost papers<\/a>\u201d along with a few other things that weren\u2019t yet available a decade ago, Google\u2019s AI surmises \u2014 that\u2019s the most precise term I can come up with for its \u201cthinking\u201d \u2014 that \u201cthe landscape of Caspian Lake deeply mirrored and reinforced the metaphysical concepts he was formulating.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It offers the following indications of that influence of the northeast Vermont landscape on Whitehead\u2019s thinking:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\n

The Rejection of Materialism:<\/strong> In the 1920s, Whitehead was actively fighting “scientific materialism” \u2014 the idea that the universe is made of static, dead matter. Writing on the shores of a vibrant, changing lake ecosystem allowed him to visualize reality not as a collection of fixed objects, but as a “structure of evolving processes.” [1<\/a>, 2<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Concept of “Concrescence”:<\/strong> Whitehead’s philosophy states that the fundamental building blocks of reality are not things, but “events” or “actual occasions” that fluidly merge their past experiences into a new moment of creativity. The shifting light, weather, and water of the Vermont wilderness served as a perfect macroscopic example of this cosmic flux. [1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interconnectedness (“Everything is Everywhere”):<\/strong> In Process and Reality<\/em>, Whitehead famously argued against the “bifurcation of nature,” meaning you cannot separate the human mind from the natural world. At Caspian Lake, he practiced this immersion. His metaphysics insisted that a red sunset is just as real a part of nature as the light waves physics uses to explain it \u2014 a philosophy born from directly experiencing the environment around him. [1<\/a>, 2<\/a>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I share this not only because I\u2019m in Greensboro on the cusp of the centenary of Whitehead’s productive writing retreat, but also because I’m thinking a lot about AI (as I prepare a course on \u201cAI and the Future of the Humanities\u201d), and because it suggests the kind of thinking I don’t believe AI is really capable of: speculative, inferential \u201csurmising\u201d or conjecturing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have not verified the details of what the bot is working from in the sources it cites \u2014 they include videos of Matthew David Segall<\/a> (which I don’t have time right now to watch in full), the aforementioned “lost papers” (though I’m not seeing Vermont mentioned in what’s available online), a few other more standard sources on Whitehead, and my own pieces from ten years ago. His published letters to his son, North, don’t say much about the landscape surrounding him during his Greensboro months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m tempted to conclude that Google AI is “thinking” hypothetically, bridging the gaps between its “knowledge” of, on the one hand, Whitehead’s Process and Reality<\/em> and, on the other, of this wooded northern Vermont lake community, to make connections that just might be there, but also might not. (I should add that I wasn’t looking for this. I had only typed in “when did Whitehead start writing Process and Reality<\/em> at Caspian Lake” and this whole thread of the lakeside environment’s influence opened up for me on the Google AI-mode enabled browser I’m working on.) Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, AI’s “thinking” here reminds me of some of my students’ writing, at least when they are trying, but not too hard and not too creatively, to make a case for something that’s plausible but not proven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of that gets into the challenging topic of “what is called thinking,” as Heidegger put it<\/a>, but that’s another topic for another day, one for which I’m finding Hannah Arendt’s later writings<\/a> helpful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caspian Lake’s influence aside (and today that influence is a bit more sullied by city folks with their fireworks and drunken singing), I hope local brewmaster Shaun Hill<\/a> will finish reading Process and Reality<\/em> so that he can finally release a concoction, perhaps a double IPA, named after it for his Philosophical Series, which only includes drinks named after books he\u2019s actually read. The founder of award winning<\/a> Hill Farmstead Brewery is no lightweight (he’s a one-time philosophy major): the series includes The Birth of Tragedy<\/em>, The Genealogy of Morals<\/em>, Madness and Civilization<\/em>, Being and Time<\/em>, and Difference and Repetition<\/em>, the latter two being among the densest volumes of 20th century philosophy. But he\u2019s admitted to me that he\u2019s struggled getting through Whitehead’s most challenging tome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next summer is the centenary of Whitehead\u2019s arrival here and of the writing of nine-and-a-half of its chapters. 2028 is the centenary of the conclusion of Whitehead\u2019s Gifford Lectures that were based on his Caspian Lake writings, and 2029 is the centenary of the final published result. So Shaun still has a little time. If it\u2019s not enough, I will have failed at one of my life\u2019s tasks (turning being into becoming).
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten years ago, I wrote about Alfred North Whitehead\u2019s time spent at Caspian Lake in Greensboro, Vermont. It was there that, according to his biographer Victor Lowe, “Whitehead\u2019s metaphysical system was created and his magnum opus, later named\u00a0Process and Reality, was shaped.\u201d In a follow-up note, I noted the exact place where he stayed and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[628626,350273,628627,711299,123514,350269,551,423],"class_list":["post-14555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ai","tag-alfred-north-whitehead","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-caspian-lake","tag-greensboro","tag-process-and-reality","tag-vermont","tag-whitehead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3ML","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8836,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/06\/20\/whiteheads-genius-loci\/","url_meta":{"origin":14555,"position":0},"title":"Whitehead’s genius loci","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I was astounded\u00a0to read the following passage as I sat in a cottage on the shore of Caspian Lake in Greenboro, Vermont, earlier today: \"Work on 'The Concept of Organism' began with the summer of 1927, which the Whiteheads spent in a cottage on the shore of Caspian Lake, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8868,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/07\/06\/whitehead-in-greensboro\/","url_meta":{"origin":14555,"position":1},"title":"Whitehead in Greensboro","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 6, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This post follows up on my\u00a0previous note\u00a0about Alfred North Whitehead's time\u00a0spent in Greensboro, Vermont. It was updated on July 7, 2016, thanks to information obtained from the Mitchells' descendants. I have\u00a0found out where the Whiteheads stayed when he was writing his philosophical magnum opus,\u00a0Process and Reality. It was in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"s-l1600","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/07\/s-l1600-275x182.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10041,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/01\/28\/process-and-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":14555,"position":2},"title":"Process and Reality","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been trying to convince acclaimed northeast Vermont brewer Shaun Hill to add Whitehead's Process and Reality to his Philosophical Series\u00a0of ales, stouts, lambics, and porters, on the pretext that it was written down the road from the brewery. But also because Nietzsche, Foucault, Emerson, Thoreau, and Deleuze would appreciate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music & soundscape"","block_context":{"text":"Music & soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/01\/a3292134263_10-275x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1310,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/29\/other-matters\/","url_meta":{"origin":14555,"position":3},"title":"other matters","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's very nice to see that philosopher and Deleuzian\/Spinozist Jeffrey Bell has joined the blogosphere, with a set of very interesting posts up already. Graham Harman has been providing more useful writing tips, here and here. William Connolly has been posting to the impressive group blog The Contemporary Condition. Levi\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog stuff"","block_context":{"text":"Blog stuff","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/blog_stuff\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13535,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2024\/03\/19\/musical-process-and-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":14555,"position":4},"title":"Musical process and reality","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 19, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot has been written about music and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze: for instance, on Deleuze and music theory, on music after Deleuze, and on Deleuze's \"Thought-Music,\" and there've been some valiant efforts to put Deleuze to music, like this one, this one, and this one, and several related\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music & soundscape"","block_context":{"text":"Music & soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/c3xK35N0XKg\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1262,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/12\/between-whitehead-peirce\/","url_meta":{"origin":14555,"position":5},"title":"between Whitehead & Peirce","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The case has often been made -- by John Cobb, David Ray Griffin, and others -- that Alfred North Whitehead's process metaphysics provides an account of the universe that is, or could be, foundational to an ecological worldview. 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