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Chapter Five Learning to Create the Future We come now to the last of Whitehead’s metaphysical writings, Modes of Thought. Although the three previous books that we have considered are also metaphysical, their attention is directed to limited domains. This book is concerned with metaphysics itself. It is not a metaphysical reflection on the nature and function of art or sense experience or reason, but a metaphysical reflection on the nature and function of metaphysical ultimates. My aim in this chapter is to explore similarities between Whitehead’s stages of education and the two “ultimate notions” Modes of Thought interprets . I hope this exploration will shed light on what Whitehead means when he opens the book’s “Epilogue” by saying: “The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought, and civilized modes of appreciation, can affect the issue” (171). two Ultimate Notions Whitehead identifies “ultimate notions” as those “general characterizations of our experience” which “occur naturally in daily life” (Modes 1). They are presupposed in our social structures, our cultural expressions, and our scientific understandings. We take them for granted; they go without saying. There is nothing more “far-reaching” than our ultimate notions, nothing more fundamental in terms of which they can be explained. They are that in terms of which we develop our explanations of all else. Whitehead never offers an inventory of these ultimate notions. Instead, he selects a single one, “importance,” as the ultimate notion on which he will focus, and immediately contrasts it with another ultimate notion, “matterof -fact.” They are “antithetical,” he says, but they “require” each other (4). A matter-of-fact is a particular thing: a this-here-now, as distinct from all the other things that are but which are not here or not now, 119 120 Modes of Learning which are at another place or another time. There are a lot of thises and thats, an inexhaustible multiplicity of them, each one uniquely itself. I hold this pebble in my hand, not that one or any of the myriad others scattered along the beach. Its graceful shape and striking color distinguish it from the other pebbles, but it also differs from them by being the only pebble in my hand. In contrast to a matter-of-fact, importance is a value—a generalization or idea or feeling—that gives matters-of-fact some kind of unity. It brings them together meaningfully, disclosing a whole of which they are components. My pebble is composed of the same kind of rock as all the other pebbles on this beach, all of them calved off from larger rocks and worn smooth by wind and wave. They are significant aspects of the beach ecology because they offer shelter to various organisms that in turn are food sources for other organisms, and because they protect the beach against precipitous erosion and other ecology-destroying instabilities by dispersing the force of the ocean as it crashes ashore. The paradigm of conscious experience, claims Whitehead, is the linking of these two ultimate notions, the “fusion of a larger generality with an insistent particularity” in a judgment that “This is important” (4). The particular matter-of-fact is not taken as a bare indifferent thing but as something of value, because of its inherent qualities and because of the wider significance it evokes. When emphasizing the inherent qualities, “the individuality of the details” of a thing’s importance, we often speak of its intrinsic “interest” and therefore our interest in it. When emphasizing the wider implications, “the unity of the Universe” this interest intimates, we speak of its “importance” (8). Whitehead treats the two terms as synonymous, as emphasizing different facts of the same paradigmatic judgment that a particular matter-of-fact is significant. I chose this pebble because its sparkle caught my eye and its shape reminded me of a childhood friend who gave me a similar pebble she found as we walked together at sunset on a similar beach, long ago when our futures still sparkled with promise. I will bring it home, this pebble of mine, and set it on the fireplace mantle as a reminder of my resolve to be for others the friend I can no longer be for my childhood companion. For Whitehead, judgments about the importance of facts come in a variety of “emphases” (6) or “species” (11) or “senses” (26). His lists vary, but in each case the kind of judgment correlates...

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