concrescence

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Concrescence is Whitehead’s integration of inherited influences into a new actual occasion, a growing-together through which plurality becomes a fresh unity. The corpus uses it as an attributed account of relational novelty and compares it with transactional actualization. Its genetic process is not itself a succession in physical time, and the philosophical comparison does not establish identity with RTI, a hidden negotiation clock or conscious choice at every scale.

Explanation

RB1 introduces concrescence as the integration each occasion performs, with a new synthesis adding something rather than merely repeating its antecedents. RB2 develops prehension and inherited influence as aspects of relational constitution. The resulting unity can become a further condition for later becoming rather than exhausting the field of all possible organization.

The temporal qualification is explicit in RB1: the genetic process of concrescence is not a sequence within physical time. Its analogy with offer and confirmation therefore should not be narrated as a second measurable clock behind a completed quantum event. This preserves a distinction between internal becoming and the physical succession of constituted events.

RB3 restates concrescence as growing together and contributing effects to other occasions. The source’s comparison with quantum transactions is nevertheless a virtue of fit rather than independent confirmation, and RB2 declines panexperientialism. The proposal therefore retains the conceptual operation without importing a universal theory of microscopic consciousness or claiming empirical identity among the compared ontologies.

Scope and attribution

Preserve the Whiteheadian operation, its temporal qualification and the limits on the transactional analogy.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

Integration and nonphysical genetic sequence qualify the concrescence–transaction comparison.

Occurrence locators: 65, 69, 116, 158, 257.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Inherited influences and new unity are developed without adopting panexperientialism.

Occurrence locators: 204, 205, 206, 232.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The later account gives the growing-together gloss.

Occurrence locators: 333.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.