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Water Metaphors in Process Thought PP1 Jan B.F.N.Engberts Physical Organic Chemistry Unit, Stratingh Institute, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands <J.B.F.N.Engberts@rug.nl> Dedicated to Ron Phipps Whitehead’s process thought Although process philosophy has never been a dominating mode of thought in the West, it nevertheless has a long tradition at least going back to Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 500 B.C.). He saw already that process is metaphysically prior to substance: “the river flows” and “one can never step into the same river”. This is a concrete philosophy. The river is in flux, not a static object. The streaming water is what primarily characterises the river. Rescher1 has summarized the history of this approach to philosophical issues. In recent times, Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) extended process thinking to a comprehensive, coherent, provocative, and fully undogmatic philosophical investigation of our immediate living experiences. As he said PP2 late in his life: “In all I have written, I have been trying to express common sense”. He clearly conceived the universe as being made up of occasions of experience. He noted that the final facts are, all alike, actual entities, which PP3

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are drops of experience, complex, interdependent and in process. Moreover, all processes around us represent a creative advance into novelty.Whitehead2 writes in “Process and Reality”: “creativity is the universal of universals characterising ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which PP4 the many, which are the universe disjuctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjuctively.” In fact, creativity is the principle of novelty and has the status of the ultimate metaphysical principle in Whitehead’s philosophising. Process philosophy in the East. Comparison with Whitehead In the East, the tradition of process thinking is even older than in the West and has more strongly determined the life style of the various Asian civilisations, particularly in China. We find elegantly developed schemes of process philosophy in the Buddhist tradition, both in India and later in China, and in classical Chinese philosophy: the Yi Jing (Book of Changes), Daoism and in classical Confucianism and, still more highly developed, in Neo-Confucianism. PP5 In the ancient Buddhist texts, the notion of process is a basic starting point. In the Pali version of the Dhammapada, which is part of the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Sutta Pitaka, verse 82 reads: “All the elements of being are non-self. When one by wisdom realizes (this), he heeds not (is superior to) (this world) of sorrow; this is the path to purity”. In his commentary, Radhakrishnan3 says: “The proposition that there is no permanent, unchaging self in persons or things (sarvam anatman) is not a speculative theory, or a sentimental outburst on the transitoriness of the world, but the basis of all ethics” (in the Buddhist ideals of compassion and later in Whitehead’s moral ideals) “….there is nothing absolute and permanent in them….the reality of the person is in the creative will….” And: “Our life is in inconstant process, ever changing and never stopping to be. We are not entities but processes”. After the introduction of Buddhism in China, these ideas were also cherished by philosophers like Seng-Chao (384-414) who said4: ”Judging from the fact that everything changes at every moment, we say that there is change but no

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permanence. And judging from the fact that everything at every moment remains with that moment, we say that there is permanence but no change…. How close is this to Whitehead, who wrote so beautifully in Process and Reality2 that we always have to deal with two basic facts: flux and permanence…. Later in our lives we often feel more strongly the union of these notions, leading to5 “peace, the harmony of harmonies”. Both in the Eastern and Western traditions harmony is experienced as an intrinsic value notion. Neville6 says about this: ”….the most plausible metaphysical way of understanding value is through the aesthetic properties of harmony…” Value is the word that Whitehead uses for the intrinsic reality of an event. But he also warns us: ….”this immortality of the world of action, derived from its transformation in God’s nature, is beyond our imagination to conceive….” In China, the ancient text of the Yi Jing (Book of Changes)7 stands out as the book that inspired subsequent thinkers to stress the dynamic character of the universe. But, perhaps even more importantly, the universe and the human world are being conceived as part of an essential oneness, participating in a creative change involving the yin and yang forces. “Since it is the same heaven moving with untiring power, there is also created the idea of duration both in and beyond time, a movement that never stops nor slackens, just as one day follows another in an unending course. This duration in time is the image of the power inherent in the Creative….” In classical philosophical Daoism, the famous text Dao De Jing, traditionally attributed to Lau-tzu (ca. 400 B.C.), process is clearly priviledged over substance as argued by Ames and Hall8 in the introduction to their novel translation and interpretation of the book. These authors translated the term Dao as “Way-making”, determining “the sea of our lived experiences”. It also has the dimension of the processive nature of Dao with the immediacy and specificity of the creative act. Things (wu) are seen as an ongoing fluid process with Dao making the pathway that can be travelled. K’ung-tzu (Confucius, 551-479 BC) and his immediate followers had similar views. Standing by the river, he said “….passing on like this, it never ceases, night and day….Nature and the human world should be conceived as participating in a creative harmony”. And: “ ….the goodness of human nature is like the downward course of water. There is no human being lacking in the tendency to do good, just as there is no water lacking in the tendency to flow downward. And, illustrating the relation between nature and the human world: “A gentleman studies water because all of the principles to which he aspires are embodied in its many manifestations”.

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Kúng-tzu’s ultimate realities are ethical ideals which he saw exemplified in Nature as the creative harmony resulting from transforming interactions between yin and yang. He definitely saw a oneness in virtue of heaven and the human being. A well-developed metaphysics was created in the Sung dynasty by Zhu Xi (1130-1200) with primary attention for human life and behavior, in the PP6 tradition of K’ung-tzu. Primordial creativity was equated to the “great pervasive power of Heaven and Earth” (sheng-sheng chi’h hsin). In a thourough study, Julia Ching9 commented on Zhu Xi’s interpretation of change:…how in the case of yin and yang, as the two modes of becoming, PP7 each rises to its maximum and then falls away, leaving the field to its opposite….” But creative advance is now supposed to have a more cyclic character, opposite to Whitehead’s metaphysics involving a linear advance. The most important metaphysical categories are li and ch’i. Li is “the ideal pole”, “above shapes”, (hsing-erh sheng) and is involved in change and becoming through the two modes yin and yang. Ch’i is “the real pole”, “within shapes” (hsing-erh hsia), a dynamic principle which gives shape and actuality to li. Whitehead’s process philosophy The different schools of process thought have the common characteristic that the ideas are just based on our concrete, everyday experiences which are valued as concrete intuitions of the universe. Science is certainly not the single tool for painting an account of these experiences. Whitehead holds PP8 poetry in particularly high esteem, and he notes:”….if we can relate the abstractions of the sciences with the insights of the great poets, the result will be a more complete understanding of reality than either science or poetry alone can give us”. The great poets know about, in Whitehead’s words10, “the ultimate notion of the highest generality at the base of

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actuality”, and they know it deep in their minds. They express it in their poems without defining or analysing this basic notion. In our daily life, during our moments of inspired conciousness, we are often engaged in a search for observations and experiences which are of relevance as a test of the metaphysics to which we adhere. Let us look around us. We see large structures of concrete. Hard and solid matter. But, as elegantly PP9 explained by Jungerman11, this is not more than an illusion, a limitation of our senses. Considering the structure of matter, it is relatively easy to calculate that the fraction of the atomic volume in which the atomic mass is located is less than 10-27 of the atomic volume itself. Matter is almost completely empty. But in this empty space there is a strong force field and intensely dynamic and creative processes are taking place, which can be viewed as a consequence of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Virtual pairs of elementary particles are continually being birthed and then dying. Not only that, the whole spatial universe is a field of forces and a field of incessant activity. Particles just appear as manifestations of these fields.It is clear that these insights add great weight to our confidence in process thought, because they are in full accord with Whitehead’s view that “the world at its most elementary level is a realm of events, not of substances”. Experiencing process in the natural world Objects as we observe them with our senses are actually successions of occasions of experience. This can be seen and expressed in many different ways. The physicist will say that reality can be best viewed as a complex PP10 combination of interdependent energy events, birthing and then rapidly fading away.Many scientists now agree that the laws of physics and cosmology are, too an amazingly correct extend, just the right ones for making life possible on this planet. In a recent book, Leonard Susskind12c notes with great stress that “the existence of life is extremely delicate and requires very exceptional conditions”. This is one version of the anthropic principle12 and its value for process philosophy appears to warrant serious study.

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The biologist will use another language to focus on the evolution and behavior of complex, chemistry-based living systems. In this context PP11 Pross13 argues that “stability within the biological world derives from the nature of the replicating process. Replicating systems reflect a stability that is kinetic in nature, a dynamic kinetic stability of the kind we find in a flowing river or a water fountain”. But there are more modes of expression. Whitehead, in Modes of Thought14, writes: “philosophical truth is to be sought in the presuppositions of language rather than in its expressed statements. For this reason, philosophy is akin to poetry, and both of them seek to express that ultimate good sense which we term civilisation”. Metaphors and symbolism in process thought Still another way to express deep experiences of the processive natural world is in the form of metaphors. These are matters of imaginative rationality, permitting understanding of one kind of experience in terms of another15. Whitehead uses the term symbolism, that he defines carefully: “the human mind is functioning symbolically when some components of its experience elicit conciousness, beliefs, emotions and usages, respecting other components of its experience. The former set of components are the “symbols” and the latter set constitute the “meaning” of the symbols16. The Chinese word for metaphor is Yin Yu, literally hidden analogy. Often metaphors induce aesthetic experiences and they contribute to a feeling of happiness and harmony in experiencing flux and permanence in actual reality. I like to show that liquid water is a particularly attractive vehicle for metaphors in process philosophising. Let us first have a brief look at some physico-chemical properties of water17 which are relevant for appreciating water a root metaphor in process thought.

The Water Molecule

STRUCTURE

GEOMETRY

The water molecule is very small: the hard sphere diameter is 2.75 Å (compare neon: 2.79 Å).

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The individual water molecule (H2O) contains only three atomic nuclei, one PP12 oxygen and two hydrogens. The single water molecule is very small and PP13 has a hard-sphere diameter of only 2.75 Ǻ (1 Ǻ = 10-10 m) similar to that of the noble gas neon (2.79 Ǻ). Eighteen grams of water (1 gmol) contain 6.022. 1023 molecules. This is an incredible number which is about 1000 times more than the total number of sand grains in all beaches of the world (100.000 km, 100 m wide and 1 m deep)10. The water molecule is overall electrically neutral, but has two partial positive charges on the hydrogen PP14 atoms and a single zone of negative charge on the oxygen atom. These charges permit favorable electrostatic interactions between the molecules: twice as a hydrogen-bond donor (pointing one of the the positively charged hydrogen atoms to a negatively charged oxygen atom of a second molecule) and twice as a hydrogen bond acceptor (with the oxygen atom interacting with a hydrogen atom of a second molecule). The experimentally observed

double acceptor ability on the oxygen atom is primarily determined by space limitations for more than two waters interacting with the negative charge. These interactions allow the formation of a highly dynamic three-dimensional hydrogen-bond network. The water-water hydrogen bonds have

A Four-Coordinated Water Molecule Showing Hydrogen Bonding to Four Neighbours. Twice as a Donor and Twice as an Acceptor.

Liquid Water

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PP15 an average strength of ca. 20 kJ.mole-1 . This explains the unusually high

melting and boiling point of water, so important for life-processes on earth. The dynamics of the hydrogen-bond network is exemplified by water molecule reorientation times of about 2 ps (1 ps = 10-12 s) and times to move over one molecular distance of about 7 ps. The properties of this hydrogen-bond network are at the heart of the many water anomalies such as the fact that ice floats on water (temperature of highest density at 4 oC), the large heat necessary to evaporate water, the fact that water can carry huge amounts of heat, as in the Gulf Stream, with a large effect on the climate. But I particularly stress the water-driven, entropically-determined hydrophobic interactions18 that govern the stability of cell membranes and which are essential for the three-dimensional protein structures and the catalytic action of enzymes. Despite the strong intermolecular interactions between water molecules, water pours freely around room temperature. Water poetry

Cartoon of the 3D hydrogen-bond network of water. The liquid forms an infinite, network with localised and structured clustering. In a sense, water looks like “liquid ice”. Water-water interaction: ca. 20 kJ/mol or 5 kcal/mol (ca. 10 KT). Heat of vaporisation: 2447 kJ/kg. Heat of melting: 333.4 kJ/kg, 6.007 kJ/mol. Specific heat capacity: 2.113 kJ/K/kg, 38.07 J/K/mol. Absolute molar entropies (273 K, 1 atm.): Ice 41.0 J/K Liquid water 63.2 J/K Gas 188.3 J/K Reorientation time water mol.: 2 ps. Time to move one mol.distance: 7 ps.

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Streaming water in the rivers and in the sea, and responding to the natural environment, has always provoked a strong inspiration to process thinkers. But even more than that, poets have sometimes described water as a living PP16 being, even possessing a soul. Gaston Bachelard19 has written that “water is singing reality”. In his dreams about water he is feeling its feminine characteristics. Dormant water, dreamy and calm, leads to melancholy. Disappearing into deep water is like travelling to a far horizon or sinking into infinity. The flux of water is associated with farewell, departing, perishing and good-bye forever. The ultimate metaphor for flux. Water’s fluidity provides an understanding of the psychology of the creative unconcious. In the words of Bachelard, the human mind has claimed for water one of the highest values – the value of purity. Water draws to itself all images of purity. And murmuring water is able to teach birds and man to sing and speak….Water appears to us as a complete being, with a body, voice, and soul. Water, by means of its reflections, doubles the world and adds new spiritual dimensions to the world around us. Many poets have felt the metaphoric richness of water contemplated in its reflections and its depths. As Stephané Mallarmé has written: A sad flower, that,which grows alone And has no other love Than its own shadow, listlessly Reflected in the water…. Water metaphors in process thinking So far Bachelard and back to process philosophising. The streaming water is a perfect metaphor for the flux of events in a continuing process, the fluidity of time and ultimately of the universe. Liquid water is also the most mobile component in living systems. During his Harvard days,Whitehead very much liked to look at the river behind his house20. He might have felt the beauty of the moving waters, with beauty defined as the internal conformation of the various items of experience with each other. But the flux of the water does not imply that the rapid succession of events points to their insignificance. By contrast, Whitehead says clearly that “the immediate facts of present action pass into permanent significance for the Universe”.

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Ron Phipps21 expressed this idea in a concise and beautiful way: “The fleeting present is integrated with the felt presence of past events and the lure and anticipation of future events….” In Whitehead’s footsteps, Griffin22 gave this idea religious significance: “All worldly experiences are prehended by, and thereby included in, the divine experience which Whitehead calls the consequent nature of the religious ultimate. Slightly deviating from Whitehead’s initial notion2 of God as a single actual entity, he argues that, instead, God has to be conceived as a serially ordered society of divine occasions of experience. In each moment God prehends all the actual occasions into a divine satisfaction which includes initial aims for the next moment of the universe. These intial aims are based on God’s primordial aims combined with God’s sympathetic knowledge of the present situation. Thus, as the primordial nature of God provides the guide for creativity and orderliness in the universe, it is the consequent nature of God that prehends all worldly occasions and absorps them into the divine experience.” As recorded by Lucien Price20, Whitehead said on November 11, 1947: “God is in the world, or nowhere, creating continually in us and around us. This creative power is everywhere, in the ether, water, earth, human hearts….The process is itself the actuality, since no sooner do you arrive than you start on a fresh journey….” But water metaphors can be much further extended. From the majestic waves on the ocean to the streaming rivers. And, looking microscopically, we see that the highly mobile and fluctuating hydrogen-bond network in liquid water will reorganize itself upon dissolution of materials into the water. The dissolved compounds are “hydrated” in a specific manner and their chemistry is largely determined by the hydration layers around these molecules. The chemistry of life processes takes advantage of these hydration processes but also in laboratory chemistry: the beneficial effects of using water as the solvent are now rapidly being employed in many chemical reactions. The properties of water are unique. With the hydrogen-bond assemblies of these small molecules, being both reactant and solvent, water is crucial for all life processes, determining to a large extent the extraordinary complexity and dynamics as well as the beauty of the biological processes in the world in which we live. In fact, the need for liquid water determines the fine-tuning of the temperature on our planet.11 Every instant in the history of a living being is a tribute to the exceptional properties of water. This has been recognized already by many process thinkers and poets in striking metaphors long before the physics and chemistry of water had been investigated.

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PP17 Let me therefore finish with a relevant quote from the Dao De Jing in which Lao Tzu8 characterizes water metaphorically by saying: The highest good is like water, Water’s goodness is that it Benefits the myriad living things, Yet does not contend And dwells in places which The multitude detest. Thus, it approaches the Dao. References

(1) N.Rescher, “Process Metaphysics”, SUNY Press, New York, 1996. (2) A.N.Whitehead, “Process and Reality. An Essay in

Cosmology”,Corrected Edition, D.R.Griffin and D.W.Sherburne, Eds., The Free Press, New York, 1978.

(3) “The Dhammapada”, transl. by S.Radhakrishnan, Oxford Univ.Press, 1950.

(4) Fung Yu-lan,”A Short History of Chinese Philosophy”, D.Bodde, Ed., The MacMillan Comp., New York, 1960.

(5) A.N.Whitehead, ”Adventure of Ideas”, The MacMillan Comp., New York, 1933.

(6) R.C. Neville,”Metaphysics in Contemporary Chinese Philosophy”, J.Chin.Phil. 2003, 30, 313-326.

(7) “The I Ching or Book of Changes”, transl. by R.Wilhelm, 3d Ed., Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1967.

(8) “Dao De Jing”, transl. and with commentary by R.T.Ames and D.L.Hall, Ballantine Books, New York, 2003.

(9) J.Ching, “The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi”, Oxford Univ.Press, 2000.

(10) A.N.Whitehead, “Science and the Modern World”, The MacMillan Comp., 1925. (11) J.A.Jungerman, “Evidence for Process in the Physical World”, in “Physics and Whitehead, Quantum Process and Experience”, T.E.Eastman and H.Keeton, Eds., Ch.4, Suny Press, New York, 2004. (12)(a) J.D.Barrow and F.J.Tipler, “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle”, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986. (b) M.Rees, “Just Six

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Numbers. The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe”, Basic Books, New York, 2000. (c) L.Susskind, “The Cosmic Landscape. String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design”, Little, Brown and Comp., New York, p.356, 2005. (13) A.Pross, J.Phys.Org.Chem. 2004, 17, 312-316. (14) A.N.Whitehead, “Modes of Thought”, The MacMillan Comp., New York, 1938. (15) G.Lakoff and M.Johnson, “Metaphors We Live By”, The Univ.of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980. (16) A.N.Whitehead, “Symbolism. Its Meaning and Effect”, The MacMillian Comp., New York, 1927. (17) J.B.F.N.Engberts, ‘Structure and Properties of Water” in “Organic Chemistry in Water”, Ch.2, Blackwell Publishers, 2006, in press. (18) Review: W.Blokzijl and J.B.F.N.Engberts, “Hydrophobic Effects. Opinions and Facts”, Angew.Chem.Int.Ed.Engl. 1993, 32, 1545-1579. (19) G.Bachelard, “Water and Dreams, An Essay on the Imagination of Matter”, The Pegasus Foundation, Dallas, U.S.A., 1983, Sec.printing, 1994. (20)L.Price, “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, Nonpareil Books, Jaffrey, 2001. (21) R.Phipps, “A Whiteheadian Theory of Creative, Synthetic Learning and its Relevance to Educational Rewform in China”, 2005. (22) D.R.Griffin, “Reenchantment without Supernaturalism”, Cornell Univ.Press, Ithaca, 2001.