Abstract
Philip Rose argues for a radical shift away from the traditional affirmation of the primacy of actuality (the “metaphysics of actuality”) to the primacy of possibility (the “metaphysics of possibility”) as the true ground of being (arche). Throughout the western intellectual tradition, actuality has been elevated as logically prior to, and explanatory of, possibility. In reviewing this tradition, Rose engages the fact than not even Whitehead escapes the metaphysics of actuality which finds acute exemplification in his famous “Ontological Principle.” Highlighting problems with this tradition, Rose looks to the evolutionary cosmogony of C.S. Pierce to argue that possibility rather than actuality should be the viewed as the original and primordial ground. For Rose, the work of Stuart Kauffman goes a long way in making a turn to a metaphysics of possibility, but his proposal can also be strengthened further if possibility is more readily conceived as primordial.
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Rose, P. (2022). Rethinking Whitehead’s Cosmology Through the Cosmogonic Philosophy of C.S. Peirce: Speculation on the Origins of the Actual and the Metaphysical Primacy of the Possible. In: Davis, A.M., Teixeira, MT., Schwartz, W.A. (eds) Process Cosmology. Palgrave Perspectives on Process Philosophy . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81396-3_11
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