A ‘Whiteheadian’ concept describing pure potentialities or real things that do not have the ability to make decisions or have feelings, they can only be actualized. These can be seen as abstract forms or qualities that could be the ingredient in an actual experience but are not experiences in themselves. They are the ‘how’ of experience. Discoveries require eternal objects to function, this doesn’t mean we used the right one or that more than one couldn’t have been used in it’s application. For eternal objects to exist as potentials, they need somewhere to be. Whitehead assigns this to the primordial nature of God. Note: There is a difference between pure potentialities and lived ideas, see [[Propositions]]. ### Paradoxes of Eternal Objects 1. How can God experience eternal objects without learning them first? This would state that God and eternal objects are mutually constitutive, they create each other. 1. Abandon subject-object model entirely. This makes God and eternal objects the same. 2. Do new potentialities constantly emerge - new eternal forms? Whitehead says no. He says that all eternal objects are complete and fixed. 1. Emergent complexity? Relational novelty? Biological evolution? How can these be eternal objects before the conditions for the existence have emerged? Possible Solution: What if neither are true? What if all possibilities / eternal objects were created within a closed system ‘reality’? Thus removing the intermingling of God and eternal objects by one level of separateness. Colors are potentialities actualized on the mountain. They are potentialities actualized within the eye when looking. **Pure Potentialities of the Objective Species** Spatio-temporal displays of the world. The contrasts are pure potentialities ‘eternal objects’. What the subject shows, it’s attributes etc. **Potentialities of the Subjective Species** Feelings, what the subject feels, sees etc. Eternal objects give the world it’s shapes, forms, textures etc. They are not temporal, they are non-temporal. They are ‘ingressed’ in time. Kind of like Plato’s ‘Forms’ but they are not more real than the actual world. They are real though. What is ultimately real in the world itself as it ingresses those potentialities. ## Sources: - [[@Alfred North Whitehead]] - Center for Process Studies - [[Propositions]]