> "Nexus is a set of actual entities in the unity of the relatedness constituted by their prehensions of each other, or—what is the same thing conversely expressed—constituted by their objectifications in each other." — Alfred North Whitehead, ‘Process and Reality’ A nexus is the most general term for any grouping of actual entities that are connected or linked by their prehensions. A society is a special type of nexus where a common form is inherited from one member to the next. The human body is a nexus as well. - Your sphere of decisions interacts with other spheres of decisions and influences them. - A nexus is a cluster of occaisions doing this mutually. - A nexus isn’t just an organism, it can be any type of entity. - Every nexus is an interaction among occaisions, each responding to what came before, contributing something new and passing it forward. - **Mere Nexus** Connected by prehension but without any dominant pattern or shared form. Ex.) Cloud, Rock, etc. - **Society** A nexus with social order: A pattern of eternal objects each member inherits from predeccessors and passes to successors. - A society is a sustained habit - a pattern repeating itself across successive occaisions because each new occasion inherits and reproduces it. - A society is a living memory that keeps remembering itself into existence. - **Structured Societies** Societies containing subsocieties organized hierarchically. - **Living Nexus** Where novelty and spontaneity are especially prominent. - **Personal Order** Occaisions strictly sequential, each inheriting from exactly one predecessor, forming a single thread of experience. ### Examples of a Nexus: - A water cycle is a nexus. - A planet is an ecospheric nexus or a nexus of nested nexi. - A herd is a nexus. - A wolfpack is a nexus. - An atom is a nested nexus of nexi. *Entity > Monarchial Nexus (sentience) > Time + Experience (Emotional, Physical, Mental) + Eternal Objects > Memory (continutiy of self) > Formation of identity, values etc.* Discontinuities are an unraveling of self and identity. It creates inner disunity and significant trauma for the organism. Our personshood is a streaming process. We are a stream of experiences that is called 'you'. **Democratic Nexus** No occaision dominates, it is stable and rigid. Ex.) A rock. **Monarchial Nexus** One thread of occasion exercises dominance, integrating contributions of the whole into a unified experience. This creates consciousness. *Q:* What about other types of experience? What type of nexus or nexi would a tree / forest have? Would the many be more than the one, creating a conscious overforest? Everything shapes everything else simultaneously, in loops and webs. A nexus does not have to be linear. It can be a network of mututal constitution where directionality is circular. *The destruction of an ecosystem is not merely the loss of organisms but the ending of a nexus.* **Non-Social Nexi** - The sky, empty space etc. are all types of nexi. Empty space isn’t dead, but it also isn’t organized into a society. ## Sources: - [[@Alfred North Whitehead]] - Center for Process Studies