for - definition - prehension - Whitehead

definition - prehension - defined by Alfred North Whitehead - the feeling that each node of an idea network have for one another

• Think of it as short for comprehension
• Comprehension usually implies more of a conscious sort of rational reflective understanding

• When Whitehead shortens that to prehension

  • he's trying to get at something that is not yet conscious

  • certainly not self-reflective

  • but more of an aesthetic feeling of being permeated by the presence of the other beings
  • in an environment without yet reflecting on the fact

pre-linguistic - see epoche as well, seems related - like the word-less intuition before a precise word is formed to capture the new permutation of salient defining experiences

• So apprehension or feeling is a kind of unconscious apprehension
• So our conscious forms of apprehension or comprehension
  • are a further elaboration upon a much more basic form of apprehension / feeling
  • that Whitehead argued pervades the universe at every scale