Re-reading Whitehead Through the Pre‑reflective Experience of Atmospheric Processes

Summary

By examining the experience of atmospheres through micro-phenomenology, this article offers a new perspective on Alfred N. Whitehead's process philosophy. Both Whitehead's thought and micro-phenomenology focus on what occurs before something becomes a perceivable quality, but from different angles. Atmospheres, which exist at the edge of awareness, are treated as a field of possible experiences that emerge when the perception of objects is replaced by processes. Exploring sensual experience and meaning-making through atmospheric media helps situate new conceptual approaches to human-environment relationships. The author suggests that atmospheric awareness enables critical reflection and acceptance of difference, and that this perspective provides fruitful connections to contemporary research on experience and meaning-making.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article explores new perspectives on Alfred N. Whitehead’s process philosophy through a micro-phenomenological investigation of the experience of atmospheres. Whitehead’s philosophy and micro-phenomenology are both interested in something before it becomes a perceivable quality, yet from a different angle. Atmospheres, always at the brink of our awareness, are taken as a field of possible experiences that opens up when the perception of objects is replaced by processes. An exploration of sensual experience and meaning-making enabled by atmospheric media through process philosophy and micro-phenomenology helps situate new conceptual attempts at the relationship between humans and their environments. I will pay special attention to those parts of experience that impact assumptions about the relationship between humans and their environments and will suggest that atmospheric awareness offers opportunities for critical reflection and acceptance of difference. I propose that a new perspective on Whitehead’s philosophy through micro-phenomenology provides fruitful connections to contemporary research on experience and meaning-making. In explicating my subjective experience with atmospheric processes, I make a first step towards tracing the processes of experience as described by Whitehead in my own experience and thereby offer a way to acknowledge subjective experience that might inspire a wider range of scholarship.