On the New and the Novel: An Adventure in the Temporal Logics

Abstract

This paper is an adventure of ideas. More specifically, it is a continuation of the adventure of ideas concerning the relations between creativity and logic at the level of being one finds in the work of Whitehead and his interpreters/inheritors. The “argument” of the paper, such as it is, is that ontological creativity may be fruitfully described by two logical functions, one exploding the movement from possibility to actuality, and the other from actuality to possibility. The paper explores both functions, or “senses,” as fruitful ways of understanding ontological creativity, especially within processual (Whiteheadian and Bergsonian) thought. The two senses of creativity, the paper also argues, ought to be understood as primitive and inexorably “together.”

Keywords

• creativity
• logic
• time
• process
• whitehead