The third and final stage in the formal constitution of an actual entity is the satisfaction. Whitehead says of this stage that it is “the culmination marking the evaporation of all indetermination; so that in respect to all modes of feeling and to all entities in the universe, the satisfied actual entity embodies a determinate attitude of ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” [323]
This “determinate attitude of ‘yes’ or ‘no’” exists regarding any “question” which another occasion may ask. Here, a “‘concrete unity of feeling’ is obtained [in which] all indetermination as to the realization of possibilities has been eliminated.” [322] Once the satisfaction of an actual entity has been attained, it is what it is entirely; there is for it no more possibility for it to be anything other than what it is. In this way, no matter what question is asked of the satisfied occasion, the answer will be either “yes” or “no,” it will never answer “may be.”
In this phase the actual occasion completes its formal development and is finally constituted as a determinate actual existent and an element for the prehension of other actual entities. ‘Satisfaction ’ is “the culmination of the concrescence into a completely determinate matter of fact.” [322] It is the “attainment of the private ideal which is the final cause of the concrescence.” [323]
The second form of fluency in the world is “transition.” This phase of the Process, according to Whitehead’s account, “is the fluency whereby the perishing of the process [that is, the concrescence], on the completion of the particular existent [its satisfaction], constitutes that existent as an original element in the constitutions of other particular existents elicited by repetitions of process.” [320]
This phase of process resembles the flux of time. Transition is a macroscopic process involving macroscopic entities (completed concrescences and nexus of actual occasions), “the vehicle of the efficient cause, which is the immortal past.” [320] In one aspect, it is the passage of a satisfied concrescence from the present into objectively immortality in the past. In another aspect, it is “the origination of the present in conformity with the ‘power’ of the past.”
In either respect, whereas the first form of fluency, the fluency whereby an occasion is constituted as an actual existent, doesn’t require a discussion of time, the second form of fluency, the progression from particular existent to particular existent, “from attained actuality to actuality in attainment,” [326] from satisfied concrescence to novel concrescence, has the appearance of time and is defined using temporal vocabulary.
Consequently, in order clearly to understand “transition,” it is necessary to examine Whitehead’s conception of time in further detail. For this I will turn to the section entitled “Past, Present, and Future” from his book, Adventures of Ideas.
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