Abstract
This paper aims to construe that which Whitehead’s cosmology describes as a playful universe, while he scarcely uses the word “play” (rare exceptions appear in the first chapter of Process and Reality (Whitehead, 1929a/1978, p. 5)). I discuss the idea of “play” in his cosmology as a function of the “imagination” of speculative reason that emerges from immediate experience. By virtue of imagination, which leaps beyond the determinations of our immediate experience to envisage unlimited possibilities, the world we experience instantly turns into a creative and meaningful world, where novel and unexperienced values are constantly realized and are perpetually perishing. The function of reason is to activate this creative leap of imagination in a coherent fash ion.
Whitehead notes that the transboundary leap of imagination is an essential aspect of speculative philosophy.
He also emphasizes that the “play” of free imagination is a method in speculative philosophy (Whitehead, 1929a/1978, p. 5). Imagination lies at t he heart of this “play.” The transboundary leap of imagination activates “play” and prompts it to transcend logical consistency to unrestricted freedom. He explores the concrete aspects of reality by means of the method of the playful imagination, which introduces us to a playful freedom from causal determinations and logical necessity. We can say that this actual world, including 81 ourselves, becomes meaningful by virtue of imagination, which ourselves, becomes meaningful by virtue of imagination, which retains the vividness of immediate experience, while retains the vividness of immediate experience, while transcenditranscending the eterminations of the stubborn facts of ng the determinations of the stubborn facts of concrete experience. Through such an imaginative leap, our concrete experience. Through such an imaginative leap, our actual world is revealed as being meaningful.actual world is revealed as being meaningful.
