Every actual entity is in its nature essentially social; and this in two ways. First, the outlines of its own character are determined by the data which its environment provides for its pro- cess of feeling. Secondly, these data are not extrinsic to the entity; they constitute that dis- play of the universe which is inherent in the entity. (Whitehead 1929/1978, 203)
In this book, I use the notion of transaction in the sense that Dewey articulated it;
and I develop it here, based on Whitehead, in terms of the relation of events. This leads us to a theory in which, as the opening quotation points out, every actual entity – inherently of evental type – is in its nature essentially social. Yet another name for dealing with the same phenomenon is used by Mead, who, in the six books that contain his works, uses the term transaction only once. In that one occasion – which pertains to the fact that individual subjects can enter their own experiences only as a objects, i.e. “only by means of his experiential transactions with other individuals in an organized social environment” (Mead 1972, 225) – it may be read as synonymous with “exchange.” But another term is used to denote a phenomenon that has the very same quality as transaction: sociality. He denotes it to be a principle:
[T]he principle of sociality that I am attempting to enunciate is that in the present within which emergent change takes place the emergent object belongs to different systems in its passage from the old to the new because of its systematic relationship with other structures, and possesses the characters it has because of its membership in these different systems.
(Mead 1932, 65)
In this statement are apparent both qualities of transaction that arise from the relations that events can have. First, sociality pertains to the present, which is the passage from the past to the future. The specious present is past and future simulta- neously and, thus, any object, any individual, is simultaneously part of the past and future. Indeed, the “temporal dimension of sociality is essential to its existence”
(Mead 1932, 82). An entity-as-event belongs to two different systems because of systematic relations with other events (“other structures”). Any thing “can be a member of two divergent systems only in passage, in which its nature in one system leads to the transformation which its passing into another system carries with it”
(77). The term passage is used in two ways: first as the passage from past to future that happens in the present and second as the passage from one perspective on the world (e.g. a moving train) to another (e.g. the landscape with its trees).
In the exchange involving Mrs. Winter and Gina, we note that neither did just externalize and thereby make available something utterly subjective but that the sound-words were for the specific other in this specific event (i.e. a mathematics lesson in this school). But when the words “that one, the square, is a little bit shorter”
came from Gina’s mouth, the Said – i.e. the content of the event of Saying – also (thus simultaneously) represented something of herself. Other students present might have said something different, and as the events revealed, Mrs. Winter antici- pated and worked toward another form of statement that did not include color or size. The words were a manifestation of sociality, of mind, because in it are present
both Gina (as event), from whom the words come, and Mrs. Winter (as event), to whom the words are destined. The words were different phenomena at once for at least three reasons: because (a) there are two people for whom they exist, (b) already for Gina, they manifest something of herself for the other, and (c) the words, the Saying, have evental, thus emergent quality. Emergence is a manifestation of social- ity, and mind is a manifestation of the sociality of nature. It thus exists in nature; and it is its temporal dimension of sociality that it passes from one person to another.
But any “minded organism has the other dimension of sociality as well, so that what appears now as in one system and now within another, lies … in a system in the world answering to this character of the minded organism” (Mead 1932, 80–81).
Mind is simply an expression of the emergent nature of life, that is, life-as-event.
In each (sound-) word-as-event, there is a double passage: from past to future and from one person to another. Any object is present in both dimensions of that pas- sage, and that double presence is the essence of sociality or, as preferentially used in this book, of transaction. The present, as shown above and in Chap. 2, considered as event, has temporal and spatial qualities. This is why “the sociality of the present is the very structure of mind” (Mead 1932, 90). Mind is but the latest manifestation of the “fundamental organic relationship whereby the physical world is properly described as a community” (Whitehead 1929/1978, 288); and that organic relation- ship – existing between people and things and between multiple people – is the reason why evolution, history, events, and occasions are creative, characterized by novelty that cannot be derived from what has been immediately before.
In the transactional approach, the arrival of novelty within the event, that is, its emergent character, is fundamentally social and sociality is the character of the evolution that itself has emergent character. The social, rather than being con- structed, is not merely the condition for anything of higher psychological nature, as Vygotsky and Leont’ev presumed in their conception of human behavior as social in the strong sense. More so, it is the very quality of an emergent nature. That is, sociality is a quality of the event. Mind, one of the topics of educational psychology, thereby comes to receive the deserved recognition “as an evolution in nature, in which it culminates that sociality which is the principle and form of emergence”
(Mead 1932, 85).
In the mathematical description, the evolution of complex systems includes the generation of new forms. In the Bénard effect, for example, water between two metal plates at the same temperature moves randomly. But when the temperature difference between the two plates reaches a particular value, the water all of a sud- den moves in regular columns. That effect cannot be predicted on the basis of the behavior of water or the plates prior to reaching the point. In biological systems, such generations of new forms is the norm and constitutes the essence of evolution.
In evolution, new forms emerge. The point where new forms emerge actually is the same where the old forms disappear. The point is like a boundary between two countries, which is thus part of both. That is, at the point of emergence, “there is a plurality of ‘systems,’ that is to say of distinct standpoints, and we have the conse- quence that the ‘same’ object must be in different systems at once” (Mead 1932, xxx). Sociality is precisely this capacity to be in multiple systems at once, that is, to
be several things at once; and it is the origin of the social nature of everything humans do. The sound-word, as shown above, is such an event that is in multiple systems at once; and, thus, it is an inherently social object. In the same way, an object that intersects with multiple percipient events is social – as intuited on the part of the German philosopher Feuerbach referenced in Chap. 2. That is, sociality and the social world are not constructed. Instead, the sociality of nature is the condi- tion for the social in animals generally and in humans specifically.
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