ABSTRACT
I survey a range of biological accounts of the synchronization of living processes with their non-living milieus, as a way of constructing a process philosophical account of “nature” as we might understand it in today’s context of accelerated climate change. My analysis spans the evolutionary synchronicity of species with environment, as the biologist Julian Huxley contemplates in his reflections on the effects of geological shifts and the forces of “denudation” exerted by the weather, by plants, and by animals. Such forces do not only exist for the benefit of individuals or species, participating as they do in the processes of natural selection towards extinction if the conditions are unfavorable. I then consider the evolution of birdsong in Charles Hartshorne’s Born to Sing, and how it might help us to expand upon Henri Bergson’s account of the relation between memory and “virtual objectivity” as he outlines in Matter and Memory.
