Abstract
This essay examines the processes of abstraction in ordinary perception as part of cognitive processes in general and aesthetic experience in particular. Whitehead's early conceptions of sense perception are drawn on here, and subsequently so are the cognitive operations at the mental pole of events.
In addition to affective strata of experience, with reference to Process and Reality and Modes of Thought, the article considers the processes of symbolic reference, conceptual feeling, and conceptual analysis as synthesizing factors in the process of abstraction. The article also analyses the first systematic theory of art, namely, that postulated by Charles Batteux, and his special conception of mimesis.
Whitehead's conception of aesthetic experience as an experience of what he called 'vivid value' is then compared with similar ideas held by the Czech structuralists and proponents of reception aesthetics. In his conclusion, with reference to Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, the author seeks to demonstrate the role that the act of becoming plays in abstracting aesthetic experience and its contribution to personal and social development.
In addition, the author then sets out the distinctions between abstraction in science/logic and abstraction in aesthetic experience/art, which were made by Whitehead and his pupil Susanne Langer.