prehension

See also: préhension

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin prehensio, prehensionis. Doublet of prison.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /prɪˈhɛnʃən/

Noun

prehension (countable and uncountable, plural prehensions)

1. The act of grasping or gripping, especially with the hands.
2. (philosophy) According to Alfred North Whitehead, a type of universally acting perception that is not limited to living, self-conscious beings, and which involves an interconnectedness of the observer and the observed.
   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 214:

     The addiction to punning was related to a reverence for the "Word." In a pun or a hieroglyphic figure, several lines come together in what Whitehead would call "a prehension"; in the comprehension of an event, that sympathetic resonance between the observor and the "thing" observed, there is a correspondence between the cosmic word of the gods (the Logos of St. John) and the inner words of the human mind, for each shares existence because it is a manifestation of divine laws and harmony.

Related terms

• apprehension
• prehensile
• prehensive