prehension

is uncognitive apprehension, or relations that are not always or exclusively knowledge based, yet they are a form of 'grasping' of aspects of the world.

For example, the word 'prehension,' which Whitehead defines as 'uncognitive apprehension' (SMW 69) makes its first systematic appearance in Whitehead's writings as he refines and develops the kinds and layers of relational connections between people and the surrounding world. As the 'uncognitive' in the above is intended to show, these relations are not always or exclusively knowledge based, yet they are a form of 'grasping' of aspects of the world. Our connection to the world begins with a 'pre-epistemic' prehension of it, from which the process of abstraction is able to distill valid knowledge of the world. But that knowledge is abstract and only significant of the world... it does not stand in any simple one-to-one relation with the world. In particular, this pre-epistemic grasp of the world is the source of our quasia priori knowledge of space which enables us to know of those uniformities that make cosmological measurements, and the general conduct of science, possible.'

prehension, n.Definitions

prehension