prehension

1. (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.Examples: "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."countableuncountable