Abstract
Ongoing developments in evolutionary and systems biology highlight the deficiencies of reductionistic and mechanistic explanations of the "organic" world (and widen the meaning and application of this term). Whiteheads ontology provides the basis for a unified theory of social organization that connects the emergence of primitive life to the development and diversification of human societies along a continuum of creative ontogeneration. The metaphysical characteristic of "creativity " is precisely the manifestation of the ontogenerative relationship between possibility and actuality. Actualization is change. While all actualization necessarily exhibits some degree of continuity with the pasty it is driven by the inertiac availability of specific relevant forms of possibility (eternal objects), through which it has access to an array of "novel" forms for actualization. This relation to novelty explains everything from the emergence of prokaryotes on earth 3.6 billion years ago to the possibility of ideological resistance in human societies today.
