What are actuality and potentiality?

Answer

In philosophy, potential and potentiality refer to the capacity, power, ability, or chance for something to happen or occur. Specifically, this pertains to some form of change or alteration. A seed has the potential to develop into a full-grown plant. A plant lacks the potential to transform into an airplane. An airplane has the potential to soar through the sky. An airplane lacks the potential to generate seeds. A coin has the potential to land as heads or tails when flipped—it even has the potential to land on its edge. A two-headed coin lacks the potential to land as “tails.” A woman has the potential to either accept a marriage proposal or reject it. The potentiality exists, even if the final outcome has not yet transpired.

In the same realm—philosophy—the terms actual and actuality denote a potential or potentiality that has been realized, made tangible, or brought into existence. A fully grown plant embodies the actuality of a seed’s potential to grow. An airplane in flight has realized its potential to fly. A coin that lands as “heads” when flipped has realized its potential for that result and has not realized the outcome of landing as “tails.” A woman who is engaged is someone who has actualized the previous potential of accepting a marriage proposal.

In the context relevant to Christianity and Christian apologetics, actuality refers to the concept of truth: actuality is that which exists, which is real, and which aligns with reality. Many things might be possible, in the sense that their potential exists, but only what happens, occurs, or exists is actual. In certain theological approaches, this is utilized to elucidate the concept of God: He is a being of pure actuality, devoid of potentiality. In other approaches, the notions of actuality and potentiality are employed to differentiate between ideas that are possible and those that are plausible, likely, or actual.

Aristotle’s notion of an “unmo

“Unmoved mover” is grounded in the difference between potentiality and actuality. According to his definitions, potentials cannot self-actualize. Coins do not flip themselves, nor do they flip for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Seeds have to fall into fertile soil to grow. Airplanes do not spontaneously fly, nor do they simply go from stationary to flying by their actions.

In other words, potentiality can only become actuality when potential is made actual by some outside force. That force’s influence, in turn, was also a potential made actual, and so on. This implies a chain of actions: each change is a potential made actual by some separate, prior set of circumstances. This chain cannot continue forever, however. Without an uncaused cause, there would never have been any “actuality” at all. There must be one thing that is pure actuality, with no potentiality: an unmoved mover. While Aristotle did not identify this original actuality with the Judeo-Christian God, specifically, the concepts are notably similar.

From a Christian standpoint, then, God can be described as a being of pure actuality. As One whose existence is necessary «And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. », (Exodus 3:14) and who does not change «For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. », (Malachi 3:6) and who is beyond time «in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; », (Titus 1:2), God matches the logical requirements of an unmoved mover. As a being of absolute perfection, God cannot be different from what He is, meaning He has no potentiality. Rather, He is the one and only thing in existence.

Sentence that is purely, fully, and absolutely actual, the origin from which all potentialities are ultimately derived.

Not all potentialities are exactly the same. We can distinguish between potentials that can only be actualized through certain means and those that can be actualized by many different means. For example, we might say a particular woman has the potential to become a mother. In a broad sense, the woman’s potential to become a mother can be actualized either by giving birth or by adopting a child. However, if we use the word mother in a strict biological sense, then there is only one means of actualizing that potential, and that is for her to conceive a child.

Using this same idea, we can examine concepts such as the appearance of design in nature. Not all explanations for how these actualities came to be are equally valid. The entire point of Intelligent Design is that certain actualities are—at minimum—best explained by purposeful intervention, and they are likely only explicable that way. As an analogy, a group of five turtles has the potential to be balanced in a stack on top of a telephone pole. But the only way for that to become actual is if some agent outside of the turtles acts. This is a potential the turtles themselves have no means of actualizing. Far and away the most plausible explanation for that arrangement would be that a person deliberately stacked the turtles on top of the telephone pole; all other explanations are wildly improbable, if not impossible. Turtles do not spontaneously find themselves stacked on telephone poles, and “natural” processes don’t put them there, either.

In a similar sense, molecules have the potential to be formed into self-replicating structures; this is exactly what DNA is. But, according to all existing observations, there is no way for those molecules to self-arrange out of chaos. Nor is there any remotely plausible explanation for them to come into that arrangement other than intelligent design—just like turtles.Stacked on a telephone pole. One might argue that a single turtle could be stranded on the pole by a tornado or in a two-turtle stack in a river. Similarly, natural accidents and circumstances could lead to the formation of complex molecules or unusual arrangements. However, it is not reasonable to suggest that a stack of five turtles on a telephone pole—or something as complex as DNA—is most likely the result of a series of mindless accidents.

The concept of actuality-potentiality, then, serves to illustrate why arguments for God as a Creator make significantly more sense than theories based solely on mindless matter and energy.

A biblical perspective on potentiality and actuality also clarifies concepts such as miracles. Since God is the ultimate source of all changes from potential to actual, it is reasonable to state that certain potentials can only be realized by God “But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”, (Matthew 19:26). The fact that only God can actualize certain potentials—that these actualities are “miraculous”—does not render them logically impossible. To suggest otherwise would require a person to abandon reason in favor of a predetermined conclusion. In reality, one way to distinguish true miracles from remarkable coincidences is that they represent an actuality that only God could have brought about.

In discussions of philosophy, the terms potential and actual refer to “what might be” and “what is.” The interaction of these concepts and the process by which a potentiality transforms into an actuality are subjects that spark extensive debates and profound conversations. The description of God in the Bible provides the most logical and observational sense regarding these concepts.