This "internal relations" idea of "being" as "power" underpins Marx's account of the "essential powers" that define human being. This is found in his definition of “wealth” as “the development of all human powers as such the end in itself.”< http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch09.htm
>
With this meaning, "power" is a foundational idea of the "humanist" tradition Marx sublates. Whitehead finds it in the following passage from the Sophist and then elaborates it in terms of the ontological idea of "internal relations."
"Str. Let us push the question; for if they will admit that any, even the smallest particle of being, is incorporeal, it is enough; they must then say what that nature is which is common to both the corporeal and incorporeal, and which they have in their mind's eye when they say of both of them that they 'are.' Perhaps they may be in a difficulty; and if this is the case, there is a possibility that they may accept a notion of ours respecting the nature of being, having nothing of their own to offer.
Theaet. What is the notion? Tell me, and we shall soon see.
Str. My notion would be, that anything which possesses any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect, has real existence; and I hold that the definition of being is simply power." <http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plato/plato-sophist.asp?pg=45
>
Whitehead connects this to "the doctrine of Law as immanent" (a doctrine derived from the ontological idea of "internal relations"):
"This statement ['and I hold that the definition of being is simply power'] can be construed in terms of the notion of imposed law, namely, that it is an external imposition on each existent, that it be correlated with determinate causal action on other such existents. But such an interpretation neglects the exact wording. Plato says that is is the _definition_ of being that it exert power and be subject to the exertion of power. This means that the essence of being is to be implicated in the causal action on other things. It is the doctrine of Law as immanent. Further, a few sentences later he proceeds: - '... Can we imagine being to be devoid of life and mind, and to remain in awful unmeaningness as everlasting fixture?'
"Notice that in this argument, that which is not acted upon is a fixture. Plato denies that being can be conceived 'in awful unmeaningness an everlasting fixture.' It is therefore acted upon. This agrees with his primary definition, that 'being' is the agent in action, and the recipient of action. Thus, in these passages Plato enunciates the doctrine that 'action and reaction' belong to the essence of being: though the mediation of 'life and mind' is invoked to provide the medium of activity. This notion of a medium, connecting the eternality of being with the fluency of becoming, takes many shapes in Plato's _Dialogues_. Very probably, indeed almost certainly, passages inconsistent with this doctrine can be found in the _Dialogues_. For the moment, the interesting fact is that in these passages in this Dialogue we find a clear enunciation of the doctrine of Law as immanent." (Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, pp. 120-1)
“By the doctrine of Law as immanent it is meant that the order of nature expresses the characters of the real things which jointly compose the existences to be found in nature. When we understand the essences of these things, we thereby know their mutual relations to each other. Thus, according as there are common elements in their various characters, there will necessarily be corresponding identities in their mutual relations. In other words, some partial identity of pattern in the various characters of natural things issues in some partial identity of pattern in the mutual relations of those things. These identifies of pattern in the mutual relations are the Laws of Nature. Conversely, a Law is explanatory of some community in character pervading the things which constitute Nature. It is evident that the doctrine involves the negation of ‘absolute being’. It presupposes the essential interdependence of things.
“There are some consequences to this doctrine. In the first place, it follows that scientists are seeking for explanations and not merely for simplified descriptions of their observations. In the second place the exact confirmation of nature to any law is not to be expected. If all the things concerned have the requisite common character, then the pattern of mutual relevance which expresses the character will be exactly illustrated. But in general we may expect that a large proportion of things do possess the requisite character and a minority do not possess it. In such a case, the mutual relations of these things will exhibit lapses when the law fails to obtain illustration. In so far as we are merely interested in a confused result of many instances, then the law can be said to have a statistical character. It is now the opinion of physicists that most of the laws of physics, as known in the nineteenth century, are of this character.
“Thirdly, since the laws of nature depend on the individual characters of the things constituting nature, as the things change, then correspondingly the laws will change. Thus the modern evolutionary view of the physical universe should conceive of the laws of nature as evolving concurrently with the things constituting the environment. Thus the conception of the Universe as evolving subject to fixed, eternal laws regulating all behaviour should be abandoned. Fourthly, a reason can now be produced why we should put some limited trust in induction. For if we assume an environment largely composed of a sort of existences whose natures we partly understand, then we have some knowledge of the laws of nature dominating that environment. But apart from that premise and apart from the doctrine of Immanent Law, we can have no knowledge of the future. We should then acknowledge blank ignorance, and not make pretences about probability.
“Fifthly, the doctrine of Immanent Law is untenable unless we can construct a plausible metaphysical doctrine according to which the characters of the relevant things in nature are the outcome of their interconnections, and their interconnections are the outcome of their characters. This involves some doctrine of Internal Relations.
“Finally, the doctrine of Immanence is through and through a rationalistic doctrine. It is explanatory of the possibility of understanding nature.” (Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, pp. 111-3) (I've used this passage in another context to explain the limits the idea of "internal relations" places on the use of axiomatic reasoning in general and mathematical and quantitative methods in particular. <http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/pkt/2003I/msg00516.html
>)
Ted