Each entity,object has been noted by Aristotle to have a present moment expression, its actuality ---what that entity is in its fullest sense now. Potentiality is the set of varied actualities which the entity/object might be in the future. Potentiality and actuality are linked, influencing each other.
A particular table, for example, is pure potentiality when it is an intention and an idea in the mind (or program) of its maker. At some point that idea is translated into a final version, completed when the last coat of varnish has dried. It is at that moment real; it has actuality.
Now picture a set of future versions of that table: one set of versions ages under average conditions - the most likely conditions, and another set of that table's versions age under varying lesser likelihoods. The average 20 year potentiality of one table might be something more scratched and less finished but still basically intact. Less likely -- given the nature of the world and its treatment of tables as a class -- would be that it's shine and strength had actuallly been enhanced. Very low likelihood, just as an example, would be, say, that all of its atoms would be integrated into the earth and plants of an organic vegetable garden.... and the people, animals etc who had eaten from it. (How? The table is ground into sawdust and then put into a wormbox -- which over 5 years has processed the wood into plant-useable compounds).
I'm guessing that since that a table is now inanimate -- its potentiality picture is less wide-ranging than those of animate (hence dynamic) entities such all as a duckling or a colt, a just hatched mayfly or a newborn baby. Because of their more interactive and dynamic natures, each is likely to have a higher number of distinct, clusters of potentialities.
So let's look then at the at the actuality--potentiality notion as it applies to humans... and ultimately as it applies to nurturer's generally and to teachers specifically.
seque: develop idea here
seque: and further develop idea here
Nurturer's are motivated by a general set of emotional drives... most primal being compassion? or control??
Whatever the primal motivation true urturer's [those that work to live up to the designation] protect the actuality of the nurtured.. and in so doing conserve the set of potentialities.
Nurturers then work to translate actuality into what?
Perhaps the high road for realistic sorts is the pursuit of the most elevated potentiality given the time, energy and resources available.The most likely potentiality? (Even if it's a 'low' member of the set of potentialities? I would hope not). The most elevated , the highest expression of that individual's potentiality? (even if nearly impossible? -- well--admirable but again, not likely).
So what is elevated, then? [Much room for development in follow-through entry or perhaps in a co-respondents take on elevation]
Are nurturer time, energy and resources evenly distributed amongst potentialities? Should the nurturer fret about that or simply work allow the most elevated potentialities under the conditions that DO exist (and seem likely to continue to exist into the foreseeable future)?
Any human or animal has a potentiality that is established genetically at the moment of conception or birth. There are other compontents that are thought/have been thought to frame potentiality[genetics being a creation of the last 150 years]: witness the themes and issues examined through astrology, the effect of parental position in society, the general setting within which one's family resides, one's gender and sequential position amongst siblings, as examples. (We may now parse potentiality by means of the Scientific Metaphor for human existence .. but we still are driven by and reason with a much broader set of causal assumptions .
At the moment a child is born s/he has the greatest range of potential futures that s/he will ever have.
Each moment lived from that point on forms the child -- and that actuality (a set of habits being established-- a relationship with adults being shaped -- sibling relations and it's influence on future relations now having taken place) narrows the universe of possibility.
Jump forward to adolescence --- that person has made many decisions and developed many habits that interact with nurturers and the environment in such a way to eliminate or reduce the likelihood of some futures that may have existed in the future and to increase the likelhood of other futures that were simply one among thousands of possibilities with finite but small likelihood at the time of conception and, later, birth.
The longer we live, the more our actuality is specifically rendered; the more real we become, the more constrained our set of future potentialities. One will always work toward the most preferred future but, as one accumulates experience and the consequences of past actions, the choice amongst futures is made amongst an increasingly limited set of possibilities.
